As many cities and towns in the country are battling to dispose plastic waste spending crores of rupees, 200 villagers in the coastal district of Dakshina Kannada in Karnataka have virtually started producing fuel out of waste plastic to run their day to day life.
These 200 village panchayats have come together in a novel way to recycle the plastic waste using indigenously developed converter plant to produce synthetic fuel which can be used as flexible as diesel. The plastic reclamation plant which generates a synthetic fuel has been successfully used in pump sets, generators and boilers saving lot on diesel and also protecting the environment.
According to Asha Thimmappa Gowda, president of Dakshina Kannada zilla parishad, around 200 villages under Bellare gram panchayat in Puttur Taluk have come together to produce synthetic oil an alternative to diesel to save the environment degradation. She says it was reverse engineering process adopted to produce synthetic oil from the plastic waste generated in 200 villages.
This first ever experiment at grassroots level in the country has caught the interest of many other panchayats and this technological breakthrough is expected to change the waste disposal propositions in the country. These villages which come under sensitive Western Ghats are very particular about saving the natural habitat.
This indigenous, desi technology to convert plastic waste into fuel has been the 9-year effort of a mechanical engineer from Mysore N Satish and an IITian Dr Babu from Chennai. They have a manufacturing centre at Nanjangud near Mysore and producing Plastic Reclamation Units(PRUs) which have capabilities disposing plastic waste scientifically. Altanol Technologies ( name of the company which produces these plastic waste into fuel)are now patenting these PRUs and looking ahead to solve the waste disposal problem across the country.
Speaking to The Pioneer N Satish co director of the Altanol Technologies, says the desi dynamics of PRU technology has a scientific answer to convert plastic waste into energy. He says this cost effective technology which took almost nine years for them to develop has an in built answer to the plastic waste problem both in macro and micro levels. He said " it is basically reverse engineering. The plastic waste recycle through PRUs has all the properties of diesel. If we have ten thousand kgs of plastic waste we can produce 6,000 liters of fuel per day. We are waiting for patents to our technology. The fuel has zero emission in its usage."
According to Satish, this synthetic fuel has been classified as a diesel equivalent by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and has a wide variety of use, like in running pump-sets, generators, industrial boilers, and costs less than Rs 25 per litre.