Climate change mitigation is on the world’s agenda item for any international negotiations. Mitigation involves all efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emission which indirectly aims at reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are indiscriminately being used by the industry, transport as well as house hold sector.
Use of fossil fuels may be lessened by providing an alternative of energy in the form of bio briquettes. Though bio briquetting is not a new venture but viewing forest bio residue as a source of energy is unique especially in Indian contexts. Waste pine needles forest bio residue of Western Himalayas may be used as a useful energy alternative. This alternative energy source may be used in some appropriate industry thereby reducing the fossil fuel load.
Chirpine trees are found over an area of half a million hectare in Uttarakhand and has a tendency of shedding its leaves every year in the months of January to May. These dry and fallen pine needles are highly inflammable and contain 18-20 mega joules of energy per kg of its mass which is higher than that of wood, saw dust and fuel oil.
In an estimation by forest Research Institute, Dehradun over a million ton of dry pine needles fall every year on the forest floor of Uttarakhand.
These needles are extremely combustible and repeatedly cause hazardous forest fires in the summer months. Burning of pine needles works as a big source of atmospheric carbon.
This also leads to soil erosion, land degradation, dryness, and loss of plantation and damages to life and property of the human beings. Pine needles are abundantly available in the hilly region of Himalayas.
On thermal decomposition they generate gases such as light volatiles, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and other organic vapours.
Since pine needles pose serious threat to forests from forest fires, their collection and disposal for energy recovery is a very attractive proposition. One way of disposing this dry and fallen pine forest bio residue resource material would be bio briquetting.
To protect the most fragile Himalayan ecosystems from the hazards of forest fire initiated by the dry fallen pine needles, it became mandatory to associate the nearby villagers with an individual enterprising venture connected to forest bio-residues.
A machine needs to be conceptualized with which every individual villager may work as a potential entrepreneur for the manufacture of bio-briquettes.
Considering the remoteness of the area, hilly terrain, non-availability of continuous supply of electricity, lack of expertise in case of failure of motors fitted in the machine and transportation of dry and fallen pine needles to briquetting factory being a highly cost intensive activity are some of the important factors which needs attention while planning for converting pine needles into briquettes.
Based upon the past experiment and previous experience, it was found that electrically driven macro and mega entrepreneurship activities for pine needles briquetting could not get desired results in the state of Uttarakhand.
As an “out of the box” approach, a manually driven bio briquetting machine was conceptualised which could be installed at the source of raw material, that is nearby chir pine forest. This manually driven machine for pine needle briquetting has the following unique features.
(i) This machine does not require any pyrolysis process of pine needles. Pyrolysis process is highly technical and villagers are not well trained for this.
(ii) It is hand driven, so that there is no requirement of electricity.
(iii) It is light in weight., so that it could be transported easily to the remote terrain.
(iv) Machine doesn’t need any binder for briquetting. There is always an acute shortage of cow dung or molasses as a binder in hilly areas.
(v) Low maintenance and low initial cost of the machine.
(vi) Machine can also use other bio-residues for briquetting.
With above distinguished features a lab model of a manually operated bio briquetting machine for pine needles briquettes was successfully designed and manufactured, which can generate a pressure of above 1500 to 2000 psi at the delivery end which is fair enough to densify the loose pine needs into briquette form.
This machine had field trials and found highly appropriate to mitigate forest fire by involving communities into chir pine needles briquetting. Hundreds of such machines should be given to the villagers for pine needle briquetting, and a value chin with market linkages should be created.
This initiative will not only reduce the danger of forest fire in chir pine areas but also generate sustainable livelihood options for the communities living in Western Himalayan region of Uttarakhand. Above machine is now well registered with patent number 496458 dated 9-1-2024.
(The writer is retired IFS officer)