Dirk India to set up 2 fly ash recycling units

Dirk India Pvt Ltd (DIPL), a fly ash-to-partial cement replacement product maker, is planning to set up two new fly ash recycling plants out of Maharashtra, at a total investment of Rs 60 crore.

DIPL, part of the international Dirk Group, boasts of being the first fly ash recycling plant in the country. It is located next to Eklahare Thermal Power Station, 20 km from Nashik. Its recycled fly ash, which is used to replace cement, is branded as Dirk Pozzocrete.

The Nashik plant has a recycling capacity of 2,500 tonnes per day. Dirk India exports 50 per cent of its production to all Gulf countries, Middle East, East Africa and Iran.

Speaking to Business Standard, Georg Dirk, chairman of Dirk Group, said, ?We are planning to open two new fly ash recycling plants and are in negotiations with two other power generation boards in this regard.

Both stations together will have an additional output of 6,000 tonnes of fly ash per day, and we will require Rs 60 crore to set up the (two) plants."

Refusing to disclose the names of locations of its two proposed fly ash recycling plants, Dirk said, "It is not economical and environmental sensible to transport fly ash from other power stations to our Nashik plant for processing. We can only build further plants at new locations."

Fly ash is a waste and its disposal is a huge problem. It is disposed of either by creating ash heaps or washing it with water in slurry form into large lagoons.

Both these routes are costly and environmentally disputable. Currently, India has 84 coal-fired power stations generating per year 140 million tonnes of various ashes of which 115 million tonnes is fly ash.

Of this, 16 million tonne is used by the cement industry to mix it with OPC clinker to produce PPC (Pozzolan Portland Cement), while 3.5 million tonne is used as separate component mixed with OPC at construction sites as partial cement replacement, he said.

"Our objective is to create greater awareness for our 'Pozzocrete' trademark under which we are marketing the processed fly ash and to set quality standards, which will provide certainty for the consumer that a constant performance level is guaranteed. This is why we feel it is essential that all fly ash products in India should provide the quality verification mark of the Bureau of Indian Standards (ISI) to avoid any structure to fail and seriously damage the reputation of the national resource fly ash as a safe and advantageous construction material," he said.

Pozzocrete is the only Indian fly ash product that has obtained the ISI certificate. It improves the quality of the concrete and is sold at approximately 50 per cent of the price of cement in Maharashtra.