Climate Change: Summary of CDM Project 4567

Project 4567: Methane Recovery from waste water treatment in seafood industry in Maharashtra, India.

The CDM project aims to recover methane from wastewater treatment in seafood industry at Maharashtra, India. The registered project is small-scale and hosted by the Government of India while the private entity and project participant is Gadre Marine Export Pvt Ltd (GMEPL), which claims to be the lead manufacturer of seafood known as SURIMI. The CDM report defines SURIMI as “a stabilized myofibrillar protein obtained from deboned fish flesh i.e. washed with water and blended with cryoprotectants”. GMEPL is located at Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), Ratnagiri, Maharashtra.

Districts of Maharashtra

The project involves installing an Effluent Treatment Plant for treatment of wastewater in order to generate biogas. The project activity will utilize renewable energy technologies to supply thermal energy generated from the biogas for the manufacturing plant, and thereby replace use of fossil fuel. The units include solar thermal water heaters and dryers, solar cookers, energy derived from renewable biomass and other technologies that provide thermal energy.

The project plans to contribute to sustainable development in the following ways:

1. Social – generate employment opportunities for both skilled and unskilled labour.
2. Economic – develop renewable sources of energy and create local employment opportunities while helping to conserve finite sources of energy i.e. fossil fuels.
3. Environment – reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), such as CO2 and CH4, and help improve air and water quality. The controlled environment where the wastewater will be treated will also reduce the strong malodours produced from degradable components of the waste involved in the process, thereby eliminating presence of flies and mosquitoes in the surrounding area.

The project will contribute to technology transfer as it plans to employ an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) technology for treatment of the wastewater. Wastewater treatment in seafood industry is mentioned in the CDM report to be among the first of its kind in India in terms of technology, geography, sector, type of investment and investor, market, etc. The capture of biogas & utilization of captured biogas as a fuel for thermal purposes is also a new concept in the seafood industry in India.

UASB Scheme

The positive impact of the project is the reduction of GHG emissions in the atmosphere. The characteristic of this new technology also leaves a positive effect on the air quality in the surrounding environment, and the methane gas is not wasted since it is utilized to produce energy. Negative impacts on the air would be due to the emissions of burning biogas for energy generation. However, it would emit less hazardously since biogas is considered to be a relatively “clean” fuel.

The baseline of the CDM project would be to continue using open anaerobic lagoons to treat the wastewater, as opposed to closed digesters that lead to capturing methane.

The project activity is a less known technology in seafood industry not only in the state of Maharashtra but also in India. To justify the additionality of the proposed project, the CDM report states that prevailing practices in India and existing regulatory or policy requirements would have led to implementation of a technology with higher GHG emissions.

The project was seen as a risk in the opinion of investors who would prefer to opt for an anaerobic deep lagoon as a wastewater treatment facility. To overcome this challenge face in the implementation of the project, the report states that the CDM revenue is expected to alleviate the significant barriers by providing the additional revenue for the plant, which would be gained by the sale of carbon credits.

The CDM report does not particularly mention anything with regard to the climate resilience of the project, but given that it is dealing directly with the seafood industry, it might be affected by the amount of  seafood being produced.  Nonetheless, the structure and technology itself can be assumed to remain minimally affected by future climate change.

Example of a UASB Tank

Comments Off on Climate Change: Summary of CDM Project 4567 / 24 Feb 2012 por Syafrina Sharif
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