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tA new horizon for use of Bio-diesel in rural India has been added by the DCE Bio-Diesel Team by developing a bio diesel cooking range. The cooking range works on Bio-diesel and is a substitute for kerosene for cooking. The crude oil prices are already causing a serious cancer for Indian economy as India imports 75% of its crude oil. While diesel is largely utilized in rural India for tractors, diesel gensets, water-pumps, kerosene is used as a fuel for cooking by rural poor. Kerosene supply to rural India is already facing shortage and as such it is important to find a substitute for kerosene said Prof. P. B. Sharma, Chief Coordinator of Bio-diesel Research at DCE. The team has developed a bio diesel stove which uses Bio diesel in place kerosene. The bio diesel stove besides being a good substitute of kerosene stove is environmental friendly as it does not gives out the aromatic hydro carbons and carbon mono oxide which are present around a kerosene stove. Kerosene stove thus causes indoor pollution and badly effects the health of rural women who currently use kerosene as a fuel for cooking says Naveen Kumar of Bio-diesel research team of DCE. Bio-diesel is a green fuel and is produced from Petro-Plants such as Jatropha and Karanja. India is sitting on a gold mine of bio diesel provided cultivation and production of bio diesel can be taken up on a nation wide scale. Almost 11 million hectors of land comprising of waste land, barren forest land, land on both sides of the railway tracks, land on both sides of highways and express ways being built up and the spare land in rural areas can be effectively utilized for cultivation of Petro-plants to build up bio diesel capacity for India. DCE has pioneered the designs of bio diesel reactors of various sizes ranging from 5 litres to 600 litres per batch and has undertaken R&D to produce word quality bio diesel. DCE campus has 3500 petro plants and the college has creating in house capacity to produce 10000 litres of bio diesel from the petro plants in the campus. DCE currently running two bio diesel cars on roads of Delhi. DCE has also organized training programmes for bio diesel production to benefit the farmers of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and also the Ex-servicemen and self help woman groups of Orissa. The DCE R&D work on Bio Diesel is supported by PCRA (Petroleum Conservation Research Association of India) and Ministry of Non conventional Energy Sources of Govt. of India. With the success on the development of bio diesel cooking range, the DCE team is embarking upon developing bio-diesel petromax for rural lighting. Bio-diesel would thus meet the requirement of transportation, lighting, cooking and even electricity needs of rural India in the coming years besides generating jobs in millions for the rural poor says Prof. Sharma, Principal DCE |
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