Breathing Easier

A waste management firm offers Punjab a ‘zero-residue’ solution for the paddy stubble burning crisis. Will it work?

- Asit Jolly

 This could well be the answer. Facing flak for the clouds of acrid smog that smother the national capital and large parts of north India annually, Punjab has embarked upon an ambitious venture that promises to safely consume 20 million tonnes of stubble left over from the summer paddy harvest every year.

The state government has tied up with Neway Engineers Private Ltd, a Chennai-based solid waste management firm that will deploy a proprietary ‘zero-residue technology’ to convert the problematic straw into high calorific value Carbon-Enriched Fuel (CEF), bricks and paver blocks. If all goes as per the MoU between the company and Punjab’s Bureau of Investment Promotion, Punjab’s farmers will no longer need to set fire to the paddy stubble to ready their farms for the winter wheat crop.

S.K. Shivkumar, a senior director at Neway, says the company will build 100 units that will process paddy straw collected from all over the state and stored at some 400 cluster points. “We will use a new ‘carbonisation-devolatising process’ that is currently pending patent in 148 countries including India, the European Union and North America,” he adds. According to him, Neway has already successfully deployed the technology to convert MSW (municipal solid waste)—a far more challenging process—into CEF in Chennai.