India’s first methanol cooking fuel program launched in Assam

NITI Aayog member Dr. V.K. Saraswat has launched the India’s fist Methanol Cooking Fuel Program, at Namrup, in Assam on October 05, 2018.

• Ritu Bordoloi of Namrup became the country’s first owner and user of a cooking stove fuelled by methanol.
• 500 people who were given a stove with two 1.2-litre canisters of methanol as part of a pilot project by the Namrup-based Assam Petrochemicals Limited (APL).
• APL is India’s first public sector producer of methanol and formalin from natural gas as feedstock.
• As per the one exper,there are 5.5 lakh people in Africa and 8 million in China who use methanol as cooking fuel. But India is the first country where the focus is on replacing LPG. Much of the world is looking at how our cooking fuel project is working out.

About Methanol

• Methanol (Methyl alcohol) is a building block for various chemical industries. It is a transparent liquid with typical smell of alcohol. Methanol is highly inflammable and poisonous.
• Methanol is the simplest single carbon compound can serve as the best alternative fuel for India. It is a highly efficient fuel, can be blended with gasoline/diesel, emits lesser NOx, PM, no SOx and can be further converted to Dimethyl ether (DME) which is a clean diesel alternative and can be blended with LPG as well.
• Methanol – CH₃OH – is four parts hydrogen, one part oxygen and one part carbon.
• Methanol can be produced from natural gas, coal and renewable sources such as municipal waste, biomass and recycled carbon dioxide.
• According to the V.K. Saraswat, since, coal to methanol is a proven technology (still not used in India) in the World, India being the 5th largest country with coal reserves, must tap its potential and produce methanol/DME