East Coast Railway commissions waste to energy plant in Bhubaneswar
BHUBANESWAR: The East Coast Railway on Thursday commissioned Indian Railways' first waste-to-energy plant at Carriage Repair Workshop, Mancheswar here.
Railway Board Member (Rolling Stock) Rajesh Agarwal inaugurated the facility, first in Government sector, on Wednesday night.The plant will use polycrack technology to process the scrap and convert waste into energy to produce light diesel oil in 24 hours.
ECoR officials said a large amount of non-ferrous scrap generated daily from the Mancheswar workshop was being sent to landfill in the absence of a proper disposal method. However, with the use of polycrack technology ECoR can now use the scrap to generate energy.
Polycrack technology, the first patented heterogenous catalytic process, converts non-ferrous scraps into hydrocarbon liquid fuels, gas, carbon and water and doesn’t require pre-segregation of waste for their processing. Drying of waste is also not required due to its high tolerance to moisture.
Waste in the polycrack plant is processed and converted into energy within 24 hours. The fully automated system does not emit any hazardous pollutants. ECoR officials said the plant was set up within three months at an investment of Rs 2 crore.
The plant would require Rs 10.4 lakh per annum for its maintenance. However, having a capacity to process 500 kg waste per batch, the plant will also provide an annual income of Rs 17.5 lakh by selling the diesel oil.
Officials said this is the first Government plant and fourth in the country. The first plant was a small one with a capacity of 50 kg a day set up by Infosys at Bangalore in 2011. The second came up at Moti Bagh in Delhi in 2014 and the third one was set up at Hindalco in 2019 with 50 kg capacity per batch. ECoR General Manager Vidya Bhushan, Additional General Manager Sudhir Kumar and other officials were present during its inauguration.