Hydrogen-CNG to reduce carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emission by 70%: Dr. SSV Ramakumar, Director (R&D), IndianOil
New Delhi   21-Nov-2018

Indian Oil Corporation(IOC) plans to leverage its various patented technologies to be part of India’s emerging bio-fuel sector, from bio-methanation technology to converting refinery off-gases into ethanol, SSV Ramakumar, Director Research and Development (R&D) at IndianOil discusses with ETEnergyWorld various projects and collaborations. Edited excerpts.. There have been talks about IndianOil’s plan to convert refinery off-gases to ethanol. Can you elaborate on the issue? LanzaTech has a bio-fermentation technology to convert steel mill off-gases to ethanol. They have plants in China which are operating very well. So we thought that in our refineries we have a lot of off-gases, though LanzaTech does not have any experience in converting refinery off-gases into ethanol, we thought that the mechanism is exactly the same. Any off-gas can be translated in terms of its composition and the elements would be the same carbon monoxide and hydrogen. So we thought that many of the units in refineries generate these kind of off-gases. We took the off-gases and undertook a pilot test from some of our refineries using their microbes (LanzaTech) and we got fantastic results. Based on that the board has decided to set-up a 33,000 KL per annum ethanol plant at Panipat refinery using refinery-off-gasses, which we will commission by December 2019. This plant will be the first of its kind in the world, we have co-designed this plant (IOC& LanzaTech). This will open up the flood-gates for other refiners to adopt this technology, every refinery generates some form of off-gases and if converted into ethanol then it will be a win-win situation for all of us and will fill some void in the ethanol scarcity. Can you give us an idea of the tie-up between IndianOil and LanzaTech? We have picked up around five per cent equity valuing $5 million in LanzaTech. Most importantly, we have become partners in the refinery-off-gas technology. We will be co-licensing this technology all over the world. The oil ministry is saying that based on the success of the Panipat refinery the other 22 refineries in the country can adopt it after validation. So, we will be using this technology to produce ethanol at our own refineries and license it other refineries as well. In our country alone the scope of this technology is good. What is the current status of the plan to use hydrogen as a fuel for public transportation? The Supreme Court has directed IndianOil to set up a pilot reformer in one of the Delhi bus depots and convert at least 50-60 buses from Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) to Hydrogen-CNG and do a wide-scale evaluation and validate the claims we are making. Our claim is that once you switch from CNG to H-CNG the carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emission will be reduced by 70 per cent and there will be a 3-4 per cent of fuel economy. So, the EPCA and the Supreme Court see this as a good intermediately measure, a less cost-intensive measure on the way to e-mobility. They were toying with the idea that all city buses should be converted to electric buses, which was coming at a huge cost, more than Rs 1,500 crore. But, here you have to just put up a reformer, it can be in a de-centralized way or you can put up a centralized reformer and natural gas can be directly converted into H-CNG mixture. The same dispensers which you see at CNG pumps can be used to fill up this fuel. Were you able to bring down the cost of production for hydrogen? In the case of H-CNG, we are not producing hydrogen, we are reforming natural gas partially so that certain percentage of hydrogen will be produced in the mixture and the rest will be unconverted CNG. That’s how it is H-CNG. Normally other countries like Brazil, US and nations where such mixtures are used produce hydrogen and CNG differently and physically mix it, which would be a logistical nightmare. We have a unique patented technology of H-CNG. So, we will be using that. Is IndianOil also working on waste-to-energy projects? The ministry has launched SATAT policy under which in the next 3-4 years 5,000 compressed bio-gas plants are expected to come up and Oil Marketing Companies will provide for complete off-take guarantee. As traditional bio-gas has certain impurities and cannot be used as a transportation fuel, you have to purify the bio-gas and eliminate the carbon dioxide. This needs a methanation technology where carbon dioxide levels are minimum and methane yields are higher. If the bio-gas formed is methane rich, almost 99 percent, then that reduces the cost of purification. In this case also we have a bio-methanation technology, which, as compared to other commercially available technology, boasts of 89 per cent of methane yield as compared to 50-60 per cent of methane yields achieved through other technology.