What is the energy use and CO2 of Indore's dal mills?
TERI's 2017-18 profile puts Indore's 100 or so dal mills at about 4,241 toe a year: 22.4 million kWh of electricity and 5,786 t of wood for dryers. The power comes to about 15,100 t of fossil CO2 at today's grid factor; the wood's CO2 is biogenic and reported apart (estimate).
The mills
- About 100 mills: roughly 25% micro (about 5,000 t a year), 60% small (10,000 t) and 15% medium (20,000 t).
- Toor, chana, masoor, moong, urad and matar, from local mandis and farmers and from Maharashtra; Indore's namkeen makers buy much of the chana as besan.
- Cleaning, three stage dehusking, a little water to help splitting, drying, splitting, sizing, sorting and packing, mostly on belt driven machines over three floors.
- Husk is sold as cattle feed, not burnt.
Two fuels, two kinds of CO2
Electricity runs every machine, and that is your fossil footprint. Wood fires the hot air ovens that dry dal, mainly in the rainy season; its CO2 is biogenic and goes on a separate line, though the wood quantity still has to be recorded. Wood is more than half the cluster's energy in toe but adds nothing to the fossil total. Power cuts are rare, so diesel is negligible.
Two figures in the profile that do not agree
The profile gives cluster output as about 1,500 t of dal a day. Its own mix of 25 micro, 60 small and 15 medium mills adds to about 10.25 lakh t a year, nearly twice that. The cluster energy total is built from the mix, so per tonne figures from it lean low. Use your own throughput.
Where TERI found savings
- IE3 motors in place of standard ones on destoners, separators, sorters and blowers: about 3% over IE2 and 7% over IE1, paid back in 10 months to 2 years.
- VFDs on motors whose load varies with grain size: 6 to 8%.
- Screw compressors with permanent magnet motors and VFDs: 0.23 down to 0.15 kW per cfm in TERI's 30 hp example, a 1.7 year payback.
Indore dal mill cluster, CO2 a year (estimate)
- Electricity: 22.4 million kWh x 0.675 kg = 15,120 t fossil CO2
- Wood, reported separately: 5,786 t x 15.6 GJ x 112 kg = about 10,100 t biogenic CO2
- Per tonne over the profile's mix of 10.25 lakh t: about 15 kg fossil CO2
- Over the stated 1,500 t a day, even counted for all 365 days (5.48 lakh t): about 28 kg
Mill counts and energy from TERI's energy profile of the Indore dal mill cluster (2017-18). TERI's own 18,368 t uses an older grid factor. Wood CO2 at IPCC 2006 defaults for wood (15.6 GJ per tonne, 112 kg CO2 per GJ), shown for reporting only.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads MPPKVVCL bills into monthly fossil CO2 per tonne of dal at the CEA factor. It has no factor for wood; keep the dryer wood weights in your own register and report them as biogenic.
Sources: TERI, Energy profile: Indore dal mill cluster (SAMEEEKSHA), IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy, CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, version 22.0
Last reviewed 2026-11-01.