ANNOUNCEMENTS
Coal demand for Thermal power plants in India is expected to increase to 784.6 million tonnes per year from April 2023. Every day newspapers are covered headlines of the coal crisis in India. Co-firing of biomass in thermal power plants can be an ideal alternative to reduce the anthropogenic CO2 emission and dependency on coal. In budget 2022 finance minister announced compulsory 5% co-firing of biomass in all coal-based thermal power plants and launched mission SAMARTH to increase to 10% in upcoming years. The objective of this study is to understand effectiveness and inclusiveness of SAMARTH policy. This study calculated the boiler’s efficiency of 210 MW and 500MW thermal power plants for 5%,7%,10% cofiring scenarios. In 210 MW plant, efficiency for all the scenarios found to be higher than efficiency of 100% coal use (73.51%). Similarly in 500 MW plant efficiency for all cofiring scenarios observed to be higher than 100% coal use (72.21%). The GHG reduction potential calculated from co-firing biomass residue found to be increasing with increase in biomass ratio. The project boundary included emission from transportation of biomass, aerobic decay emission still result show high GHG reduction potential. The qualitative and quantitative result inferred policy’s positive impact on environmental, social, economic parameters. Primary data collected reveals the amount of biomass generation per acre, biomass management in the 2020, and Farmer’s willingness toward selling biomass to thermal power plants.
Keywords-
- Thermal power plant
- Biomass residue
- Efficiency
- Co-firing
- GHG reduction
