Prospects of biomethanation in indian urban solid waste: Stepping towards a sustainable future

Abstract

Industrialization and urbanization together have a cumulative effect on generating significant amounts of urban solid waste which leads to increasing threats to the environment. India with a population of about 1.27 billion people alone generates about 0.2–0.5 kg of waste day−1 capita−1 of which around 40–50 % is organic in nature. According to published reports, if these organic fractions of the waste are not treated properly and reach the landfill site; they can become a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and causes leaching of harmful pollutants. These GHG and newly generated pollutants have been found to have detrimental effects on ground water, and create imbalances in the ecosystem. Therefore, ‘need of the hour’ is to utilize the energy that is stored in the waste through different available technologies like composting, vermicomposting, fermentation and biomethanation etc. The process of biomethanation appears to be a more reliable and promising technology as it not only aims to solve the problem of organic solid waste, but also provides sustainable energy in the form of biogas. Moreover, when compared with other technologies, biomethanation is economic, eco-friendly and less labor intensive. Even though several research studies were conducted in the field of biomethanation, the process is still unpopular especially in developing countries due to lack of appropriate knowledge, treatment systems and due consideration by the government. © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016.