Indian Innovators (14 page)

“The price of road constructed by using KK Polyblend turns out to be almost the same as that of the conventional road. However, the life and quality of the road is much higher than the conventional road. If we pay the rag-pickers lesser, we can lower the construction cost, but we would not like to do that.”

KK Plastic Waste Management has laid 1,200 km of roads so far, all across Karnataka. They have also received invitations from several other states to present the technology or execute pilot projects.

Because developed countries also face similar concerns in disposing of plastic waste, the US Department of State invited the Khans to make a presentation on their technology at a multinational summit in Malaysia in 2010. The company is currently in talks with a foreign civil contractor for executing joint projects across the world.

In 2008, CNN-IBN honored Ahmed with the Real Hero Award. His efforts toward plastic waste management have also been mentioned in the NCERT Class XII Biology book under the section on Environmental Issues.

He, however, laments the lackluster working of municipal corporations in India.

“Unfortunately, road construction, being the domain of government bodies, is full of red tape. Receiving payments from the government agencies for work performed is a very slow process. It takes between six months and a year to receive payments after completing the project. This blocks working capital. Sometimes, you are even asked to grease palms to get your own hard-earned money.”

The Khans are looking for infusion of capital into their company to make an automated plant capable of generating huge volumes of KK Polyblend in a short time, so that they can speed up the road laying process. Each such plant would cost
3-5 crore.

Ahmed’s battle against plastic waste does not end with KK Polyblend. He is also helping a friend develop long- lasting and good-looking furniture from a blend of powdered plastic waste and wooden shavings. The furniture pieces would have as much as 80% of waste plastic and would be termite resistant.

Team Papyrus Efficiencia: (L to R) Pratik Mahapatra, Anurag Kyal, Snehasis Patra and Subham Debnath

Environment-Friendly Paper

The first paper-like substance was invented by the Egyptians over 6,000 years ago. It was named papyrus, and is also the root of the English word, paper. Papyrus was made by weaving fibrous plants together and pounding them into a flat sheet.

Later, the Greeks and Romans created a kind of parchment paper by using animal skins. However, paper, as we know it today, came into being in 105 AD, when a eunuch in China, named Cai Lun, mashed mulberry bark, hemp and scraps of cotton with water and dried a layer of the mixture in the sun on a linen cloth.

As the Chinese culture flourished and expanded to the edges of the Asian continent, paper went with it to Korea and Japan, and finally reached Europe in 1009 AD via the port city of Valencia in Spain. In the 13th century, Arab traders introduced paper in India, where it replaced the traditional clay tablets and dried leaves as writing material.

However, the real revolution came about with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany in 1453. The subsequent boom in literacy rates led to a sharp rise in demand for paper for printing books.

Today, almost 300 million tons of paper is used annually across the globe. The global economy is highly dependent on paper. Everything from currency to official documents and from packaging material to books requires paper. Paper accounts for 2.5% of industrial production and 2% of world trade.

The current size of the global paper industry is pegged at almost $350 billion. With a growing population and rapid economic progress in emerging markets, the demand for paper is set to double by 2020, despite measures to introduce electronic documentation. Among other things, the ban on plastic polybags has led to a sharp rise in the use of paper as a substitute material in manufacturing shopping bags.

Paper production is the third most energy-intensive of all industrial manufacturing activities, accounting for 12% of the total energy used in the industrial sector.

Though the sophistication of the paper-making process has increased over the centuries, there has been little change in the raw material used.

As a result, each year, over 4 billion trees are cut to supply raw material for paper. A recent mapping of a change in Earth’s forest cover by Google Earth revealed that forest cover is being lost at an alarming rate of 2,100 square kilometers per year. The ecological impact of such large-scale deforestation is immense. Still, the demand for wood pulp exceeds its supply, leading to higher prices of wood pulp, and thus, paper, which also puts financial pressure on the end user.

Moreover, the papermaking process releases a variety of chemical pollutants. According to the US Toxic Release Inventory report published by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pulp and paper mills are among the worst polluters of air, water and land. The paper and pulp industry is also the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the manufacturing sector. The WorldWatch Institute offers a similar assessment for the rest of the world. Each year, thousands of tons of highly toxic chemicals such as toluene, methanol, chlorine dioxide, hydrochloric acid and formaldehyde are released into the air and water from papermaking plants around the world. These chemicals are capable of causing respiratory, reproductive and skin diseases.

Paper can be recycled up to seven times. Yet, owing to the usage pattern of paper, only about 40% gets recycled; the rest decays in landfills and produces methane, a greenhouse gas which is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Among all this bad news, the good news is that some budding technologists seem to be making headway in changing the way paper is made.

A team of biotechnology students from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Bhubaneswar, Odisha – Pratik Mahapatra, Anurag Kyal, Snehasis Patra and Subham Debnath – has found a solution to the paper menace, which kills many birds with one stone.

Anurag takes us back to the summer of 2011, when their exciting journey into the world of innovation started as a small project....

“At the end of our first year of engineering at KIIT, we were looking for summer internships. We applied to various research organizations around the country, but received no response. We were not sure about what would interest us, but still applied wherever we could.

However, our efforts were bearing no fruit. So, we approached one of our teachers, Dr Vishakha Raina, an environmental microbiologist, for help.

Dr Raina said that she could give us a very interesting internship, but was not sure how serious we would be about it.

In order to make sure that we wanted to do some meaningful work and were not looking for mere certificates, she set the condition that she would not give us any certificates for our work. We readily accepted that.

She explained that she was recently approached by the Chilika Development Authority (CDA, the authority responsible for the upkeep of the famous Chilika Lake and surrounding areas) in order to find a solution to a fast-growing weed that was threatening to destroy the beauty of the touristy lake.

“The alkalinity-resistant weed had occupied 50 square kilometers of the lake. This not only affected the area available for boating, but also caused increased sedimentation and threatened the livelihood of the local fishermen. The weed consumed most of the oxygen in the water, resulting in death or migration of fish and other creatures (Chilika Lake has the largest population of endangered Irrawaddy dolphins in the world). Thus, the ecological balance and biodiversity of the lake were being destroyed rapidly.

This particular species of the weed, called Phragmites karka, had no documented use. Thus, removing the weed meant pumping scarce funds into something that had no tangible returns. Once removed, the weeds could only be left to decay along the banks, producing an offensive odor.

Thus, the CDA wanted to investigate if some practical use could be found for the weed, so that the local fishermen could be incentivized to remove them regularly.

Dr Raina asked us to visit the lake, collect samples and investigate various biological and physical properties of the weed.

After investigating the properties and going through a lot of research papers on the subject, we decided that the best use for the weed was probably as biomass for a biogas plant. So, we set up a pilot biogas plant in the lab and started conducting experiments to ascertain the economical viability of using Phragmites karka for the production of biogas.”

The results were less than satisfactory.

“The weed was largely made up of hard cellulose. So, it took much longer than agricultural or civic waste to putrefy and the gas yield was low. Therefore, the cost per unit of the gas would have been much higher than the alternatives. It worked out to be
70 per unit of gas with Phragmites karka, as against the average figure of
45 per unit with most other organic waste.”

However, the team did not give up. “We really expected the biogas solution to work and continued with the project even after the end of the summer break and into the next semester. We tried tinkering with a lot of variables to optimize the yield, but all our efforts met with disappointment. After sulking for some time, we started to explore other alternatives.

Then, in one eureka moment, it struck us that since the weed’s cellulose content is high, it could be a good candidate for making paper.”

At that time, the team had no idea about the paper- making process or the challenges involved. So, they started researching the industrial paper-making process.

“The industrial paper-making process is quite sophisticated. Once a tree is cut down, it goes to a mill, where it is debarked and then chipped by a series of blades. These chips are then ground into finer powder. The powder is heated under high pressure for a long time in a vat with water and chemicals such as caustic soda and sodium sulfate to make it into slurry known as pulp. In the final stages, additives such as starch, china clay, talc and calcium carbonate are added to the pulp to improve the strength and brightness of the paper. The pulp slurry is sprayed onto a huge flat wire screen. The fibers bond as the water drains out. The paper is then pressed between rolls, which squeezes out more water and makes for a smooth surface. Heated rollers then dry the paper, which is cut and rolled into sheets.

We had to implement a scaled-down version for laboratory experimentation. Unfortunately, the kind of equipment required for the purpose was not available in our laboratory and we had little financial means to get it. So, we made the equipment ourselves.”

They grind the weed into a fine paste and mix the paste with water. The slurry thus created is treated with a host of biological enzymes in a specially designed bioreactor for a specified number of hours. Even the bleaching is achieved via the use of appropriate enzymes.

“Not only does our technology convert ecologically disastrous weeds into paper, and thereby, save wood, it also saves the environment from hazardous chemicals, because it does not involve chemical processes. The biological enzymes are biodegradable and can be recycled.

Because the weed grows very fast (it reaches the same density within one-and-a-half months of being weeded) and has no alternative use, it is quite inexpensive. Thus, the cost of the paper produced is one-third of that made from wood pulp. The quality of paper, in terms of strength, finish, smoothness and brightness, is as good as the conventional paper. It can be used for both writing and printing.”

This proprietary system has been perfected over several iterations and the team has applied for a process patent for it.

“We have also found that this weed has good phytoremediation (removal of organic pollutants and toxic heavy metals from the soil by plants) potential. Thus, growing the weed in areas where industrial effluents have caused soil pollution would ensure regeneration of soil. The soil can then be reclaimed for safe commercial agriculture.”

In 2012, they applied for the India Innovation Initiative (I3) organized by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in association with Agilent Technologies. They were chosen among a select few from across the country to present their technology at a conference at IIT Delhi and also pitch to prospective investors.

“We didn’t have money to go to Delhi by air, so we booked train tickets from Bhubaneswar to Kolkata, and then from Kolkata to Delhi. It was a long journey and we were scheduled to reach New Delhi by 5 AM. That would leave us with just enough time to go to our hotel room, dress up and reach IIT Delhi by 10 AM.”

However, an innovator’s journey is never without hurdles. “The journey was smooth until Kanpur. Around 10 PM, as the train halted at Kanpur station, a technical problem caused it to get delayed. There was no clear estimate of when the train would resume its journey; so, we kept waiting nervously. But as the clock struck midnight, we started to panic. It seemed like fate was against us.

Finally, at 1 AM, we boarded another train bound for Delhi. We didn’t have a ticket and convinced the TTE (traveling ticket examiner) to help us. But it was already too late. By the time we reached IIT Delhi, all the other participants had already put up their posters and were interacting with the judges and the investors. It was quite disappointing to have traveled so far and missed the opportunity to interact with some of the well-known faces of the country’s technology industry.

As we proceeded to the presentation, we could see that we were much less experienced than most of our competitors, who were much better prepared.