May 8, 2025 | Authors: Reeva Dani and Jashan Khandwala
Brisil Technologies is a cleantech startup founded in 2016 by Tanmay Pandya. A chemical engineer by education, Pandya founded Brisil in Vadodara, Gujarat, to extract high-dispersion silica from Rice Husk Ash (RHA) using a patented zero-waste chemical process. As of February 2025, having capitalised on the opportunity to convert waste into valuable raw material, Brisil has become a key supplier of green silica to the footwear and tyre industries globally.
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India is a leading rice producer globally, having produced 145 million metric tonnes ****(MT) in 2024-2025, accounting for 27% of global production.
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Rice Husk (RH)—the outermost layer of the grain—accounts for roughly 20% of the harvest by weight and is separated as agricultural waste during the milling process. By this measure, RH waste amounted to approximately 30 million MT in 2024-25. Its high silica content makes it unsuitable for animal feed. However, it has a significant calorific value and can be used for electricity generation, agro-industrial applications, and paper processing.
In the past decade, several Asian countries, including India, have developed power plants that produce bioethanol as a sustainable energy source by incinerating RH waste.
Source: Shafi and Me, 2017.
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A power plant using RH as fuel generates between 5 to 100 MT of RHA as daily residue.
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RHA contains 83-90% silica, and when disposed of in open landfills or water bodies, it contributes to environmental pollution by worsening air quality and leaching into groundwater.
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However, research in the past few decades has demonstrated RHA’s potential to be an economically viable source for silica materials used in ceramics, glass, construction, plastic, rubber, energy storage, processing, and bio-applications. Thus, RHA-silica has emerged as a sustainable alternative to traditional sources of silica, such as sand and quartz.
Brisil Technologies developed and harnessed the potential for this form of green silica in applications such as tyre rubber, industrial rubber, footwear, and paints. Brisil’s origins can be traced back to Pandya’s first venture, Bridgedots Tech, co-founded in 2012. As Pandya explained,
We wanted to bridge the gap between academic research and industry requirements by collaborating with leading institutes in technology education. We worked to find and scale academic R&D-driven solutions to industry challenges. In 2014, a power generation company approached us to come up with ideas for utilising RHA in alternate ways. In our research, we found the potential for silica extraction that could be used in several industry applications. However, commercialising the technology would be a challenge.
Intrigued by the opportunity, Pandya incorporated Brisil Technologies in August 2016 to develop commercial-grade silica at scale.
Industrial Symbiosis involves collaboration between companies or industries, such that one organisation’s output waste and material flows are used as valuable and productive input for another organisation. It draws inspiration from biology—symbiosis refers to cross-species associations for mutual benefit.
The concept has witnessed a resurgence in interest and attention from policymakers, businesses, and academia in recent decades after Frosch and Gallopoulos’ 1989 work on industrial ecosystems. Within industrial symbiosis, a complex value assessment gets attached to resources recovered from waste.
Experts have theorised on industrial symbiosis as a means to support the transition to a Circular Economy (CE) model by highlighting the necessity of implementing cross-sectoral partnerships and efforts.
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CE models involve establishing closed-loop systems to reduce waste and keep materials in use. Broadly, CE principles are intended to close (increase circulation, optimise resources), slow (increase lifetime), and narrow (increase production efficiency) material loops.
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We analyse Brisil’s approach of converting waste into a resource, examine its efforts to replace unsustainable materials with a renewable and sustainable alternative, and discern how it has built and sustained industrial collaborations. Through this case study on commercialising and scaling RHA-silica production, we develop a comprehensive understanding of circularity implementation by exploring the opportunities and challenges in technology integration and ecosystem collaboration.
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Industrial Symbiosis framework; adapted for Brisil’s industrial network from Yu et al., 2021.
The waste valorisation approach in sustainability practices is an effort to move away from linear **make-use-discard models. In the cradle-to-cradle concept of circular economy, waste is transformed into a value-creating input resource. In this framework, it is recommended that systems recover and repurpose waste streams as secondary resources, ensuring that materials are reused or recycled rather than ending up in landfills. At the end-of-life stage, considerations vis-Ă -vis reusability, recyclability, remanufacturability, and processing capacity affect the technical value of waste-as-a-resource. As residue from a waste-to-energy practice, RHA can be used to extract silica, thus addressing concerns around waste management by transforming a secondary product into a valuable asset. In 2015, Pandya and the team at Brisil leveraged this observation to design and patent a silica extraction process.
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At Brisil, the process begins with a chemical treatment where the rice husk ash is mixed with reagents to separate solid impurities. The resulting liquid silica solution is then filtered and precipitated to isolate solid silica. Finally, silica with high dispersion properties is produced through multi-step chemical purification.
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Pandya recalled,
We received support for our initial R&D from the power generation company [that first introduced the idea]. The rice husk ash for the initial trials came from power generation facilities in Gujarat.
In 2017, Brisil was selected for The Power of Ideas initiative by IIMA Ventures (then the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship). Pandya used the funding support from the program and some angel investors to rent a facility in Indore, Madhya Pradesh and begin consistent green silica production.