Friday, September 26, 2008

Gobar Gas Plants : Have you seen any?

I am a small town guy who is a son of a farmer. OK. My father is not a framer, he is a businessman, but we had our own farms so he liked the idea of playing a framer. (Anyway probably we lost more than we earned in our farming operations. Probably my dad wouldn’t agree but that’s the overall impression I have.)

No but this post is not about farming. This post is about gobar (cow/buffalo dung) gas. If you don’t know gobar gas is a term used for bio gas that is obtained from cow/buffalo dung. If you want to know more about it, read this wikipedia article.

I still remember the gobar gas plant we had in our front yard of the house we used to live in. This was in 80s. There was this huge tank (dug in ground having brick walls.) for the storage of the dung and water mixture which was put inside it by our saldar (A hired employee who looks after farming operations, something sort of a farm manager). And then there was a metal dome fixed as a kind of lid. In the center of this lid there was a pipe with valve from where we used to get gobar gas which was used for cooking.

During all my childhood this plant was an enigma and attraction. As long as I remember it was mostly defunct during my childhood. It just stood there as relic of a bygone era. Since there was danger of one of us kids falling into the tank, we were not allowed to play near it, but of course we did and there is a faint memory when I had almost fallen in the tank.

Later during renovation of the house my father removed the biogas plant and built a storage room above it. We sold that house around 2 years ago. Even though my entire childhood went in that house, I surprisingly remember little of it. Anyway I was never a person who gets attached with things. But somehow the memory of that gober gas plant remains.

In so many years after that I haven’t seen a single gobar gas plant. They almost seem to have become non-existent. Have you seen any?

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