• Students from the IITB node using some of the Centre’s facilities

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  • Members of the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) for the Centre, attending the SAC meeting held at IITB in Jan, 2018

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  • Inauguration of the Centre facilities at IITB by Dr. Renu Swarup (Secretary, Department of BioTechnology, Government of India). On the left is Dr. Devang V. Khakhar (director, IITB) and on the right is Dr. Pramod P. Wangikar (centre coordinator).

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  • Governing Council (GC) members of the Centre attending the annual GC meeting at IITB in Jan. 2018

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  • Deliberations of the GC meeting, 2018

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  • In-session pictures of the SAC meeting, 2018

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  • In-session pictures of the SAC meeting, 2018

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  • Attendees of the student conference, held parallel to the GC meeting at IITB, Jan 2018

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  • The Centre stall set up with Centre attendees at the international conference in Delhi titled the ''Mission Innovation International Conference on Sustainable Biofuels -2018” held at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on the 26-27th February, 2018

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  • The Centre stall set up with Centre attendees at the ‘Urja Utsav’ held in IITB in 2017

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  • The Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan visiting the IITB node of the Centre. Greeted by the Centre Coordinator, Dr. Pramod Wangikar

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  • Snapshots from the minister’s visit

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  • Students from the IITB node using some of the Centre’s facilities

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  • Students from the IITB node using some of the Centre’s facilities

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  • IIT Bombay

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  • IIT Jodhpur

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  • IIT Guwahati

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  • IIT Kharagpur

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  • IIT Roorkee

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About us

This ‘virtual’ centre for Bioenergy Research and Innovation funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, was formed to unite scientists from some of the premier technical institutes of the country under one umbrella mission to solve the big problems in the field of Bioenergy in India. This collaborative network complements the other DBT funded initiatives dedicated to help India reach its energy mandates.

Participating Institutes

Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are renowned Indian institutes of higher learning, that have a stellar world-wide reputation of research and technical innovation in all major fields of science and engineering. The DBT Pan-IIT Centre for Bioenergy has roped in scientists from 5 nodal IITs (namely IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Guwahati, IIT-Jodhpur and IIT-Roorkee) to serve the cause of bioenergy innovation. This ‘virtual’ centre is coordinated by Prof. Pramod P Wangikar from the IIT-B node.

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publications last year alone

24
5
Institutes
30
Investigators
100
Research Scholars
7
Research Groups
23
Sub-projects

Research Targets

Group 1: Cyanobacterial Biofuels

OBJECTIVE:-
GROUP 1 To engineer a cyanobacterial strain to produce succinate, n-butanol, etc.

TARGET:-
n-butanol (>4 g/L), succinate (>5 g/L)

Group 2: Algal Biofuels

OBJECTIVE:-
To genetically engineer a microalgal strain to produce high amounts of lipids, oil or ethanol

Group 3: Process Engineering (for algal bioenergy)

OBJECTIVES:-
• Maximize biomass yield in photobioreactor
• Designing optimal photobioreactors
• Cost effective algal harvesting
• Hydrogen production from algal biomass
• Technology package development for Post harvest Processi

Group 4: Biochemical, thermochemical and electrochemical conversion

OBJECTIVES:-
• Catalytic upgrading of bio-oil to transport fuel
• Development of low cost Microbial Carbon Capture (MCC) cells for continuos algal culture and power generation.

Group 5: Rational strategies for enzyme and strain improvement (Biomass to biofuels)

OBJECTIVES:-
• Engineering enzymes with desirable properties
• Simultaneous transport of hexose and pentose sugars in Zymomonas mobilis
• Butanol production in Clostridium sp.

Group 6: Bioreactor design (fermentative processes)

OBJECTIVES:-
• Control design for simultaneous saccharification and fermentation
• Bioethanol production by fractional hydrolysis and cofermentation

Group 7: Techno-economic and Life Cycle Analysis of biomass derived biofuels

Studying the techno-economic feasibility of integrated biorefineries and the life cycle impact assessment of lignocellulosic biofuels and its applications in India.

Center Facilities at IIT-B

The DBT Pan-IIT Centre for Bioenergy has a central facility with a host of state-of-the-art equipment and expertise currently located at IIT-B. These are available for a fee to both academics and industry for a fee. A few examples are shown below. Clockwise:

  1. Multicultivator with online monitoring of optical density
  2. Temperature and light regulated growth chamber
  3. GC-MS
  4. LC-MS