CSIRIICT tech turns dry leaves into soil conditioner

CSIRIndian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), which had indigenously developed high rate biomethanation technologybased Anaerobic Gaslift Reactor (AGR) for the generation of biogas and biomanure from organic waste, has now successfully demonstrated that it can be remodelled to convert dry leaves into a ‘soil conditioner’.

This method, called Accelerated Anaerobic Composting (ACC), ensure that only a biomanure is generated, not the biogas. “This is a much simpler process, four times cheaper and does not require much expertise. It only needs RCC structure and pits without any big machinery,” ex

A diagram showing the operation of an ACC unit..

plained CSIRIICT chief scientist A. Gangagni Rao on Sunday.

The ₹7.5lakh 500kg capacity ACC ‘demonstration’ reactor was established in a gated community, Maple Town Villas, at Sun City in Ban

dlaguda on request of the residents’ association and is said to be working well for the past couple of months, generating about 10 tonnes of soil conditioner.

The organic manure thus generated out of the dry leaves from the trees on the 40 acre community land is being utilised by the residents of the 275 villas for various plants and trees on the premises, said Mr. Gangagni Rao, who heads the IICT’s bioengineering and environmental sciences division.

“We have tried using dry leaves for the first time after testing it in our laboratory. The soil conditioner parameters adhere to the standards prescribed by the fertiliser control order of the Union Agriculture Ministry about the content of nitrogen, carbon and others,” he explained.

GHMC Commissioner Ronald Rose and his team of officials had recently visited the facility to witness the operation of the AAC plant along with CSIRIICT director D. Srinivasa Reddy, Maple Town Owner’s Association’s president Sudhakar Reddy and others. The plant was installed by KHAR Energy Optimisers.

The preprocessing of dried leaves includes shredding into small pieces. The plant can produce about 6,000 kg of soil conditioner a month.

The team then visited the sewage treatment plant (STP) where sewage from the gated community was being treated to generate reusable water.

The future plan now is to make use of the technology to tackle domestic waste as well. “We can convert everything into biomanure with a little bit of tweaking,” said Mr. Gangagni Rao

The chief scientist had developed the AGR technology suitable for the Indian environment and has been successfully overseeing the plants being established across the country for converting kitchen waste, vegetable market waste and waste from the poultry industry into manure and gas for over a decade now.

There are about 30 AGR based plants across the country. Notably, Bowenpally vegetable market’s 10tonne biogas plant generating 500 units of power was mentioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his radio talk ‘Mann Ki Baat’.

The chief scientist said Indian Institute of Chemical Technology is ready to take up projects for treating any kind of waste and certify the efficacy of the biomanure.