Contribution in Higher Educations

Research Contributions

Formulating and Enforcing Sound Environmental Policies for Industrial and societal sustainability

As an active researcher with passion for developing technology solutions for pollution control I have been guiding my group to be actively engaged in addressing important pollution problems and developing modern methods for mitigating them. We are also actively engaged in survey of air and other pollutants to keep abreast with the current situation to tune the research accordingly. A gist of our contributions over the years and future perspectives are given below.

Air Pollution Control

Industries that contribute to economic development and helpful to human beings, also load atmospheric air with dangerous pollutants such as SO2, CO2, NOX and Mercury. The need for the study of atmospheric science is gaining ground in the last three to four decades. Tropospheric O3 and related photochemical oxidants are the most prevalent harmful air pollutants in many industrialized and developing countries. Surface O3 has increased considerably since pre-industrial times. Emissions of the above pollutants in the atmosphere have increased steadily over the past five years. Measurement of atmospheric pollutants, due to the urban agglomeration and tremendous increase in vehicular population results in rise of various pollutant concentrations. In the Metropolitan cities, there is an increase in the NOX, PAH concentrations, which react in the atmosphere and form ozone concentration at the ground level.

We are actively studying the ozone level at different altitudes in the urban agglomeration, to establish the mapping of ozone level in the entire city, which will ultimately lead to the identification of the hot spots. The policy and the strategy will be drawn based on the trouble shooting hot spots to mitigate the ozone precursors. We are also contemplating to apply different air models, so as to help the policy makers to draw a viable policy, to implement schemes in order to safeguard environment and public health. Present research activity also involves the study of gas phase pollutants and ozonolyses of olefins, particularly, with respect to ozone chemistry and the studies of reactions of ozone with series of olefins. These research findings are of direct relevance to the atmospheric chemistry of alkenes and to their role in oxidant and aerosol formations. The present study also focuses on the effect of temperature on the formation of photochemical ozone, relevant to global warming.

Waste Water Treatment

Novel approach in textile effluent treatment has been developed by continuous research in the field of waste water mitigation. The adsorption of textile dyes using cheap lignocellulose substrates; kinetics and mass transfer involved in the sorption process, modeling and simulation of solid/liquid adsorption systems (by linear and non-linear method) were studied. Other important research areas are removal of heavy metal ions from aqueous solution, using polymeric resins and adsorption of organic compounds from aqueous solution using mesoporous silicates and lignocellulose substrates. The adsorption studies were internationally credited and cited in many articles. Some of the significant studies are biosorption of malachite green, a cationic dye onto Pithophora sp., fresh water algae and removal of Acid Violet 17 from aqueous solution by adsorption onto activated carbon, prepared from sunflower seed hull and removal of heavy metal ions from aqueous solution by using activated carbon prepared from cashew nut shell.

Solid and Hazardous Waste Management

Under land pollution, research and development activities cover a broad spectrum of possible renewable resources from solid waste management. Solid waste management, especially with respect to its disposal and management is being explored. Research article on production of biogas from municipal solid waste with domestic sewage was widely cited in many journals and utilized for commercialization. The significance of the work is in successful implementation of anaerobic digestion as the method of waste treatment leading to the regional utilization of renewable energy resources with site-specific application depending upon local resources, energy requirements and costs. Another research finding published in Applied Energy Journal entitled as “Thermophilic composting of municipal solid waste” is also a significant contribution in the waste management field.

Alternative fuels

There is an also ongoing research project in our research group on production of Biodiesel from various non edible oils, kinetics, thermodynamic studies and modelling in Biodiesel production. There are several non-edible oils from different species such as Pungam (Pongamia pinnata), Jatropha (Jatropha curcas), Pinnai, Karanja and Neem (Azadirachta indica) which could be utilized for Biodiesel production processes. Modelling and kinetics of process parameters such as methanol to oil ratio, catalyst loading and temperature were optimized using Classical method and Response surface methodology (RSM).