In a successful trial run, the engine emitted a high-octane blue and orange flame some 50 feet long for 10 whole seconds. A representative of the company that has developed the technology said, ‘We are doing this not just because it’s good for the environment, but because it can be produced locally, it is cost-effective, and it is a fuel with high performance and high purity.’
The company is working in tandem with a biogas firm that collects bovine waste products from farmers whose livestock is keeping up what is literally their end of the business as though to the manure born. I’m not bullshitting.
While the report from Japan is unlikely to motivate Isro to repurpose Gaganyaan, the unmanned space vehicle scheduled for a launch this year, and go dung-ho to adopt the bio-methane technology, it might well inspire indigenous emulation, if not in rocket science, at least in other forms of motorised mobility. With fossil fuels facing increasing heat for being the main culprits behind global warming, thanks to vehicular emissions, alternative energy sources will be a future growth industry.
At COP28 in Dubai, 195 countries, including India, signed off on an emission-reducing agreement, which called for a ‘transition from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner’, the two f-words being used for the first time in an international declaration. A leaked letter from the general secretary of Opec, which purportedly sought to block mention of the f-words at the meet, underscored the need for a globo-COP28 to rein in the rampant rise of these prime pollutants.
In the not-too-distant future, eco-friendly gau gas could well emerge as the preferred mode of propulsion on land, in the air and on the sea. In what might be called a ‘chalti ka naam goru’ scenario – be it represented by the automobile, the two-wheeler, aircraft, or ship – the polluting internal combustion engine could yield place to a non-polluting, renewably charged internal combustion engine, that could reap windfall dividends for India.India’s oil import bill, the second biggest after that of China, comes to a whopping $119 billion-plus as the nation meets almost 80% of its energy requirements from outside sources. Oil imports account for the lion’s share of the country’s current account deficit, the villainously named acronym CAD. With gau power replacing the anachronistically misnamed horsepower in motorisation of all kinds, in a trice, or even a twice, the odious CAD could be turned into a bounteous CASH, as in Credit Account Surplus Herewith.With the world’s largest cattle population, India could become an exporter of clean and green energy instead of being an importer for its fuel requirements.
An ancillary benefit of such a development would be that of employment generation, as salaried gau rakshaks upskill themselves to be not only protectors of kine and kith, but also their potty-trainers, instilling in their four-legged wards ergonomic time and motion discipline – in all senses of that term – which will maximise output at their end, again in all senses of that term.
Science might never be able to devise a perpetual motion machine. But thanks to an energy source that hits the bull’s eye, India might yet develop a perpetual mooing mechanism that could provide an uptick to globalisation by turning it into gobarisation.
