The Hindu : New Delhi News : IP student’s project may help cut down production cost of bio-fuel

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 03, 2008
ePaper

New Delhi

New Delhi

IP student’s project may help cut down production cost of bio-fuel

Parul Sharma

Ramneek Khurana undertook project along
with University of Newcastle, UK
Process of checking economic feasibility
of venture to begin this month

NEW DELHI: If a project undertaken by a student of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University along with University of Newcastle, UK, passes the economic feasibility study, the world can hope for a much lower costing industrial production of bio-diesel.

Ramneek Khurana, a final year student of the University School of Chemical Technology at Indraprastha University has just returned from Kolkata where he addressed the Indian Chemical Engineers’ Conference on the results of using a heterogeneous catalyst in extraction of Jatropha Curcas (an inedible weed) to produce bio-diesel.

“Beginning January, we will initiate the process of checking the economic feasibility of the project that has been developed in the laboratory. If everything goes fine, we hope to venture into industrial production and also approach the industry for sponsoring it,” he says.

For the past two years, Ramneek, with guidance from A.P. Harvey and J.G.M. Lee at Newcastle and U.K. Mandal in his School, has been working on a project that incorporated three methods by which the cost of bio-diesel can be reduced.

First, they used the seeds of Jatropha Curcas (which is grown in many parts of India) as a source of the oil. Second, by producing fuel efficiently by combining the extraction of oil from seeds and the reaction to form bio-diesel into one single step and, third, by using a low-temperature solid heterogeneous catalyst replacing conventional homogenous catalyst.

“I applied for a summer internship with Newcastle University in 2006. We worked on changing the raw material from the earlier-used rapeseed as feedstock to Jatropha seeds. We also introduced a solid catalyst as suggested by Claire McLeod, a Ph. D. student there, instead of salts that tend to increase the cost of production,” said Ramneek.

“With the change in the system, we observed that the conversion rate into bio-diesel was about 92 per cent in two minutes and more than 99 per cent in eight minutes. I submitted my report in 2006. That was when we worked on the production process. When I went back in 2007, we explored the manufacturing prospects of the project keeping the European market in mind,” he added.

In the latter part of 2007, Ramneek and Dr. Mandal developed a “kinetic model” at Indraprastha University with the help of data exchange from the British university. They prepared a satisfactory model to correspond with the laboratory-scale results of 2006. The kinetic study was intended to help in taking the process to an industrial scale.

As of now, the cost of bio-diesel production is too high and far too expensive than petrol. If the project becomes successful, it could be available at the same rate as or even lower than petrol.

Use of bio-diesel also significantly reduces air pollutants, such as particulates and hydro-carbons, which help in keeping the environment cleaner compared to other fuels.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi