The specially-built furnace that treats garbage to obtain crude carbon. Picture by Soumen Bhattacharjee

A project to convert municipal solid waste into fuel has come up in Barasat, North 24-Parganas, 23 km from the city.

Based on German technology, the project is being run by Barasat municipality, West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) and an entrepreneur based in the district.

“We have been working on the project for the past five years,” said Jalaj Chaturvedi, the entrepreneur.

“We had approached WBREDA and Barasat municipality two years ago for implementing the idea. The pilot plant has recently come up at the dumping site of the civic body,” he added.

Ulrich Stephani, the scientist from Germany involved in the project, said the plant converts solid waste material into carbon-rich material, like coal and coke.

“We first dry the garbage and then treat it in the specially-built furnace to obtain crude carbon,” Stephani added. After the controlled combustion, the residue is ground into finer particles to make coke cubes.

“A kg of our cubes releases around 3,000 kilo-calories of energy, which is equivalent to the energy release of locally-available coke cubes. Smoke emission from the cubes, too, is much less than from the conventional coke,” Chaturvedi said.

The entrepreneur’s claim was echoed by municipal chairman Pradip Chakrabarty. “When Chaturvedi and Stephani approached us two years ago, we did not take them seriously. But a test of the coke produced from waste revealed that it is of the same quality as coke cubes available in the local market.”

The municipality is not being able to supply adequate garbage to the company. “They demanded around 11 tonnes a day. We can supply only five tonnes,” he added.

WBREDA, too, is enthusiastic about the project, the first of it’s kind in the state. “We have provided some funds to the company and have got good results. We hope coke cubes produced by the company will help the local people, who still depend on coal for cooking and other purposes,” said WBREDA director S.P. Gan Chowdhury. The company, he added, is planning to set up power generation units that will run on fuel produced from solid waste.

Chaturvedi said seven other municipalities had contacted the firm for implementing the project in their areas.