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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western...

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western India (HRAWI) spokesperson Pradeep Shetty.   “We are in continuous touch with the concerned authorities, but the situation is very gloomy. There is no response from the Centre or the Ministry of Petroleum on when the situation will ease. We fear that more than 50 pc of all eateries in Mumbai will soon down the shutters. The same will apply to the rest of the state and many other parts of India,” Shetty told  ‘ The Perfect Voice’ .   The shortage of commercial LPG has badly affected multiple sectors, including the hospitality and food industries, mass private or commercial kitchens and even the laundry businesses, industry players said.   At their wits' ends, many restaurateurs resorted to the reliable old iron ‘chulhas’ (stoves) fired by either coal or wood - the prices of which have also shot up and result in pollution - besides delaying the cooking.   Anticipating a larger crisis, even domestic LPG consumers besieged retail dealers in Mumbai, Pune, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur, Akola, Nagpur to book their second cylinder, with snaky queues in many cities. The stark reality of the 12-days old Gulf war with the disturbed supplies has hit the people and industries in the food supply chains that feed crores daily.   “The ordinary folks leave home in the morning after breakfast, then they rely on the others in the food chain for their lunch or dinner. Many street retailers have also shut down temporarily,” said Shetty.   Dry Snacks A quick survey of some suburban ‘khau gullies’ today revealed that the available items were mostly cold sandwiches, fruit or vegetable salads, cold desserts or ice-creams, cold beverages and packed snacks. Few offered the regular ‘piping hot’ foods that need elaborate cooking, or charging higher than normal menu rates, and even the app-based food delivery system was impacted.   Many people were seen gloomily munching on colorful packets of dry snacks like chips, chivda, sev, gathiya, samosas, etc. for lunch, the usually cheerful ‘chai ki dukaans’ suddenly disappeared from their corners, though soft drinks and tetrapaks were available.   Delay, Scarcity  Maharashtra LPG Dealers Association President Deepak Singh yesterday conceded to “some delays due to supply shortages” of commercial cylinders, but assured that there is no scarcity of domestic cylinders.   “We are adhering to the Centre’s guidelines for a 25 days booking period between 2 cylinders (domestic). The issue is with commercial cylinders but even those are available though less in numbers,” said Singh, adding that guidelines to prioritise educational institutions, hospitals, and defence, are being followed, but others are also getting their supplies.   Despite the assurances, Shetty said that the current status is extremely serious since the past week and the intermittent disruptions have escalated into a near-total halt in supplies in many regions since Monday.   Adding to the dismal picture is the likelihood of local hoteliers associations in different cities like Pune, Palghar, Nagpur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, and more resorting to tough measures from Thursday, including temporary shutdown of their outlets, which have run out of gas stocks.

Incineration to Plasma Pyrolysis: Machines That Safeguard Public Health

Effective treatment is the shield that prevents biomedical waste from turning into a public health disaster.

In the earlier stages of biomedical waste management, we saw how waste is first segregated into colour-coded bags at the point of generation and then carefully collected and transported under strict safety measures. These steps are vital to prevent accidental exposure and to ensure that different categories of waste reach their respective processing streams without mixing. But segregation and transport alone do not neutralise the dangers hidden in biomedical waste.


It is now the operator’s job to further ‘treat’ this waste as per the protocols and specifications described in the BMW Management Rules of 1998 and 2016.


Treatment is essential to get rid of all the deadly infectious pathogens that are lingering in the tissues and fleshy parts, amputated parts, materials soaked in the blood and other body fluids, etc. Such pathogens that have been lying dormant in these organs and tissues for a long time might be waiting eagerly for an opportunity to spring back and invade and infect the healthy human body. So before they get such an opportunity, destroy them! That is the whole purpose of treatment at CBWTF. There are different types of equipment and machines used for treatment. The following is a brief introduction to these machines.


Incinerator: Incineration is a thermal process that transforms medical waste into inorganic, incombustible matter, thus leading to a significant reduction in waste volume and weight. The main purpose of any medical waste incinerator is to eliminate pathogens from waste and reduce the waste to ashes. However, certain types of medical waste, such as pharmaceutical or chemical waste, require higher temperatures for total destruction.


Medical waste incinerators typically operate at high temperatures between 900 and 1200°C. Developing countries like India usually use low-cost, high-temperature incinerators of simple design for the stabilisation of healthcare waste. The most reliable and predominant medical waste incineration technology is pyrolytic incineration, also known as controlled air incineration or double-chamber incineration. The pyrolytic incinerator comprises a pyrolytic chamber (primary chamber) and a post-combustion chamber (secondary chamber).


Most of these incinerators are diesel-fired. These incinerators are specifically used for treating the contents of yellow bags. These bags containing incinerable waste are loaded in the pyrolytic chamber through a front-opening door either manually or using a conveyor belt. In this chamber, the waste is thermally decomposed through an oxygen-deficient, medium-temperature combustion process with temperatures ranging between 800 and 900°C, producing solid ashes and gases. The gases produced in the pyrolytic chamber are burnt at high temperatures ranging between 900 and 1200°C by a fuel burner in the post-combustion chamber or secondary chamber using an excess of air to minimise smoke and odours. The flue gases from the secondary chamber then pass through air pollution control devices such as a venturi scrubber for complete elimination of particulate matter, if any. Finally, the smoke is released into the air through a 100-foot-tall stack or chimney. The ash is transported to a landfill for deep burial. Advantages of this technology include a relatively lower and affordable cost and almost a 99 per cent reduction in the volume of the waste being treated. In the past few years, technologically advanced incinerators have been manufactured in India that aim for zero pollution through emission.


Plasma Pyrolysis: This system uses a plasma-arc torch to generate the plasma energy, which can generate heat reaching temperatures as high as 1650°C to 11000°C. However, this is a relatively new technology and has very little track record. While some specific pyrolysis technologies show promise, others have not achieved performance and emission levels claimed by manufacturers, and others have not worked at all.


Whether through proven methods like incineration or newer approaches such as plasma pyrolysis, the ultimate goal remains unchanged: to eliminate pathogens, safeguard public health, and ease the environmental burden of biomedical waste. I will be exploring more technologies in my next article. Until then, wishing you a safe and healthy weekend.


(The author is an environmentalist.)

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