Friday, November 30, 2007

Bio-briquettes can keep the winter at bay

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

Razen Manandhar

Kathmandu, November 29:
Winter is already here but the Valley denizens have nothing reliable to heat up their rooms. With ever-increasing load shedding hours and the year-round shortage of LPG, using electric or gas heaters in not imaginable. But wait. There is a solution at your doorstep. You can go for something called bio-briquettes made of biomass, which produces maximum heat and almost no smoke.

One bar of bio-briquette can heat your room for nearly two hours just at the cost of Rs 15 to 20. A briquette stove however costs from Rs 700 to 1200. By using bio-briquettes, youwill be chasing away the chilly winter on one hand and helping to keep your city clean on the other. But one should be cautious while using bio-briquettes for heating purpose and ensure that the room is well ventilated.

In the capital, bio-briquettes are available in departmental stores and shops around hospitals, as the marketers presently intend to supply them for the purpose of generating heat for massage of newborns.

“We can produce bio-briquettes by using wastage paper, saw-dust and other parts of the garbage. We can generate energy and help the municipality to minimise the volume of waste side by side,” said Sanukaji Shrestha, the chief of the Foundation of Sustainable Technology.

He has developed a technology for producing bio-briquettes out of waste materials. But he does not produce them for commercial purpose. Instead, he teaches people from different localities on how to produce them and contribute solid waste management.
Bio-briquettes have not however been effectively marketed so far.

Integrated Development Society (IDS) has provided training on bio-briquettes in a dozen of districts. “We provide training to communities but most of them are not producing bio-briquettes commercially,” said Santosh Guragai, a trainer of IDS.

Nirmal Nepal, the director of Nepal Bio-briquette Company Pvt Ltd, said they will be focusing on marketing this winter.
[ KATHMANDU, NOVEMBER 30, 2007, Mangsir 14, 2064 ]