Researchers from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and the University of Queensland in Australia have developed a new waste management system designed to address three problems: air pollution, agricultural waste, and access to electricity. Anthropocene Magazine reported on their findings.
The system was designed specifically to solve these problems in rural India, where, in many places, air pollution and crop residues are abundant but access to reliable electricity is lacking.
In a paper published in the journal Science of The Total Environment, the researchers described the system as "bioenergy trigeneration," based on a recycling method called pyrolysis. Pyrolysis works by thermochemically treating biomass (organic material that can be used as fuel). In India, this biomass would primarily consist of manure, straw, and grain husks, as Anthropocene detailed.
"Scaled across a nation the size of India, even a modest uptake of the system could have a big impact on climate emissions and public health," Dr. Siming You, an engineering professor at the University of Glasgow and one of the study's authors, said in a press release.
In addition to getting rid of the agricultural waste while producing electricity, the process would produce biochar — a charcoal-like substance that can be used as a soil fertilizer and has the added benefit of storing carbon, said Anthropocene.
The system would also produce bio-oil and syngas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen), which could be used to power the pyrolysis in a circular closed loop, per the study. Excess bio-oil and syngas could be used instead of the dirty cooking fuels that many people in rural India rely on, reducing indoor air pollution.
Much of India suffers from some of the worst air pollution anywhere in the world. A study conducted by Boston College researchers found that the country had 1.67 million air pollution-related deaths in 2019 while sustaining $36.8 billion in economic losses. Clearly, outside-the-box solutions like the pyrolysis system are necessary to begin to address that problem.
The more conventional methods of reducing air pollution — i.e., developing clean energy infrastructure for wind and solar to replace dirty energy sources like oil and gas — are also in the works. India recently began a solar and wind project that will reportedly be as large as Singapore and visible from space, which aims to produce 500 gigawatts of clean energy by 2030.
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