TheGreenBillions Limited (TGBL), a company specialising in consulting, managing, and implementing sustainable initiatives, has formed a partnership with The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to establish the first plant in India that extracts green hydrogen from biomass and municipal solid waste. TGBL’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Variate Pune Trash to Energy Pvt. Ltd. (VPWTEPL), will be responsible for the management and utilisation of 350 TPD of Pune’s municipal non-recyclable waste for the production of hydrogen over 30 years. In a novel and forward-thinking manner, the project will attempt to extract pure hydrogen from municipal solid trash. Discussions regarding the future adoption and building of similar plants are also taking place with several additional state municipalities in India.
Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), a Central Public Sector Enterprise of the Government of India, will provide project management consulting.
In the end, the process known as plasma gasification will be utilised to convert the “Refuse Derived Fuel,” also known as “RDF,” from the rubbish into hydrogen. This innovative technique was developed through an extensive partnership between the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru.
The Maharashtra government enterprise known as Mahatma Phule Renewable Energy & Infrastructure Technology (MAHAPREIT) has planned to acquire the hydrogen produced at the facility and create the logistical infrastructure necessary for transferring hydrogen to the industry. During the project’s first stage, MAHAPREIT proposes forming a partnership with Maharashtra Natural Gas Ltd., a joint venture between GAIL (India) Ltd. and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd., in order to incorporate natural gas into the city gas distribution network in Pune (BPCL). MAHAPREIT and GAIL can support the proposed hydrogen blending project in defining a norm for a circular economy because the proposed project will involve the creation of hydrogen from the city’s waste and the mixing of that hydrogen back into its gas distribution network.
As per BECIL, With this initiative, Pune city can decrease up to 2.5 million MT of CO2e, more than 3.8 million MT of waste will be diverted from landfills, and an estimated 1,800,000 homes will be directly served.
Municipal solid waste (MSW) that would otherwise be deposited in low-lying urban areas would be used, saving up to 689.5 cubic metres of space daily and 25.16 hectares of valuable land annually.
This garbage will consist of biodegradable, non-biodegradable, and home hazardous waste, which will be separated using optical sensor technology at TheGreenBillions’ facility in Pune. The facility’s wet waste will be utilised to produce humic-acid rich bio-fertilisers with minimal carbon emissions, which are regarded as superior to traditional bio-fertilisers. The objective of this project is to demonstrate the technological and economic viability of waste-to-hydrogen generation.
