Department of Civil Engineering, FET, MRIIRS organized an expert lecture on Waste to Energy, on on January 28, 2020. Dr. Abhishek Asthana, Senior Eminent Faculty from University of Sheffield Hallam, United Kingdom, delivered this talk.

Dr Abhishek Asthana is the Director of Hallam Energy, the energy research group at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU). In 2009, he co-founded Hallam Energy and has since led 57 projects of energy research and D consultancy. He has won £3.5 million funding for SHU, co-authored 41 scientific papers and 2 books, invented 4 patents and developed 5 commercial software packages.

He shared his experience with students and discussed challenges faced by the second largest populated country in the world. Solid waste management is of critical concern and needs attention. The current waste management practice in India involves collecting waste from sources through a community collective bin system, after which it gets transported to a low-lying landfill system with intermediate processing of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). The open dumping practice is leading to various problems like pollution and health hazards. Both surface and groundwater are affected by this.  

He also discussed the efforts made by Hallam Energy in response to the approach of Ministry of Urban Development for setting up of state-of-art waste to energy plant at Delhi for tackling the generated waste on day to day basis. The landfill site at Ghazipur is now 65 metres tall which is just 8 m less than that of Qutub Minar’s height. 

It was an interactive session with active participation by all students. The session ended with thanks to the speaker by the HOD. Department is thankful to Dean FET, Colonel Girish Kumar Sharma and all the members of International Education Centre, MREI for facilitating this session.