Ranchi, Mar 18 : Before the presence of Chief Minister Hemant Soren an MoU was on Thursday inked between Gas Authority of India Ltd and Ranchi Municipal Corporation to set up a plant to produce compressed biogas plant from waste collected in the city.

The MoU was inked in the Vidhansabha here and was signed by Executive Director of Gail India KB Singh and Ranchi Town Commissioner Mukesh Kumar. Chief Minister Hemant Soren congratulated both the sides on the agreement.

Secretary of the Urban Development Department Vinay Kumar Choubey asked the officials of the company and RMC to commence work on the project soon. Under the project a target has been set to produce 10 tonnes of compressed biogas everyday from 300 tonnes of organic waste. In the first phase a plant will be set up whose construction will be completed in two years and for setting up of the plant RMC is providing 8 acres of land to the company in Jhiri and in the second phase if needed the RMC will be making arrangements for more land.

Gail India in two phases will set up 300 metric tonnes organic waste processing plant and in the first phase plant having capacity of 150 tonnes processing capacity will come up. In each plant in a day 5 tonnes of compressed biogas will be produced. Gail will be investing Rs 28.19 crore for setting up the plant.

Further inside and outside the city two gas filing plants will ne set up. Over a period of 20 years this initiative will help RMC save Rs 81 crore over processing of waste. It will also help to reduce pollution while RMC will be able to make claims on 100 percent carbon credits over waste processing.

Those who were also present included Ranchi Mayor Asha Lakra, Deputy mayor Sanjeev Vijayvargyee and senior officials of Gail.(UNI)