Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Approaches for Waste Management

so rajesh i'm going to stop here and i will let you share your presentation and then start your presentation thank you very much again for uh finding time to present thank you thank you professor reddy uh for very generous introduction uh like i've based on the achievements that you have i've not seen a humble person more than you like you are more approachable than anyone i've seen so so and uh and i i i know you since your book uh which we which i read in grad school with professor rajdi sharma uh so that's since then uh like uh we met we have we have been looking at your work so you are basically a role model for us uh so okay uh so we'll get started uh uh with this topic uh any again any question please uh put it on uh in your in the chat box uh we will get the questions towards the end and also please keep your microphone muted so that we don't get disturbed so as professor reddy mentioned and as you saw in the flyer the topic is looking at the resource recovery and circular economy approaches in waste management so as uh like before i get into the topic i usually show these two slides and i think some of my students who are in the audience uh probably they have seen it n number of times but uh i i will show this anyway because this actually helps me to put things in big perspective see if you look at the age of this earth because see we are talking about this resource recovery we talk about circular economy we talk about sustainable engineering we talk about environmental risk assessment uh like human health impact have impact on environment all of this if you look at in a big picture is essentially to trying to keep this our home which is this mother earth as clean as possible so that our future generation can survive on this planet they should also thrive they should also enjoy their life so we have no rights to make this planet a dirty planet isn't it we are only here for for a few years and then the next generation will come so so in in that contest if you look at the earth like humans on this earth earth is around 4.6 billion years old some of the newer research actually suggests that it is even older than this but we will not go into that problem let's say that is all for our presentation today let's say it is 4.6 billion years old and if you take that 4.6 billion years and then you put it on on a 24-hour scale so if you put it on a 24-hour scale why 24 hours because there is 24 hours in a day so it becomes a little bit easier to understand so if you put it on a 24 hour scale in that scale one second is actually 52 000 years so if you start from say started from midnight and then go all the way around you see that we don't have first plant life actually comes at 6 pm so we started at midnight morning came the day came afternoon came at evening 6 pm is the first plant life and then we had dinosaurs at around between 9 p.m and 10 p.m 21 and 22 hours and if you look at the humans they appear at 23 59 12 and that's the genus homo appears now the modern humans as we are you and we are me are today that has come at 23 59 56 so that means what only four seconds and in those four seconds we have done so much of pollution in the environment we are using so much of resources and creating so much of waste four seconds like two hundred thousand years slightly more than two hundred thousand years we've created a mess of this planet isn't it so and that's we cannot continue with that business as usual we have to look at uh in terms of trying to uh like make make this world a much better place see if you look at the mother earth we recently we saw this during this corvette pandemic if there was a lockdown we we all were inside our home just a tiny virus that's like as a human we have too much of an ego but that tiny virus actually destroyed our ego it should that you if even if you don't uh like if you if even if the humans don't exist on this planet the planet will exist actually planet will flourish so there were species before us there will be species after us so that's a big statement actually if you think that way so we are only here temporarily that could be thousands years but that is temporary in the if you look at the age of of this particular planet so keeping that in background what we have done in last several years especially after the second world war we have been producing a lot of waste waste is actually a misplaced resource and that's what we are going to talk about that's why i said resource recovery it's not waste management we are more nowadays we talk about more about resource recovery rather than focusing on end of pipe approach we want to have a proactive approach so this report came from world bank in 2018 towards the end of 2018 where they have looked at how the waste what is the waste management scenario as of that particular date and how the things will be by 2050 so it says that world generates around 2 billion tons of municipal solid waste annually and if you don't take any action if it's business as usual we are going to have 3.4 billion turns by 2050. so that's a lot of garbage and that means a job security for people like me i call myself a garbologist so i work with different types of garbage so as professor uh reddy was giving the intro so it's uh so it's a job security isn't it but that we should we should look at that and try to make a joke there that should not be the focus like we should try to minimize the waste being produced we should try to do uh like a recycle and do the resource recovery and all that and i'll get in a point in few few minutes i'll get there why we really need to do that so if you look at this municipal solid waste i'm just focusing on municipal solid waste we have other types of waste stream out there but for this talk let's focus only on municipal solid waste because that's what you and i produce on a day-to-day basis that's why you and i see on a day-to-day basis especially if you are in india or any developing countries we have a huge problem in terms of waste management even in north america there are issues of waste management it's not that they're all the problems are fixed there too so if you look at the garbage this is a global average figure uh we have metal around four percent we have glass around five percent we have plastics is around 12 and this paper is around 18 17 18 and the food waste and uh green waste is around 44 so if you look at if you add these all together 5 plus 4 is 9 12 plus 9 is 21 21 plus 17 is 38 so 38 should be easily recycled isn't it so because individually they do have recycling market metal can be recycled glass can be recycled most of the plastics can be recycled even say 60 to 70 percent of the plastic can be recycled and these are all by weight bases and paper and cardboard can be recycled as well food and green waste can be composted can be anaerobic daily digested and produce resource from there but why it is not happening what is the problem in a many countries even if you look at the north america as well the recycling rate is very low it's around 23 24 so that's a very low recycling rate in u.s and canada combine that data uh from there in some provinces some states in u.s it's even worse than that so so what is the problem what is what is actually becoming because everything gets mixed up especially in developing countries like india when you mix everything together it's very difficult to do basically you can do nothing with that mixed garbage other than putting them in a sanitary landfill uh probably two weeks ago professor melinda was talking about all those landfill leachate recirculation and all that so we we can put it in a sanitary landfill that's the only solution we have it said if it's a totally mixed msw uh you cannot really do much above with that other than putting uh if there are some technologies out there which claim that things work but many times they are we have seen that it does not work to their uh to what they claim uh there might be some technology out there but in general it is mostly safe is putting it in a sanitary landfill but that's not the solution isn't it putting things in sanitary landfill it is like i would not should not say it's not a solution it's definitely a solution to keep the environmental problems away it's okay you can prevent the groundwater pollution you can prevent the land you can collect the landfill gas landfill gas at around 65 you can probably we can collect because that's uh that's on a higher side in terms of landfill gas collection efficiency so we are losing some resource there we are putting recyclables in the landfill it will degrade it will produce a methane but that's not a good use of that we should try to promote more on resource recovery and space for landfill other than big countries the space of landfill is a problem in many countries there is an issue of lab finding a new site for landfill many european countries they don't want to have a landfill so landfill unfortunately gets a lot of bad name as well although it's not uh it is a it's a actually considered one of the marvels of geo environmental engineering and uh i totally agree with that it it requires so much of knowledge to design and operate a landfill so and if you look at in south asia where we are sitting right now it's 334 million tons and in north america 289 million tonnes so there is a lot of waste going to be produced in the different areas which needs to be managed so as i said the problem is mixing of garbage this piece i wrote almost three years ago in economic times which is on for effective waste disposal segregation is the key if you can google it and go to that particular newspaper there was a big article done with some inputs from our our side as well on what here it is actually how to make ways to wealth and reality so there was a big article done on that and they asked me to write a separate piece on on segregation so i wrote that so there we talk in great detail about why segregation is important why it is important to implement that solid waste management rules in india that wait and try uh segregation or similar rules in all over the world where why it is important because as i told you just now that unless it's if you are collected separately unless wet and dry dry means all the recyclables will be in the dry fraction we can individually separate it out and make use of that even when thing gets mixed together it's very difficult to any uh do anything with that other than of course putting it in the landfill so then this whole concept of circular economy it's a new buzzword for last few years uh last maybe over a decade now so what is such a circular economy some of you may be remember knowing some of you may not be knowing so i thought i'll put a few slides here just to explain what is circular economy so that later on when we talk about how we are approaching how we are applying circular economy in waste management you can understand that it's essentially looking at moving away from take make waste linear model right now what is the model you go to the mother earth you mine get the raw material you bring it to the metallurgical like those uh plants those uh refract refineries or those where we make the alumina and aluminum seed steel and other stuff we make variety of products we use it dump it into the environment so waste that is your linear model that's like a lean it's a linear isn't it so it's a linear model circular economy says that let's try to avoid creating waste and bring those resources back into the economy so it's actually decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources that's and that is requires a whole basically a new set of thinking in terms of industry so the circular economy uh thinking in the industry gradually it is coming again it is leading from western european countries but gradually other countries are also trying to catch up and they try to do that that we actually we have to go there because see when we talk about all these different materials present into the environment we have certain met certain elements are considered abundant but abundant is also there is a number isn't it so if the way we are using it if we keep on using it at that particular rate we will also run out of that in maybe maybe 100 years or a few hundred years or so but there are several rare earth metals there are several critical metals which are needed for for variety of products that we make so those critical metals or the rare metals they need to be recovered from the waste stream because unless you do that recovery it becomes uh it becomes a problem you are you you cannot really get new material from the mining uh mind like a resource as of today earlier if you had say if you take 100 tons of raw your ore you may get one ton today to get 110 you may have to go for 1000 tons of oats so a lot of water required in mining a lot of energy required in mining a lot of mining overburden so see there's a lot of waste being uh produced and that's that you know and then we have so much of waste we are just putting it into the landfill or those kind of environment and mostly in dumb sites and which is again polluting the environment so that's what uh this that's what the concept behind applying this circular economy let's take the secondary resource and bring make it bring bring it back into the economy so designing out waste and pollution so if the waste and pollution were never created at the first place so circular economy is trying to reveal and design out negative impacts of economic activity so whether it's a greenhouse gas hazardous substances air pollution water pollution land pollution so you can try to avoid that as much as possible so here if you take this example from the wastewater treatment plant you try to do this energy recovery from this energy you produce biogas the biogas can be used for electricity can go for heat then your other material coming out could be used for bioplastic we can get phosphate for a phosphorus fertilizer the the sludge coming from these and ad facilities can be used for organic fertilizer and the clean water can go for irrigation and whatever we do from day to day like uh stuff for our houses and all that the wastewater goes there so here again trying to minimize waste as much as possible and we we have a concept of zero waste zero waste actually does not literally mean zero it means approach towards zero we will never have actually zero zero waste because there will always be some waste which is there which will need a finding uh like a resting place so there is always a need for sanitary landfill what we have to do is we have to extend the life of the landfill as much as possible by trying to do resource recovery of whatever component we can do resource recovery from a uh trying to make and of course you have to make the economics work there as well so if if we could build an economy that uses things rather than uses them up so that's the concept of circular economy so you try to preserve the value in the form of energy in the material i should design it for durability reuse remanufacturing recycling so this is what today if you want to buy if you have an old tv tv goes bad it's much easier to go buy a new tv you don't even have to go anywhere you buy on put it on online shopping it will be delivered at your home in few days and then your old tv is just becomes a junk because it's very difficult to even find a refurbishing place or a repairing center these days especially in big cities even in india so so that's that's why this through use and through culture that is creating a lot of waste as well so the circular system is try to like learn from nature now if you look at the mother nature they work in a circular system so that the natural system always work in a circular way so that's what we want to uh we can do here is some example for example steel production if you look at the by-product from the slag they make the cement fertilizer dust goes to jinkin iron process gas can be used for electricity or heating there could be other by-products made so there are there is a way to make things all thing is that we have to go out of our comfort zone and let it and we have to look at from that perspective so if we could not only protect but actually actually improve the environment from the waste if you can produce biogas if produce green fuel produced by uh like electricity waste bio refinery recycle and use the management hierarchy properly where where we say reduce reuse recycle do that way rather than putting more and more waste just into the environment and try to get away from fossil fuel more on renewable energy fuel see we are talking about going to this electric car electric vehicle like in india we are talking with so much on electric vehicle these days electric vehicle with the present present energy mix actually may not be that much of good uh if you do an lca or you do the life cycle assessment on that you will get that that actually electric vehicle if you go with the present energy mix is not that much of an improvement because we are using so much of coal based thermal power plant so we have to look at uh liquid we have to get away from fossil fuel then if you have more and more renewable energy that's where it will make more sense for renewable energy as well you have to look at for example solar power now solar panels after uh after the end of life of solar panels what will happen to it how to recycle those solar panels how to do the resource recovery of those heavy metals present in the solar panel if it ends up in the dump sites in india or in any developing countries or any place in the world so what what kind of leaching could be there so all those are research questions as well for the students who are out here if you want to do phd in these areas do contact us we'll be happy so how this whole concept of origin of circular economy started was a swiss architect he was he was looking at all these packaging and other stuff and all the waste that is produced in a building system and then he said that we have to sift we have to sift to a system where we design out waste and pollution we cannot keep on producing creating pollution the way we have been doing and then it's a big way if you have looked at circular economy even on once you must have seen this diagram this is from ellen macarthur foundation all of the students or whoever is an audience if you are interested in circular economy this is one place you should definitely go because they have a wonderful resource uh to for you to learn about circular economy in fact there is a mooc course on circular economy uh on edx as well on crosera or edx it is there we are trying to develop one from india too we'll see if we can be able to do that so as you can see here it talks about biological cycle as well as technical cycle biological cycle where you take the anything which is biodegradable you collect it you take extract the biochemical feedstock you do anaerobic digestion you produce biogas and then you put it in the biosphere your sludge and other stuff which goes there it uses for farming so we are trying to use all the resources back rather than putting it in a dumb side where it rots and my methane is produced and goes into the atmosphere and creates those global warming potentials and all that similarly for technical cycles it you try to recycle refurbish reuse remanufacture maintenance so that's the they talk about that this is the basic diagram of this circular economy systems diagram which you will find in most of the most of the documents related to circular economy this diagram will be there so decoupling natural resources use an environmental impact there are some examples of already happening japan reduced this material consumption in 2010 down to the level of 1970. so in 2010 they had that material consumption what they had in 1970 so that said absolutely complete decoupling mexico city is working on that as well recycling global annual turnover exceeds 160 billion us dollar and processes more than 600 million tons of commodities and annually and produces a lot of secondary production uh materials secondary materials so these things are already happening uh right now so presently uh in uh by say if you look at 2050 we will be using 140 billion tons of resource uh that will be used uh demand for resources now 1900 it was 7 billion tons 2005 it was 60 billion tons in the present rate 2050 from 2005 to 2015 45 years will it will become actually two two and a half times so growing population uh economic development increasing consumption growing consumption consumption pattern use and throw so all those are like lots and lots of resources are needed so if you don't if you don't if you follow the usual pattern will having uh increase in resource extraction increase in greenhouse gas emission resources scarcity land degradation water pollution loss of biodiversity air pollution see we cannot we talk about economy all the time you cannot have healthy economy without having healthy workforce if you and i are sick and if i have a lot of money in my bank what so that so what so it's i can get the medicines i can buy the medicines but if i cannot enjoy the life what is the point of having those money so having good economy is very very important but having a healthy workforce is more important because if your workforce is important then only you will have a healthy economy because then the problem will be people will be uh like efficient they will do the work for us they will do the work and then they will produce healthy economy we are becoming more and more urban uh 60 of india's population will live in urban areas 70 of the building that will exist in india is yet to be constructed so so that why this i'm talking about all these that means lots and lots of resources are needed in country like india so and we have the sustainable development goals where we have to have clean water and sanitation we talk about good health we talk about like a live life on land we talk about climate we talk about responsible consumption so there are several sustainable development goals which links to this having proper waste management proper resource extraction this diagram was actually it was in the indian resource panel which was done in 2015 where they found that how we how the in india the demand for resources will be so if you look at up to 20 2010 it is the actual data and this is the projected data so if you look at say 2030 for now or 2050 for let's look at 2050 we will see that more metals more fossil fuel more non-metal non-metal minerals more biomass so every for everything we need more and more resources and we cannot just go to mother earth and get those resources so we have to look at secondary resource secondary resource secondary materials are needed so the use of secondary materials are inevitable to meet both growing demands as well as supply constraint so that kind of gives us uh the incentive to look for resource recovery from waste material and from the variety of waste material today i'm focusing on municipal solid waste but then we can talk about for other industrial waste mining waste and so on and so forth uh if you if you look at the urbanization in india we had the last two sensors in 2001 and 2011. uh next census is going to happen in 2021 which is now um it may probably get delayed a little bit because of covid but maybe later this year we'll have the data or early next year i will have those information so as you can see here different colors i'll not spend too much time here the yellow is the less urbanization the red is the most and you can see that many states have changed coal many states are becoming more and more urban more and more urban means more and more demand for resources more and more waste production as well and then a lot of demand a lot of stress on urban local bodies in terms of managing the waste providing clean water providing uh proper sanitation waste water treatment treat wastewater systems and all uh this is the government data actual data is actually quite much higher this is the cpcb 2015 uh report now it is almost seven years old uh but we are since i just go by the government figure so it is 62 million tons annually out of all that 70 gets collected and out of 7 out of that which is collected only nearly 25 percent is treated rest 75 of the collected waste is just going into online landfill we had several composting plant biomethanation plant rdfs and waste to energy plants and some of them are also struggling we'll talk about that in a minute why why they are struggling and so it is it is becoming an issue uh so in terms of you look at the waste management in india we started long back the first uh record which shows up is uh the composting of solid waste ministry of agriculture gave loans for composting of solid waste in 1960 and since then we have been doing something or the other but for municipal solid waste this surat plague was one of the trigger point where uh surat plague actually raised a lot of awareness about having proper municipal solid waste management then we have these committees there and then we had this municipal solid waste rules msw rules 2000 and then there was a cph manual associated with that that manual uh to go along with it's basically to uh like if you in north america we have those recruitment worlds so which kind of goes in detail about how those rules can be implemented so then later on in 2016 all these rules got revised in between we have a lot of other rules came for different types of waste and this got revised they got more streamlined and 2018 e-waste got even further revised 2015 we had the cnd rules first came we had this uh national action plan we have sacha bharat mission we have national green travel so a lot of in terms of regulation lot of things have happened but still in terms of getting these rules implemented is becoming a problem so where we are lacking in developing countries specifically and also in developed countries pockets of developed countries and i would talk about india particular since i've been exp as professor reddy said i've been trying to work with several proposed smart cities in india so whenever you go for this integrated waste management plan you have to take a scientific approach and that that science and policy has to meet together and that's where we are we actually we are lacking and that's uh many of you will agree with that that we science and policy like for most many times we see that actually it is not uh it's meeting together and it's creating a lot of problem so how to go about doing a integrated waste management plan say for any city to start with first of all of course you need to know what you want what is the need identify your need what type of waste are currently generated and in what quantities because you need to know i say that say if you go to a doctor and the doctor you are i'm sick i'm sick with some but some serious disease and i go to the doctor and doctor doesn't do any diagnosis and he writes the prescription i will be really worried about that prescription because no diagnosis was done unfortunately that is how the waste management is happening in the country for many almost two decades two and half decades people go to consulting firms and they write the prescription they have right they have no idea of what is the how much waste is there what is hub what is there in the garbage because what is produced at our home and what is what is ending up in the waste disposal system is way different our collection system is not secure what you produce at home so if you if you go and take the sample from individual houses that waste goes to a primary collection center the primary collection center is out in the open on the side of the road you have the goats you have dogs you have cows eating a lot of stuff from there you have rack pickers and others taking all the recyclables from there now you went to the secondary collection again some of those things gone and then finally you went to the dump site or waste to energy plant or composting plant and then along the way since the collection is not that proper you lose some some of some already got degraded now you designed your system based on very limited samples collected from individual homes some hig high income group low income group medium income group some like high high income area some slum area and you got some data and you did that but that's not is what the garbage is coming because the collection system is not like that that everything will come there so if you design your plant in that way of course it will fail isn't it that's the reason why the things fail so we have to really have do the blood test urine test of this garbage that's what i'm trying to say that you have to have a very good understanding of what is there in the garbage people said well it would require a lot of money oh yes it will but if the plan fails which they are you are actually losing more money there so we have to do the things properly in hindi people say uh like those of you who understand hindi we'd uh in uh it is said that that do it uh quickly but don't do it in haste don't take decision in his to have a proper understanding of the problem so that is needed that's the need what type of waste is there what in what quantity is there then you review your existing system what is present uh with like how to if can we salvage something from the present how to get these rack pickers or vast waste speakers incorporated into formal system review the regulation you make your own decision making framework you establish your objective and here as well it becomes more of a site specific say it cannot be one size fit all for entire country like india because what will work say for example waste to energy plant in a high rainfall area with so much of moisture in the garbage waste energy is not going to work we know that so we cannot say that waste to energy can work in in a higher and then but in a dry climate in a very dry state yes it is possible as long as the calorific value is good as long as you don't mix your bricks and soil and other things with it which reduces the calorific value so you need to have your objective identify potential components you compare your options and when you compare option try to have the thinking of life cycle there don't have a silos approach have a systems approach and i'll show you in next slide how we do that and develop an integrated waste management plan you implement the plan and then you evaluate the waste management plan so usually these plans are done for 25 years but then you every five years you should come back and revisit that plan and look at what is working what is not working why it is not working what went wrong and how to fix it and for all these we need to have public participation we need to do outreach we need to have education and we need to have each and every stakeholders on that table you need to get industry folks on the table too because they are the people who will make that make it happen so we cannot make rule which cannot be implemented see when making a tough rule but it cannot be implemented there is no point making those rules isn't it so that's uh so we have to realize that and that's a big miss that we are having in many of these developing countries so in terms of life cycle you start looking at from the entire approach from your what is your goal and scope are you looking at for your entire waste management whether to go for anaerobic digestion or composting or if you want to go for waste to energy plants whether you have enough calorific value whether you go for a landfill land for engineered landfill with gas recovery engineered landfill without gas recovery so you kind of line up all those different options and then you do this life cycle assessment for entire from generation storage collection transfer and transport processing and then finally to disposal and treatment and then you look at uh where you are getting the best best uh your benefit for the environment and you choose that and of course you have to look at the economics so you have to do the life cycle costing as well so looking at the environmental footprint as well as the economic aspect and operational issues so environment their economics and operational taking all these three together that's we have to make the decision so that's how we have to have a systems approach in uh doing this uh kind of uh solution so once you have uh gone through that you have different technologies out there another thing we say that whenever you talk to some ulb they will ask do you have any new technology are you my new there are lots of technology already present but we are not even being able to implement the simple technology on the ground because we are not operating it properly the problem is not the technology problem is that we are not doing proper homework in getting those technologies implemented so for if you for uh for your organic fraction you can go for composting anaerobic digestion for thermal conversion there is a incineration gasification paralysis this gasification paralysis is usually done for a specialized waste not for a municipal solid waste that much but incineration must burn or refuse direct fuel anaerobic digestion for organic fraction like biodegradable or composting those things can uh does uh make sense and you look at the what what kind of market you have so if you produce compost there is no market for compost there is no point going to go going for compost you do anaerobic digestion for that and because you will make those biomethane and you can use those so if you don't make those decision properly what happens what we are you are seeing in this graph here this is from 2018 uh from to burn or not to burn uh this is done by uh ss uh sambials or swathi singh sambial and richa uh they have done this small report and as you can see there are in a 69 megawatt operational plant in terms of waste to energy 84 megawatt under construction 382 under proposed and then 66 non-functional now we are having this proposed i'm really afraid that if we do business as usual if you don't act soon we may get these graph kind of catching up with this because if why those are non-functional we have to really understand what why it went why it did not work and how we expect that unless we change our collection system unless we change our uh the way we are handling the garbage how it will stop how it will suddenly it will start working it will not work there is no magic isn't it so we have to learn from those failures uh so that we can we should not make those mistakes so so that's uh um see each and every technology can be used but you we have to make sure whether it is used it is really usable is whether it is really useful uh in that contest so now i'll talk about one example from our lab which we have been working on in recent times on hydrothermal carbonization which is on kind of circular economy concept it is uh it's because as i said waste to energy having as you saw just uh before being too much of moisture the calorific value is low and with all these inert material also calorific value goes down but moisture creates a lot of problem in especially in indian contests for many states where we have too much of rainfall like a good amount of rainfall so we thought that can we use this htc process hydrothermal carbonization process along with anaerobic digestion and doing some pre-treatment to the lignocellulosic biomass to increase the biomarker to increase the methane production as well so if you can do that uh so that's what we we wanted to test it out so htc is actually trying to mimic the natural qualification process so we're working with high pressure and uh it's a it's mixed with water and heated in a closed reactor which is like a pressure cooker so in this study we looked at this yard waste and later on we used food waste as well so first since there is a little cellulosic biomass there's a lignin so we start we did some pre-treatment to break those lignin then we did anaerobic digestion produced biogas and the sludge which came down we did the hydrothermal carbonization will produce hydrochar and try to minimize the waste as much as possible but for this as well you need source segregated garbage it cannot work on mixed garbage so as i said in that economic times piece you need source segregated waste later on we also used food waste mixed yard waste and food waste together and we produced this bio gas we looked at the energy balance we as per uh for we looked at some of this kinetic model as well and try to like look at based on different treatment system which model works good how to predict how much how much gas will be produced and this was uh in terms of uh this this is a smaller reactor later on we use the bigger reactor as well and uh temperature was around 200 degree centigrade uh six hours uh solid to liquid ratio was one is to four and uh pre-treatment was done using uh your oven or your hot water and like a microwave or sony sonicator so different pre-treatment method was used to break down those lignin and that helped into producing more methane when we do research we looked at the mechanism we try to understand what is happening with different things which we are trying to understand so we do all these sem and all those images to try to see uh where what are the different uh uh like structures how the structures are changing what are the ftir will give you all these bonds functional group which actually makes you understand better in terms of mechanism i'll not go in those detail if you're interested you can always send me an email i will more than happy to share those papers which we have already published in these areas and we can talk about that as well so in terms of results and discussion if you can go because interest of time i'll go there a little bit quicker so we produced of course with a pre-treatment uh our gas production was more and with we also walked a different food and mine food and mass ratio will have food and micro ratio this graph is important so because this gives us in terms of big picture so here the yellow bar is your input energy which will be negative how much energy we are putting into the system uh green is your output energy how much energy is coming out of the system and this hash light green with hash is your net energy gain so as you can see for different food microbe ratio uh we had net energy gain in each of those scenarios so we we do produce energy from those other if you're if this becomes negative if you are actually having more input energy less output energy of course that technology we can we can uh publish a paper or two but that will not go that that technology cannot go anywhere and we did find uh that hydrochar which was produced uh i did had slight increase in uh in the calorific value but in terms of calorific value not that much of an increase but that uh hydrochar if you look at your uh hydro charge stability it found out that the pre-treated one were stable for a longer period of time and that hydrochar produced was compared to lignite lignite and peat in terms of calorific value so it can replace coal at different uh like applications so rather than using fossil fuel we can use this so here we saw that uh htc uh saw an increase in twenty one percent of carbon content uh is compared to seventeen percent tga analysis showed that hardware chart prepared actually were more thermally stable as compared to the untreated yard waste so digested hydrochar overall we first saw that you can do it doing a pre-treatment improves biogas production it also improves better quality hydrocharge so in line of circular economy resource recovery uh using anaerobic digestion coupled with hydrothermal carbonization actually presents us as a unique new opportunity so then we move to the bigger reactor as well so we have done some work with the bigger reactor now uh where uh you saw the smaller reactor first now we have a bigger reactor and presently we are trying to uh build a uh uh like a pilot plant on this as well so this fuel pallets and we even treated this uh we made this uh uh pelletization so this pelletization can be done this pallets can be used for a longer period of time we can use it self-life can be improved and uh it can be sold to different uh agencies where they can use it as a fuel source and presently as part of a phd student of one of my student haribak sarma he is working on on this particular topic we are looking at in terms of the big picture as professor reddy was mentioning that we always try to look at the big picture in terms of all those work that we are doing in terms of developing this particular aspect of hydrothermal carbonization for organic fraction of municipal solid waste how it fits in the big picture from a social point of view from an economic point of view from environmental benefits so what is known as the pistol analysis we are trying to do that and we are also looking at the life cycle assessment so this will try to look at uh jobs as well as looking at greenhouse gas emission reduction market renewable energy climate change sdg contributions uh so all those things uh uh will be uh like being explored uh you will see very soon you will see some papers from that as well so that hydro chart produced was actually taken even further and uh i saw that a student who worked on it uh from nit warangal uh he is in the audience uh uh i saw his video was on in the beginning uh cy krishna veena so he worked on taking this hydro char and then making it uh as an energy storage material so as energy storage material so see think about that food waste or the organic waste that you are wasting today maybe two years down the line you have that part of the battery in your cell phone that would be really cool isn't it and if we can do those kind of uh beneficial reuse if we can do those uh we can say value-added products that will make this proposition attractive for more and more companies to come and work in this particular area so that's what uh this that paper is will be out very soon uh say krishna is there it's a pressure on him to get it drafted now so i've already announced it to a big audience so it's uh so we are so that will be really nice we are also looking at to use a soil amendment use of course fuel uh activated carbon carbon black and all that so very quickly i'll skip these now these are some of the work that which we got published there are several other papers i just put some examples here in very good journals and it got a lot of media coverage uh in of different newspapers and others it came we were interviewed for some places too we are doing some a lot of other works in our lab uh i'm trying to kind of wrap up in next five six minutes so that we have some time for questions so in terms of um we are doing some work on electrochemical oxidation of leachate uh this is working on that then sagrika just recently finished she's working on organic waste to biogas that's what her project then harid like uh amit jaglan is trying to do how to have better waste management at university campuses and we are hurry like we have a student working on a smart sustainable waste management fuel from plastic and biomass nanoparticles for remediation so just i just wanted to give you some idea about different work that we are trying to do uh so that if any of one of you are interested to work on these areas you're more than welcome to contact us i will be happy so as professor randy was mentioning in recent times i'm doing some work on plastic so i thought i'll just talk very briefly about the involvement of plastic that we have been working with national geographic we are trying to look at uh plastic from sea to source as you can see that there are a lot of work a lot of media on ocean cleanup then there is a lot of uh attention on river cleanup as well but there is no attention uh there is not as much attention in terms of let's stop it from the happening at the first place so what is why it is happening why these plastics are ending up in this reverse and finally to ocean it is because of the mismanagement of municipal solid waste because the municipal solid waste is not being managed properly along those rivers or along the and then so this mismanaged leads to leakages of this plastic waste and that gets into the river and then finally to the ocean so that's what being a waste management research per team we have been working on that so try to understand again try to understand how much plastic is there what type of plastic is there and how to prevent it from reaching the river so that was the my my part of the work that this project was multidisciplinary and all that but this was what iit kharagpur was involved in that and we walked from all the way from the top from herself uh to uh uh to to bayer bengal and we have done sampling at different places we've met people we talked to people we looked at the rack pickers and the report is already out there so now if you go to the national geographic website you will find the summary report a very brief summary report they have put they did not put a very detailed technical report because that gets boring so if they put a summary report more for their policy makers but detailed report is also will be available soon so so we went all around uh so we the students they went around and they did all that this was the research team as you can see mostly led by uh ladies which it was a two leaders of these teams where these two ladies jenna jamback and heather from uk heather from uk jenna is from university of georgia a very long friend of my very old friend of mine and here is my student gaurav who worked on this project and then avinash they worked on this project and i i'm a bit dressed up too much because i had a meeting after this at iit roorkee so that's why you see me dressed up by quite a i'll compare to other i'm uh that i'm licking an odd man out so but any so this was the team we worked along the river the world wildlife institute were involved people from bangladesh were involved several organizations other organizations from us and uk were also involved in that then i'm also working with world resource institute on as a high level panel for sustainable ocean economy which is a unique initiative for 14 world leaders they are working on uh trying to prevent this ocean pollution so this was our task to come up with the strategies to address plastic pollution in the context of already stretched again this report is out there if you are interested uh you will find it if you don't just send me an email i'll send you that uh this was we were the lead authors on this blue paper jenna was just jenna is jenna ellie mosh is an independent consultant in us and myself and we had authors from pretty much all around the world so just a very summary of that report uh what we what was the findings so five to 13 million metric tons of plastic going to the ocean each year that is equivalent to one dump truck of plastic per minute going into the ocean 13 billion per year in damage to marine environment three percent of ocean plastic is floating 97 actually goes into goes below the surface and finally to the sediments 1.9 million micro plastics per square meter on the ocean floor actually by 2050 we'll have more pieces of plastic in ocean than the fish so if you love seafood you are actually you may lose your seafood but it's not only plastic plastic unfortunately gets a lot of bad press a lot of bad name see it is as i tried to say earlier as well plastic as a material is not that much of a problem it is the plastic waste which is a problem mismanagement of plastic waste is a problem but there are other sources of waste as well which goes into the ocean in terms of industry pharmaceuticals seaweed treatment plants crops animal agriculture and solid waste dumping atmospheric deposition and a lot of things happening in the ocean itself which leads to having uh pollution into the ocean so how to prevent that so we looked at some of these sectors like what are the municipal sectors agriculture and aquaculture industrial maritime all those different sectors we looked at the types of pollutants macro plastic macro plastics other plus like new antibiotics heavy metals industrial oil and gas so this was more of kind of looking at a you can say that it's a big review paper of 60 65 pages uh printed 60 65 printed pages so it was a like a maybe a state of what is the present state of knowledge in terms of this we looked at the ocean uh species what is the impact on the ocean uh health of uh like a health in uh of a species present in ocean or also like a human health impact and economical impact as well so then we come up with a solution so how to how like how what needs to be done in terms of and then broadly how like you improve waste water man treatment improve the storm water adopt green chemistry practical resource efficiency recover recycle improve coastal joins build local systems and then we go in great detail about that and we relate it to different sdg goals as well uh so in terms of all these how it will help in several of those sdg goals uh which we need to achieve by 2030. and it was reported this work has been reported in many media houses this is from guardian uh this is where they talk about how to like improve uh power plastic plastic pollution situation in the ocean so that's what kind of big picture what we have been some snapshot of what we have been doing this is where my research is my research group is working right now and we are looking at in near future looking at organic fraction of municipal solid waste and try to do a lot of resource recovery and circular economy approaches there in terms of well generating value added products so if you're interested in any of those areas feel free to let us know in recent times we also did some work on looking at kovid impact on waste management some of you may have seen those papers so covered impact on looking at solid waste as well as over impact on plastic waste so and then we are working some more on this aspect right now so my take home message for you that whenever you look at a solution have a systems approach have a kind of circular economy thinking have