India’s first such project by using an innovative German technology.
Uttarakhand is showing the way to India to clean up and be rewarded as it is going to install a huge plant to produce electricity from the non-segregated waste, India’s first such project by using an innovative German technology called gasification, about 500 metric tons of waste will produce 41 megawatts of electricity every day in Roorkee town of Haridwar district. Even better, there will be no emission, landfill or other waste from the process as this gasification technology, mixed waste will be treated at ultra-high temperature of about 1,100 degree Celsius and it can reach up to 2500 degree Celsius in the absence of oxygen to produce a synthetic gas that will be used further for production of electricity.
The plant will get waste from Dehradun, Roorkee, Haridwar, Rishikesh and all the adjoining areas daily, costing an invitation of Rs 500 crore. The plant will yield just two by-products: synthetic gas, also called green gas (which will be used to make electricity) and a sand-like residue (called non-leachable inerts) which can be used for construction and road making.
The power produced from the project will be put in the Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited (UPCL) grid that will be used to light street lights maintained by many municipal corporations in the state. The gas produced from the waste can also be used as cooking gas.
Thus, Uttarakhand has shown the world how to use waste positively, to generate electricity and be responsible, a pathfinder to make Swachha Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign) a reality as the plant will be using all kinds of wastes including municipal, hazardous, biochemical, industrial, drain silts, plastic and agricultural. And, it will fill any landfill.
This could be the renewable source of generating electricity of future as it is almost impossible to reduce the generation of dry, non-biodegradable waste from human activities that is the hallmark of progress, but we can also get rid from it and get electricity, making a Hindi phrase: aam kea aam, guthliyon ke daam (double benefits or Earths Joys And Heaven’s Combined) comes true.