Waste to Energy for Tamil Nadu Newsprint & Papers Ltd.

Waste to Energy at Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Ltd.Public sector unit Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited (TNPL) manufactures high quality newsprint at its plant in Karur, Tamil Nadu. It has full scale effluent treatment plant to treat the waste water generated from various sources within the mill premises.

Bagasse, the raw material used here for producing paper pulp, is stored in huge piles and water is sprinkled over it, to avoid dry bagasse fines being carried away by the wind. The leachate from the piles, called bagasse wash water, contains high concentration of sugar based organics. TNPL wanted to produce methane rich biogas from this waste water to supplement its energy requirement by using biogas as an alternate energy source, and the contract was awarded to Ion Exchange Waterleau after a competitive techno-commercial tender process.

In this waste-to-energy plant, raw bagasse wash water is treated in a high rate solids contract clarifier to remove suspended solids to the maximum extent (to avoid choking of the anaerobic reactor) and then passed through an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor for biogas generation and reduction in organic pollutants in the effluent. UASB treated effluent flows to the existing effluent treatment plant for further downstream treatment.