The East Coast Railway has commissioned a waste-to-energy plant in Bhubaneswar at Mancheswar Carriage Repair Workshop. The plant, the first of its kind in the Indian Railways and fourth in the country, was built at a cost of Rs 1.79 crore and it has the capacity to dispose of 500 kg waste, including plastic and e-waste, an official statement said.

All kinds of waste can be converted to light diesel oil, which is used to light furnaces, it said. This waste-to-energy plant uses a patented technology called polycrack.

What is polycrack?

Polycrack is the world’s first patented heterogeneous catalytic process which converts multiple feed stocks into hydrocarbon liquid fuels, gas, carbon and water.

Its advantages are…

* Environment-friendly

* Non-polluting

* No dioxins and furans

* Low PM count

* Low toxic metals

The 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, garden waste and Jatropha fruit and palm bunch.

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 of in landfills, which had a hazardous impact on the environment.

Waste generated from the Mancheswar Carriage Repair Workshop, coaching depot and Bhubaneswar railway station will be feeder material for this plant. The process used in the plant is a closed loop system and does not emit any hazardous pollutants into the atmosphere.

The combustible, non-condensed gases are reused for providing energy to the entire system and thus, the only emission comes from the combustion of gaseous fuels. The emissions from the combustion are found to be much less than prescribed environmental norms. This process will produce energy in the form of light diesel oil which is used to light furnaces.

The first such plant in India is a small one and it was set up by Infosys in Bengaluru in 2011. The second plant is located at Moti Bagh in New Delhi and it has been in operation since 2014, and the third one was set up by Hindalco in 2019.

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