Sustainable Technologies and Environmental Projects or STEPS is taking measured but certain steps towards ensuring our planet stays green
Between stunning Hawaii and beautiful Japan, there is an area of the Pacific Ocean where ocean currents meet. Called the North Pacific Gyre, it is twice the size of Texas, and should have been pristine and pure. But it is suffocating in 3.5mn tonnes of trash, says the renowned Algalita Marine Research Foundation of Long Beach, California. Its studies have shown that plastic fragments outnumber zooplankton 40:1 in the area. The Gyre resembles a plastic soup. It isn’t just the sea, the land is no less polluted. According to America’s authoritative Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US produces more than 230 million tonnes of waste each year—enough to fill more than 82,000 football fields edge-toedge with six-foot high compacted garbage. If just four per cent of the world’s population generates more than one-fourth of the planet’s waste, one can only imagine what the rest of the planet is suffering. The biggest threat to our planet is from plastic waste.
Scientists have theorised that since plastic is made from petroleum, it can be turned back into fuel. The idea is that it will not only remove harmful plastic from the environment, but also turn it into usable fuel. Entrepreneurs have tried, but haven’t found just the right technology. Most plastic-to-fuel processes are either not commercially viable, produce inferior quality fuel, harm the environment or handle only a few types of plastic.
However, an Indian engineer has developed a process that can revolutionise plastic waste conversion worldwide. T. Raghavendra Rao of Mumbai produces high-quality fuel from waste plastic, without producing harmful byproducts. His process is cost-effective and can handle plastic waste of any kind. Most plasticto- fuel technologies fail in the quality of fuel they produce. The catalysts they use, remain in the fuel they produce. “That leaves you with 500kg of catalyst in a 25 tonne-a-day plant,” says Rao. Such a high volume of toxic residue is environmentally unacceptable.
That’s why Rao set up STEPS, for Sustainable Technologies and Environmental Projects, in Mumbai. STEPS uses a proprietary catalyst that helps convert plastic into a mix of liquid fuel, liquefied petroleum gas, and coke that can turn into fuel pellets. The fuel can run furnaces and generator sets, and can even be refined to make petrol, kerosene, diesel and light diesel oil. And the LPG generated from the process is sufficient to power the conversion plant itself. “Our process leaves no catalyst in the residue, which is anyway free carbon that can be compressed into pellets and used as fuel in furnaces,” adds Rao.
Rao says that just 15 large cities of India produce nearly 4mn tonnes of waste every day, of which almost 200,000 tonne is plastic. “We are focused on turning waste into wealth.” It sounds like magic and is, indeed, magical. Rao is one of India’s, and perhaps, one of the world’s finest eco-entrepreneurs. He has received encouraging results from tests in the Netherlands, West Asia, and Malaysia. STEPS is expanding globally and setting up plants which can process 25 tonnes of plastic a day, in Austria, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Set up at a cost of $2 to $3mn each, these plants are not considered expensive. The good news does not end here. Rao’s technology can produce up to 25,000 litres of petroleum a day, at an operating cost of Rs 12 a litre—just a little more than a quarter—excluding the cost of raw material. STEPS says the fuel they produce meets the standards prescribed by ASTM International, a US-based body that sets product quality and safety standards for the industry worldwide. “The wonderful thing about the STEPS technology is that its outcome is so positive; its application can be world changing,” says Jerry Llewellyn, president of Amera Consulting Group in Texas, USA. James Vance, project manager at IC2 Institute at the University of Texas which evaluated the “marketability” of STEPS says “Competing systems from Alphakat (Buttenheim, Germany), Ozmotech (Victoria, Australia) and Plas2Fuel (Washington, USA) exist, but they have limitations of emissions, selective plastic input as well as high capital cost due to low processing efficiency.” Vances’s report on STEPS clearly put Rao’s innovative technology way ahead of any competition worldwide. In 2007, STEPS won an award from the India Innovation Growth Programme. The programme is a joint initiative of aviation giant Lockheed Martin, the federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), and IC2. It helps innovative Indian technologies find markets worldwide. T.R. Rao is not resting on his laurels. Apart from plastic, the STEPS technology can also work on organic waste. The company has a joint venture in Malaysia with Greenbase Sepadu Sdn Bhd, and has tested Rao’s technology on branches from which the palm fruit (used to make palm oil) has been harvested. Closer home, the STEPS technology may be one way to efficiently handle the mounting e-waste in the country. STEPS has developed seven waste conversion technologies. Of these, five technologies have been commercialised. There are others in various stages of development; Rao is a man hard at work.
There are some other technologies that STEPS has developed. Most of them are selfexplanatory: they include Refinery Waste to Fuel conversion , Agriculture waste to Fertiliser, Biomass to Energy, Grey Water Treatment and Chemical Free Algae Control.
As the world grapples with waste disposal, Rao is confident there will be no dearth of raw materials for his plants. He says that nothing is waste till it is wasted and he has shown the world that these are not mere big words.