bio innovation
Bio Innovation-IIT Series
The Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT), a leading research institute in
India opened its premises for public
to the twelfth annual Open House on
April 23, 2016. BioVoice brings the
details of few innovative bioscience
projects that were on the display
Mobile unit for biogas
enrichment and bottling
This IIT Team has developed a mobile
unit of biogas purification and bottling
plant mounted on four wheeled trolley
operated by a tractor
Team comprising Dr V K Vijay, Dr P M V
Subbarao, Dr Vandit Vijay, Dr Bhaskar Jha and
Mr Dhruv at Biogas Production and Enrichment
Laboratory, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
designed and developed the portable system
utilizes water based carbon scrubbing technology.
The developed system is able to process 20
Nm3/h of biogas to upgrade it to natural gas
quality fuel. This mobile unit of biogas
purification and bottling plant can be easily
transported at biogas plants sites situated in and
around villages to purify the biogas and store into
the CNG cylinders at 200 bar pressure. The high
pressure upgraded biogas can be easily dispensed
into vehicles which have been mounted on the
cascade. The upgraded biogas can be used for
other applications such as power generation and
cooking fuel to a grade of LPG fuel required in
households as well as in industries to meet the
requirement of gas combustion for various
thermal applications.
The innovators say that the system is easy to
handle by young entrepreneurs providing
employment in rural areas and energy security.
This developed system enhances the business
model of biogas for its commercialization. At
large, the system is able to remove the limitations
of utilizing biogas at a point of generation. Such
kind of system can be taken up by rural
entrepreneurs having large job opportunities for
semi–skilled and skilled mass of workers in
villages.
Boosting biofertilizer
productivity
The optimized process developed by the
IIT team provides an efficient and
economical way for
large scale
manufacture of
biofertilizers.
Agricultural production worldwide is faced with
severe problems caused by climate change and
ever-increasing population. The need of the hour
therefore is to practice sustainable agriculture
with agricultural amendments that are efficient
and environment friendly. Modern biotechnologies such as biofertilizers consisting of
microorganisms are a powerful tool to improve
soil fertility for sustainable production, besides
being excellent alternatives to contaminating and
energy demanding chemical fertilizers.
The IIT Delhi group under the leadership of Dr
Vikram Sahai and consisting of Prof V S Bisaria,
and Dr Shilpi Sharma of the Biochemical
Engineering and Biotechnology Department
developed a LabView platform based process
control software and a high productivity fedbatch process.
The group of researchers did the same by using
bench scale bioreactors, for enhanced production
of cell mass of the two pseudomonad strains R62
and R81. The developed process is an efficient
way of mass production of the PGPR strains by
the fed-batch culture using a pH-based feeding
strategy.
The fed-batch culture method has been scaled- up
in a 14 L fermenter. Compared to a batch culture
method which is currently used by industry, the
developed fed-batch culture method provides
about 20-fold higher viable cell counts of the
biofertilizers, to the order of 2.7 x 1010 cfu/ml
(colony forming units/ml). In other words
product output of one cycle of fed-batch process
is equal to that from 20 batches of conventional
process. The optimized process thus provides an
efficient and economical way for large scale
manufacture of biofertilizers. The fed-batch
fermentation process developed by IIT Delhi also
provides a platform technology for large scale
cultivation of other microbial biofertilizers with
high cell counts for their application in
agriculture.
Tissue engineering and 3D
bio-printing
By using innovative procedures, this IIT
group tried to generate cellular grafts
based on autologous cells and porous
3D scaffolds to repair tissue damages
Trauma, disease and aging process can lead to
critical defects in various organs which cannot be
regenerated by itself. The resultant loss of
anatomical shape and function can be life
threatening. Tissue engineering seeks to achieve
functional restoration of these defects by using a
variety of factors, such as biomaterials, cells,
bioactive molecules, bioreactors. The
conventional approach includes the fabrication of
a scaffold followed by seeding of cells onto these
scaffolds growing them in laboratory and then
transferring it to the patients. Based on these
understanding, the group comprising Mr Sumit
Murab, Ms Priyanka Dubey, Ms Shikha Chawla,
Mr Shibu C. and Prof Sourabh Ghosh from
Department of Textile Technology at IIT-Delhi
tried to generate cellular grafts based on
autologous cells and porous 3D scaffolds to repair
cartilage, bone and muscle tissues, as well as
complex tissue interfaces.
Scaffolds of wide varieties of 3D architectures and
mechanical properties are designed by using
concepts of Textile technology like knitting,
weaving, nonwoven and braiding. Aside from
scaffold and appropriate cell source,
environmental inputs - such as appropriate
biomechanical forces, hydrodynamic fluid
transport of nutrients and metabolic waste
products and growth factors, are considered to
develop in vitro engineered tissue constructs.
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