Pune-based Rudra Environmental Solution India Ltd has taken a lead in the designing and setting up of a plant that converts all kinds of plastic waste into poly fuel that can be used for furnaces and boilers

An environmentalist at heart, Pune-based entrepreneur Shirish Phadtare's second love is trekking and photography. He's, in fact, just returned from Leh and Ladakh where he says the snowfall had almost threatened to prevent his return on time. The wall of his office is adorned with framed pictures of tigers, deer, and other wild animals, which he has shot in the Kanha Tiger Sanctuary. But then what's his first love? It's a new business venture that will turn plastic garbage into fuel with the help of a machine that he and his partners have designed and put into operation. Rudra Environmental Solution India, the company set up for this purpose, has set up its first plant at Jejuri near Pune to convert plastic waste into poly fuel through a process called pyrolysis.

Pyrolysis, Phadtare explains, is the thermo-chemical decomposition of organic material at elevated temperatures in the absence of oxygen or any halogen. It involves the simultaneous change of chemical composition and physical phase, and is irreversible. Pyrolysis is a type of thermolysis, and is most commonly observed in organic materials exposed to high temperatures. It is one of the processes involved in charring wood, starting at 200-300?C. It also occurs in fires where solid fuels are burning or when vegetation comes into contact with lava in volcanic eruptions. In general, pyrolysis of organic substances produces gas and liquid products and leaves a solid residue richer in carbon content, char, which can be used for tarring of roads. Extreme pyrolysis, which leaves mostly carbon as the residue, is called carbonisation.

Pyrolysis differs from other high-temperature processes like combustion and hydrolysis in that it usually does not involve reactions with oxygen, water, or any other reagents. "Anhydrous pyrolysis can also be used to produce liquid fuel similar to diesel from plastic waste, with a higher cetane value and lower sulphur content than traditional diesel. Using pyrolysis to extract fuel from end-of-life plastic is a second-best option after recycling, is environmentally preferable to landfill, and can help reduce dependency on foreign fossil fuels and geo-extraction," he adds. Using this principle, and after almost five years of trial and error, Rudra Environmental Solution India now has a fully operational plant with a capacity for 200 kg of plastic waste that can, in optimal conditions, produce about 100 litres of poly fuel.

Such a plant costs a minimum of Rs 38 lakh for continuous processing and Rs 32 lakh for batch processing. "We can use about 25-30 kg of plastic per hour in the continuous process machine. The output will depend on the quality of plastic used, as for example the condition of the plastic bags or the water bottles, etc," Phadtare elaborates. For the company, one business alternative was to design and set up such plants for others while the second was to make the fuel themselves. Phadtare and his partners chose the latter. "Our commercial fuel production will start from next month and we aim to target those manufacturers who are currently using furnace oil in their boilers. "We have already produced fuel during our trial runs and sold it at Rs 40 a litre. According to our calculations, the return on investment can start within four to five years," Phadtare reveals.

But what about the raw material? How does the company plan to collect as much as 200 kg a day of plastic waste? Phadtare admits that this is a big challenge. "We approached the Pune Municipal Corporation to get the plastic waste from them, which is collected from as many as 14 wards across the city. This would have also solved their problem of disposing the waste. Also, burning plastic in the open is dangerous for health since it is one of the biggest pollutants. However, the PMC is yet to accept our offer. Therefore, we have devised an ingenious way to collect the raw material on our own," he replies.

The company has set up a team to collect plastic bottles, polythene bags, food packages, soiled plastic, etc., from around ww1,300 households in various parts of the city. "We ask the residents to keep the plastic aside and we pick it up free of cost," says Medha Tadpatrikar, a partner with the company. It's a huge cost that is being borne by the company for lack of any other option. "If only the civic body would chip in, we can start a plant to convert 9,000 kg plastic a month into 5,400 litres of fuel. This would be profitable for both us and the PMC or any other civic body," Phadtare points out.

Interestingly, the idea to dispose off plastic in a suitable way first came to Phadtare's mind when he was at the Kanha Tiger Sanctuary. "I was a witness to a case of the death of three deer at the sanctuary, the cause of which was their having gorged on plastic," he recalls. In 2008, Phadtare, who is a cost accountant by profession and runs a food processing plant, met up with two friends who were chemical engineers with the National Chemical Laboratory, and proposed the idea of disposing plastic waste in a non-polluting way and generating a more useful by-product. With information obtained from the Internet and other sources, Phadtare and his team first came up with a mini plant, which processed about 15 plastic bags to produce 5 ml of poly fuel.

"Elated by our success, we scaled up the operations and went on increasing the size of the plant till we finally reached 200 kg processing capacity. This was necessary because the plant would have to be commercially viable," Phadtare says. Can the fuel also be used for vehicles? Phadtare admits that he has tried it for his scooter and there have been no problems so far. "However, the use of poly fuel for vehicles would be a grand and complicated task because it would involve the big oil companies, the government, vehicle manufacturers, dealers, and so on, each with huge stakes that wouldn't necessarily be in favour of substituting petrol or diesel with poly fuel," he says.

Certain civic bodies though have begun to express interest in the plant and demos have been conducted for the municipal corporations of Katraj and Matheran. Meanwhile, so gripped is Phadtare with the idea of turning all kinds of waste into useful products that his company has devised yet another prototype that converts wet garbage into manure. "We just have to add a little culture for this process and it can be done in homes too for which we have designed special drums of 35 kg and 50 kg. These are priced at Rs 1,600 and Rs 2,000 and are already selling well," Phadtare says. There are more such projects in the pipeline and as Phadtare puts it, "It's business but it's also our way of saving the world from environmental degradation."

Rudra Environmental Solution India Ltd., B-1, Minar Apartments, 124/1, Erandwane, Law College Road, Pune - 411 004. Tel.: 020-25448900. E-mail: rudraenvsolution@gmail.com.