From Bagasse to Buildings ?

 Research done by University of East London claims that we can use bagasse ( left

over after extracting juice from sugar cane ) , can be converted into strong solid
blocks , which can replace currently used cement concrete blocks in construction
of houses
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Why should this technology be of interest to us in India ?
For following two reasons:
Ø  During next 5 years, Govt is planning to construct 2 crore ( 200 lakh ) houses for
poor.
That is 40 lakh houses per year . This will require a producing a huge amount
of concrete ( and GHG emissions )

Ø  On the other hand, India produces :
#  A total of ( approx. ) 100 million tons of Bagasse every year
#  Of this ( approx. ) 40 million tons gets used for manufacture of Ethanol
#  Leaving behind a surplus of  60 million tons of bagasse which can be
used for making Sugarcrete blocks for construction of those 40 lakh
houses / year

If 8” wide concrete blocks were to be used for constructing a 350 sq feet house ,
then how many blocks and cement would India need to build 40 lakh houses per
year ?
Total number of 8" concrete blocks needed
14000 million
Total cement required
1120 million tons

How many Sugarcrete blocks can we make from 60 million tons of bagasse ?
An 8 “ block made out of bagasse will weigh approx. 0.9 Kg and need about 100
gms ( 0.1 Kg ) of bagasse

Hence bagasse needed for 14000 million blocks = 14000 million x 0.1 Kg = 1400
million kg = 14 lakh tons = 1.4 million tons

As against this need of mere 1.4 million tons , we have an annual SURPLUS of 60
million tons of bagasse !