Presently a lot of focus is being given on waste management. Awareness drives are conducted for various types of waste management such as solid waste management, e waste management, bio waste management and plastic waste management. Various methods and means are being prescribed for different types of waste management. What if all these types of management can be done at one single place with the help of a single device? Some people might wonder whether it is possible or not. The answer to this question is YES it has been made possible by the world’s first patented heterogeneous catalytic process known as POLYCRACK. This technology comes with some advantages over conventional approach of waste treatment such as:
- Prior segregation is not required.
- Municipal waste processing can be done within a day.
- Landfill not required.
- Biological decomposition not required.
- Non polluting process.
- Low Sulphur and Nitrogen emissions.
Basic principle on which polycrack technology work includes: waste material (without segregation) as feed and from that feed energy will be produced in the form of light diesel oil. This diesel oil can be used for burning furnaces.
At the beginning, feedstock is provided which may comprise of mixed waste of various types. This feedstock goes to polycrack unit and from there it is transferred to catalysis chamber for polymeric vapour catalysis. Subsequently it is taken to condenser where handling of non condensed gases is done. After this oil and water separation is done by forwarding the fed to oil water separator. From oil water separator the recovered water is filtered and taken to water storage tank. This water can be reused according to future demand and convenience. The oil that is separated is taken to distillation chamber. Principle of Distillation chamber is separation of compounds based on their boiling points. Therefore, light diesel oil is obtained as a result.
Apart from obtaining light diesel oil from condensor, the gases that have not condensed are taken to Gas filter unit where gas obtained is transferred to polycrack unit by its pumping to vaporizer. The remaining residue is removed. Similarly carbon handling is also done by its treatment using cool water circulation and ferrous as well as non ferrous metals are separated in different units. Then carbon is broken into further smaller units using pulverization. Pulverization is a process where external force is used to reduce the original size of material into pieces. Further if required binder is mixed and briquettes are formed so that they can be carried on easily for external use. Briquettes are uniformly shaped converted agricultural waste that is easy to use, transport and store.
With respect to installation there can be two ways: Centralized processing and Decentralized processing.
Centralized processing can have the capacity of 25 ton to 50 ton per unit, that can be installed t landfill sites for treatment of freshly arriving waste material. Multiple units can be installed to tackle 100 ton waste per day.
In Decentralized processing various units can be installed in various places in a city and this can prevent the carriage of waste to landfill sites and these units can be used to cater to 100 kg to 10 tons per day.
These type of inventions can play a major role in tackling the waste management problem of country like India, where according to data of Ministry of environment more than 30 lakh tons of waste is generated every year. At present this technology is being used by Indian railways which is first if its kind in Indian Railways and fourth in the country.
DISCLAIMER-
The views are that of author’s own and not necessarily the views of IPTSE Academy. This blog is a platform for academic discussions and hence authors have been given flexibility to convey their thought process.
AUTHOR:
Tushar Srivastava, Student at law School, IIT Kharagpur.
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