Delhi, the capital of India, may soon have the country’s first bus fleet that runs on two green fuels: compressed natural gas (CNG) and digester methane. Working with the Swedish government, the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy plans to create a biogas plant inside the Kesopur Sewage Treatment Plant complex in West Delhi to create compressed gas for transit fuel, according to a report in The Weekend Leader, a publication based in southern India.
Delhi already has some 450,000 CNG-fueled vehicles, including 16,000 buses. Meanwhile, Sweden is a leader in biogas technology: the publication says more than 40 percent of the country’s biogas is used to fuel vehicles. The Swedish technology uses an advanced treatment system that yields 99 percent pure methane from digester gas.
The compressed biogas is thus almost the same as CNG and can be injected into the engine cylinders of CNG vehicles. Similar technology is in use in Norway and Germany. The biogas plant is expected to be in operation by early 2013.
“At full capacity, the sewage treatment plant will emit enough raw gas for the biogas plant to generate around 25,000 cubic meters of compressed biogas per day,” according to The Weekend Leader. “This is enough to fuel 120 buses.”
