Country’s first governmental waste to energy plant commissioned

Bhubaneswar: The East Coast Railway (ECoR) has commissioned the country’s first governmental Waste to Energy Plant at Mancheswar Carriage Repair Workshop in Bhubaneswar.

The plant was inaugurated by Railway Board Member (Rolling Stock) Rajesh Agarwal in presence of ECoR General Manager Vidya Bhushan, Addl. General Manager Sudhir Kumar and Principal Heads of the Departments of East Coast Railway.

This Waste to Energy Plant, a patented technology called POLYCRACK, is 1st-of-its-kind in Indian Railways and 4th in India.

It is the world’s first patented heterogeneous catalytic process which converts multiple feedstocks into hydrocarbon liquid fuels, gas, carbon and water, said a release on Thursday.

It has been constructed in three months and the target date of commissioning of this Plant was January 2020. About Rs 2 crore have been spent for commissioning of this Polycrack Plant, the release said.

Waste generated from Mancheswar Carriage Repair Workshop, Coaching Depot and Bhubaneswar Railway Station will be feeder material for this plant. This plant will access 500 Kg of waste materials per day.

While estimate income from the byproducts is Rs 17.5 lakh per annum, the maintenance cost will be Rs 10.4 lakh per annum.

This is the first plant in Indian Railways and 4th in India. The first plant is a small one set up by Infosys at Bangalore in 2011 and the second one is at Moti Bagh, Delhi in 2014 with a capacity of 50kg per day/batch each. The third one set up at Hindalco in 2019 with 50kg capacity per batch.

Earlier, lots of non-ferrous scrap generated from the Carriage Repair Workshop had no efficient method of disposal. As a result, these elements were being disposed by landfills, which had an environmentally hazardous impact.    

Polycrack Plant can be fed with all types of plastic, petroleum sludge, unsegregated MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) with moisture up to 50 per cent, E–Waste, automobile fluff, organic waste including bamboo’s, garden waste etc., and Jathropa fruit and palm bunch.