The Tiruchi Corporation has floated a tender to establish a bio-compressed natural gas (bio-CNG) plant at the Ariyamangalam dump yard with a capacity to process about 100 tonnes per day of the organic waste generated in the city.
A sum of ₹35 crore has been sanctioned under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) 2.0 for the facility. A tender has been floated to identify a suitable contractor to construct the plant under a public-private partnership (PPP) mode for producing biogas from the waste collected from houses and commercial outlets.
The civic body has outsourced the collection, segregation, transportation, and processing of waste generated in all the 65 wards in the city to a private agency. On an average, 400-450 tonnes of municipal solid waste is collected daily from the households in the city.
With the biomining to retrieve the dump yard at Ariyamangalam nearing completion, the civic body would establish a biogas plant to process the vegetables, meat, and other organic waste to produce CNG.
Air quality
The produced bio-CNG will be utilised for commercial needs such as a fuel in transport vehicles. “The biogas plant will prevent the land from turning into a dump yard. The air quality of the city will improve since the burning of waste will come down,” said a senior official.
The plant will be built under the design, build, finance, operate, and transfer (DBFOT) mode. After 20 years, the contractor will return the assets to the civic body. A contractor will be identified by April and around three acres of land in the retrieved space of the Ariyamangalam dump yard will be utilised for the plant, the official added.
A material recovery facility would be set up at the yard to segregate the dry waste into recyclable, non-recyclable, inert, and refuse-derived fuel, which will be sold to scrap dealers and factories for reuse.
