Agricultural wastes as a supplementary source of energy: An economic assessment of a briquette making facility

For commercialization of crop based biomass briquetting technology and alternate source of energy model, is essential to know whether the technology is economically viable or not. In view of this, an attempt was made to analyze the economics of the biomass briquettes prepared by utilizing unused agricultural byproducts and other selected biomass produced from different crop residues. Biomass briquetting is one among the processes of converting low bulk density biomass into high density and energy concentrated fuel referred as briquette and has scope to use as fuel energy for food preparation by the rural households. India continued to roll its economy with agriculture whose energy requirement is increasing day by day with the progress made in agricultural sector. Under the existing situation, day to day’s demand for fuel energy for food preparation at rural households observed to be very high and women folk struggle hard to gather fuel for food preparation. On the other hand, in India plenty of biomass is available due to vast agricultural based crop production systems. The per annum current availability of biomass in India is estimated at 1,249 million tons. With this advantage, to minimize the drudgery of rural women folk and to fulfill rural house hold demand for fuel energy required for food preparation, could only be addressed by the means production of biomass briquettes which provides cost effective and good fuel energy source for rural households for cooking food every day. The economics of biomass briquettes production indicated per month average net return ofINR80,000to the briquette machine owner. The project appraisal with other financial indicators for biomass briquettes production had indicated desired, theNet Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, Benefit-Cost Ratio and Payback Period were observed to be INR3931, 245, >30 per cent, 2.21 and 3.00 years respectively