The railways have been suffering a loss of more than Rs 350 crore every year due to corrosion of rail tracks, caused by open discharge toilets fitted in all railway coaches. Apart from track corrosion it also leads unhygienic condition, stench and degradation of environment. But with help of “green toilets” developed by the Defence Research & Development Establishment (DRDE), the Railways hope to overcome this problem once for all time.
Unlike the traditional toilets in trains, where the waste is discharge on tracks, the new system installed in the green toilets will treat the night soil inside the tank with the help of a bacteria which will convert it into harmless gas and water. “To begin with we will equip 1,200 coaches with “green toilets” or “bio toilets” in the current fiscal,” said a senior railway official at the Kapurthala Rail Coach Factory, where these toilets are being made and installed in the coaches.
The Railway Board has also set up a core committee which will ensure that all the new bio toilets are fitted in all the 50,000 coaches with the railways traversing all over this vast country. According to a railway official the RCF is “setting up a plant here for generating anaerobic bacteria to be used in bio toilets in coaches. The plant will come up in a 100 cubic metre site at the RCF premises.” Besides Kapurthala, there will be two more anaerobic bacteria generation plants to be set up at Chennai and Nagpur, he said.
While bio toilets are being fitted in all new LHB coaches manufactured in RCF, conventional coaches will also be equipped with these toilets in a phased manner, said the RCF official. The anaerobic bacteria inside the toilets consume waste material and convert it into water and gas in the bio-toilet system. The water passing through chlorine tank is discharged as clean water and the gas generated evaporates into the atmosphere.
The RCF plant will produce about 10,000 litres of bacteria in 10 days. One toilet requires 150 litre of bacteria for 10 days. “Currently we are procuring bacteria from DRDE but we have to generate on our own to meet the requirement for all coaches,” he said, adding “the plant will be operational in the near future.” The bio toilet is estimated to cost about Rs 1 lakh per unit. “It is odourless and it will also prevent corrosion of rail tracks due to the open discharge of waste on rails,” he said.
While about 50 bio-toilets will be fitted in LHB (Linke Holfmann Bush) coaches, the rest will be used in conventional coaches. The bio-toilets are already operational in some coaches as part of a pilot project. “Some modifications are being made during the trial and now the new technology will be extended to as many trains,” the official said.