BioUrja

Efficient and reliable biogas solution

Key Outcome : Clean Fuel, Organic Fertiliser, Waste Repurposing
Product Highlights
  • An IOT enables biogas solution that generates double the biogas output vs conventional technologies.
  • Needs 1/10th of water and takes 1/2 the space of conventional plants.
  • Highest ROI payback in the category.
  • Automation and remote sensing offers least manual intervention and least down time.
  • Dedicated customer care support system for proactive maintenance tips and support.
  • Helps to accelerate progress in SDGs in clean energy, climate change and sustainable communities.
  • Available as a standard product from 100kg per day capacity to 2000 kg of food waste. Above that capacity custom BioUrja solution is available.
Primary SDG
Market Addressed
Climate Action
Affordable & Clean Energy
Organic Waste Treatment
Renewable Energy

Commercial

BioUrja provides a higher payback/least cost of ownership over 5 years, as compared to other wet waste management solutions. Moreover, it also enables additional economic advantage in terms of lesser requirement of resources in terms of space, water and electricity.

Input resource Requirement:

  • Space: ~7mx7m for 1000 kg/day capacity (can be customized is smaller layouts as well or can also be split across various floors)
  • Water: 10-15% of input food waste (for wet waste management solution)
  • Electricity: ~40 units per 1000 kg of waste

Output generated:

  • 120-140 cu.m. biogas/1000 kg of wet waste
  • ~1000litre liquid soil conditioner

Tech USPs

Detailed Description

The process flow as shown above, enables the following:

  • Separation of biological process in the system into two stages, which enables higher stability
  • Automated heating of digester thus ensuring the system is maintained at the most optimum temperature
  • Automated gas compression, storage and measurement using the patented twin balloon system
  • Automated flaring of excess biogas
  • Automated supply of biogas in kitchen without requirement of manual intervention
  • Stable and high efficiency operations by maintaining the digester health using the biohealth management system

Impact

  • BioUrja enables positive contribution to three SDGs i.e. Clean Energy, Climate Change and Sustainable communities i.e. SDG no. 7, 11 and 13
  • The GHG mitigation from a 1tons of wet waste by processing it using BioUrja is 7.272 tons of Co2 mitigation

O&M and warranty

  • Warranty: 2 years defects liability on the system.
  • BioUrja operations are completely automated except the feeding of waste to the plant. This includes automation of
    1. Gas management System
    2. Supply of gas to the kitchen as soon as the burner regulator is switched on
    3. Flaring of excess gas if the storage vessel is full
    4. Heating of the digester to maintain stable operations
  • Additionally, the remote monitoring system sends the performance data to the server from where it is reviewed by GPS operations team. Thus the operations team is in regular contact with the client operator to provide technical support over the call
  • The system can easily be operated by an unskilled labour trained by GPS operations team
  • The biohealth management service to ensure a high uptime, is a paid service.
    Since a biogas plant is a biological system, it is important to maintain the health of the plan to ensure high performance. This service enables regular monitoring of the system health to thus ensure a high productivity and high uptime.

Patents

The Technology has several patents:

Twin Balloon Biogas Compression System
Twin Balloon Biogas Compression System is an automated system for gas management. This enables automated supply of biogas at the point of use without the need of manually switching the blower on (as in conventional solutions). The remote monitoring data connected to the twin balloons also enables gas measurement with high accuracy.
Biohealth Management System
This system is used by BioUrja to check the health of the plant daily to ensure higher productivity and stability of the system. Using this system we determine the health using active indicators (apart from pH) that give us a lead time of about 2 weeks in forecasting an anomaly. This helps in restoring the health without affecting the entire process. Moreover, the data from this system can be monitored remotely thus enabling us to manage system health even from across cities, states and countries.
Conventional technologies don’t have any health check in place or they monitor only pH, which is a lagging indicator. This means that by the time pH shows a drop, the biological system has already broken down, and the recovery is very difficult and expensive.
Stirring Regulation for Continuous stirring of a resident digestate inside a digester
The patented technology used for heating and maintaining the temperature in a digester, also creates convection current within the contents of the digester, thus leading to stirring.

Order fulfillment

The installation timeline for BioUrja is as follows:

Day 00 – Receipt of Advance
Day 60 – Dispatch of system from GPS premises
Day 90 – Completion of Installation and Inoculation of system
Day 105 – Start of Feeding and Training of Client Personnel
Day 120 – System Handover

Compliance

The BioUrja solution helps bulk waste generators (BWGs) comply with the SWM Rules. These rules require BWGs to manage the wet waste within their premises.

Overview

GPS Renewables – Redefining the biogas industry in India

GPS Renewables was setup in 2012 and is one of India’s Leading Clean Tech companies, with close to 100 projects to its name. Through its state-of-the art Waste Management Solutions GPS has served marquee clients like ITC, Microsoft, Intel, Bosch, Saint-Gobain and many more.

Top Management

1. Mainak Chakraborty the Co-founder & CEO of GPS Renewables is on the Credit Committee, Beneficial Returns, is a member of the Bioenergy Advisory committee, MNRE and is also an ex-Global Shaper, World Economic Forum. He has done MBA from IIM Bangalore.

2. Sreekrishna Sankar the Co-founder & COO at GPS Renewables is also a technical advisor for Govt of Kerala. Previously he had worked as a Consultant with Oliver Wyman and is a founding member at Free Software Foundation, India. He has done MBA from IIM Bangalore

Clientele

 

Collaboration

  • BIG (Biotech Ignition Grant) from BIRAC, Dept of Biotechnology, GoI in 2013
  • Grant from Centre of Research Excellence, BITS Pilani in 2014
  • BIPP (Biotech Industry Partnership Programme) grant from BIRAC, Dept of Biotechnology, GoI in 2018
  • Grant from Suchitwa Mission, Govt of Kerala in 2017
  • Grant under Innovation in Clean Technologies Programme, BIRAC, Dept of Biotechnology, GoI in 2019

Awards

  • Mission Innovation (2019): GPS Renewables has been selected amongst the top 100 global solutions with highest potential impact on avoided GHG emissions, presented at Mission Innovation’s Ministerial meeting in Vancouver in May’19
  • Ashden Awards – International Runner-up (2017): As a mark of excellence in the field of Green Energy
  • Climate Solver 2015: Awarded by WWF. According to WWF, BioUrja has the potential to mitigate over 44 million tons of CO2 by 2024
  • COP21 Paris 2015: GPS led a worldwide cleantech CEOs call for action at COP21 along with WWF. Was one of the few startups WWF highlighted to convey the potential of cleantech solutions to world leaders at COP21
  • Bioenergy person/ firm of the year (2015): Awarded by Fortune Media, alongside Sun Edison (for solar) and Mytrah (for wind)
  • Safaigiri Award for best waste wealth creators (2018): GPS Renewables won the award organised by the India Today group and was nominated under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan to champion the same.
  • Global Entrepreneurship week: GPS named as one of the 50 most promising startups across the world as a part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week by Kauffman Foundation. GPS was the only Indian startup to be a part of the GEW50 list
  • The Tech Awards: Global Top 5 (finalist – environment) at the Tech Awards, organized by the Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, USA
  • MIT Innovators Under 35 2013: GPS Founder Mainak Chakraborty named as one of the top innovators under the age of 35 by the MIT Technology Review
  • Sankalp Forum 2013: Winner, Cleantech Category. Sankalp is Asia’s largest platform for recognizing social enterprises
  • Entrepreneur Magazine 2013: Entrepreneur Magazine (2013): Featured amongst top 8 cleantech firms in India

Review

Positive reviews from the following customers have been verified (in form of written statement/call/video):

IIM Bangalore
Art of Living Bangalore
ITC Maurya, Delhi
Taj Palace Delhi

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