Green Engineering., Eco-chemistry and Kinetics for Sustainability
Intense modernisation and industrialisation is continuing to have many adverse effects on nature and the environment. There is an urgent need to look into the eco-friendly materials and processes. We “GEEKS” are striving to develop such sustainable processes, and some of our current projects are listed below:
a. CO2 Reduction: Carbondioxide (CO2) is one of the major contributors of global warming. It occurs naturally in the atmosphere but the human activities, such as the burning of fossilfuels and other processes, are significantly increasing its concentration in the atmosphere for the past few decades. We focus on the development of a design algorithm for modelling and simulating the gas absorption in chemical solvents. We also study the effect of various operating parameters on gas removal in milli and micro channels (Fig. 1.) and try to develop an energy efficient process.
Fig. 1: CO2 capture using milli-channels.
b. Artificial Photosynthesis: Imagine if you can mimic the natural process of converting CO2 to hydrocarbon fuels and oxygen.We work on development of artificial photosynthesis process using adsorption based mechanism on TiO2 and similar materials.
c. Aqueous Two Phase Extraction: Waste water treatment is one of the major concerns in the present day scenario. Dyes from industries are a major cause of water pollution. We study the extraction of these dyes using aqueous two phase systems in milli and micro channels, which due to high specific interfacial area provide good extraction efficiency.We also develop mathematical models to aid in scaleup and process optimisation.
d. Foam Fractionation: Foam fractionation is a separation technique in which surface active solutes are concentrated from very dilute solutions by preferential adsorption at gas-liquid interfaces, created by sparging an inert gas through a surfactant solution (Fig. 3). Owing to its ability to separate based on surface activity, this process can be used for practical purposes like enrichment of biomolecular solutions in pharmaceutical and food industries. It can also be used to strip surface-active contaminants or non-surface active contaminants (like metal ions) from waste water streams. Our primary focus is on enrichment of surface active molecules using two processes i.e. foam fractionation and micro channels. During fractionation in batch and micro channel (Fig. 2.) various physical processes like Adsorption, Foam Drainage, Bubble Coalescence, and Gas Diffusion come into play. We carry out both experimental and theoretical studies to understand these processes in batch and microchannel systems.
Fig. 2: Foam fractionation in micro-channel.
Fig. 3: Foam fractionation experimental set up.
e. E-waste management and Nanoparticle Synthesis :
Increase in the amount of E-waste generation globally has led to problems in the managementof this waste. Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) comprise major
portion of such E-waste. Copper is a major metal content in PCB followed by traces of Silver and Gold. Available methods of E-waste management do not
ensure recovery of metals in an eco-friendly manner. We focus on green recovery of the major metal contents of the PCB, via dissolution, and convert
them into useful nanoparticles with real world applications.
1) Dissolution Kinetics of metals in PCB
2) Separation of Metal Nitrates
3) Nanoparticle Synthesis in microfluidic devices
