Singapore firm offers to process city garbage into mineral water, fuel

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 23

A Singapore-based company owned by a royal prince has offered to process city’s waste into mineral water and electricity.

The AG Dauters company founded by Dr Max Langenburg — born Prinz Albrecht Zu Hohenlohe Langenburg — hailing from Langenburg, Germany, may soon arrive in the city to launch operations.

While speaking to The Tribune, company’s MD Ajay Girotra said the garbage collected from solid, liquid, effluents and even biological sources would be converted into power, mineral and fuel (diesel/CNG). While the MC will not pay anything as the company will sell end products to the state government to recover the cost of solid waste processing in the city.

The company has sent a proposal in this regard to Mayor Jagdish Raja recently.

“At present, Jalandhar generates around 500 metric tonnes of solid waste and 200 MLD of liquid waste per day. If we convert this into energy with our technology, we will be able to make this city self-sustainable by producing its own green energy in the next 25 years,” said Girotra.

He said with the latest technology offered by the company, the civic body would be able to generate 280 MWH of power per hour from solid waste, 2,000 MWH of power per hour from liquid waste, 150 MLD of mineral water and 40 MLD of fuel on a daily basis.

According to the income model of the company, it will not charge anything to set up the plant that will be established at a whooping cost of Rs 1,000 crore in the city. But it will sell the end products at highly economical rates to the state government for 25 years.

“We work on the Zero cost factor. Since our technology is the latest, there is zero emission, zero residues, zero start-up power and the cost for our client will also be zero,” said Girotra, adding that even the area required for setting up the plant will be over 1/10th of the conventional plants.

The company’s MD said the technology offered by his company was based on the practical applications of quantum physics, chemistry and engineering with its proprietary processes and uses plasma gasification as a platform where any kind of solid and liquid waste could be converted into power, drinking water and fuel with zero emissions and residues.

Though the company had contacted the state government last year during the SAD-BJP regime, the offer was turned down by the then government as it refused to buy power from it.

“The previous government turned down our offer by stating that since Punjab is a power surplus state, it would not be able to buy power from us. However, with municipal waste processing becoming a tough challenge these days, we are hopeful this time,” said Girhotra.

At present, the city generates over 500 tonnes of waste every day. Due to lack of processing facility with the MC, huge garbage hills have been formed in many places, including Wariana village.

Though a proposal to set up a solid waste plant at Jamsher village was mooted during the earlier SAD-BJP regime, it could not get through due to a strong protest lodged by the then area MLA, Pargat Singh, along with area residents.

Even the solid waste management company — Jindal Infrastructure — hired by the civic body two years ago also left the work after facing a repeated tussle over the collection of solid waste with MC’s sanitation workers.

When contacted, Mayor Jagdish Raja said he was likely to meet company officials next week and would discuss the project in detail before putting it on table at the General House meeting.

An overview of waste in city

Total households : 2.10 lakh

Households availing garbage collection facility : 1.65 lakh

Commercial establishments : 6,000

Establishments availing garbage collection facility : 525

Daily garbage generation from the city : 480 MT

Company’s process

1: Separate water and waste

2: Convert water into H2 and O2

3: Recreate water 

4: Convert waste into gas

5: With gas, generate power

Solid waste 100 MTPD gives 35 MW | No segregation required  | No landfills required 

Liquid waste 01 MLD gives 10MW | Self-cleaning | Self-maintaining | Slug-processing | No landfills required