picture from ahmedabadmirror.com
A couple of young men in India have developed a system to turn hotel food waste into electricity and fertilizer. Sumedh Bapat, a mechanical engineer and Srinivas Kasulla, an environmental professional, have developed a method to deal with waste disposal. Their system can treat 5 tons of hotel garbage daily and at the same time generate electricity through a biogas plant. Their system has been so successful that they have been contracted by the Pune Municipal Corporation to build 3 plants that will treat the waste from 26 hotels. The plants will create enough electricity to provide lighting to public parks nearby. In other words – 5 tons of hotel food waste per day can light 700 tube lights which use an average of 50 watts for about 10 hours. After generating gas, the remaining digest can be used as manure, producing up to 9,000 litres of organic fertilizer each day.
Arundhati Ranade of the Ahmedabad Mirror commented:
“”Bapat and Kasulla, who are in their thirties, are not new to dealing with problem of waste with the help of eco-friendly solutions. They have set up a company called Greenleaf Renewable Energy Pvt Ltd, whose turnover is Rs 7.5 crore.
“Our project called 3EBT, which is Eco-friendly Biogas Technology, was selected for ‘Innovation’, an event organised by the IIT Bombay alumni association,” Bapat said. “”
Hopefully Sumedh’s and Srinivas’s system will not only light parks but light up the minds of other engineers and hotel operators around the globe to embrace similar technologies . . . and have garbage light the way.
