Energy Resource and Technology

Prof. S. Banerjee
Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur
Lecture - 36
Solar Distillation and Biomass Energy
Going to the next topic, let us quickly finish the remaining part of geothermal energy and
we have seen yesterday that two types of sources one that emit dry steam or superheated
steam and the type that emit saturated or a wet steam, these two we have already covered.
There are a quite large number of other geothermal sources that either emits wet steam
whose water proportion is quite large or it is simply hot water. In that case, what can you
do? In that case, essentially the problem becomes similar to the problem that we
encountered in OTEC, ocean thermal energy conversion, because there you, what you are
getting is essentially hot water.

So, how did we tackle the problem in case of OTEC? We said, either we can have a
flashing cycle or we can have a binary cycle. In case we are talking about the flashing
cycle, it is easy to see that that is more efficient or effective, if you have relatively larger
temperature, larger enthalpy in the fluid that is coming out. Why? Because, otherwise you
will have to go to far lower pressure and if you go to far low pressure, then the size of the
turbine becomes huge. So, in order to avoid that, for hot water cycles or where the source
is saturated steam, but with relatively large water content, in those places it is better to
have the binary cycle.

So, in case of the binary cycle, how it will look?

(Refer Slide Time: 2:38)

It will look as if you have a chamber which will act as the boiler in which your
geothermal steam or hot water comes like this and then, you have the boiler for the binary
fluid and in case of the OTEC cycle, we have learnt that earlier people used to consider
freon as a suitable binary fluid, but nowadays with the problem of ozone hole, freon is no
longer the favoured binary fluid. Now, most people are now considering either ammonia
or some newer substance that does not have the ozone hole depletion characteristic.

So, after this it will go to a turbine. So, the direction is like this. It will go to a turbine that
will run a generator and the turbine output goes to, it has to go to a condenser. So, the
condenser will have something like this. I will draw schematically and it comes out and
that has to be then pumped up to, so this will be the standard cycle. So, here is the
turbine, turbine for the binary fluid and here is the condenser for the binary fluid and here
you have to put in cold water and hot water comes out. So, this is essentially the cycle.
So, in this case, the hot water comes up that gives the heat to the binary fluid and there is
a binary fluid cycle and this, in the process of doing this, the hot water is relatively cooled
down, but that water again has to be pushed back to the well. So, the cycle goes like that.
There are quite many places where this binary cycle is actually installed.

(Refer Slide Time: 5:33)

For example, if you go to the, this is again a very schematic way of drawing it, where the
hot water is coming, it is giving the heat to a heat exchanger and the cold water is being
pushed back to the well and the binary fluid is going through the cycle. But, this is, the
one that I drew on the paper is the better way of representing it.

(Refer Slide Time: 5:53)

Here is a binary fluid cycle in the Soda Lake in Nevada in United States.
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(Refer Slide Time: 6:04)

Here is one that is in the island of Hawaii. What are these exactly, these things?

(Refer Slide Time: 6:15)

Or in this case what are these things? .. So, you have to have the relatively large
condensers, because of the relatively lower temperature there.

(Refer Slide Time: 6:29)

This is a very small, relatively small size plant in California which is designed to run by
itself. That means there is no, no operator here. Only when there is some problem the
system detects the problem and then it radios to the operator who comes and repairs the
problem. So, you have a standalone geothermal system in California.

(Refer Slide Time: 6:54)

This is a very small plant in Thailand. You can see the size is of that of a shed only. So,
you can have, depending on the location, depending on the availability of the fluid you
can have various sizes of the plants. Let us, let us stop the geothermal energy part here. Is
that understood?

So, in a nutshell what you have is there can be, the take home message is there can be
three types of fluids that can come out; the superheated steam, the saturated steam or the
hot water. You never use the actual surface manifestations that naturally occur. We
always use, always do some geothermal prospecting to find the actual hotspot. We sink
wells there, two wells, one for drawing the hot water, another for pushing in the cold
water. So, there is a complete cycle established and that is how we do it.

In case of India, India has a reasonable, not, I should not say as large as the sites in
Philippines or Italy or New Zealand or United States, but it has a reasonable prospect of
harnessing geothermal energy, provided we can accurately locate the hotspots. As yet it
has not been exploited to a large scale, because we have not yet been able to locate the
actual hotspots. We have only sunk some wells and thereby reached temperatures like
100 degrees and we have running power plants, small size power plants from that water.
So, there are a few topics in energy that are still to be covered. So, I will try to complete
that within the next week two classes, today and the next class.

Student: .

Oh, I , yes, what? What is the problem?

Student: .

(Refer Slide Time: 9:06)

Yes, this is the place where the other fluid is flowing. I am drawing with green; this is the
other fluid, so here it goes. This is the part through which the, binary fluid means two
fluids; the primary fluid is the water that actually does the heating, but the secondary
fluid is either ammonia or some substances like that. This cycle is essentially the same as
what we covered under the ocean thermal energy conversion, OTEC. That is why I did
not go into the details of it. These are already been covered under the other and you
remember the same cycle is useful wherever there is any waste heat in the industrial
processes. Any industrial process if it has waste heat, then the same cycle can be used to
generate some amount of power out of it.

In the idea of use of solar energy, there is one other concept; probably I did not cover it,
solar distillation, did I cover? No?

(Refer Slide Time: 10:18)

So, it is another form of harnessing solar energy, solar thermal energy and we have
already seen the idea of the flat plate collector, we have already seen the idea of the
concentrating collector, but solar steel is a modification of that. True, you can use the
heat that is collected in a flat plate collector or a concentrating collector to run a
distillation plant. So, in that case, the idea would be that you have a separate solar
collector collecting the heat and that heat is used somewhere else to do the distillation and
the distillation is a very large scale industrial process. Many industries need distillation,
so the idea is that why not integrate the two. The place where the solar energy is collected
would be the same place where the distillation takes place. How can that be? The idea is
rather simple.

Suppose you have something similar to the solar flat plate collector which means this is
the direction in which it is tilted. The top surface is glass and the bottom surface is an
insulation, here there will be some insulation material and there would be one surface on
which the actual collection is done that is the metal surface. Imagine, the standard
structure of a flat plate collector, it is like this. In addition, in the flat plate collector you
have the water tubes that go along this collecting the heat, rising up thereby and then it is,
generally goes out and there is a process that is established which stores heat in a tank.
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That is a standard thing in the solar collector, solar flat plate collector. So, we are talking
about the , the solar incident, solar radiation coming like this. So, you have a stand like
this, something like this.

Now, imagine that instead of this surface being a normal metal surface, supposing this
surface is a wet cloth here, so some kind of a wetting material, something that wets and
that collects the solar energy, what will happen? Because it wets, it contains water and the
water because it is absorbing the solar energy will evaporate. As it evaporates, what will
happen to it? Here there was a glass which is allowing the heat through. Thereby the glass
is not heated. This surface is heated which is taking part in the evaporation process, as a
result of which the steam that is coming out will see only one relatively cooler surface
available that is the glass, as a result of which it will condense on the glass.

So, small droplets will form on the glass and the since the glass, the whole thing is tilted,
the droplets will flow down the glass surface and then if you have a small collector here,
a pot like thing, not just a pot because it is actually extended like this if you draw it 3-D,
so you will need to have a, you know, a half cylinder to collect the material and then you
can have simply a tap, tap here to take it out. If you put a slight inclination here, then it
will normally flow down the tap. As the water is collected, you can simply open the tap.
It will collect in a pot or something, clear; simple structure. Essentially, the same
structure as a flat plate collector.

Only thing is that in this bottom surface you have, in this bottom surface, the one that I
am drawing with red, here you have something else. This is the insulation. Here, you
have the absorber which is in the case of the normal flat plate collector simply a copper
plate. In this case you have something that can be wetted, mostly wet cloth may be. So, as
the water evaporates, there has to be some way of replenishing the water. So, there has to
be some reservoir water here which continuously puts in some amount of water to the wet
cloth. That is the essential idea. So, the same thing works as the collector as well as the
distillation plant. Such things are often in short called solar still. Solar distillation plants

are also called solar still. If you come across this word, you will know that this is nothing
but a distillation plant, all right.

Now, here we can see that there is one problem that you need to have some way of
continuously replenishing the water so that the upper part does not dry up and water will
have a natural tendency to flow down. So, before it flows down and reaches this part, it
has to evaporate and if it does reach this part, then there will, water will accumulate here
which will be somewhat inefficient. So, all these problems may be there. But, the
advantage is that you can tilt the whole thing to face the solar energy, so that the yield
may be high if you can make these things work. That means the rate at which the water is
coming up should be equal to the rate at which it is evaporated. That means this has to be
adjusted, because all the time the solar radiation changes.

There is a variant of this, which takes care of this problem which is in fact more popular
as a standalone system.

(Refer Slide Time: 17:31)

Here you have the collector horizontally, so that you have a collector system whose base
would be something like this and you have the glass cover. The glass cover must be there
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in order to act as both; the green house agent that means it has to allow the solar radiation
in, but not the solar, the heat out. Glass is one substance, so glass has to be there and
secondly glass is a substance on which the water collects. So, glass has to be provided,
normally it is provided like this. That means if you want to look at it in 3-D, it will be
something like this. It will be a structure something like this, you see.

Now, this is the, these two are the glass plates. This is one, this is another. This can be
glass, but this can also be something else because this is not the direction from which the
sun is coming. These are the directions from which the sun is coming and here you have,
at the bottom now you can have a simple copper plate blackened in order to absorb it and
water can be simply here flooding the floor. That means water can be here all over the
floor which means that you do not need to do any adjustment or anything like that, you
simply pour water there in the morning and as the day advances, the heat is collected and
water is evaporated and that water will be collecting on the glass surface and it will also
flow down like this.

It will flow down and naturally there has to be some way to collect which is done like
this. You have to have a collecting mechanism here and there. It is just a half cylinder
that collects it and which is inclined a bit in one direction, may be in this direction, so that
it normally flows down in this direction and then you have to have simply a tap to take
the water out. The advantage of this is that you do not need to have any finer adjustment.
All you need to do is to put some water. You have a more or less a rough estimate of how
much water evaporate within a day. So, that much water you simply put in and that is it,
leave it. At the end of that day, you find water that has been distilled and accumulated in
a bottle, very simple process really. What is there in this side? What should be there?

In case of the flat plate collector, the lower part, the bottom part has insulation. In this
case, how do you do the insulation or in other words, do you need to do the insulation? If
you do not have any insulation, simple, simply this is on the ground. This is a cement
structure may be, no insulation. What will happen? During the day time, the heat will go
in, all right, because heat will be conducted towards the ground. But, during the night
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time the same heat will come out, as a result of which the heat is not lost really. Heat that
is going in will come out during the night and that will take part in the evaporation. That
also continues during the night.

So, you can have a relatively longer period of evaporation. So, it is not necessary to spend
money in this kind of design on putting a proper insulation. If you do not have any
insulation, then also it works as good.

Student:

Because the dews are forming on the glasses, the glasses will not look exactly
transparent; will not look exactly transparent in the sense of image formation. What is the
problem if there are water droplets on your glass? Your image looks distorted. But other
than that, what property do you expect out of this glass? Is it image formation? No. What
do you expect? We expect only the green house property, nothing more. That is it should
allow the solar radiation to come in. Does that stop because of the water droplets? No.
The heat that is radiated, heat energy that is radiated from here will be stopped. Does that
get jeopardized because of the water droplets? No. So, it really does not hamper. It only
does not form the proper image. The glass will look as if it is a bit, it is non-image
forming that is all, nothing more. Is that clear? So, that is how it works really.

You might argue that then the yield will be higher if you put say a fan here and blow it,
because it will be, it will cool the glass surface further. No; a natural, natural line of
thought, you put a fan and then cool the glass surface. No, it does not work. The reason is
that you might, you might imagine the whole thing as an electrical circuit, some energy
coming in like a battery and there are resistances. Why? Because the thing is going up
and the heat that is absorbed is again, you know, fluid is evaporated and that reaches that.
In between, the fluid experiences some resistance. So, there is a temperature here, there is
a temperature here. The temperatures can be imagined as similar to voltages.

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So, if you bring down this voltage, there is a finite resistance in between. So, it will result
in the reduction of this voltage also that means this temperature also. So, it does not really
increase the yield, so simply leave it. As it is, it works and in remote locations or places
which are close to the sea, where you need water all the time, drinkable water or water for
other purposes, this can be used. In remote locations, in villages, where you need distilled
water for the purpose of the medication, where it is difficult to get the industrial distilled
water, you can have local plant like this. So, it produces sufficiently. I have used such
systems. I have seen that these things produce sufficiently to cater to even villages. So,
this is the concept of the solar still.

As you have seen, there are two essential designs.

(Refer Slide Time: 25:38)

One, like the flat plate, which will have the advantage of, what is the advantage of this?
That it can always face the sun which the horizontal design cannot, right. But, the
disadvantage is that here you have to have some way of keeping the surface wet all the
time, which may not be trivial and here you have the problem of keeping it wet is trivial,
you simply have to pour, but it does not face the sun all the time. Obviously, that is the
concept of the solar distillation, solar still.
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(Refer Slide Time: 26:21)

There is another type of energy source that I need to cover. That is the Biomass is any
kind of mass that is created in the biological process. Straw, bagasse, cow dung, all these
are biomass and the essential idea is that it is a different form of solar energy, because
solar energy is absorbed by the plants. Plants then increase in size. The increase in size is
essentially owing to the absorption of the solar energy. So, you can cover a very large
area simply by plants which grow in size, because they absorb solar energy and that
energy you can use to generate energy for industrial use or for human purpose.

So, then the idea would be that you have a large area covered by plants that grow
relatively fast. Forestry where the plants grow relatively fast, there are plants like that.
For example, in India subabul is used for this purpose. There are other plants. Eucalyptus
is now used, but eucalyptus has some problems that it does not allow other plants to grow
in the vicinity, but nevertheless there are plants that have the property of growing very
fast, absorbing the solar energy very efficiently. There are also plants that are considered
to be pests. For example, water hyacinth. In water, the water hyacinth grows like,
profusely, uncontrollably, but that can be used as an ideal absorber of the solar energy,
right. It is still absorbing solar energy and that is how it is growing. So, the water
hyacinth has another interesting property that it grows in water and it has the property of
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absorbing all the toxic substances in the water. So, it can also be used as agents that can
detoxify the industrial effluents.

In any case, the essential point is that we have to have some agent that can absorb solar
energy and can bind it and the plants are the ideal things for that purpose. So, once you
have the biomass collected that means if you are growing trees it is not necessary all the
time to cut the trees. You can simply cut off the branches, leaves, collect the leaves that
fall, there are hundreds of ways of collecting the solar energy that has been, accumulating
the solar energy that has been collected and then that mass can be used in various
processes in order to generate energy.

One simple idea is to, can you tell me how would you like to generate energy out of it?
To burn it, as simple as that, burn it. As you burn it, then, have you ever burnt wood?
Everybody has, right. Is it a pleasant process? No, it is a very dirty process, because
smokes and other things go up. Why? Because, the wood normally contains a lot of
volatiles; lot of volatiles are there. When you heat it, they go up and then finally what is
left is carbon and naturally that carbon comes out at a later stage. First thing the volatiles
go up and that is what produces the smoke.

So, one way of handling this problem would be first to allow the volatiles to be
evaporated, to collect them, to use them separately for some purpose and then use the
charcoal that remains as the fuel. That is possible. You can also have systems where the
biomass, for example straw or bagasse, bagasse do you understand what it is? In the
factories that produce sugar from the sugarcane, their byproduct would be the, that is
called bagasse. That is called bagasse, the byproduct is called bagasse. So, that is an
energy rich substance. It does not have the sugar anymore, but it has a lot of cellulose. So,
essentially we are trying to use cellulose.

Now, so the bagasse can be used as one of the biomass materials; that can be used. Straw,
huge amount of straw is produced, because of the agriculture. Now, how to efficiently use
the whole thing? Say, we are considering straw, straw and material like that or material
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like the body of the water hyacinth. Body of the water hyacinth contains a lot of water.
So, they can be simply pressed, water goes out and then that material can be used as the
available biomass. Now, they, if you simply burn them, as you have seen a lot of
unwieldy things come out. So, that also results in some amount of pollution.

Instead, if they can be degraded, biodegraded, by means of the bacterial action, if you say
leave some amount of straw on the ground, what will happen after sometime? After
sometime what will happen? They will rot. They will rot and after sometime you will find
there is no straw, because it has been mixed with the ground. What is that process? The
process of where bacterial action broke the bonds of the cellulose and ultimately that
became, cellulose is what? It is a polymer, right. It is a polymer of smaller molecules. So,
those molecules were disengaged and thereby the whole thing was simply, whole thing
rotted and mixed with the ground.

When that happens, it increases the fertility a lot. That means that increases the, that
makes the nutrients go into the soil. That is how normally the forests are nutriated. The
water collects at the bottom, they rot and that rotten material goes into the ground. So, if
you can hasten that process that means by means of, there are now biotechnological
processes available by which you can hasten the process. For example, if you now go to
the step within the IIT campus, there is a plant that converts straw into manure. How does
it do it?

They simply have one process in which, it is in the first stage biodegraded for some time
and then it is mixed with worms that is called vermiculture and then that is left for some
time, about a month or so and the whole thing is then rotten. The point is that through that
process, again imagine you are considering cow dung. You can burn cow dung. You can
dry the cow dung and burn it. That has been used for millennia in India. Obviously, that
is a, that is a very inefficient process. Have you ever seen people burning? Lot of smoke
come out, right.

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A more efficient process would be to convert it into a, what should I say? The process by
which you produce methane and the thing that remains is more easily used by plants, so
that kind of process, which is called the biogas plants, that would be a more natural way
of using it, more technically sound way of using it. Why? Because, you have produced a
clean fuel, methane. So, when I talk about the biomass, all the biomass that are collected,
they can be used in this form. For example, if you have collected large amount of water
hyacinth, either you can have some bio digester that produces methane from the water
hyacinth or you can simply have a cattle farm. They eat it, they produce a lot of cow dung
and that cow dung can be used for the biogas plant.

So, essentially, ultimately we would not like to use the biomass in a very ugly way,
polluting way. Rather you would like to use it in an environmentally benign way and the
most environmentally benign way is to first use it in the animal process, produce
relatively more degraded material, because all through this process you are essentially
breaking the bonds. If you have the cellulose substance then it has a lot of bonds. If you
degrade it by means of bacterial action the bonds are broken. If you feed it to some cow,
in the gut you have, they have bacteria, it breaks the bonds. So, ultimately you have the
relatively benign substance. So, there have been a few designs of the bio digesters which
produce methane and that methane can be used for our purpose.

If you do not do that what happens? If you do not do that, say the cow dung is on the
ground. The cow roams around and puts the cow dung on the, on the ground and that
remains there. What happens? Things that we do not notice; what happens? After all the
process that I am talking about will happen, slowly. The cow dung will rot and what is
the process? What is the, what is the product of the rotting process? Methane and the
methane will go into the atmosphere. What is the property of the methane? It is a
greenhouse gas; it is a greenhouse gas. So, the point is that we have huge number of
cows, huge, right and that huge number of cows are producing huge amount of cow dung
and that huge amount of cow dung is contributing into a huge amount of greenhouse gas.

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So, the natural way of using it is to do it in an organized way, to produce the methane, but
then use it to run engines. Methane can be used to run engines. The whole of Delhi runs
on methane. Do you understand? Do you know that? On natural gas, yeah, compressed
natural gas, nothing but methane. So, you can then produce very large amounts of
methane simply by using the biomass degradation process. There are a few designs of bio
digesters now available, some you can see within IIT. For example, if you go to the
Agricultural Engineering Department, there is one. If you go to the CEC guest house,
near the CEC guest house within that campus there is one. No, it is not that cows reside
there. It is not that there are cows there; that can also use human waste.

(Refer Slide Time: 38:39)

So, you have a cylindrical dome like structure made of iron and you have the ground
something like this. This gap is actually very small, but this gap is necessary in order to
put in the cow dung mixed with water. So, the cow dung is put, which is, which
accumulates here in this part and you have this iron material that is upside down and
normally it would sink to the bottom like this and as the cow dung that is normally mixed
with some bacteria that means some bacteria has to be put into it and as the methane is
formed what will happen?

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It will push the cylinder up; it will push the cylinder up. So, the cylinder slowly goes up
and because of the weight of the cylinder, the pressure inside is high. So, it is, it will be
somewhat pressurized natural gas, pressurized methane. So, if you have an outlet here,
with a stop cock if you keep it stopped, then the pressure will keep on increasing and if
you open it, then that steam will normally flow, because there is a relatively higher
pressure inside. So, this is simple construction of a biogas plant, which you see in many
places. In some places you do not have this relatively movable thing. It is just one solid
cement construction, but that is also possible where the gas accumulates and as the gas
builds pressure that can be taken out. So, this is the essential design.

In case of the water hyacinth, in many countries they have water hyacinth farms. Where
there is a large amount of solid waste or liquid waste from cities, but what you do
normally with city waste? The sewage, what do you do with it? That contains a lot of
nutrients, huge amount nutrients, what do people do with it? They normally release it into
the river and you notice that the Ganga is so polluted, because all the towns and cities
along the Ganga, they all release their sewage into the, into the Ganga and in fact, one of
the purpose of the Ganga action plan was not to release the sewage into the river.

What do you do with it? In fact what can very efficiently be done is to collect it in a large
pond in which you simply allow water hyacinth to grow. So, as the water hyacinth grows,
it absorbs the nutrients, it absorbs solar energy, so that you have very concentrated
amount of energy available in the form of the water hyacinth. That can be fed to livestock
and their output can be used to produce methane. So, it is a complete integrated process
and that is also true for much of the solid waste that is produced in the cities, in markets.
Just go to the IIT market any day, you will find a huge amount of solid waste produced.
The waste from the, from the fish market, from the, you know, vegetable market, huge
amount; all this can be used in order to produce such biomass. They can be digested, they
can be made to produce methane or they can be fed to livestock and their output can be
used to produce methane. Is that point clear?

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The amount of, earlier the creation of social forestry was not really considered. It has now
become a possibility, where instead of cultivating anything else, there are places where
cultivation of the normal agricultural products like paddy or wheat is not very good, there
are places which are relatively infertile, in those places the larger trees can grow. So, the
use of that kind of land to cultivate trees that are normally in a conventional sense
unproductive, but which grow very fast and thereby you can use the biomass content of it,
that can be used as a substitute. Their products can be used to produce paper as well as
the leaf, leafy materials or the smaller tweeds can be used to produce energy. That is
another source of energy.

Providing nutrients to those things is another issue and it has been found that if you
simply take the city waste or the market waste and put it on the ground for some depth,
simply put it on the ground, what happens? Due to the bacterial action they degrade and
the results of the degradation seep through the ground, thereby increasing the fertility.
Large amounts of land in the West Midnapore district, Purulia district and Bankura
district, that were completely infertile earlier, only one crop used to grow that too very
badly and nowadays many of these areas have been converted to very, very fertile land
just by this process. You only have to allow it the time for the humus to grow in the soil
and for that there are now technologies available.

For example, our rural development center, RDC here, has done this experiment on many
tracks of land in the nearby areas. If you simply take a bicycle and go towards Salva, you
will find huge tracks of completely infertile land. Have you seen that? Have you ever
taken the bicycle and ventured that way? You will find large tracks of completely
infertile lands and they can be turned fertile just by, by this method, by using the normal
city waste. So, biomass is actually very large source of energy that can be harnessed in
India, especially because India is a very large area, very large area, much of which is not
really used, not really used in a productive way. The places which are used in a
productive way where you have the solar energy collected, do you understand what I
mean by this, where this solar energy is collected?

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Not that solar thermal collector or solar still that are, yes, the places which are, yes, but
let me accurately state my, put my statement, where the solar energy does not strike the
barren ground, where it strikes a leaf, every place where it strikes the leaf is productive.
Do you understand that? Forests are productive in the sense, any even the weeds where
they grow they are also productive in that sense. Any place where the solar energy is not
directly striking the ground thereby heating it up and making it completely useless, every
place, every kind of plant is then productive. Why? Because, they are converting the solar
energy into something that is usable.

So, the huge landmass that we have, a proper strategy of increasing the total yield of the
country is simply to cover it as much as possible by some kind of vegetation, which
unfortunately, this awareness unfortunately is not there in India, as a result of which, I do
not know which part of the country you all come from, actually it is a fact that much of
the countries landscape is uncovered. Forests are very small area, very small. It is
normally estimated that in order to keep the environmental balance and to keep the
weather cycle fixed, you need to have about 33% coverage. India has less than 15%, but
even that is the forest cover.

Just imagine the area around Kharagpur. You will find that most of the places, sunlight is
directly striking the ground. Not only the sunlight, if there is no vegetation cover, the rain
also strikes the ground directly. If it is falling on the leaves and then dropping on to the
ground, then it does not have the kinetic energy, but if it is directly striking the ground, it
has a large amount of kinetic energy, as a result of which it unbinds the soil and makes it
flow, as a result of which huge amount of silt is carried off from the fertile ground into
the rivers. The rivers clog and the fertile grounds lose their soil cover. So, this is an effect
that is very much there in India. That is again because we do not have the awareness to
cover as much as possible with some kind of vegetation. Even weeds, no problem; has to
be covered by some kind of vegetation.

The moment you cover, all that vegetation is biomass; whatever kind and that biomass
can be collected and a very large amount of energy can be generated out of it. We only
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have recently installed some energy converter out of the solid waste in the cities. For
example, three or four cities in India, I should say towns, have installed such converters,
even one is in progress in Calcutta. So, there is a, there are plants that produce energy,
electrical energy out of solid waste that are produced in the cities, but then that has also
not done to a large extent, because people talk about how economical it is. After all it is
the question of using the material. So, it is actually beneficial for the society. So, the
society should actually pay for it, but that awareness is not there.

So, the point is India has the major advantage that, much of the world does not have. It
has a large area. Most of the area is coverable, it is not dessert. Dessert areas cannot be
covered, but the other areas can be covered. But unfortunately, that awareness is not
there. When you become somebody, I will expect you to work towards producing this
awareness. Any kind of vegetation that allows the vegetation to absorb the sunlight is a
resource. That awareness you should create. That is all for today. Tomorrow will be the
last class and tomorrow we will talk about the energy storage.

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