ECoR To Build Novel ‘Waste To Energy’ Plant In Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: East Coast Railway (ECoR) will set the first-of-its-kind ‘Waste to Energy Plant’ in Indian Railways in the Odisha capital.

The proposed plant will be built under an initiative of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan at the carriage repair workshop at Mancheswar in the city. It will be the only third such plant in India.

ECoR General Manager Vidya Bhushan laid the foundation stone of the plant on Monday. ECoR Additional GM Sudhir Kumar and the heads of various ECoR departments were also present on the occasion.

According to ECoR sources, lots of non-ferrous scrap are generated in the carriage repair workshop without efficient method of disposal. As a result, they find their way to landfills, which is environmentally hazardous. The plant will help the workshop to tackle this problem with a patented technology called Polycrack.

It is the world’s first patented heterogenous catalytic process which converts multiple feed stocks into hydrocarbon liquid fuels, gas, carbon and water, the sources said.

A Polycrack plant can be fed with all types of plastic, petroleum sludge, unsegregated MSW with moisture up to 50%, e-waste, automobile fluff, organic waste including bamboos, garden waste, etc. and Jathropa fruit and palm bunch.

Advantages Of Polycrack:

1. Pre-segregation of waste is not required to reform the waste. Waste as collected can be directly fed into Polycrack.
2. It has high tolerance to moisture hence drying of waste is not required.
3. Waste is processed and reformed within 24 hours.
4. It is an enclosed unit hence the working environment is dust free.
5. Excellent air quality surrounding the plant
6. Biological decomposition is not allowed as the Waste is treated as it is received.
7. The foot print of the plant is small hence the area required for installing the plant is less when compared with conventional method of processing.
8. All constituents are converted in to valuable energy thereby making it zero Discharge Process.
9. Gas generated in the process is re-used to provide energy to the system thereby making it self reliant of its energy requirement and also bring down the operating cost.
10. There is no atmospheric emission during the process unlike other conventional methods except for combustion gases which have pollutants less than the prescribed norms the world over etc.

ECoR has set a target to commission the Polycrack plant in January 2020 at a cost of Rs 2 crore.