AlterEnergyz: Answer to managing waste?

Goa is known for its vibrant tourism industry and a big part of this industry is the food and beverage component. The state prides itself with the best of restaurants, cafés, bistros and pubs and tourists can choose from a very wide variety of cuisines. 

Thus, it is natural that for the amount of food that is prepared and the amount of ingredients that are sourced for the same, there is huge amount of kitchen waste generated across the state.

What happens to this waste? Well there are two usual responses to this. The first, it is the government or the panchayat or the municipality’s responsibility. Second is the popular NIMBY (an acronym for the phrase "Not In My Back Yard").

Against this backdrop, AlterEnergyz, a Goa based company in the field of renewable energy and scientific waste management, has made an impact. They are working with restaurants that are not only using getting rid of their waste, but the same waste is being converted into cooking gas. Moreover, it has turned out to be efficient in tackling the menace of rodents as all the garbage is getting disposed of. 

Due to its portability, non cumbersome and easy to maintain quality, restaurateurs have found these biogas systems to tackle various issues including odour from kitchen waste, ensuring better hygiene in and also helps reduce expenditure on LPG cooking gas. 

One such restaurateur Antonio Moraes from Anjuna praised how this has provided them an extremely useful solution to their waste management woes and the fact it takes only five to ten minutes for feeding the unit helps. 

How does it work? “A biogas unit comes with a digester tank in which everyday kitchen waste gets digested by anaerobic bacteria that emit about 70% methane and other gases. This gas is stored within the upper chamber that floats in water. The gas is collected in the gas drum, which rises or moves down, according to the amount of gas stored. The gas drum is prevented from tilting by a guiding frame. If excess gas is produced, it is automatically released due to buoyancy ensuring safety. When the drum floats in a water jacket, it cannot get stuck, even in substrate with high solid content. As the gas rises, it passes through a gas pipe connected to a Biogas stove, similar to LPG stoves, and is ready for cooking,” said Samrudhh Hegde Desai, Partner Alterenergyz 

“The input for the digester is one part kitchen waste and one part waste water that can be obtained from washing rice and dhals. Once the entire mass gets digested, it is converted into rich liquid manure which comes out of the outlet pipe and collected in a bucket. This can be used for gardens, potted plants or poured into the drain,” said Brian Farias, partner, Alterenergyz

“In addition to the its benefits to the environment and that it converts organic waste to produce energy, for larger quantities of waste the gas produced can be converted to electricity using generator as well,” added Brian.

Samrudh pointed out that they provide portable Bio-methanation plants in various capacities ranging from Domestic 2 Kg/Day (Wet waste) to Industrial 1000 Kg/day which give 1.5 Cu m to 25 Cu m of Bio Gas (Methane). The resulting savings could be to the tune of 20-30% on LPG while the lifespan of a digester is about 25 years.

Besides restaurants, they have managed to work with institutions, households and other establishments across Goa. These includes the Indian Coast Guard, Vasco - 50 Kg/Day Unit , SnehaMandir Old Age home, Ponda - 10 Kg/Day - , Hospicio Hospital, Margao - 10 Kg/Day - 7. Old Age Home, Bogmalo - 20 Kg/Day , Ideal School, Pilgaon Bicholim - 5Kg/Day amongst others. 

“Portable Biogas digesters are provided as a solution that not only helps manage wet waste in a safe and hygienic condition but also displace a family's LPG needs by half. An average family of 4 consumes one LPG cylinder a month, thereby 12 a year. If Biogas systems are installed in homes, the family only has to spend on the first 6 cylinders of LPG, the remaining 6 is taken care by biogas, resulting in an average savings on LPG,” added Samrudh.