Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention. Thanks to protests by Mandur residents, Bengaluru is discovering newer solutions to deal with the municipal solid waste (MSW). The latest to emerge on the city’s firmament is a processing plant for discarded tender coconut shells.
The first such plant has been set up behind the Freedom Park in Gandhinagar area of the city and has begun trial run. Set up by CIPL Resurge Private Limited, a Mumbai-based company, it can process forty tonnes of coconut shells on an average day and turns the shredded stuff into briquettes needed for combustion in factories, foundries and boilers.
Tender coconut shell is the toughest and heaviest single item among the biodegradable waste the BBMP collects every day. It takes long to decompose and if not collected from the streets or the sidewalks, poses a challenge to vehicles as well as pedestrians.
The company had signed an MoU with the BBMP to set up the pilot project. Under the arrangement, the BBMP has given on lease the land for three years behind the Freedom Park where huge mounds of discarded shells could be seen around the plant shed.
How it works
The plant consists of a shredder and a compactor. Once the shells are shredded, the shredded stuff is fed into the compactor which turns them into cylindrical briquettes of 90 millimetre diameter each.
These can be cut into desired lengths and are highly sought after by factories and foundries that use boilers for combustion. According to Anupam Acharya, Associate Director of CIPL Resurge, the pilot plant is looking for nearly 40 tonnes of coconut shells a day to be collected from the BBMP’s West Zone. The area has major transportation hubs such as City Railway Station and Kempegowda Bus Station, and commercial areas such as City Market, Majestic, Chikpet, Binnypet, and Cottonpet where huge amounts of waste is generated.
Shredding yields both fibrous material and sawdust. The fibrous material can be separated and can even be used in the coir industry. Acharya says the company is talking to the Coir Board for supply of the fibrous part of the output.
The residual sawdust is fed into the briquetting machines which produces solid, black coloured briquettes.
The CIPL has already set up two more such units in Mumbai where garden waste is used as the input and in Pune where west waste collected by the civic body is compacted.
Acharya says once the trial run is complete, the Freedom Park plant can even take sugarcane begasse discarded by the umpteen sidewalk sugarcane juice sellers and even hard shells of coconuts offered by devotees in temples.
Briquettes for fuel
The plant has been set up at a cost of Rs. 70 lakh and can employ seven to eight persons. However, it can invisibly offer employment opportunity to coconut shell collectors and cart operators who transport this to the plant. A plant capable of processing 40 tonnes of coconut shells can produce nearly 20 tonnes of briquettes or pallets a day.
M.R. Venkatesh, Chief Engineer heading the MSW division of the BBMP, says the briquetting plant is a step forward in decentralising the disposal of biodegradable waste by the civic body in an eco-friendly manner and dealing with it at zonal level. Success of the plant may enable the BBMP to allow establishment of such plants in each municipal zone of the city.
The briquette technology has been developed by Chanakya Institute of Public Leadership (CIPL), an institute in Bombay University which trains 15 students every six months and encourages them to take up popular issues for developing solutions.
(The author can be contacted at maqsiraj@gmail.com)
A plant capable of processing 40 tonnes of coconut shells can produce nearly 20 tonnes
of briquettes or pallets a day
