Nagpur’s first CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) station is all set to become operational from September 8, 2019. The CNG station located at Automotive Square in the city is set by Rawmatt Industries Private Limited.

The CNG station at Automotive Square is the mother station, where LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) will be stored and converted to CNG and further supplied to nine more daughter stations, which will become operational soon in the city. Currently two daughter stations (one at Khapri depot and second one at Wadi depot) are getting ready and will be operational in 10-12 days. The station at Automotive Square will be able to supply 23,000 kgs of CNG in Nagpur. It also has an additional facility to provide 15,000 kgs of Bio CNG.

Speaking about the difficulties in bringing CNG to Nagpur, Vaddadi Subbarao (Director, Rawmatt Industries) told Nation Next, It was a great challenge to bring LNG by road tankers to Nagpur and then convert to CNG as there is no natural gas pipeline closer to Nagpur. In bigger cities like Delhi and Mumbai, there is a City Gas Distribution (CGD) network to distribute CNG to stations and households. Rawmatt has taken all care to ensure appropriate supply chain management and proper inventory systems to ensure regular supply of CNG to Nagpur.

Subbarao added, We bring in LNG from Dahej Terminal in Gujarat with the help of tankers. Transporting LNG as compared to CNG is easy and cost effective. After LNG arrives in Nagpur at our facility, we convert it into CNG with the help of vaporisation and further transport it to daughter stations by CNG cascades mounted on vehicles.

Interestingly, the arrival of CNG in Nagpur coincides with the vision of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, who has always been a well-known advocator of use of alternate fuel. It is keeping in mind the Union Minister’s vision that Rawmatt Industries has converted several buses owned by Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) from being run on diesel to being run on CNG.

Subbarao said, Buses operated by NMC have been in heavy losses for a few years now. In a conversation with Gadkariji, he shared his dream of converting NMC diesel run fleet to CNG to help cut down the pollution and provide economic and cost effective solutions.  He further asked to immediately convert the buses to CNG to avoid the theft and losses of diesel. CNG is cheaper than diesel and also gives more mileage than diesel.  On Gadkarijis request, we converted a diesel-run bus to a CNG-run bus. We then undertook the trial and the results were astonishing in terms of efficiency.

Gadkari inaugurated the bus converted by Rawmatt Industries in March 2019 thereby paving a way for NMC buses to be run on CNG. All diesel run buses owned by NMC will be gradually converted into CNG run buses.

Subbarao further said that Rawmatt Industries is in the process of converting diesel fleet to LNG directly, which will be more economical and cost effective compared to CNG. LNG is yet to take off in India due to non availability of infrastructure. Rawmatt has facility to dispense LNG also in Nagpur and is gearing up to meet future needs of LNG.