Indian Railways’ East Coast division inaugurates maiden Waste to Energy plant

Using a patented technology called Polycrack, the plant would convert multiple types of waste into hydrocarbon liquid fuels, gas, carbon and water.

In a first of its kind initiative, Indian Railways’ East Coast Railway division will establish a Waste to Energy Plant in Odisha which would use plastic, petroleum sludge, unsegregated municipal solid waste, e–waste, automobile fluff and organic waste to generate power using a patented technology.

A Polycrack device to segregate waste. (polycrack.com)

Vidya Bhushan, who is the general manager of East Coast Railway, laid the foundation stone of the plant in Bhubaneswar’s Carriage Repair Workshop site in Mancheswar. East Coast Railway officials said huge amounts of non-ferrous waste were being generated in the Carriage Repair Workshop at Mancheswar and there was no efficient method of disposal and which led to these waste products end up in landfills.

Using a patented technology called Polycrack, the plant would convert multiple types of waste into hydrocarbon liquid fuels, gas, carbon and water. Explaining the advantage of Polycrack over conventional approach of treating solid waste, East Coast Railway officials said under the new technology, pre-segregation of waste is not required.

“Waste as collected can be directly fed into the plant. It has high tolerance to moisture hence drying of waste is not required. Waste is processed and reformed within 24 hours. All constituents are converted into valuable energy thereby making it zero Discharge Process.Gas generated in the process is re-used to provide energy to the system thereby making it self-reliant of its energy requirement and also bring down the operating cost,” said Manas Poddar, chief workshop manager of the carriage repair workshop.