Garbage Power: Converting Waste to Energy

In Kanpur, India, a 12 MW power plant is proposed to be set up with plan for door-to-door campaign for collection of garbage which would be used for generating electricity. The collected garbage after segregation and recycling would not only be used as an organic fertiliser, but would also produce coal-like fuel which would help in generating electricity.

Eastern Railways has ambitious plans to utilize the large amount of garbage collected from Howrah Station, then convert this garbage to gas and then electricity. Railway officials estimate that 35 cubic metres of garbage is generated daily from the station. The two nearby railway colonies generate another 28 cubic metres. This can generate enough gas and electricity to meet some energy requirement at the station.

Technology sharing to generate power from garbage

Any organic waste, whether it comes from urban or rural areas or industries is a resource as it gets degraded and in the process generates energy. In the urban areas of India, every year about 40,000 million tonnes of solid wastes and 5000 million cubic metre of liquid waste is generated. This can be suitably recycled to generate 2500 MW of power by sharing technologies from countries like Japan, China, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, points out Ernst and Young (E&Y) and Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM) joint Paper on `Mitigating Climate Change: The Indian Perspective’.

Out of this, urban and municipal wastes are expected to contribute 1500 megawatt of power and 1000 megawatt to come from industrial wastes by 2012.

Waste-to-energy plants

The function of the waste-to-energy plants is almost like coal-fired power plants except that they use garbage instead of coal to fire an industrial boiler. The process is otherwise the same, involving burning of the fuel to release heat which turns water into steam which turns the blades of a turbine generator to produce electricity

Out of 100 pounds of garbage comprising paper, plastics, and yard waste, more than 80 pounds can be burnt as fuel to generate electricity at a power plant. About 525 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity can be generated from a ton of waste, enough to heat a typical office building for one day.

Watch video on converting city waste to useful resource.

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