Jaipur, July 11 :

Compressed biogas (CBG), an economical substitute for petrol and diesel based on cow dung, will soon be made available in here. The Rajasthan Goseva Sangh (Rajasthan cow care centre) has installed the state’s first CBG bottling plant in its premises in Jaipur.

Developed on the lines of compressed natural gas (CNG), CBG is made with the help of cow dung and could be used as a cheap fuel substitute for vehicles.

The $26,000 bottling plant is expected to be inaugurated within the next few weeks. “The plant is an experiment by the union government to provide a cheap substitute for petrol and diesel,” said Dhirendra Bhandari, director of the Rajasthan Goseva Sangh, adding that it was the first biogas bottling plant in the state and the fourth in the country after Rajkot, Gorakhpur and Kanpur.

The difference was that the Jaipur plant was based on water process techniques while the other three depend on chemical processing. According to Bhandari, the Jaipur facility was ideal for the purpose since it had a huge cow dung gas plant.

“The success of this plant would decide the fate of several cow shelters across the country,” Bhandari said. The Rajasthan Goseva Sangh

owns about 200 cows, which provide about 1,000 kg of cow a day that translates into 500 litres of CBG.

“Gobar (cow dung) gas is actually the purest form of methane gas, which when compressed in cylinders could be used for running vehicles.