A micro industry with closed energy and water cycles for sustainable rural development

Abstract

Sustainable development requires combining economic viability with energy and environment conservation and ensuring social benefits. It is conceptualized that for designing a micro industry for sustainable rural industrialization, all these aspects should be integrated right up front. The concept includes; (a) utilization of local produce for value addition in a cluster of villages and enhancing income of the target population; (b) use of renewable energy and total utilization of energy generated by co and trigeneration (combining electric power production with heat utilization for heating and cooling); (c) conservation of water and complete recycling of effluents; (d) total utilization of all wastes for achieving closure towards a zero waste system. Enhanced economic viability and sustainability is achieved by integration of appropriate technologies into the industrial complex. To prove the concept, a model Micro Industrial Complex (MIC) has been set up in a semi arid desert region in Rajasthan, India at village Malunga in Jodhpur district. A biomass powered boiler and steam turbine system is used to generate 100-200 KVA of electric power and high energy steam for heating and cooling processes downstream. The unique feature of the equipment is a 100-150 kW back-pressure steam turbine, utilizing 3-4 tph (tonnes per hour) steam, developed by M/s IB Turbo. The biomass boiler raises steam at about 20 barg 3 tph, which is passed through a turbine to yield about 150 kW of electrical power. The steam let out at a back pressure of 1-3 barg has high exergy and this is passed on as thermal energy (about 2 MW), for use in various applications depending on the local produce and resources. The biomass fuel requirement for the boiler is 0.5-0.75 tph depending on its calorific value. In the current model, the electricity produced is used for running an oil expeller to extract castor oil and the castor cake is used as fuel in the boiler. The steam is used in a Multi Effect Distillation (MED) unit for drinking water production and in a Vapour Absorption Machine (VAM) for cooling, for banana ripening application. Additional steam is available for extraction of herbs such as mint and processing local vegetables. In this paper, we discuss the financial and economic viability of the system and show how the energy, water and materials are completely recycled and how the benefits are directed to the weaker sections of the community.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2015.05.004
Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Engineering and Technology > Mechanical, Biomedical & Design
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > Sustainable environment research group
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College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Operations & Information Management
College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Aston India Foundation for Applied Research
College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School
Additional Information: © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Presented at the 6th BSME international conference on thermal engineering, 19-21 December, 2014, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Uncontrolled Keywords: micro-industry,sustainable development,trigeneration,General Engineering
Publication ISSN: 1877-7058
Last Modified: 16 Dec 2024 08:13
Date Deposited: 14 Oct 2015 13:20
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2015-06-11
Authors: Sen, Padma Vasudevan
Sen, P.K.
Hegde, S.
Singh, S. N.
Mukhopadhyay, A.
Singh, Prahalad
Davies, P.A. (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-4783-1234)
Berry, R. (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-3395-046X)
Dey, P.K. (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-9984-5374)
Engineer, Cyrus

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