Converting plastic waste into petrol

"ALKA Zadgaonkar believes in creating something of value even out of waste. Since 2002, she has been demonstrating to Indian and foreign experts how waste plastic can be converted into petrol, offering a solution to one of the world’s biggest environment problems—-waste plastic disposal.

Head of the Department of Organic Chemistry at Nagpur’s G.H. Raisoni College of Engineering, Zadgaonkar recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) for manufacturing and marketing petroleum products generated from waste plastic. She has been given Rs 5.9 million for the pilot project.

How did she hit upon the idea? "Both plastics and petro-products are hydrocarbons. The only difference is that in plastics the chain of molecules is longer. So, I wondered if it was possible to break the chain into small segments to convert it into value-added fuel. I started working on this idea in 1995 and my first successful experiment was in 1998-99," says 40-year-old Zadgaonkar.

Zadgaonkar’s method is simple: shredded plastic waste - free of oxygen – is heated with coal and a secret chemical. The products include fuel range liquids, coke and LPG range gases. About 1 kg of plastic and 100 gm of coal churn out a litre of fuel, which contains the gasoline range. More processing, Zadgaonkar claims, yields refined petrol.

"We can use any waste plastic recycled any number of times," says Zadgaonkar. She has received a patent from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)."

Above are some parts of an article in The Sunday Tribune dated Sunday, September 28, 2003. Full article can be read here. Now this is something we have been looking for a long time in our mission of Clean and Green. As soon as we came to know about it, we contacted her. Following are the important points from that discussion:

1. The plant can not be rented as it costs around 6 crore rupees.
2. The product has been launched commercially recently so it brings some complications of its own.
3. Currently there is no plant installed in Bangalore neither they are collecting the waste from Bangalore (through any agency etc) as capacity of this plant is 5 MT/day and Nagpur is producing 30 MT/day of waste.
4. She does not have any plan to install one such plant in Bangalore in near future.

Now we have seen a ray of hope. Do we have something like this in Bangalore? If you know, please share it with us. More about Alka's effort can be read at http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Magazine/story/alkaZ/

Pritesh Jain
for Save Nature

ps: photo copied from goodnewsindia.com article. For illustration purpose only.