Waste Management Technologies (WMT)

Program Title: Waste Management Technologies (WMT)

Genesis:

This program is aligned to the “Swachh Bharat Mission” or “Clean India Mission” of the Government. DST initiated a special program on Waste Management Technologies (WMT) in October 2015, and constituted a high level Expert Advisory Committee (EAC-WMT) for this purpose, chaired by Dr. G.D. Yadav, Vice Chancellor, Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai. Waste Management encompass a variety of interventions in the generation, prevention, characterization, monitoring, treatment, handling, reuse and ultimate residual disposal of solid wastes.

Objectives

Take stock of technological development, assess, analyse and look for material recycling systems with low environment loading and improve upon them or find better alternatives.
Develop waste management technologies that can be adopted in small & medium scale enterprises in order to improve their productivity and global competitiveness.
Establish techno-economic feasibility of proposed methodologies/ technologies.

Salient feature

The program aims to promote the development of suitable technologies with potential to ameliorate the environmental load from the huge amount of residuals generated by industrial development and consumption lifestyle.

Technology Development Projects will be undertaken by R&D agencies, in association with industry, to develop pre-competitive technologies/ techniques/ processes
The selection of projects is based on the criteria of novelty & scientific uniqueness, thereby DST aims to promote innovative technologies that can have commercial potential.

Thrust areas

1 E-Waste (Electrical & Electronics Waste): Recycling & Recovery

Development of simple indigenous material recovery technology for specific applications (precious & other metals, plastics, glass and rare earths) in collaboration with industry.
Green Product development and Design for recycling.

2 Industrial Hazardous & non-hazardous Wastes

2.1 Mining Waste: Overburden, Tailing Pond

2.2 Metallurgical Waste

2.3 Cost effective treatment of refractory organics

2.4 Recycling/recovery of value added materials from hazardous/non-hazardous wastes

2.5 Solid Waste from Chemical Industry (such as adsorbents like ion exchange resins, activated carbon, clays, membranes)

2.6 Membrane rejects and Salts

2.7 Industrial sludges

2.8 Industrial spent solvents and chemicals,

3 Newer technologies for Biomedical Waste

4 Urban & Rural Solid Waste, including Plastic Waste

4.1 Existing Landfills: Gas Extraction, Leachate Treatment, Material Mining, Remediation, Value-added Material Recovery