Green furnaces at 3 crematoria run by north corpn to use 75% less wood

NEW DELHI: With new platforms, addition of eco-friendly furnaces and expansion of existing facilities, the infrastructure at Delhi’s crematoria has seen rapid expansion due to the pandemic in the past one year.
North Delhi Municipal Corporation is now setting up brick-laden closed furnaces for cremating bodies at three of its Covid-designated sites. These furnaces use one-fourth of the wood that a conventional open pyre requires and the time taken to cremate a body will also be less.
Mayor Jai Prakash said the construction work had started and six — two furnaces at each site — will be built initially at Panchkuian Road, Inderpuri and Mangolpuri cremation grounds.
Officials say the metal lining and closed environment of the furnace helps in raising the temperature up to 1,000 degrees Celsius, which cremates a body in 1-1.5 hours while using less than 1 quintal wood. A normal cremation required four-five quintal wood. The mayor said the units would help in protecting environment by reducing the wood usage while smoke-capturing units could be placed on the chimney to reduce pollution.
While the city witnessed the peak of funerals of Covid victims around April-end, more than 2,000 quintal wood was being consumed daily for Covid funerals alone. The corporations had to seek assistance from the forest department and neighbouring states to meet the demand.
Recently, IIT-Ropar has come up with improved features for crematoria furnaces for better efficiency and some of these features will be incorporated in new furnaces, officials say.
East Delhi Municipal Corporation will also open a CNG crematorium with two furnaces at Ghazipur in the next couple of days. Mayor Nirmal Jain said the first CNG unit in east Delhi was operationalised at Karkardooma two weeks ago.
The overall crematoria infrastructure in the capital has been vastly improved during the pandemic. Before 2020, Delhi had CNG crematoria at two sites (Nigam Bodh Ghat and Punjabi Bagh) and an electric crematorium at Sarai Kale Khan, which was used for unclaimed bodies. New CNG furnaces have been opened at places like Karkardooma, Green Park and Subhash Nagar.
South Delhi Municipal Corporation is also planning to upgrade the Sarai Kale Khan cremation ground as the key facility of the city with 150 traditional platforms, CNG furnaces and two existing electric furnaces.