CHENNAI : The Central Pollution Control Board has sought an Action Taken Report (ATR) from the Tamil Nadu government next month over setting up of Material Recovery facility (MRF) prior to setting up of Waste to Energy plants or energy recovery system.
Directing the state to ensure implementation of Solid Waste Management Rules 2016 and Plastic Waste Management Rules 2016 as amended in 2018 in each municipal body, it has urged the State pollution control board to ensure setting up of MRF prior to Waste to Energy Plants or co-processing in cement plants so as to convert mixed solid waste into segregated combustile fraction or refuse derived fuel for better efficiency of the plants.
MRFs act as a temporary storage and segregation area before transporting the materials for recycling. This comes as CPCB feels that without segregation of dry, wet and silt waste, the efficiency of waste to energy plants cannot be increased. It is learnt that waste to energy plants in Delhi and other cities are not running due to feeding of unsegregated mixed municipal solid waste leading to inefficient energy output and huge quantity of rejects adding to the waste.
Interestingly, this also comes as Greater Chennai Corporation has completed a detailed feasibility report to develop two waste-to-energy plants at Perungudi and Kodungaiyur to generate power by processing 5,500 tonnes of municipal solid waste from the city per day. It is learnt that the 32-Megawatt-capacity plants will incinerate waste which reaches the landfill to produce energy.
The operational and maintenance costs of the plants at Kodungaiyur and Perungudi are estimated at Rs 1,243.50 crore and Rs 1,163.43 crore respectively over a 20-year period.Sources indicated that CPCB has directed the State pollution control board to ensure segregation of dry and wet waste at source before transportation.