VK NARDEP BIOGAS PROJECT SUPPORTED BY FORD FOUNDATION

MINUTES OF THE REVIEW MEETING HELD AT CCD, SEPT. 28TH, 2010

Nardep (national resource development) unit of Vivekanand Kendra has a project with
funding support of Ford foundation ending in September 2010 to set up a biogas unit to
develop its innovative, value added uses for the farmers as well as urban consumers.
The project is being implemented through Covenant Centre for Development (CCD), an
NGO based at madurai on its farm campus termed Sevayur in Kariapati block,
Virudhunagar district. CCD provides land, cow dung & people to operate the project.
A meeting was conducted o the project on 28th Sept. morning at the biogas site by Dr. Ajit
Kanitkar of Ford Foundation to review the progress & plan its closure.
CCD has set up the 100 cu. m. capacity biogas unit & kept 70 local cows for dung inputs.
Since it was insufficient, it had also started recently buying 1 truckload of cowdung
weekly as feed. Dr. Vasudeva, NADEP & this project director observed that the biogas
unit is not even used to 10% of its capacity & the dome is not moving up & down 2 times
a day as needed. This could damage the equipment & the gas must be released if not free,
so that the dome settles down each day, he advised.
On the current usage of the gas, Mr John Britto, Sevyur campus manager of CCD said the
gas saved expenses of about Rs. 1,000/- (one thousand) weekly in kitchen for cooking &
the slurry sales earned about Rs. 2,500/- (two & half thousand) weekly.
Dr. Kanitkar suggested that this was inadequate & bottling unit must be set up soon for
commercial use of the gas to fulfill the project objectives. It can be used for cooking or
many methane buyer companies, not automobiles. He advised to estimate productivity at
the minimum & cost at the maximum to calculate productivity & profitability. He advised
to make weekly action plan for the next few months for visible output so that an
extension can be considered to close the project meaningfully for demonstration purpose.
Then it may be possible to run th unit even with private investors due to high profit.
Dr. Vasudeva said without the unit, there is loss of Rs. 6 lakh per annum occurring to
CCD. This was preferred over duel fuel electricity generator. For, the biogas produced is
6 cylinders daily valued Rs. 400/- (four hundred) each & Rs. 2,500/- (two & half
thousand) total. This implies Rs. 7.5 lakh annually. The cost of bottling unit had raised
additional fund of Rs. 6 lakh was needed. Dr. kanitkar suggested that CCD could pay Rs.
4 lakh in it & rest from the project balance fund.
It was decided to do daily progress monitoring by field staff of CCD (Mr Pungmaran) &
NARDEP (Mr Khadiresan) over phone. Mr. John Britto should review progress with Mr
Ramkrishna weekly over email & phone. Mr. Muthu, CCD chief should do so with Dr
Vasudev on monthly basis.