IIT Team Finds How To Raise Biofuel Yield From Aquatic Weeds

Scientists at Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur have unlocked the secret to ramp up yields of biofuel sourced from commonly found aquatic weeds such as water hyacinths. In a new study published on December 1 in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers have shown that this weed -- which contains up to 50 per cent hemicelluloses -- can now be used as an economic and abundant source of biofuel.

"We show that the secret to rapidly producing soluble sugars from amorphous natural polymers such as hemicelluloses lies in their smallest scale-the pores," said Saikat Chakraborty, faculty member at the Department of Chemical Engineering and lead researcher of the Bioenergy Research Group at IIT - Kharagpur. Chakraborty and co-author Sajal Kanti Dutta have uncovered the pore-scale phenomena that result in "fourfold increase in the yields of fermentable sugars and bioethanol" from hemicelluloses..

Scientists at the institute's chemical engineering department and PK Sinha Centre for Bioenergy are now working to transform these fundamental insights into new biofuel technologies that would help fight climate change.

With inputs from IANS.