Date: 7/23/2010
Pak-US Project Awarded to Dr. Romana Tabassum, "Solid Waste Management for Bioenergy Production"
Partners:
1) Pakistan Side
Co-Director Dr. Romana Tabassum
Institution: NIBGE, Jhang Road, Faisalabad
2) US Side
Co-Director: William J. Orts
Institution: USDA-ARS-WRRC, Albany, CA, US
Project Cost for Pakistan: US $ 0.7765 Million
Pakistan could face a major energy shortage in natural gas, power and oil in the next three to four years. This crises can choke the economic growth of the country for years to come. Pakistan’s total energy requirement is projected to increase by about 48 per cent to 80 million tons of oil equivalent (MTOE) in 2010 from about 54 MTOE in the recent past. Much of Pakistan’s energy is supplied from natural gas, which accounts for about 50 per cent of the country’s energy consumption, and is projected to increase by 44 per cent to 39 MTOE from 27 MTOE currently. At the same time oil demand is also expected to increase by over 23 per cent; for example, last year’s oil import bill amounted to be about $6.5 billion as compared to $3.5 billion in 2004-05. Figure 1 outlines global energy demand projected for the next 35 years, showing that industrial growth in Asia is a trend that will roughly double energy demand by 2035. Since Pakistan is resource-deficient in natural gas and oil, it must rely on imports to cover about one third of its energy demands.
This is a multidisciplinary project that provides new technology for production of bioenergy. This project will benefit Pakistan by converting waste into renewable energy. Successful outcomes of this research are aimed to reduce Pakistan’s reliance on petroleum imports, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and stepdown the costs of waste treatment. This research project combines fundamental knowledge of enzymes, building expertise in anaerobic digestion in cordination with bioengineering at optimized pretreatment of biomass. Research output will be utilized to scale-up the production of bioenergy. This project is a joint venture of scientists from the Industrial Biotechnology from NIBGE and the USDA Western Regional Research Center in Albany, CA, USA.
