Coconut shells and mango pits can be the fuel crop for biogas generator set

Now there are many generator sets used in the countries and areas of electrical shortage, such as diesel generator set, gasoline/petrol generator, natural gas generator, CNG, LPG, biogas generator, biomass generator, dual-fuel generator set etc.

One of plant scientist at the University of Kentucky in the United States, named Seth Debolt, wanted to find a new source of fuel together other scientists. This new fuel can be used to generate electricity for some poor people in the rural areas of developing countries.

Growing a separate fuel crop would take land away from food crops. If like this, we have to get one between bio-fuel and food crops. In fact, in the world, a billion and a half people have no electricity. A billion others have an undependable supply. The people live in the place of energy poverty; typically they’re the same people who have food insecurity issues. So any change in availability would be most detrimental to that group of people. Professor Seth Debolt find a good way to solve this problem. The people can grow the coconut and mango. In the past, coconut shells and mango pits are often thrown away as the wasting materials. However, they store a lot of energy and have an “excellent” heating value compared with coal of low to moderate grade.

The same is true for the pit of an olive, peach or cherry, or the shell of an almond or walnut. The core problem is a way to release that energy. Up to now, scientists have already made it. Here we can use a machine called gasification. Gases can be released in the low-oxygen chamber when the plant matters are heated. These gases will be burned in an engine that drives a generator to generate electricity.

Professor Debolt says he and his team see possibilities for plant matters, including rice hulls, coconut shells, mango pits etc. These crops can be used to generate electricity in a small-scale system, at least in part alleviating energy poverty in a certain possibility.
Thus, those tropical countries like Indonesia with large crops of coconuts, mangoes and similar fruit could be benefit from this technology.

Professor Debolt also says this is not a perfect solution. There are existed technical questions, like how to safely deal with the hazardous waste that gasification can produce. Meanwhile, there needs to be money to get these projects started.

When the petroleum is used up, most of generator sets, such as diesel generator set, gasoline generator/petrol generator, heavy oil generator etc, will step down from the stage of history. Hope we don’t face to a hard reality and have the replaced energy once the petroleum is depleted.