Chennai’s garbage can be converted to 12 crore litres of aviation fuel

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

Chennai’s 5000 tonnes of garbage per day has the potential to be converted to 12 crore litres of aviation fuel and 4.5 crore litres of diesel per year.

An expert told Express that through plasma gasification and vitrification process, a technology developed by NASA, the garbage could be generated into wealth.

Vinod Bose, coordinator South India, for the Indian arm of US-based Solena Fuels, said his company has the proven expertise and is vying for a tie up with the state government under the public-private partnership. The cost for the project would be around Rs 3,000 crore and many European nations are going in for this technology, he says adding that the investment could be recovered after a period of around eight years.

He said that under this technology, segregation of garbage at source is not necessary. “It is a complete recycling process without producing any harmful products,” he says.

The technology uses a mixture of feedstock to power its systems, including agricultural wastes, urban wastes, or any other matter that is carbon based.

The feedstock is prepared and then fed into a plasma reactor, which holds one or more plasma torches. These plasma torches heat the reactor to roughly 5,000 degrees Celsius. This high temperature plasma field is used to transform all organic components into a clean and useful synthetic gas (also known as biosyngas).

Since the chemistry of the reactor is controlled, the major gases that are formed are carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Once formed biosyngas is sent to a gas-conditioning island where it is quenched very quickly and rapidly cooled. This cooling causes precipitation of volatile metals into the slag. This first cleaning stage removes any residual sulfur and chlorides, and the next step removes mercury. Almost 99 per cent of the particulate matter will be removed.

Once this phase is complete, the syngas is compressed and sent to a gas turbine to produce renewable power and steam in a combined cycle or the biosyngas is delivered to a Fischer Tropsch process to produce biofuels, including biojet fuel, bionaptha, and biodiesel.

It is a complete recycling process without production of any harmful by-products. All processes are indoor so there is no disturbance of the surroundings, besides it requires only 20 acres of land to house the project, he says.

“The fuel produced is 'ready-to-use' and no modifications to engines are required besides raw material for the project will always be available at low cost since our cities will always generate garbage,’ Bose says.

This could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are presently emanating from open land dumps besides the project will eliminate the need for landfills or garbage dumps and free land for productive use as well as avoid pollution of the environment.

Harmful emissions like carcinogenic substances,dioxins and furans are reduced to zero. The only waste generated is a vitrified material which can be used as a filling material in constructions and roads, he added. There will also be no contamination of surrounding land and water.