Providing Solution For Garbage-free Future
Providing Solution for Garbage-free Future
Municipal Solid Waste Management
MSW, commonly known as trash or garbage is a waste type consisting of everyday items which is creating an abysmal state of Municipal Solid Waste Management towards sustainable metropolitan development, comprises segregation, storage, collection, relocation, carry-age, processing, and disposal of solid waste.According to Central Pollution Control Board report, in 2016, India produced some 50 million tons of waste each year (per capita 500 grams/day), of which roughly 23 per cent is processed-taken to landfills or disposed off using other methodologies.
Other Challenges
- Inadequate waste collectionfacilities- very high % of moisturein unsegregated collected waste from various sources such as households etc. is being dumped at a landfill site on daily basis.
- Allocated land for most of the landfill sites is over utilized. More land shall be required if waste processing not introduced to process both fresh and legacy waste.
- Traditional methods and technologies of processing waste are no good and redundant.
What needs to be done
The Government has been implementing the biomass power and cogeneration program since 1994. In the last 14 years or so, just about 4 per cent of the total estimated potential has been realized so far that too at low efficiency outcomes.
The growing O&M costs and stagnant tariffs have made biomass power development financially unviable for the developers. As a result, despite the country having a biomass potential of 8,000 MW; the current installed capacity for the same stands way below – only 1050 MW. Even pelletization has been ruled out by experts as unviable. Also, various methods of collection, compression and processing have not been encouraging so far.
Technologies for Solid Wastepracticed in India and Challenges involved
- 1. It is aerobic decomposition of biodegradable organic matter only. Inorganic waste is not processed.
- 2. Requirement of large areas and long time (15-20 days) to obtain the output.
- 3. Raw material transfer is voluminous and expensive.
- 4. Difficult off-take and that too at very low cost
- 1. It is a method for mixed MSW, which can be very effective in preparing an enriched fuel feed for thermal processes like incineration or industrial furnaces.
- 2. Low Calorific Value is biggest challlenge.
- 3. Low acceptability in industrial markets leading to low viability.
- 4. High moisture content leads to low efficiency in output.
- 5. High Operational and Maintenance cost.
- 1. Incineration plants are not advisable to be installed in city limits because of environment hazards.
- 2. Whilst modern incinerators comply with the existing emission legislation there is some public concern that the emitted levels may still have an adverse effect on health.
- 3. Much higher costs and longer pay-back periods, due to the high capital investments.
- 4. Produce a solid waste residue and leachate which requires management.
- 5. Without stringent pollution norms and strict implementation, it can pose as a threat to environment and human life.
- Not applicable for large scale
- 2. High amount of civil work
- 3. Slow process – lots of by products still needs to be settled
What needs to be done..?
- Government bodies/ Agricultural Ministry/ Rural development agencies have to be roped in to organize biomass waste collection market.
- Proper consideration/charges to be provided to farmers as per their land and produce, at the same time to ensure that no extravagant demands are raised from farmers side as well.
- To ensure proper storage of the biomass waste as all crops are seasonal. Also, cow dung from rural and urban areas to be made part of bio-mass as it is available throughout the year.
- Pilot projects should be setup to encourage to get best possible output by using biomass as raw material.
- Grants to be given for development and scalability of technologies under Make in India campaign.
- Companies that can Indianize and commercialize International technologies/products should be encouraged and brought into play to ensure effective cost management of best technologies from across the globe.
- Minimum use of biomass for power generation should be done as power tariffs in India are becoming very competitive.
New Technologies and Solutions available
- 1. For compression, latest techniques are available that can compress material from 70-80 kg/m3(conventional system) to 600-750 kg/m3 (available latest solutions). This can reduce transportation costs largely.
- 2. Biomass can be mixed to get specific and better outputs. Higher efficiency can be achieved by proper mixing of different raw material.
- 3. Further using various processes bio-mass can be converted to green fuel that is directly a replacement to coal. We can call it sulphur-less coal as well.
- 4. Even for enhanced storage-processes like surface binding can be done and can result into better results.
- 5. Even organic treated waste mixed with biomass waste can be used to produce green fuel.
- 6. Biomass like coconut shell made products have huge international markets
- 7. Liquid extracted from cow dung can be processed into liquid fertilizers of best quality.