Abstract

Electricity supply for rural areas, so long, has been a far cry in context of Bangladesh. Realizing this, many organizations along with Bangladesh government are trying to bring renewable energy in a competitive package to meet deficiency. But solar energy, mainly for its inefficiency and high cost, is not having much success in a broader aspect. SHSs are capable to maintain only household demand for 4-6 hours. But for the emergence of small enterprises and to boost the rural economy, energy security at countryside has indispensible role. This paper explores rice husk based biomass plant as an alternate energy source to meet the electricity demand of local enterprises, irrigation and rural households. Since the availability of rice husk is at stake, a mixture of biomass (rice husk & saw dust or rice husk & bamboo dust) instead of using only rice husk as fuel is also proposed for electricity generation. Ash generated from the husk is processed to produce silica and calcium carbonate through silica precipitation method. Demand and market analysis is also done to examine sales potential of products (electricity, silica and calcium carbonate).