Project Description

The primary occupation of the local tribal area of the Athanavur Gram panchayat of Yelagiri hill is the agriculture and animal husbandry. The Yelagiri hills have abundance of natural resources in terms of fertile land, moderate water availability and forest products. The crop data of the target site indicate the role of agricultural produces in the earning capacity of local population in Yelagiri hills. The bio cover of the Yelagiri hills is dynamic due to spatial inconsistency of the forest cover. Dry mixed deciduous and scrub forest occupies a significant portion of the study site. Proximity of forest and widespread farming happening in the Yelagiri hills make the project site a biomass dense area. On the other hand, unwanted growth of plants like Southern Rata and Prosopis julifora (Seemai Karuvelam in Tamil) in the target region is adversely affecting the farming. Uncontrolled invasion of these plants reduce the crop land area and significantly consume ground water level. Hence, considering the fact that the biomass through Prosopis juliflora and Southern Rata must be consumed through S&T route to completely eradicate from the home land to make sure the existence of agriculture and provide the value added to its produce. Therefore, the proposed project envisaged to address the issues of Prosopis juliflora and Southern Rata through S&T solutions by keeping in mind the need of the target people together. Eventually, biomass gasification based trigeneration system such as electricity, heating (cooking) and cooling (cold storage) seems to be an attractive technology to cater the needs of local people. So this project aims on providing sustainable solutions to the local population by implementing an advanced three stage gasifier (ATSG) driven trigeneration system that can be fueled by above said biomass fuels. This will help in eradiating the invasion of unwanted plants while improving the livelihood of local community.