Government plans crude oil from plastic

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has recommended that the state government set up polymer energy plants to produce crude oil from plastic waste at the Kodungaiyur and Perungudi dumping yards.

Everyday Greater Chennai produces 300 tonnes of plastic waste, which would yield 300,000 litres of crude oil, but it may not be immediately viable to set up plants to utilise the entire plastic waste.

The Bangalore Municipal Corporation has implemented a similar project. The PCB’s idea came from the experience of a private company called MK Aromatics which has been producing crude oil from plastic waste at its plant in Alathur on Old Mahabalipuram Road.

A PCB team recently visited the plant and decided to replicate it at the government dump yards, said PCB member secretary K Karthikeyan. He added that the PCB had decided to buy diesel produced from this crude oil at the Alathur plant to encourage the venture.

M K Aromatics director Mahesh Merchant said the plant used about 10 tonnes of plastic per day to produce 10,000 litres of crude oil.

“There is very little pollution since plastic is not burnt,” he said. “The plastic is turned into a molten state using a catalyst and vapourised before being converted to oil. The process is easy as it doesn’t need segregation or washing. We also have distilling facilities to make diesel from crude,” A plant of 10-tonne capacity costs Rs 10 crore.

However, one major problem for the civic authorities is segregation of garbage. Despite repeated attempts at implementing source segregation by distributing colour-coded waste bins to households, source segregation remains a difficult task.

To promote segregation of plastic from other waste, PCB has offered to buy plastic from households. For this, the government plans to set up 50 garbage collection centres across the city, each at a cost of Rs 8 lakh. The government has also okayed use of plastic in laying of roads.