A woman lays rice husks out to dry on the roadside. Pic: www.edwebproject.org

MOVE over physic nuts, rice husks are here.

An environmentally-friendly, renewable energy source, local experts say rice husks could be used to generate electricity in Myanmar and reduce dependence on expensive oil imports.

Rice-husk power plants process husks by heating them to create a gas that is then burned and converted into electricity.

Experts say the technology could be particularly useful for developing rural areas.

It is also an idea that neighbouring countries are putting into practice, with the support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other investors.

On May 31, a United Arab Emirates-based fund, Al Tayyer Energy, announced it would provide US$120 million for Thailand to build rice husk power plants in the country’s more remote north.

The move was designed to provide Thailand with alternative energy sources in the face of soaring global oil prices and was expected to save the country some 800 million baht ($21 million) a year from the six million tonnes of rice husks it produces annually, Al Tayyer Energy said.

On June 22, the ADB announced it would release about $1 billion dollars each year for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.

U Soe Myint, the vice president of the Renewable Energy Association Myanmar, a local non-governmental organisation, said rice husk projects here could lead to more widespread availability of electricity in villages and also benefit cottage industries and private industrial firms.

Local rice mill owners said there were plenty of rice husks to get the idea off the ground.

“We should use these plants in the countryside where rice husks are abundant,” said one mill owner, noting that Mon, Rakhine, Ayeyarwaddy, Yangon and Bago states and divisions were the most suitable areas to develop rice husk plants as they were the country’s biggest rice producers.

As an agriculturally-based country of which rice was the primary crop, he said the husks were cheap and readily available in Myanmar.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, the 1250 million baskets of rice Myanmar produces each year results in some 230 million baskets (about 4.8 million tonnes) of rice husks.

Founder of the Myanmar Inventors’ Cooperative Society U Soe Tint Aung, who has been designing rice-husk energy systems since 1985, said public interest in the technology had increased significantly in recent years due to the comparatively low cost of energy production.

It was about 10 times cheaper than using diesel, he said.

Such plants were being set up on the town-level with firms in industrial zones such as ice as saw mills being the main customers, he said.

Currently there are only a handful of firms designing and producing rice-husk energy plants, although U Soe Tint Aung said rising demand was leading to more companies getting involved in plant production.

U Than Nyunt, the managing director of Ar Mahn Tech, a company that sells dual-fuel generators, said that although it was possible to build rice-husk energy plants in Myanmar, more advanced technology was needed to optimise production.

The start-up costs and technology needed restricted what local companies could do, he said.

One of the main technical hurdles for such alternative energy designers currently is the amount tar rice-husk plants generate as a by-product, U Than Nyunt said. “This is the barrier for us. If we could eliminate the tar, it would be okay.”

Graham James Dwyer, External Relation Specialist for the ADB, also noted thatd the bank had not provided Myanmar with a loan for 20 years.

Locally-designed rice-husk plants currently produce up to 300 kilowatts.

However, a rice miller told The Myanmar Times there was a plan to produce a plant generating as much as 1500 megawatts in Dedaye, Ayeyarwaddy Division.

“We are conducting a feasibility study for building the power plant,” he said.

Last month, a rice-husk power plant designed by the Myanmar Inventor’s Cooperative Society was awarded third place in the ASEAN-organised Fifth Renewable Energy Project Competition in Brunei.