Kerala has many firsts to its credit. It may soon add one more. The Kerala State government has decided to convert waste into energy through air-fed gasification. Waste management issues come as a corollary to the growing pace of urbanisation. No city or town is untouched by it. The problem of managing garbage that rots on the streets of the capital city has been a nightmare for the Kerala government for a long time. This time, the state government decided to do something out of the box. Loro-Enviro Power (LEP) has been chosen by the Kerala government to set up a solid-waste treatment plant in the state capital. The company’s representatives say that they will bring in an innovative technology that has not been used in India, yet. LEP was chosen for the Thiruvananthapuram project from a list of four foreign companies that were shortlisted after technical bidding.

Pathbreaking technology

LEP has a patented technology called air-fed gasification that is used to convert waste into electricity. The gasification plant that LEP will be setting up in the capital city will begin operation with an initial capacity to process 35 tonnes of waste a day. This capacity can be increased to 100 tonnes/day in the future, if needed. The process being used is not pyrolysis or incineration but a ground-breaking technology that can turn waste into clean renewable electricity.

Dr. Neil Williams is heading the LEP team. He is an eminent environmental engineer with many pioneering waste-management systems to his credit. Although India will witness the use of this technology for the first time, it is not new to the world and has been effectively used in municipal waste-processing plants.

Air-fed gasification will eliminate the problem of garbage that rots in the streets and flies that invade our homes by solution technology that converts the waste to a synthesis gas, which is then consumed to create clean, green electricity. The technology being employed is clean, permanent, and can wipe out the menace of refuse from our cities.

Cost-effective ways

With technical terms such as pyrolysis, gasification and incineration being unintelligible to a large section of people, it becomes difficult to understand the feasibility and the pollution quotient of these technologies and the huge investment required.

However, this is not a capital-intensive technology for waste management. According to media reports, a senior official of the Suchitwa Mission, who started the tendering process, is said to have stated that the company will bear the initial investment of the public-private partnership project to come up on 0.8 hectare of land.

The project will be a 20-year BOT (build, operate, transfer) agreement under which the company will bear the capital investment. In turn, the government will provide the land and buy the power generated.

Although air-fed gasification technology can generate one megawatt hour electricity from one tonne of waste, the city plant will be able to generate only about 0.77 MWh from that quantity due to the high moisture content of the waste produced here.

One of the main features of the plant is an automated integrated waste-sorting facility. It will reduce the manpower requirement to sort waste into organic, plastic, metal, glass and hazardous waste and e-waste.

By-products and features

Nearly 95 per cent of the waste put into the facility will be converted into synthesis gas; the rest will be ash, which will then be processed in a slagging kiln that converts the carbon to energy and converts the ash into slag, which is a non-leachable solid. The slag is then used as a sand replacement in the manufacturing of concrete block.

The green energy features of the project are quite special. It will have a Green Cube technology that means that the facility will be self-sufficient and will not need water, sewer service or power from the grid. It will be using 15 to 20 per cent of the power generated from the plant. Again, the water removed from the waste will be recycled and reemployed for the operation of the plant.

This Integrated Municipal Solid Waste to Energy Plant, which will generate electricity from waste by gasification, will be the first of the three modern waste management plants to be put up in the city, Urban Affairs Minister, Manjalamkuzhi Ali told the media.

Loro Group won the bid to set up the waste treatment plant at Chalai. According to the minister, the Chalai plant will look like a ‘shopping mall’. There will be no leachate, foul smell, air or water pollution. Solid waste will be directly put into the plant. Since the waste is disposed through gasification, sanitary landfilling will not be required.

The Chalai plant is likely to treat 35 tonnes of waste per day and generate 3.2 megawatts of electricity from it. According to the minister, two acre of land had been identified at Chalai for this particular purpose. Two other plants are also likely to come up in Thiruvananthapuram; however, he chose not to disclose the exact locations.

It is estimated that there had been a 50 per cent reduction in waste generation due to the introduction of pipe-compost units and biowaste plants in the area.