Solid waste to Energy

Sanjenbam Jugeshwor Singh *

Energy recovery from waste is the conversion of non-recyclable waste materials into usable heat, electricity or fuel through a variety of processes, including combustion, gasification, pyrolization, anaerobic digestion and land fill gas recovery. This process is often called Waste to Energy.

In fact, Waste-to-Energy (WtE) or Energy-from-Waste (EfW) is the process of generating energy in the form of Electricity and/ or heat from primary treatment of waste or the process of waste into a fuel source. WtE is a form of energy recovery. Most WtE process generate Electricity and/or heat directly through combustion or produce a combustible fuel commodity such as Methane, Methanol or Synthetic fuel.

During the 2001 to 2007 period, the Waste-to-Energy capacity increased by about four million matric tones per year. Japan and China each built several plants based on direct smelting or on fluidized bed combustion of solid waste.

In china, there are about 434 Waste-to-Energy plants in early 2016. Japan is the largest user in thermal treatment of municipal solid waste in the World with 40 million tones. Some of the newest plants use Stoker technology and others used the advanced oxygen enrichment technology.

Several treatment plants exist Worldwide, relatively novel process such as direct smelting, the Ebara fluidization process and Thermoselect JFE gasification and melting technology process. In India its first Energy bio-science Center was developed to reduce the country's greenhouse gases and its dependency on fossil fuel.

As of June 2014, Indonesia had a total of 93.5MW installed capacity of Waste-to- Energy with a pipeline preparation phases together amounting to another 373MW of capacity. Waste-to- Energy technology also includes fermentation which can take bio-mass and create Ethanol, using waste cellusic or organic materials. In the fermentation process, the sugar in the waste is changed to carbon dioxide and alcohol.

The most common source for WtE is Incineration, which means to burn organic waste to get energy .Incination is not just conducted to recover energy rather it is most of time conducted to get rid off waste.

The solid waste management plant at Lamdeng Khunou established by Govt. of Manipur, after successful conversion of solid waste into manure / fertilizer in the first phase, now started generating 1MW of Electricity per shift per day on trial basis successfully.

In fact, solid waste treatment plant was initially lunched to produce manure/ fertilizer only from the solid waste. But now WtE project to produce Energy from Waste is being taken up in Public private partnership (PPP) model.

The installation work to generate Electricity from waste at this plant is completed now. The project was taken up in association with INOVATIVE ECO-CARE Pvt,Ltd and THERMOTECH SYSTEM Ltd of Ahmedabad . Now the plant started producing 1 MW of electricity.

To generate 1MW of electricity at WtE plant at Lamdeng Khunou, needs about 100 metric tons of solid waste. It is reported by the concern authority that about 120 metric tons of solid waste can be collected from local Urban bodies of Imphal area which is classified as Cluster-A.

To generate electricity round the clock in a day, the plant needs to work in three different shifts. Therefore about 300 metric tons of solid waste is required. As the solid waste from the Imphal area is not sufficient to run the plant 24 hours, therefore collection of solid waste from other urban local bodies beyond Cluster-A area is required.

It is highly appreciable to learn that the Government of Manipur has handed over vehicle to transport the solid waste from other urban local bodies under NLCPR project. 31 vehicles have been handed over to collect solid waste from seven (07) local urban bodies under cluster-B of Thoubal area.

The report also mentioned that, there will be a secondary collection Center at Thoubal, which after compaction will be taken to Lamdeng Khunou to use in WtE plant.

As ,this even will not able to meet the requirement of the plant , Government is trying to collect the solid waste by opening four(04) more secondary collection centers at Bishnupur, Kakching and Mayai Lambi, so that the required quantity of 300MT of solid waste can be collected to meet the need of the plant.

In fact, this step taken up by the Government of Manipur is very good and right step to keep the environment of our City and towns clean which in turn will help to save our Lokatak Lake from all kinds of threat poured on it also. At the same time, we will get additional electricity though it may be little.

If this project/ Mission is successful, it's not hard to say that our dream of Imphal to be a clean Smart City will be achieved. However, to get all these objectives lies in the hand of our general public. So let's all join in hand to make Imphal in particular and Manipur in general, environmentally very clean city and state.