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Tech for efficient treatment of waste

Our Bureau

COIMBATORE, Sept. 6

EMERGING global emphasis on optimum value addition to waste material necessitates development of technologies for treatment of waste, for hardly six per cent of the solid waste generated everyday was being put to efficient use, observed Dr. S. Kamaraj, C o-ordinator of Biogas Training Centre, Tamilnadu Agricultural University.

Speaking at a seminar on `Emerging trends in renewable energy' Dr. Kamaraj pointed out that only about 2,009 tonnes out of the 30,058 tonnes of solid waste generated everyday in 23 metro cities was being properly collected, transported, treated and dispo sed. These metro cities were home to 32.55 per cent of the total urban population, which constituted 25.85 per cent of the country's population.

``The concept of harnessing energy from waste is not only appealing but offers huge scope and enormous business potential'' he said and lamented that no successful full scale waste to energy plant was seen in India, except for high BOD industrial waste w ater and bagasse based co-generation projects.

Dr. Kamaraj said about 1,100 million cubic meters of biogas could be generated annually from the 40-billion litres of effluent generated by the 285-odd distilleries every year. The methane content in this biogas was about 60-80 per cent, he said and adde d ``if this energy is tapped, it will fetch additional energy units worth 5 trillion kilo calories annually''.

The post-methanian effluent would provide 2.44 lakh tonnes of potassium, 12,200 tonne of nitrogen and ,2000 tonnes of phosphorous annually to meet the annually manurial potassium requirement for 1.5 m.ha, nitrogen requirement of 0.12 m.ha and phosphorous requirement of 0.02 m.ha of land.