Maharashtra govt. sets up TERI's biomass gasifier at landfill site to manage waste

08 Aug 2018

Energy generated from plant supports power requirements of the site

Navi Mumbai is a city on the west coast in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It was developed as a twin city of Mumbai, and is one of the largest planned cities in the world. The city had a total population of 0.75 million as per 2001 census covering an area of 162.5 sq.km under the jurisdiction of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation. It is estimated that the solid waste generated in the Corporation area is about 750tons/day. With increasing urban population, there is an increment in solid waste generated in the city. The disposal of the solid waste generated is becoming a big challenge, particularly for a Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC). In order to overcome the problem, NMMC has proactively initiated plans to pursue waste to energy projects, initially as demonstration projects. This in turn would reduce NMMC's carbon footprint; this also would be an opportunity to showcase and promote clean and climate-friendly technologies.

One such initiative is to demonstrate the two-stage gasifier technology at the Turbhe landfill site to convert its green waste (largely fallen trees collected) into energy. The project is also aimed at creating awareness through information dissemination and to accelerate the diffusion of technology under Swachha Bharat Mission. This facility shall also be used for further research and development (R&D) work, which is joint testing of the two-stage biomass gasifier system on a variety of wastes, such as refuse derived fuel (RDF) and coconut shells. With the aforementioned objectives, a 25 kW two-stage biomass gasifier based power generation system was established at Turbhe landfill site. This system currently supplies energy to the connected loads (20kWe) in the campus, such as lighting, fans and air-conditioning in the administrative block and other lighting facilities in the campus. The total connected load in the campus is to the tune of 100kWe.

Gasifier
Photographs of the two-stage gasifier plant

About Turbhe landfill site

Every day, approximately 675 MT of municipal solid waste reaches the landfill site at Turbhe, which is collected from various nodes in Navi Mumbai. The landfill site is managed through Public Private Partnerships and covers 65 acres divided into different cells operated in shifts. The waste transported to the Turbhe landfill site is unloaded from the trucks at a segregation unit, where waste is segregated using a rotating drum trammel which is a mechanical screening machine used to sort the waste. Complete municipal solid waste passes through the perforated cylindrical drum that is normally elevated at an angle at the feed end. The segregated waste is then diverted to different processes such as composting, biomethanation unit / leachate unit and refuse derived fuel unit. The transportation of waste from the segregation unit to these other facilitates is done through conveyer belts.

Green waste
Wood collected from trees uprooted during monsoon in Maharashtra

The gasifier power plant was inaugurated by Dr. Ramaswami N. Commissioner, Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC), Shri Jayawant Dattatray Sutar, Mayor NMMC, Smt. Mandakini Ramakant Mhatre Dy. Mayor, in presence of Dr. Shirish Sinha Deputy Director of Cooperation at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), officials of District Administration, Maharashtra and TERI team. The technologically advanced two-stage biomass gasifier system for power generation has been developed by TERI in partnership with the Danish Technological University (DTU) and "Effin'art", a Swiss energy efficiency consulting firm. The two-stage gasifier power plant is financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) under its project on accelerated diffusion of biomass based clean energy systems in India.

Themes
Tags
Biogas/biomass technology
Municipal solid waste