Agricultural Waste
The environmental problems and negative impact of agricultural waste are drawing attention to the need for adopting innovative approaches to reduce and reuse agricultural waste.
Agricultural Waste is...
a general term used to describe waste produced on a farm through various farming activities, primarily field residues. Field residues are materials left in an agricultural field after the crop has been harvested and include stalks and stem stubble, leaves etc..
Fallout from Agri-Wastes...
include the adverse impacts on human health and environment calling for a need to find innovative approaches to reduce and reuse agricultural waste. The sheer volume of the waste generated is a major challenge for the currently used disposal methods.
Prevalent methods of disposal...
include crop residue recycle (CRR), using crop residues as animal feed and the most prolific method, involves burning all residue generated on fields. Each of these methods, have particular advantages and challenges, but are a significant drain on financial resources while being harmful to the environment.
Key challenges...
are the labour and energy intensive nature of all methods, which increase the water requirement of the land. Burning, which is the least expensive method, results in a significant build-up of methane in the atmosphere. This is equivalent to at least one-tenth of all methane emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels. The associated air pollution poses a significant health hazard to residents of agricultural belts and surrounding region.
Our Solutions
In view of the enormous volumes of agricultural residue generated, Vidyan has invested efforts in finding ways to valorise rather than simply treat agricultural waste. As a part of this endeavour, we, along with our academic affiliates, have put together a note-worthy bouquet of scalable technologies.
Cellulosic Ethanol
The first among these is a multi-feedstock technology that effectively converts any agro-waste into bio-ethanol in the shortest conversion time of any contemporary technology, employing a novel processing system at the low capital costs. The demo plant for India’s first indigenous 2G ethanol technology, has been set up at IGL in Kashipur, Uttarakhand.
India’s first indigenous tech
It features a fully automated plant, with minimum solid handling, rapid reaction regime operations and advanced separation technologies. It is capable of producing 750,000 L of alcohol, from any biomass, all year round.
2G-Sugar to Green Chemicals
Expanding on the bio-refinery approach, we have developed a platform for sugar streams which can be diversified into a range of bio-derived green chemicals and biofuel precursors, including lactic acid, butyric acid, propionic acid, xylitol, 2,3 BDO, FDCA, HMF, Acrylic acid and others. By employing high-cell density fermentation (HCD), high yields of these chemicals are produced from low-cost sugars derived from multiple feedstocks including crop residues.
Agro-waste to Nutraceuticals
Additionally, we offer a technology for the extraction of high-value, soluble nutraceuticals from low value oil seed meal. This technology is the first to be commercialized wherein an integrated approach has been used for the highly selective, multi-step extraction of plant protein components into high value high-value nutrients, supplements and feed. A demonstration scale plant has been successfully set-up at Vishakhapatnam, in partnership with Kanoria Chemicals and Industries.
Agro-Waste to Polymers
Similarly, we offer a continuous and cost effective for conversion of agricultural residue into oligosaccharides. These speciality products have significant commercial value as food additives and nutritional supplements.
Key benefits
Our solutions to the problem of disposing off agricultural residue generates positive influx of revenue from the sale of waste-derived energy or green chemicals, for all concerned stakeholders in the agriculture sector.
Green Technology
These technologies have the added advantage of bearing near-zero carbon foot-print, reduced emissions leading to a positive impact on the environment. They consume minimum energy and recover a significant portion of the water as part of process operations.
Cost Effective
These cutting edge technologies are deployable at different scales, even being suitable to a mid-size distributed plant. Importantly, these are indigenous technologies, that do not employ expensive, imported instruments, resulting in low CAPEX and OPEX.