Guest lecture on on carbon sequestration: Carbon dioxide to Biofuel generation on 10th February, 2018

Professor Indu Shekhar Thakur, School of Environmental Sciences, Jawahar Nehru University has given a talk on carbon sequestration: Carbon dioxide to Biofuel generation on 10^th February, 2018 in A.V hall. He very aptly had taken a topic which is of our concern interms of energy requirement and pollution load.

To meet the CO₂ emission reduction targets, carbon dioxide capture and utilization (CCU) comes as an evolve technology. CCU concept is turning into a feedstock and technologies have been developed for transformation of CO₂ in to useful organic products. At industrial scale, utilization of CO₂ as raw material is not much significant as compare to its abundance. Mechanisms in nature have evolved for carbon concentration, fixation and utilization. Assimilation and subsequent conversion of CO₂ in to complex molecules are performed by the photosynthetic and chemolithotrophic organisms. In the last three decades, substantial research is carry out to discover chemical and biological conversion of CO₂ in various synthetic and biological materials, such as carboxylic acids, esters, lactones, polymer biodiesel, bio-plastics, bio-alcohols, exopolysaccharides. This review presents an over view of catalytic transformation of CO₂ in to biofuels and biomaterials by chemical and biological methods.

The lecture was attended by faculty and post graduate students of Biotechnology, Microbiology, Environmental science, Chemistry and Zoology. It was a relevant and informative talk where Prof.  Thakur vividly explained his research work with the young audience. All could very well connect to the talk and even pursue it as their future research arena.