ABSTRACT
Bangladesh needs to diversify its primary energy sources to meet its increasing demands for affordable and quality power supply. Domestic natural gas serves as the major primary energy source and it has been depleting fast. Power generation has become costlier due to increased reliance on imported fuels. On the contrary, good quality coal and peat deposits in different areas of the country are little used. To access the domestic peat resource, several challenges need to be overcome both for sustainable mining and use in power generation. The known peat deposits in Bangladesh indicate more than 600 million tonnes resource and they are found in the floodplain areas in the haors, beels, small back swamps and in the locally depressed areas or low-lying basins. These peat deposit areas are submerged under floodwater for the major part of the year. Considering the physiographic and depositional realities the ‘slurry pond peat mining’ method may be applicable for peat extraction from Baghia beel deposits. A 50-MW power plant can be operated with mined peat from the deposit after reducing moisture. For bigger power plant operations, mined peat should be blended with imported high value coal.
