On June 7, National President of Indian Youth Congress Srinivas BV shared an old video clip of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and tried to mock him over a story the PM had narrated. The Congress leader alleged that PM Modi cooked up a story about a man transporting biogas in a large tyre tube. Srinivas wrote, “Listen to another unheard story of honourable Prime Minister. Tighten your seat belt.”
भारत के माननीय प्रधानमंत्री की एक और अनसुनी कहानी, सुनने के पहले सीट बेल्ट बांध लीजिए। pic.twitter.com/tyJFG4M3VA
— Srinivas BV (@srinivasiyc) June 7, 2023
The video he shared was from PM Modi’s 2018 speech on World Biofuel Day. It is the same speech from which Congress tried to mock PM Modi for talking about the concept of creating biofuel from sewage gas.
PM Modi said, “Once, I was in Gujarat, and a scooter was moving in front of our convoy. The person on the scooter was carrying a huge tractor tube. It was completely filled with air. If a person carries such a huge tractor tube on a scooter, the vehicles coming from behind will be scared of collision and accident. Even I was astonished. Normally a person would carry a deflated tube and fill it with air later. So I asked him to halt.”
He added, “We got down from the car and asked the person on a scooter what he was doing and why he was carrying the inflated tube like that. He could have been injured. He said that he was going to his field. I asked him the purpose. So he said that with the household waste and cattle dung of his animals, he had set up a biogas plant in his house. He fills the tube with that gas and carries it to his field. That gas is used to run his water pump in his field. Just think about the capability of our country’s farmers! Today even our farmers and villagers do innovative experiments.”
Congress leader Srinivas BV attempted to mock PM Modi over his knowledge of biofuel and how it can be transported using tyre tubes. However, if he had done a little research, he would not have shot yet another time on his own foot.
Storing and transporting biogas in tyre tubes is not a new concept. It has been tested, researched and proven a successful concept not only in India but in other countries as well. Many videos on YouTube provide details on how anyone can set up a biogas plant at home and store the gas in tyre tubes. For example, in March 2021, a famous YouTube channel, A1 Adventure, which has 2.44 million subscribers, shared a 21-minute long video of the process of setting up a biogas plant using a water tank and storing the gas produced in tyre tubes. The video has been seen over 68 lakh times.
Furthermore, we also found a video published in August 2021 on the channel Multi Talented. The person who runs the channel has set up a biogas plant at his home and stored the gas in the tyre tubes of a tractor. The video has been seen over 30,000 times.
Another video was by Crazy Ram, published in April 2022, and has over 3.5 lakh views.
In 2015, Citizen TV Kenya published a news report where they interviewed a farmer who was producing biogas at his farm using cow dung and other plant waste and storing them in tyre tubes for future use. The farmer was also developing appliances that could be operated using the biogas stored in tyre tubes.
We also found a video from 2013 where a farmer talked about setting up a biogas plant to run an irrigation system for his farm.
Storing any gas requires air-tight containers, and the metal gas cylinders are costly. Therefore, tyre tubes are an ideal low-cost alternative to store biogas. The tubes already have a valve mechanism to open and close the outflow of gas, therefore ideal for such DIY plants. Being large, tractor tyres are best for this use.
Furthermore, a tyre tube gas plant has also been conceptualised in Bangladesh. In an energypedia article, they discussed rooftop biogas plants and storing the gas in tyre tubes. Using the concept, it was noted that once the plant was ready, it could produce enough gas to cook for 1.5 hours.
We also found an old research paper that talked about building low-cost tubular plastic digesters or bio-gas plants based on concepts developed in the 1980s and before. In that paper, a diagram showed stacked-up tyre tubes for storage purposes.
It is evident that the concept is commonly used in low-cost biogas plants. Tyre tubes are not only used to store the produced biogas but can also be used to transport it. It is a well-established fact that electricity can be produced using biogas. Though transporting and storing biogas in tyre tubes has its own risks and should be handled carefully, the concept is usable and gaining popularity with every passing year.
‘The gas from sewage’ controversy
In 2018, another part of the same speech went viral on social media in which PM Modi talked about extracting gas to make tea from a sewage line. When Prime Minister Modi spoke about a tea seller who made use of sewage gas to make tea, he was essentially appreciating the innovative mind of common citizens. Trying to make fun of this, many turned themselves into a joke. Several reports in the media confirmed that sewage waste could be used to produce biogas.
