Cow dung: The unexpected hero of green energy

DW (English)

A processing plant in Tamil Nadu turns cow dung into organic manure and CNG, an environmentally friendly biogas. This helps farmers boost yields and reduce costs.

Transcript

00:01Vigneshwaran Prabhakaran is the proud owner of a biogas plant in Kurandai Kuppam, a village near Kadalore.

00:08About six years ago, he came up with the idea of using dung from some of the many cows in the area.

00:15Manure releases methane gas when it decomposes.

00:21In this plant, cow dung and other types of organic waste are processed using anaerobic digestion.

00:27Microorganisms break the waste down, separating gas from the solid mass.

00:35Over a period of 45 days, microbial action will turn the decomposed waste into biocompressed natural gas.

00:46That is distributed to the gas station and the remaining 99% of the waste is turned into organic fertilizer.

00:53So no waste is produced here, it is a zero discharge plant.

00:59It is one of the few biogas plants in Tamil Nadu.

01:06One ton of cow dung produces around 25 kilos of gas, along with half a ton of organic fertilizer.

01:12Demand for this fertilizer is growing as more farmers in the region are switching to organic agriculture.

01:24These banana fields are organic too.

01:2620,000 square meters of them belong to farmer Kannadasan, who has switched to organic fertilizer.

01:31It's four times cheaper than conventional products.

01:36But that's not the only advantage.

01:38We use SLR organic fertilizer for our plants.

01:44With chemical fertilizer, you have to keep applying it constantly.

01:48But with organic fertilizer, the yield is better and the soil's health improves.

01:53It doesn't cause any damage.

01:56A lot of people here are buying and using it, including us.

02:02We have seen great harvests since we switched to organic fertilizer.

02:07The plant wasn't cheap.

02:10Vigneshwaran Prabhakaran raised 11 crore rupees, over 1 million euros, from investors and a bank loan.

02:20On top of that, he received a government loan, part of which was a grant.

02:26Compressed natural gas is often used as an alternative vehicle fuel.

02:32His business supplies various companies.

02:34He earns around 600,000 rupees or 6,500 euros a month from gas and fertilizer sales.

02:42But running the plant isn't easy. It requires a lot of waste.

02:46A plant this size produces up to 2,500 kilos of gas a day from 150 tons of dung.

02:55One cow produces about 10 kilos. So we need 1,500 cows each day.

03:00Despite the challenges, he has no regrets.

03:06He sees biogas as the future.

03:08And the farmers are happy to have affordable organic fertilizer and great harvests.

03:12and great harvests.

03:13.

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