TURA:
With an aim to transform the municipal waste into solid fuel briquettes, the Refuse Derived Fuel or waste-to-fuel plant was inaugurated by chief Minister Conrad K Sangma at Tura, West Garo Hills, on May 17.
The current project in Tura has been envisioned as a working model demonstration project (proof of concept), to manage the daily incoming municipal garbage of Tura and its adjoining areas. HE Chang Jae-Bok, Ambassador of South Korea to India too was present at the inauguration.
All waste, except recyclables such as metals, glass, wood, e-waste and construction waste, among others, first goes through a crusher for rupture and thereafter gets mixed with the prefabricated WASTEF and enzyme, followed by the consolidation and moulding process with simultaneous moisture control by dryer machine to finally produce clean, green, odourless and smokeless fuel blocks.
The entire process is completed through an automated and integrated mechanism, free of manual handling.
Sangma stressed that this approach was primarily to assess practical viability of the concept before introducing it with much larger volumes of daily waste in Shillong and other major towns such as Jowai and Nongstoin, among others.
Earlier on March 2019, this pilot project was finalised by the government, Tura Municipal Board, and Chamhana GW, South Korea in a meeting between chief minister, his team with senior officials of Chamhana Institute of Technology, South Korea led by Dongmin Choi, chairman, at Shillong.
The Chief Minister and team, convinced by the potential of the technology, after a detailed presentation, agreed in principle to a PPP mode approach, to set up a small-scale plant, on pilot project mode, with no cost to the government of Meghalaya.
Accordingly, an agreement was reached to set up a small 35 MT installed capacity plant at Tura, in the existing dump yard site, including management and maintenance of the plant and training of local resources by Chamhana, which will have the rights to market the fuel briquettes to recover its capital investment.
The project which was to come up in 2020 was delayed due to the COVID 19 pandemic. The plant and equipment were finally shipped to India and thereafter by road to Tura in February this year.