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MY RESEARCH
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Conversion of Biomass Waste into Hydrocarbon-rich Fuels and Chemicals using Pyrolysis
The vast amount of biomass/organic waste/plastics generated around the world can be efficiently converted into liquid fuels and chemicals using the pyrolysis technique. This research aims to,
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Convert a variety of waste biomass feedstocks such as agricultural and forestry biomass waste, grassy biomass, industrial organic waste, municipal solid waste, plastic waste into hydrocarbon-rich bio-oil which can become a substitute for drop-in fuels.
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Optimize the operating conditions to produce the desired yield and composition of bio-oil with different biomass feedstocks.
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An experimental study to understand the essential chemistry of biomass pyrolysis and the effect of transport on pyrolysis reactions.
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Reveal a detailed reaction network of biomass thermal decomposition based on the pyrolysis product distribution obtained under reaction-controlled operating conditions, to support the theoretical studies investigating fundamental pyrolysis reactions.
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Develop a reaction-transport model to investigate and understand the crucial interplay of reaction and transport occurring within the biomass particle with respect to the operating conditions.
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Effect of naturally occurring metal ions on biomass pyrolysis chemistry.
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2. Hydrodynamic Cavitation of Petroleum Cruce Oil
Crude oil refineries have the major objective of improving the yield of middle distillates. Heavier crudes, containing higher amounts of waxes and longer carbon chain compounds, are being increasingly processed in the refineries. Such heavy and waxy crudes are less convenient to handle, more costly to process and produce lower amounts of distillates per barrel of oil. The
heating requirements and difficulty of maintaining these materials under heated conditions at all levels become significant because of their high viscosity. Hence, this research investigates hydrodynamic cavitation as an alternative and energy-efficient technique to improve the physicochemical characteristics of crude oil due to cracking amongst their compounds.
3. Hydrotropic Extraction of Active Compounds from Biomass and Organic Materials
A process for the delignification of sugarcane bagasse using aqueous hydrotropic solutions is developed as an alternative to conventional acidic or alkaline treatments. The conditions such as temperature, hydrotrope concentration, and bagasse loading, and time are optimized for bagasse lignin removal. The delignification process is modeled as the extraction of lignin from the solid biomatrix to estimate its diffusivity coefficient and activation energy of the process. The isolated lignin is successfully characterized by UV spectroscopy, infrared spectrocopy (IR), mass spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry analysis (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), gel permeation chromatography (GPC), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
4. Adsorptive Separations
5. Application of Biochar for Soil Amendment
Biochar, a highly carbonaceous charred organic material obtained from biomass conversion can be deliberately applied as a conditioner/ amender in order to improve soil quality and associated environmental services. Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum), lignocellulosic biomass, can potentially be used to produce biochar. The aim of the present work is to manufacture, comprehensively characterize, and apply biochar obtained from the vacuum pyrolysis and investigate its potential for soil amendment. Biochar produced from Napier grass was characterized for its pH, electrical conductivity, soil water retention capacity, surface acidity and/or basicity, elemental composition, Infrared spectra, X-ray diffraction spectra, surface area, porosity, soil–water relation and morphological properties. Experiments on the methylene blue adsorption of the biochar indicated an equilibrium uptake capacity of 35 mg.g−1 and showed good agreement with the Langmuir–Freundlich model. Kinetic studies revealed Lagergren pseudo-first-order fit with intra-particle diffusion appearing to be one of the rate-controlling mechanisms. Pot trials with Cicer grown in neutral and acidic soil amended with biochar validated that biochar augmented plant growth in terms of enhanced biomass weight and the number of seed germinations. The entire investigation revealed that the properties of the produced biochar are in line with those necessary for it to act as a suitable agent for the soil amendment.
6. Energy Storage Materials
Necessity of energy storage had led to the development of new materials which can act like supercapacitor and provide immediately energy, especially in transportation.
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