How This Startup Is Turing Discarded Plastics Into Biofuel For Industries
A report earlier this year said that India generates around 3.4 million tonnes (MT) of plastic waste annually, but only 30 per cent of it is recycled.
Over the years, the amount of plastic that is brought back to the system in one form or another has increased, but a significant portion still ends up in landfills or is burned in the open - both of which are not good for the environment.
All plastics are same
One of the major reasons for this is how complex plastics are. While we call all of them plastics, they are vastly different in their chemical composition, making the segregation and recycling process difficult.
Some of the most common single-use plastic like PET and PVC are easily recycled, while others like LLDPE and HIPS are not.
Non-recyclable plastic becomes biofuel
But Eco Green Recycling, a Mathura-based recycler, has been turning LLDPE and HIPS into biofuel.
"Plastics like PET and PVC can be recycled into things like fibre; their chemical composition makes them unfit for the purpose of biofuel," Apoorv Chaturvedi, Founder of Eco Green Recycling, said.
How plastic is turned into fuel
The process of turning plastic into energy sources like biofuel is called pyrolysis and it involves the breaking down of molecules using thermal degradation in the absence of oxygen to produce liquid oil.
"Plastics like LLDPE and HIPS are mixed with some chemicals so that they react to the gases for this process. This is then burned at a high temperature, and the emission from the process in the form of vapour is then condensed to form biofuels. Methane gas which is also a byproduct of this, is further used in the burning process at our plant," Chaturvedi said.
The biofuel generated through pyrolysis can be used as an alternative to kerosene and some extent, diesel. It is mostly used in industrial incinerators. But Chaturvedi said the biofuel can be used even in vehicles.
"We mostly sell the biofuel to industries using incinerators and furnaces. It is more like kerosene and has an industrial application. The biofuel can be further purified and used in vehicles," he said.
Eco Green currently has a capacity of 10 tonnes per day and the biofuel is sold at around Rs 50 per litre.
From college to recycling plastics?
Besides biofuel, Eco Green also processes other plastic, paper, and e-waste, primarily collected through corporations and urban local bodies.
Chaturvedi, an MBA graduate, got into the recycling sector while he was still in college by collecting and processing household waste.
"We started in 2014 with my co-founder Yogeshwar, who was also my MBA classmate. We got our first funding from the President of our college and our first warehouse was in the college campus itself. Currently, we have five different plants processing paper, plastic, and e-waste with a capacity of 15,000 mt tonnes monthly," he said.
How E-waste is processed
Eco Green also recently started processing e-waste and plans to start lithium-ion batteries by next year.
At Eco Green's MRF (Material Recovery Facility), electronic products are dismantled and metals are separated from plastics.
"If it is a TV set, we separate the plastic, metal, and glass parts. The non-recyclable parts go to the pyrolysis process for the biofuel," Chaturvedi said.
Making value from MLPs
One of the biggest challenges regarding plastic waste is recycling Multi-Layered Plastics (MLP), which are heavily used in packaging but are difficult to process as they consist of multiple components.
"There are very limited applications for MLP in the recycling industry. Category III MLP can be used to make biofuel. We are also doing research on converting MLPs into tiles that can be used for manufacturing furniture," Chaturvedi said.
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