New Delhi, Aug 4 (PTI) Principal Scientific Adviser K Vijay Raghavan virtually inaugurated a decentralised biomedical waste incinerator at Buxar Municipality in Bihar, which was developed using a technology that was selected through the Biomedical Waste Treatment Innovation Challenge, a statement said on Wednesday.

The technology developed by Ganesh Engineering Works was selected through the Biomedical Waste Treatment Innovation Challenge launched in June 2020 by the 'Waste to Wealth Mission', the statement added.

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The mission is one of the nine scientific missions of the Prime Minister's Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) and is spearheaded by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser.

The pilot installed in Buxar is a portable, forced draft incinerator capable of handling 50 kg of biomedical waste made of cotton, plastic, or similar materials per hour (5kg per batch), with the provision of waste heat recovery.

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The unit requires a two square metre area and only 0.6 kWh electricity for initial ignition of the waste with an option of auto electricity turn off.

The waste heat recovery will be undertaken from the hot gas for any productive application near the site of installation, the statement said.

Different types of waste heat end products will be tested during the pilot at different sites like distilled water, steam, hot water, gas burning. Efforts will be taken for best utilisation of the technology in residential or public places ensuring zero smoke, chimney usages, compact system, plasma (spark) burning, waste heat recovery, it said.

The problem associated with handling and disposal of biomedical waste is exacerbated due to the COVID-19 pandemic in small towns and villages which do not have access to central biomedical waste treatment facilities.

Understanding the need of decentralised technologies for waste disposal, the Biomedical Waste Treatment Innovation Challenge by the Waste to Wealth Mission invited technology applications from start-ups, corporates, and entrepreneurs from research institutions to address the challenges of safe collection, disposal/treatment of large volumes of bio-medical waste being generated during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Some 460 applications were received from all over the country and three technologies were finally selected for piloting. These technologies will be evaluated for further scale-up in the specific context depending on the results by continuous Monitoring & Evaluation by the local administration. The M&E data would be available on the Waste-to-Wealth Mission (portal) dashboard, it said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)