With a view to creating a “GREEN PROCESS CONCEPT”, the research group is working on “WHOLE-CELL BIO CATALYSIS” (WCB) for the synthesis of green fuels and biopolymers.According to sources, researchers at Gujarat Biotechnology University (GBU) are developing techniques to produce carbon-free fuels that can ultimately reduce carbon emissions and contribute to a greener environment.
The research has been published in several prestigious peer-reviewed journals including Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining (BioPR) and Chemical Engineering Technology, in addition to the book WHOLE-CELL BIO CATALYSIS” (WCB) : Next-Generation Workhouse for Green Synthesis of Pharmaceuticals, Chemicals and Biofuels.
The progress of industrialization and the exponential growth in the global use of petroleum-based hydrocarbons have increased the global carbon footprint. Researchers from the newly established institute are working towards reducing carbon emissions.
The carbon burden (is) currently a major concern for future human sustenance and the only way forward is to build green technology with carbon-free alternative fuels and WCB is a promising platform to achieve this mission – S. Palmidimari, Professor, GBU.
The team claimed that the process is not only low-cost, but also easily scale able at industrial size. The University has been established by the Department of Science and Technology, Gujarat in partnership with the University of Edinburgh (UOE), United Kingdom.
The target time frame for achieving this task at the laboratory level is by 2024. Further planning will be done on an industrial scale, – he said.
The project started at the end of the year 2019, we got some leads working with modern “OMICS” tools and (are) now getting ready to work on the bench to execute the idea. In this work, we are going to apply novel metabolic-flow engineering tools for the first time to establish WCBs to generate carbon-free fuels such as Bio-H2.
Synthesis of biopolymers (di-acids, PHBs and amines, among others) using waste biomass will be a future focus of this research group.
The “SYNTHESIS OF GREEN FUELS” (Bio-H2) project is being funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India.
The research group is also looking to engineer whole-cell systems to synthesize Bio-H2 fuels from crude glycerol and lignocellulosic biomass-derived sugars.
With the concept of “WHOLE-CELL BIO CATALYSIS” (WCB), the research group has developed a model that would reduce the cost of the process by at least 50 times and have a promising application on an industrial scale.
