Approach:
- Introduction
- Write about the feasibility of methane to be used as energy and fuel. Also, write about the limiting factors in brief.
- Clearly delineate the potential of methane usage in helping socio economic development and environmental protection.
The use of methane as a source of energy and fuel is useful to improve landfill safety, generate electricity, reduce greenhouse emissions, and to earn carbon emission reduction credits. The feasibility of Methane as a source of energy depends upon the following factors:
- Availability: Methane can be extracted from natural sources as well as anthropogenic activities. With current available technology, it is very difficult to capture Methane from Oceans, termites and wetlands; however, it is possible to extract methane from landfills, agriculture waste and coal bed methane.
- Accessibility: In India, coal bed methane and landfills are considered as potential sources for energy. However, the use of landfills has practical challenges like:
- Direct exposure to methane gas and seasonal changes in temperature etc.
- A lack of local service and technology providers for methane identification, quantification, and mitigation activities.
- There are legal and regulatory in obtaining access to the electricity grid to sell back power.
- Affordability: Many coal mines do not have adequate internal investment capital for project funding, and thus a lack of adequate financing is remains an important challenge.
Contribution in Socio and Economic development and environment protection:
- Collection and use of methane provides a valuable, clean-burning energy source that promotes local economic development and reduces local environmental pollution.
- Methane capture will witness improvement in local air quality and, ozone related-mortalities will decrease.
- It will benefit water quality, particularly in the agricultural sector, via improved management of animal waste.
- Producing energy from methane recovery avoids the use of conventional energy resources, reducing end-user and power plant emissions of CO2 and air pollutants.
- Capturing methane from coal mines, landfills, and oil and gas facilities can also improve safety conditions by reducing explosion hazards.
- It will lead to increase in local employment as methane capture plants creates jobs associated with the design, construction, and operation of energy recovery systems.
- By linking communities with innovative ways to deal with the waste it can help in, better waste management and responsible community planning.
Legacy Editor Changed status to publish October 27, 2022