The city buses in Mumbai, India’s economic capital, are now running on the biofuel being supplied by a Hyderabad-based firm. The State buses in Karnataka, too, will be powered soon by the fuel to be supplied from here.
Giaitech Fuels, a city-based firm, has signed a contract recently with Navi Mumbai Transport Corporation to supply 16.4 lakh litres of biofuel a year, reported Tushar Dhara for Express Buzz.
According to the news item, the fuel, supplies of which started yesterday, will power 265 of Mumbai’s suburban buses with biodiesel. The buses will run on a mix of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent normal diesel, a petroleum product.
Giaitech has also entered into an agreement with the Karnataka State RTC, offering to supply it 5 lakh litres every year.
Express Buzz says that India still has some way to go before biofuels are commercially available on a large scale as an alternative to fossil fuels. Giaitech has taken a big step on that road by persuading some State road transport corporations to run at least some of their buses on biodiesel.
Biodiesel is a non-petroleum fuel which can be made from vegetable oil. The raw material is waste, virgin or acid oil which are by products when refined cooking oil is manufactured. The process is simple and takes a few hours to convert vegetable oil to biodiesel. Gaiatech uses oil from pungamia seeds and mahua to make biodiesel. Their main manufacturing facility at Tiptur in Karnataka has a capacity of 12,000 litres a day and go up to 1.1 lakh litres a day.
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