Turning Agricultural Waste into Solid Fuel Through Thermochemical Treatment

Significant amounts of unmanaged organic waste are generated in both urban and rural India. As much of the waste is currently set on fire in the open air, this results in public health hazard, environmental degradation, and greenhouse emissions. We design and build a low-cost and robust thermochemical conversion process that turns this unmanaged organic waste into char. This generates new value from the organic waste, because char has various commercial uses, such as in water filtration, in industrial processes, and as a cooking fuel. An earlier miniature-scale design version has already seen field implementation and some commercial success in Kenya.