Karnataka

Dubai team proposes power generation in B’lore landfills

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Bangalore, August 3, 2013: A delegation of environmental engineers from Dubai have proposed using degassing and gas utilisation as an effective solution for garbage management in the City.

The delegation which visited the Mandur and Mavallipura landfills, found that the gas emitted by garbage was sufficient to produce enough power to sustain the electricity needs of villages in surrounding areas.

The engineers from Green Energy Solution and Sustainability, a company responsible for the implementation of garbage management solutions for the Al Qusais landfill in Dubai, said that Bangalore’s landfills were similar to those in Al Qusais, in that both locations posed similar environmental concerns, affected the health of people in nearby areas, and whose decades-worth of garbage allowed for significant quantities of methane to be built up.

“The methane buildup was so large at Al Qusais that if someone who smoked threw the matchstick in the landfill, the garbage would catch fire, and indeed several incidents of fire were reported in the place,” explained Anita Nouri, business development director of Green Energy.

She added that by effectively utilising the gas generated in the 3.5 square kilometres of the Al Qusais landfill, they were able to provide electricity to the surrounding areas. “The engineers worked on it for a year before the waste-to-energy project took off,” they said.
While the team said that it was beneficial to have a system of segregation at source in place, it added that Bangalore’s existing mounds of unsegregated garbage could be used to generate large quantities of methane.

The theory behind this system of waste disposal is to trap all the harmful gases and convert them into useful energy. The solid part of the garbage which remains in the site is left to decompose naturally. “At the Al Qusais landfill for instance, we have now extracted the harmful gas and the remaining material is inert,” explained Peter Spillmann, a consulting engineer. “The biodegradable part of the residue will degenerate over time and if there are non-biodegradable particles remaining, they will not threaten the environment as they are inert.”

The team said they still needed to conduct a detailed analysis of Bangalore’s landfills before suggesting more solutions. “This is our first visit. We will analyse the landfills in detail during the next visit,” Nouri said.

KPCC Legal and Human Rights Department president C M Dhananjay and others were present.

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