Trash-to-green-power hope

Patna: One more private company has shown interest in Patna Municipal Corporation’s ambitious project of converting solid waste of the city into electricity and fuel.

AG Dauters Waste Processing Pvt Ltd on Thursday held a meeting with Patna mayor Sita Sahu in which its officials of the Delhi-based company put forward the proposal of setting up a plant through which solid waste generated by the city would be converted into electricity and fuel (diesel and cooking gas).

“The state capital generates 700 metric tonne of waste on a daily basis. The plant, which we have proposed to set up in Patna, can convert the 700 metric ton solid waste into 300 mega watt electricity apart from fuel including diesel and cooking gas,” Ajay Girotra, the managing director of AG Dauters Waste Processing Pvt Ltd, told The Telegraph.

“Emissionof the proposed processing plant is not going to affect the environment. It will be free of carbon elements. We will bear the estimated expenditure of Rs 2,400 crore.”

Patna mayor Sita Sahu said the Delhi-based company had already entered into an agreement with the Uttar Pradesh government according to which it was going to set up as many as 11 plants in the state which would convert waste into electricity and fuel.

Girotra added: “By 2019, our company will start 20 such plants in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana among other states. The best part of our model is that it doesn’t produce ash at any stage nor smog. The plant will come on 100 per cent foreign direct investment.”

Sources said a US-based agency had also shown interest in setting up a plant for converting waste into electricity, bio-diesel and water. The agency had given a proposal of producing 6,500MW electricity, 200 million litre bio-diesel and 300 million litre drinking water using 1,500 metric tonnes of solid waste and 600 million litres of wet waste. The agency has also communicated that it can further convert bio-diesel into bio-fuel whose supply can be given to households at much cheaper rate than LPG. The US agency is also in the final leg of setting up two such plants in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh for converting waste into electricity.

Patna mayor Sahu, however, clarified that an open tender will be floated to select a company which will set up the waste processing plant.

PMC terminated the contract of a company on May 30, which was supposed to set up an integrated municipal solid waste to energy processing plant (which was supposed to convert municipal waste into compost and electricity).

The decision of termination of the service of the company after no progress was seen in its work in setting up a plant over the past four years.

The company was supposed to set up a plant at a site located in Ramchak Bairia village. As per the agreement, the company was supposed to convert 600 tonnes waste into 11.5 MW of saleable electricity.

Courtesy: The Telegraph