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Essay on Energy Sufficient Village
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Background of Energy Sufficient Village
- Essay on the Introduction to Energy Sufficient Village
- Essay on the Resources from a Cow
- Essay on the Conclusion to the Energy Sufficient Village
Essay # 1. Background of Energy Sufficient Village:
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Lord Krishna had been a colourful and many facet personalities. With rural brought-up, he showed himself as possessor or great physical prowess and went on, later in life, to demonstrate that he could win great battle by shear planning and diplomacy without active involvement otherwise. As a preacher of Bhagwat Gita, his practical philosophy of Karma Yoga has overshadowed his many other original and unconventional trends in thinking.
One of his great contributions to suffer was in the field of rural economy. He visualised cow as an economic unit around which sound economy of a village could be built and sustained. More interesting was his commitment to this idea and aggressiveness he used for the implementation of his programme.
Essay # 2. Introduction to Energy Sufficient Village:
The post-independence uneven development and industrialisation has created moral, mental & spiritual degradation and frustration among rural population in India, who have remained isolated from the economic planning and growth. It has now become compelling to think about the 80 percent of rural population for the satisfaction of their basic needs, their self-reliance based on social participation and harmony with the environment to ensure the sustainability of their development.
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The solution of the problem lies in making available cheap and abundant supply of energy for cooking, heating, lighting, community development, pumping of water for drinking and irrigation, powered agriculture and small scale industries.
The energy conversion techniques should be pollution free, based on renewable and locally available sources and appropriate technology involving local manpower, local materials and local resources which can be locally managed and amalgamated with the rural surroundings.
In this context, the wisdom of Lord Krishna can be tested. His idea of cow as a unit for rural economy can be re-modelled to evaluate it as energy conversion unit. The cow eats biomass (fodder) and gives out milk and cow-dung which can be properly processed to yield useful energy Cow is symbolic and includes buffalo and other milching and associated animals.
Essay # 4. Resources from a Cow:
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Cow is a very rewered animal in Hinduism because plenty of resources are obtained from her. The daily income resources are milk and cow-dung. Milk is one of the most wonderful and almost complete foods available in nature. Not only it has high nutrient constituents but also it is used for a large variety of domestic and industrial food products in the form of curds and kafeers, butter and butter ghee, cream, cheese, sweets, milk-powder, ice milk only and can meet their full energy (food) requirements from it.
Cow-dung is another wonderful waste to meet the fuel and fertilizer requirements in rural areas. A major portion of collected cow-dung is used as a domestic fuel after drying the cow-dung cakes. The above together with some supplements of agro-wastes and firewood meet the fuel requirements of the rural population in India.
The cow periodically gives birth to draught animals which contribute substantially to the energy demands of agriculture, irrigation and transport sectors.
Useful food and industrial raw materials are obtained after the death of cow, i.e., meat, leather, glues, blood, bones, etc. Therefore, cow is very useful as a source of raw materials for Dairy and Milk food industries. Meat industry, Leather, Chemicals and Glue industries etc.
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i. Milk and Milk Products:
The milk yield of cow and buffaloes varies widely from 5 litres to 30 litres per day; the total milk production in India may be of the order of 700 million litres per day. The daily calories need of man varies from 2500 (light work) to 5000 (heavy work). Although, man does not depend wholly on milk and milk products for his calories intake, however, a model can be conceived to evaluate the contribution of cow to meet the total energy intake of man.
The calories content of some milk product are cow milk (670 calories per litre), buffalo milk (950 calories per litre), curd (600 calories per litre), cheese (3480 calories per kg), butter (7290 calories per kg) and butter ghee (8280 calories per kg). It may, therefore, be assumed that cattle milk can give on an average 900 calories per litre of milk. Thus the present cattle population in India can fully meet the total energy requirements of 180 million people of average size.
The energy equivalents of man are 1050 kJ per man-hour; 840 kJ per woman hour and 500 kJ per child-hour. Therefore the total energy equivalent of milk production in India in 416,000 MWh.
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ii. Draught Animals:
Draught animal is an excellent energy device readily available in the rural scene and within the means and technical competence of the farmer for ploughing and water lifting and small scale cart operators for transportation (1) In India, there may be about 130 million draught animals including young stock; and 80 million work animals ploughing two-thirds of land and carry two-thirds of rural transportation.
These are more economical than tractors for ploughing farms of sizes less than four hectares and more competent than trucks for handling vehicles for small scale transportation (about one tonne) over short distances (below 20 km). Trucks become economical only for heavier loads of 3 – 5 tonnes and when distances moved per day are more than 200 km.
The animal power is 9650 kJ/Bullock-hour and total draught animal energy of working animals in India is 215,000 MWh. Five pairs of bullocks can replace one tractor and therefore, eight million tractors can be replaced by 80 million work animals, saving huge amount of capital investment in addition to avoidance of dependence on scarce diesel/kerosene oil, mostly imported by India. On an average a buffalo gives 6 to 7 births and a cow 10 to 12 births per life. Therefore, the cow contributes substantially to this form of renewable energy source.
iii. Cow Dung:
The cattle population in India is 235 million heads with a dry “dung yield of about 170 million tonnes per year. The composted manure prepared from cow-dung has 0.75 to 1 per cent Nitrogen after losses and is used as a fertilizer for agriculture. The collection efficiency of cow-dung is 70 per cent and loss constituent of 30 per cent pollutes the environment.
The prevalent practice of burning cow-dung cakes, firewood and farm wastes in rural India is not an attractive one. A major portion of the collected cow-dung is used as domestic fuel after drying the cow-dung cakes. The practice of making cow-dung cakes is unhygienic and low combustion efficiency of 11 per cent is wasteful. This can rapidly result in the problem of deforestation on one hand and loss of soil nutrients on the other.
a. Biogas:
The livestock and even human wastes have much potential as an energy source in developing countries via an aerobic digestion; the wastes are treated with simultaneous evolution of methane fuel and retention of nitrogen and other vital plant nutrients in the remaining sludge, which can be recycled as a fertilizer.
‘Biogas’ generation is a versatile process ranging from small domestic ‘Gobar’ gas plants catered by a few cows to much bigger community type plants where relatively large volume of cow-dung is continuously available. These depend greatly on hot climate and manual labour for its functioning. These can go a long way to providing much of the energy required by a large population.
The technology for conversion of animal wastes into biogas via anaerobic digestion is well established, and quite a large number of biogas plants (about one lakh) are already in operation in Indian villages (2). Our country has a potential of producing about 22,000 million cubic meters of biogas with a heating value of 21,800 kJ per cubic meter.
The Gobar gas plants are mainly developed by Khadi and Village Industries Commission New Delhi. In every state, Khadi and village Industries Boards look after the erection work of the Gobar gas Plants. The Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India is also helping for the construction of Gobar Gas Plants.
For a typical Indian village of population 500, the number of cattle would probably be around 250. The amount of dry dung collected from them would be approximately 180 tonnes per year calculated on the basis of 13.5 kg of cattle dung as daily produce of one cattle. This would be more than sufficient to meet the complete fuel and other energy requirements of the village population on conversion to methane.
The human wastes can also be used for production of biogas. Community latrines can be planned in the villages for collection of night soil for feeding to biogas plants. Wastes of 200 persons can be used to produce about 5 cubic meter of gas per day to extract 12 kWh of equivalent energy.
b. Biogas Engines:
The requirement of Indian farmers for engines varies from 3.7 kW to 7.5 kW in vertical high speed and vertical low sped types all over the country. Normally, the engine runs on an average for 5 hours per day Biogas produced by a digester that is functioning well is approximately 65 per cent methane and has a heating value of nearly 21000kJ per cubic meter.
The biogas engines for pumpsets produced in India are essentially diesel engines where air intake is connected to biogas supply The diesel is required for starting the engine and about 20 percent diesel and 80 per cent biogas are mixed automatically to produce power for running the pumpset. The biogas consumption is about 0.46 cubic meters per kWh which can be obtained from 13.5 kg of cattle dung, i.e., daily produce of one cattle.
The price of a typical 3.7 kW, 1500 rpm biogas engine with centrifugal pump of 100 × 100 mm including accessories and trolley is about Rs. 15000. It is financed by the State Agro Industries and Land development Banks and other nationalised banks and subsidised by Government. The cost of a typical gobar gas plant of 85 cubic meters capacity is about Rs. 1.5 lakhs.
c. Spent Slurry:
The disgestion process in the Gobar gas Plant enhances the fertilizer quality of cow-dung. The nitrogen content of the spent slurry from the plant is very high, 1.5 to 2 per cent which is double the nitrogen content of original cow-dung.
Essay # 5. Conclusion to the Energy Sufficient Village:
The cow is a very useful animal converting solar energy through biomass into useful products and services. It is a unique energy conversion unit. At the same time it should be remembered that cow lives largely on crop residues, grass and other such products which are not readily useful to man. Also they graze on marginal lands where edible crops cannot be raised.
Lord Krishna’s wisdom is fully vindicated. It is proposed that rural economy should be planned with cow as energy conversion and economic unit. More important is that the commitment and aggressiveness of Lord Krishna must be used in the implementation of the plans. The cattle breeding, health care, research and development in anaerobic digestion, farm and transport implements should be taken up more vigorously.