Turning waste into fuel

India is a booming economy and since couple of decades it has started moving from a production oriented mixed economy to a consumer society. This transition encourages the amassing of goods and services at far greater amount. In addition to bigger and faster market, consumerism brings with it two major issues for which India needs to find solutions with high priority. These issues are Generation of Plastic Wastes and Lack of fuel. Alka Zadgaonkar kills two birds with one stone. She has set up a research facility that produces fuel from the plastic waste produced in her city, Nagpur. The process invented and patented by Alka can accept all kinds of wastes be it carry bags , PVC pipes ,pet bottles and even expanded polystyrene (thermocol as it is widely known). No sorting or cleaning is necessary except shredding that makes economic the transport of bulky waste. As plastics emit harmful gases on burning, the shredded mixture is melted at low temperature and led to a de-gasification stage. Her facility buys 5 tonnes of plastic waste everyday and produces and sells 5000 litres of fuel to nearby industrial units. She wants to scale up the capacity but will shortly run out of raw material as Nagpur generates only 35 tonnes of plastic waste !A Professor of Chemistry by profession , Alka applied her knowledge to deal with two gigantic problems that put a question mark on the foreheads of our policy makers. She has shown a way that how our knowledge can be put not only for earning wealths but also for the welfare of the society.She is an example for how imagination and ability to use simple science concepts can help us to come up with very unique products using waste. Sources :www.eai.in (Statistics courtesy)http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/magazine/story/alkaz/