Energy And Environment

ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

Technology to manage distillery effluents The afterlife of a wasteland One man’s tipple could be another man’s poison, especially if the distillery producing your drink loads its surrounding areas with polluting effluents. It turns out that many distilleries across India dispose of effluents by dumping into them backyards, thereby threating the natural fertility of the soil in the area.

Innovate and renovate The problem posed by distillery effluents runs, literally, pretty deep-run-off effluents percolate into surrounding fields, thereby polluting soil and damaging soil structure. The task at hand is twofold: to dispose of effluents in an environment-friendly manner, and to reclaim the effluent-loaded sites that have turned into wastelands. The team at T E R I ’s Centre for Mycorrhiza Research has found an innovative way to manage effluent disposal in the country. It tried its HRTS (high-rate transpiration system) technology to reclaim the distillery-effluent loaded site of a distillery in Madhya Pradesh. The technology employs mycorrhizae and a few other useful microbes to restore greenery.

Pollution, distilled In a day, this distillery produces 90 000 litres of alcohol and discharges about 1.2 million litres of effluents,

Dark-coloured, highly organic effluents at the loading site

producing waste as much as 15 times the product alcohol. Moreover, the dumping site that T E R I had to reclaim had suffered six years matter of regular loading of distillery effluents rich in organic and acute salinity (electrical conductivity as high as 34.4 mS/cm2 as against the normal value of less than 1). Besides these impurities, the waste was also highly alkalinie (pH 9. 4 vis-à-vis the neutral pH of 7). Over time, the site was completely saturated and could not take any more effluents.

A before (left) and after (right) comparison of the distillery effluent site

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T E R I ’s technologies for sustainable development

A step-by-step transformation of a solar drying lagoon into a green patch

The distillery was facing pressure from the regulators as well as the neighbouring villages where drinking water in the wells had changed colour. The land, flooded as it was with effluents (particularly during the monsoons), and water sources around the distillery had been poisoned and an intolerably foul stench from the effluents perpetually hung in the air. Though the distillery was trying to fight the situation by using techniques like natural solar drying, lagoon system for holding effluents, and preparation of vermicomposts, these were also adding to their problems-large areas of land were being used with minimal relief to the environment.

The metamorphosis To restore the dumping site, TERI aimed its efforts at an environment-friendly and aesthetic solution to effluent disposal and management in the distillery industry-the HRTS. This is a land application system wherein effluents from breweries are used in a carefully-designed field layout with wide ridges, furrows, and trees that are bestowed with higher-transpiration capacity. A selected species of mycorrhiza is applied in the HRTS model, depending upon the soil and wastewater chemical properties. To the plants, it makes available some important nutrients from the effluents, thus controlling ground water pollution. Plants were grown on solar-dried beds using certain species of mycorrhizae that collect and supply essential micronutrients from the effluent-loaded soil to the plants.

What the technology offers P

Enhanced loading of effluent in unit land area

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Lower levels of groundwater contamination and

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Reduced land pollution of adjoining agricultural lands

The tricky situation was overcome with the expertise of TERI’s team and the site was restored. It turned into a commercially viable area with economic plantations like bamboo, Glaricidia, babool, munga, guava, mahaneem, and biofuel plantations of Jatropha curcas. The landscape too is far more pleasant.

Beneficiaries The site is now ready, all over again, for more effluents even as it is now green with plants that thrive on its rich soil. This success story of the HRTS technology has left the distillery industry extremely satisfied and improved the lives of both people and animals living around the distillery. In fact, T E R I was also asked to reclaim other such effluent-created wasteland – a lagoon – that had accumulated waste over a decade and reached a dangerously high concentration of organic matter. That exercise too proved to be a huge achievement. The ecosystem of the site saw a turnaround after the intervention- several nests were observed in the area and birds became a common sight. Scientific investigations of groundwater leaching provided further proof to the industry and pollution-control agencies of the efficacy and sustainability of the technology.

Applications/benefits HRTS has been welcomed by all involved in distilleryeffluent management since it is a cost-effective method, allows re-use of the dumping site, and matches the standards set by the environment whistleblowers. The estimated investment needed to reclaim an hectare of land through HRTS is about 185 000 rupees in the first year with maintenance costs of around about 18 000 rupees in subsequent years. The technology holds immense potential in similar industrial wastelands where effluents are an unavoidable menace.

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