Apart from exchanging information and related technologies, the collaboration also covers a life cycle assessment of each potential technology as well as material to be used in development. The partnership includes the possibility of establishing pilot plants to produce renewable energy with selected materials. The project is set to be complete within five years.

Asian Biomass Centre has been set up to work under the National Science and Technology Development Agency's umbrella.

Sakarindr Bhumiratana, president of the agency, said the collaboration aims to develop biomass conversion technologies to reduce dependence on fossil fuels at local and international levels. Those technologies include processes for the efficient, economical, clean production of renewable energy, as well as fuels and materials from varying sources of biomass.

Since renewable energy conversion technologies are environmentally attractive and economically beneficial alternatives to energy derived fossil fuels, he said that demands for such energies are growing on a local, national, regional and worldwide basis in line with demographic pressures and consumption patterns, especially in Asia. The biomass project is focusing on developing technologies using ethanol and bio-diesel.

Paritud Bhandhubanyong, director of the National Metal and Materials Technology Centre (Mtec), said that to make a decision on which material is to be used to produce renewable energy, a life cycle assessment is needed.

The assessment collects information about crops, starting from the first day they are planted, then through the growth cycle until harvest and transfer as raw materials for manufacturing plants before release as products to be tested in real vehicles.

In the assessment process, the cost of cultivation, which includes spending on water, fertilisers, harvesting and transport, and the process to turn molasses into alcohol before transfer to mix with petrol, are calculated. This includes an evaluation of how much pollution occurred during the whole cycle.

It is expected that it will take about a year to collect a complete set of information on crops' growing cycles and another two years in the process to produce renewable energies and to test them in different types of vehicles. The tests should start using pickups before moving towards passenger vehicles.

Paritud said that through the assessments the government would know exactly which crops should be used to produce either ethanol or bio-diesel. Crops to be evaluated in the project include tapioca, sugarcane, palm oil and jatropha as well as used cooking oil.

The information will also be useful for neighbouring countries. The assessment is likely to start on ethanol before moving to bio-diesel.

Paritud said the last two years of the project includes a plan to set up a pilot plant to produce renewable energy with technology considered appropriate for production.

"The production will rely on technology we co-develop. We won't import technology since each country has its own means to find ways to deal with energy demand. One solution will not necessarily suit all problems," he said.

Science and Technology Minister Pravich Ratanapian said Thailand's national energy master plan sets a target for the use of at least 8 per cent alternative or renewable energy in the country's total energy portfolio by 2010. The National Ethanol Development Committee earlier set a goal to produce about 3 million litres of fuel per day to blend with regular petrol as an alternative fuel for automobiles by 2011.

To meet the target, the Science and Technology Ministry, working with the Energy Ministry, is committed to promote research and development as well as technology transfer in prioritised energy sectors.

Pravich said the National Science and Technology Development Agency has been working on a number of research projects, especially those on biogas production using sugarcane and other agricultural waste. They also include solar-cell fabrication and installation.

Paritud said Mtec, with collaboration from other organisations, has been setting up a bio-diesel plant initiated by His Majesty the King to produce bio-diesel using jatropha as a raw material for local consumption in Hua-Hin. The investment was about Bt30 million and it expects to produce about 200 litres a day of bio-diesel.

If the project is successful it will become a model for another 20 plants countrywide.

Suchalee Pongprasert

The Nation

suchalee@nationgroup.com