Pondicherry University team gets bio-fuel patents
A team of researchers from Pondicherry University’s Fungal Biotechnology Laboratory in the Department of Biotechnology, has secured two German patents in the areas of biochemical engineering and fungal in-vitro bio-transformation for commercial-scale alternate fuel (ethanol) production.
The intellectual property rights relate to a circular economical bio-refinery model and a functional hybrid bio-reactor for better utilisation of nutrients to produce the intended products.
The research team, led by Venkateswara Sarma, comprised Navnit Kumar Ramamoorthy, Revanth Babu Pallam, Vinoth V., Shovan Rakshit, and Vignesh K. in addition to the collaborators Sudha Rani of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pondicherry University and Renganathan S. of the Centre for Biotechnology, Anna University, Chennai.
The team’s bio-fuels research ties in with the roll out of a Central scheme for mandatory 20% ethanol blending in commercially-available fossil fuels (petrol and diesel) to increase usage of bio-fuels, cut emissions and ease import dependence.
The researchers used ‘plant litter waste’ and ‘paper-based packaging material waste’ collected from around the University’s campus to produce ethanol, employing edible fungi and sequentially-adapted yeast, a press note from the University said.
The researchers are exploring ways of indigenous ethanol production as a sustainable agri-preneurial venture, which can be easily adopted by the training-equipped marginal and/or poor farmers. The team is also developing a ‘handy mobile app’ for simplifying expensive analytical techniques used in bio-refinery unit-operations.
With financial assistance from the government, funding agencies or industry sponsors, the larger aim is to develop a ‘continuously-operable, in-house, self-sustainable 2G-ethanol bio-refinery’ to meet the alternate fuel demand in the country, the researchers said.
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