Potential for Using

Rice Straw as Fuel

Key Findings of the
IRRI-SUPERGEN Rice Straw
Energy Project

Executive Summary

ice straw is a vast biomass resource in Asia, amounting to more than 500 million tonnes
produced per year. Most of it is burned in fields as a waste product, causing harm to the
environment and human health. If, instead, this could be successfully converted into a
clean-burning fuel, it could become one of the largest bioenergy resources in the world. However, it is important to understand the full range of technical and nontechnical barriers to fulfilling
this bioenergy potential. This document highlights those barriers and latest developments that
could help overcome them. It also summarises analyses that were made of the social and environmental factors in making biogas from rice straw, showing benefits and potential trade-offs.
Business models have also been analysed, along with the implementation and effectiveness of
support from government policies across Asia. Key outcomes are condensed into this report to
help guide future efforts in this important but under-researched field.

BARRIERS
The four key barriers to using rice straw for energy highlighted in this report follow:
TECHNICAL BARRIERS
A. Logistics of straw collection and storage
Conditions are often wet in irrigated rice fields; to save weight, combine harvesters do not have
baling machines and leave straw scattered across the fields. Straw must then be collected separately, often when there are labour shortages, and it is a bulky material that is cumbersome to
handle. Then there are challenges due to poor rural transportation infrastructure and the need
for storage.

B. Straw fuel properties

Rice straw contains high levels of energy, but also has high silica levels (10-15%), which damage
chopping blades and cause fouling and agglomeration at low temperatures in combustion. The
lignin wall of rice straw and its high carbon : nitrogen ratio hamper biological decomposition. It is
also bulky and, in wet seasons, often has a high moisture content.

NONTECHNICAL BARRIERS
C. Business challenges
In addition to these technical barriers, there are risks associated with sourcing straw from large
numbers of small-scale rice farmers, such as high transaction costs and the need for farmer
cooperation. These combine to result in few commercial attempts at using rice straw for energy.
Hence, there is a lack of proven business models, a lack of training, skills and knowledge, and
a high risk of failure. These in turn lead to difficulty in accessing funding and few commercial
attempts, reinforcing the vicious cycle.
D. Policy failures
Major policy issues include a lack of effective policy support or enforcement (e.g., many countries
ban straw burning without providing alternatives), a lack of effective strategy or environmental
accounting to discourage emissions, and widespread subsidies for fossil fuels.

KEY SOCIAL FACTORS

At the heart of this research has been the farmers and rural communities themselves, because
understanding them and their needs is vital for both understanding the barriers and co-developing solutions. Focus group discussions and questionnaires were used to deepen understanding of
social, cultural, and practical considerations relating to their rice straw management. These took
place in India and the Philippines and highlighted the following:
Cultural traditions and belief systems play an important role in straw management, as
they shape how individual farmers value and use rice straw. Farmers dietary preferences
influence their concept of fodder quality and animal feeding practices.
Farmer attitudes to straw use and potential alternatives are critical factors. Farmers
expect their land to look clean and free from stubble before planting and seeding so they
burn loose residue and standing stubble. Farmers have varying attitudes toward giving
away leftover straw residue, which poses both challenges and opportunities in developing business models to link farmers with various options of straw use and help them.
The agricultural system as a whole governs the availability of straw and decision-making processes of farmers with regard to straw management practices. The cropping
system poses different challenges and opportunities for straw management. It was
found that rice-wheat systems face challenges in managing farming activities in a timely
manner. Livestock farming, particularly dairy farming, plays a very important role in the
dynamics of supply and demand of straw. Landholding sizes together with cropping pattern are major factors in the availability of crop residue at both the village and household
level.
Labour availability and degree of mechanization both influence straw management
practices at all the sites studied. Traditional straw management is very labour-intensive.
The lack of workers and high wage costs were the major concerns raised by farmers at
all the study sites. The intensity of machine use, such as combine harvesters, also affects
straw management practices.
Awareness of options for alternative straw uses and an enabling environment
influence the degree of straw burning. Training and exposure to various options for using
straw can change farmers behaviour and management practices. The farmers interviewed
were open to changing their practices. Successful business models take into account
prevailing market opportunities relevant at each site, the needs of the farmers, and their
overall farming system. More pilot demonstration projects and experiential learning will
benefit farmers and increase their confidence to change their rice straw management
practices as many said, seeing is believing.

TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS
1. Logistics
Mechanised collection
Collecting rice straw is still a major challenge in the supply chain. One option to reduce the straws
volume and thus transportation and storage costs is to compress it into bales. However, with the introduction of combine harvesters that tend to scatter the rice straw in the field, collecting rice straw has
become even harder and more costly. Rice straw collection and baling technologies are still not mature,
but related IRRI studies1 of their techno-economic and GHG emissions have shown that
They can reduce labour requirement by 90%.
Total energy consumption required accounted for 10-17% of the total input energy of using the
collected straw for biogas production and caused GHG emissions of 60-165 kg CO2 equivalent
per tonne of collected straw due to fossil fuel use in collection.
The cost of straw collection ranged from US$12 to $18 per ton of straw in the Mekong Delta of
Vietnam, accounting for 10-20% of the total investment cost of biogas or mushroom production; net profits of mushroom production were $123 ($14) per ton of straw used.
Mechanized rice straw collection can be feasible to help avoid in-field burning and generate
additional income in rice-producing areas.

2. Straw fuel properties

a. Pretreatments
Normal fuel processing would often include chopping or grinding the straw into small sizes (25 mm)
to assist combustion or, in the case of anaerobic digestion, to break down its lignin wall. Size reduction
is considered as a bottleneck in processing and use of rice straw because its high silica content causes
excessive wear of tools and there is a lack of reliable, cost-eective commercial technologies to overcome this problem. The size can be reduced by chopping and/or grinding. Chopping is suited for use
with stalk material such as dierent straws, while grinding is used for brittle, tough, or large and fragile
materials.
The project team has conducted assessments and experimental verification of dierent types of rice
straw choppers, including the issue of silica in the straw causing fast wearing of chopping surfaces. Table
1 summarises the characteristics of these choppers.

Including CORIGAP and BMZ-rice straw project and reported in Nguyen et al (2016)

Table 1. Characteristics of rice straw choppers assessed.

Choppers

Chopping type

Advantages

Disadvantages

Rice straw
hammer mill
(German)

Free-joint hammer
mill, no cutting
plate

High capacity

Fast-wearing hammers, dicult to disassemble and re-sharpen. Easily clogged.

Rotary-knife chopper (Taiwan)

Knife-rotor in
reversing-rotary
drum-cage

High capacity, easy to re-sharpen knife

Fast wearing knives.

Blade rotor against

fixed cutting plates

Easy to re-sharpen knife. Less

airborne dust due to lower
RPM (75% reduction in RPM
compared with models with no
cutting plates).

High cost of investment

and operation.

Fixed-joint hammer
mill (shearing of
straw)

High capacity.

The hammers are

dicult to disassemble
and re-sharpen. Easily
clogged.

Blade rotor against

fixed cutting plates,
with mechanical
re-sharpener

Mechanically re-sharpen knife.

Rotary-blade
chopper (Taiwan)

Fixed-joint hammer mill (India)

Rotary-knife
chopper with
mechanical
sharpener (IRRI
design)

Airborne dust
pollution.

Reduced wearing of hammers

compared with free-joint hammer type.

Lower capacity.

Low capacity

Less airborne dust due to lower

RPM (75% reduction in RPM
compared with models with no
cutting plates).

In addition to the mechanical pretreatments outlined above, biological pretreatment options exist that
could be used prior to anaerobic digestion in particular. Fungi are able to break down organic matter
and certain types of mushroom can be grown on rice straw as a commercial crop. Research from the
SubProM project at Can Tho University, Vietnam / Aarhuus University, has shown that, after one crop of
mushrooms, rice straw is more easily digested to make biogas and still gives yields similar to those of pig
manure. Therefore, initial experiments were conducted to try to increase the eciency of mushrooms as
a pretreatment for anaerobic digestion as well as being an additional revenue stream. There is potential
for further work on this and other cascading uses of biomass, such as duck or other livestock bedding,
prior to end use as fuel and fertiliser. Potential also exists for further work to evaluate which pretreatments, if any, are cost-eective for rice straw prior to anaerobic digestion in a range of scenarios.
b. Energy conversion technologies (combustion & anaerobic digestion)
With such a challenging material, and in the face of the numerous barriers to its use as fuel, there was a
need to focus on just a small handful of solutions. The study did not look deeply into new and emerging
technologies, such as second-generation transportation fuels, because these face technological barriers
of their own. To combine those with the challenges of rice straw would create a multiplier eect. Hence,
for this research, the focus has been on technologies that are already commercialised so that the main
thrust could be on how specific challenges for rice straw might be overcome. The two main commercial
technologies, therefore, are combustion and anaerobic digestion. Tables 2 and 3 show the summarised
comparisons of technical options for rice straw, based on combustion and anaerobic digestion, respectively, highlighting the relative advantages and disadvantages of each technology.

Table 2. Comparison of thermal processing options (actual and proposed) for rice straw.
Options

Characteristics/advantages

Disadvantages

1-MW power plant proposed

by ENERTIME company

Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). Avoids

problem of fouling and agglomeration
of straw combustion at low temperature.

Low eciency

High capacity

High maintenance cost

12-MW rice straw combustion

power plant in Rajpura, Punjab

High cost

Environmental pollution
IRRI rice straw furnace (testing
stage)

Low cost

Still in development (testing ongoing)

Can help meet demand for rice straw

drying in wet season

Table 3. Comparison of dierent anaerobic digestion options for rice straw.

Options

Characteristics

Continuous AD
farm scale, as
demonstrated by
Can Tho University,
VN

Mixed with 50% pig dung

(ODM).

Batch ADfarm
scale, cement
digester, Punjab Agricultural University

Mixed with 25% cow dung.

Batch AD built of
cement and brick.
Yield: 320 L/kg

Batch ADfarm
scale, as demonstrated at IRRI

Mixed with 25%

animal manure.
Batch AD with
plastic digester.
Yield: 300-400 L/kg

1-MW rice straw

biogas power
plantSampurn
Agri Ventures, India

Mixed with 5% cow

dung.Two-stage AD.
Yield: 350-400 L/kg

Advantages

Disadvantages

Low cost: $200/unit

of 6-m3 digester

Rice straw floating in digester hampering decomposition and gas generation. Clogging.

Dry AD: avoids floating of rice straw

High cost: $3,000 for

1.6-ton batch of straw
Inconvenient unloading
Not portable

Yield: 390 L/kg

Dry AD: avoids

floating of rice straw.
Portable and low
cost.

Small capacity
Testing ongoing

High capacity.
Dynamic stirring
system increases
digestion.

High capital cost ($2

million for 1-MW biogas power system).
High maintenance cost.

Life cycle assessment of rice straw anaerobic digestion

For traditional rice residue management, in-field burning of straw causes pollution from airborne
particulate matter, while incorporation of straw in flooded fields emits higher methane and dinitrogen monoxide, thus increasing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). These adverse outcomes could
be avoided by removing straw for biogas production to replace the fossil fuels. This study conducted
a comparative analysis of energy and GHGE balances from rice straw production through to biogas
production using four anaerobic digestion (AD) practices.
Assessments of one industrial-scale and three farm-scale AD practices illustrated the feasibility
and limitations of this technology for rice straw. Manure was mixed with the rice straw at a ratio of around 0.05:1 depending on the technology of feedstock pretreatment and processing.
Net energy balance (NEB) was from 66% to 232% of the input energy for the AD practices. The
lowest NEB was from industrial AD mainly because of the high transportation distances and
the construction of buildings for storage of straw. The highest NEB came from the farm-scaled
batch AD with its much lower input requirements for transportation, storage, and infrastructure.
Anaerobic digestion of rice straw can reduce GHGE significantly. The industrial AD model
could attain net GHGE avoidance of 0.05 Mg CO2-eq/t. Adverse net GHGE of 0.17-0.37 Mg CO2eq/t was caused from the farm-scale AD; however, the net GHGE balance of these farm-scale
practices was just 50% of the corresponding input GHGE.
The study thus illustrated the benefits of removal of straw for bioenergy generation in terms of energy generation and GHGE reduction, particularly in comparison with the baseline scenario of burning
straw in the field.

NONTECHNICAL SOLUTIONS AND

IMPLEMENTATION
1. Business model analysis
Many technically feasible technologies have failed because the targeted users did not understand how
they could add value and in particular earn money by using those technologies. Sustainable business
models are therefore important for scaling out a technology. Identifying potential business models
around a technology can also help make decisions on target groups and scale of the operation. Business
models for biogas can include the following:
1. Individual farmer biogas production,
2. Biogas production at the community level by an SME with farmers or straw collectors providing
feedstockthe gas could be used by farmers or for other local purposes, and
3. Large-scale industrial biogas production with an organized rice straw supply chain.
Research on business models was conducted to define a simple yet flexible framework for analyzing
options for bioenergy production from rice straw at the farm scale, community scale, and industrial
scale. The model is fed with primary data collected through one-to-one interviews, focus group discussions, and field experiments, and complemented with secondary data in order to
1. Define potential business arrangements using qualitative indicators such as input availability,
storage or transportation constraints, and farmers engagement.
2. Evaluate the selected configurations in terms of their economic, energetic, environmental, and
social benefits at each step of the value chain from rice field to bioenergy use. The framework was
used to feed back to a case study in the Philippines and it can be applied to other rice-producing
areas.
A framework and spreadsheet for this business model analysis were developed based on Excel software. A case study of comparative analysis for the three models of farm scale, community scale invested by farmers, and community scale invested by the private sector was investigated using this framework. The farm-scale business model generated the highest benefits of NPV, energy balance, and value
added if the model was calculated excluding labor input from farmers themselves.

2. Policy solutions
Open burning of rice straw is a major cause of air pollution in rice-producing nations, with serious implications for human health and the environment. Alternative practices can reduce these impacts and
are already carried out at a smaller scale. However, they have been largely ignored by the policy and
research communities until recently, and barriers to deployment are significant. Seven of the worlds
leading rice-producing countries were studied to assess the levels of ambition and implementation of
policies to reduce open field burning and support energy use of rice straw.

Milled rice production (MT)

150

Estimated percentage of rice straw burned, annual average

100

140

90

130

80

120
110

70

100
90

60

80

50

70
60

40

50
40

30
20

30
20

10

10
0

China

India

Milled rice production

Vietnam

Indonesia

Bangladesh

Estimate of percentage of rice straw burned

Thailand
Series 2

Philippines

Series 3

Milled rice production and percentage of straw burned

Sixty expert respondents were asked to score the relative importance of the indicators for enabling
alternative straw management practices by distributing 100 points among the indicators of each
criteria-group. Figure 1 illustrates the results.
National policy areas
have been graded
on a 5-point scale: a
score of 0 represents
the absence of
relevant policy and
5 represents highly
supportive policies.
Table 1 details the
thresholds for each
verifier scale.
Fig. 1. Experts rating of the importance of areas of government intervention to
increase the sustainability of management of rice straw. Ratings are relative so
absolute scores are not presented.

10

3
4
0

Bangladesh

Philippines

Vietnam

Indonesia

3: Strategy in
development
4: Strategy
in place but
no targets or
monitoring
5: Strategy in
place with targets & delivery

0: None
1: ASEAN
agreement

India

ban with
widespread
enforcement

ban with parment

sources

burning

implemented

recommending

standards &
monitoring but
no strategy

2: Year-round
regional ban
ban with very
low enforcement

0: None
1: Regional
plans

Air quality plan

0: None
1: Seasonal
regional ban

Thailand

open burning

China

management
strategy

total supply
costs:

subsidy as a

Fossil fuel
subsidies

3: Tax relief on
equipment
4: Government-funded
micro-credit
5: Subsidies for
projects using
waste resources

private investment only

2: Third-party

0: None

Agri-business
support

Table 1. Identified policy instrument scores for each of the seven study nations.

engagement

5: Diverse

4: Farm visits

uses

mechanisms
5:
mechanisms

sharing
gas support

4: Small-scale
biogas feed-in

3: Small-scale
biomass feed-

3: Project series 4: Ongoing

projects
5: Research
projects
couraged

0: None
1: Single
project
2: Single project exploring
environmental
impacts
0: None
1: Tax relief on
equipment
2: Biomass
0: None
1: Extension
system only
2: Link between
research & extension system
3: Rural development policy
includes
0: None
1: Regional efforts to reduce
burning
on dangers of
burning
3: Demon-

Straw use
research

Bioenergy
support

sharing

Farmer
engagement

Rice straw management is generally low in terms of policy priorities, with issues such as rural development and poverty reduction taking precedence over environmental concerns. Institutional barriers to
policy development and implementation are significant in most of the study nations, for example, lack
of authority and accountability, as well as corruption. The development of rice straw policy is further
hindered by poor understanding of pollution sources and eects, among both government ocials and
the general public. In some regions, cultural and linguistic barriers limit the ecacy of farmer engagement activities, and can impede access to extension services. The policies that have been enacted in
dierent countries vary considerably in terms of ambition, development, and enforcement:
China, Thailand, and India are the only countries with evidence of top-down planning to
influence rice straw management.
All countries have some form of agri-business support, but this is not always readily accessible, and no provision specifically targeting agricultural wastes was identified.
Bioenergy is the only area for which all seven study nations have legislation.
All nations have invested in research and development on rice straw use, but many of
these initiatives have been ad hoc one-o projects that did not look beyond overcoming
the biochemical barriers to use.
Information sharing is left to agricultural extension systems in every country except Thailand, although China, India, Vietnam, and Bangladesh have made specific provisions to
improve this information-sharing mechanism.
All seven nations have attempted to engage farmers with the management of their rice
straw, and China and Thailand have used a variety of continual engagement methods that
have been implemented by multiple institutions rather than just the agricultural extension
system.

CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATION

Overall, there is vast potential in rice straw energy, and the three-year UK-funded IRRI-SUPERGEN project
has sought to better understand the barriers and potential solutions for implementation. More technical demonstrations are now needed, along with innovative business models and supportive policies to
create the right enabling environment.
Authors:
IRRI: Nguyen, V.H; Gummert, M; Castalone, A; Samaddar, A; Luis, J; Borromeo, E; Jamieson, C.
University of Manchester: Roeder, M; Mias, A. Thornley, P.
Imperial College: McLaughlin, O; Desme, G; Ouazzani-Touhami, N; Slade, R.
Newcastle University: Zealand, A; Edwards, S; Graham, D; Roskilly, A.
Rothamsted Research: Shield, I.
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For further information, please contact:

Martin Gummert (IRRI), m.gummert@irri.org
Patricia Thornley (University of Manchester), p.thornley@manchester.ac.uk
Craig Jamieson (Project Coordinator), c.jamieson@cgiar.org
Project website: ricestraw.irri.org
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