[Digestion] large Scale Digester for Municipal Waste (Bernd Haase)

[David Fulford]

Dear Bernd, Ramanujam and listers,

There is actually a low tech large scale digester operational in India for 
MSW. It was developed by Dr. Sharad Kale at the Nuclear Agriculture and 
Biotechnology Division of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in 
Mumbai and is called the Nisargruna biogas process. It uses the old KVIC 
floating drum technology, but is innovative in using an aerobic 
pre-digestion stage. This gives a very high efficiency of breakdown for 
food waste feedstocks.

See:
http://www.karmayog.com/cleanliness/biodegradable_waste.htm
http://www.undp.org.in/Programme/GEF/June.2004/article-3.htm
http://www.mnes.nic.in/akshayurja/akshayurja_2005_07_08_english.pdf page 17 
or do a search for Nisargruna on Google.

The prototype has been running for several years and there is one in 
commercial operation at Shatabdi Hospital Site at Govandi in Mumbai. The 
design is being commercialised and there are several companies interested 
in developing the idea.

BARC are prepared to license the design to other organisations who are keen 
to build and use this system.

Cheers,

David F.

At 20:51 03/11/2006 -0800, R.A. Ramanujam wrote:
>Dear Bernd
>
>   There is no low tech large scale digester operational in India for 
> municipal solid waste.  There is a plant operating in Chennai city of 
> Tamil Nadu India exclusively for Vegetable market waste. Its capacity is 
> 30 tpd. It is low soilds concentration digester. The maximum gas 
> generation achieved was 1700 cum/d.  It is only a demo 
> plant.  Therefore  we are working on the system to increse the solids 
> concentration to increase the gas production to 2000 - 2300 cum/d. Dry 
> fermentation processes have not been  implemented in India till now in 
> large scale as that kind proceeses have to be operated only in 
> thermophilic condition.  The biogas generated have to be utilised partly 
> for heating the digester contents. The available gas for energy 
> generation will get reduced.  The economic viability of the project is 
> not of acceptable level.
>
>   regards
>   Ramanujam
>   Assistant Director, Dept of Environmental Technology
>   Central Leather Research Institute
>   Adyar, Chennai 600 020
>   Telefax: +91-44-24450234
>   email: rar_envtech at yahoo.com
>
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>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2006 07:34:34 +0100 (CET)
>From: "Bernd Haase"
>Subject: [Digestion] large Scale Digester for Municipal Waste
>To: digestion at listserv.repp.org
>Message-ID:
><1864.203.189.135.187.1162535674.squirrel at webmail.hs-bremen.de>
>Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
>Hey colleagues,
>
>I'm working on a feasibility study in phnom penh for the anaerobic
>treatment of municipal waste. I'm wondering if some of you have heared
>about a low-tech large scale plant that works successfully. I heard rumors
>that india has plants running, but couldn't find anything in the web.
>Please let me now about dry fermentation plants that use household or
>marktet waste as substrat.
>
>thanx bernd
>
>
>
>
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*** Dr David Fulford, MSc Renewable Energy, Engineering Building ***
***     School of Construction Management and Engineering        ***
***      The University of Reading, Whiteknights,                ***
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