Department of Chemical Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) is a premier institute of science and technology established in 2008. IITH has been consistently ranked in the&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/reports/" rel="noopener noreferrer">top 10 institutes</a>&nbsp;in India for Engineering&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nirfindia.org/2021/EngineeringRanking.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to NIRF</a>&nbsp;making it one of the most coveted schools for science and technology in the country.

IITH offers&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/academics/under-graduate/">undergraduate programs</a>&nbsp;in all the classical engineering disciplines, applied sciences, design, as well as several modern interdisciplinary areas. Students are given a flexibility to explore a broad set of areas, and potentially pursue a minor or double major in a discipline that is not their own. Students who wish to seek a deeper understanding of their own discipline are strongly encouraged to get involved in cutting-edge research with the help of a faculty to mentor them, and earn an Honors in their own field.

The very foundation of IIT Hyderabad is based on&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/research/">research and innovation</a>. The vibrant research culture is evident from the number of patents and publications that IITH produces consistently every year. IITH offers&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/academics/programmes-offered/">graduate programs</a>&nbsp;at both a masters, and a doctoral level, in several diverse areas. There are separate programs for technology, design, science, and liberal arts. The&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/academics/post-graduate/">MTech program</a>&nbsp;is offered in various modes and durations to cater to the ever-growing need of postgraduate level professionals in the country.

IITH encourages and supports&nbsp;<a href="https://iic-iith.netlify.app/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">innovation and entrepreneurship</a>&nbsp;at every stage. The minor program in entrepreneurship is open to all students of IITH, and many of the courses are offered by industrialists who are entrepreneurs themselves. There are various&nbsp;<a href="https://iith.ac.in/research/centres-incubators/">innovation centers and incubators</a>&nbsp;that promote entrepreneurship and help mentor young innovators. IITH has been very successful in building tie-ups with leading academic institutions around the globe.

IITH enjoys a very special relationship with Japanese universities and industries that goes beyond academic and research collaborations. In fact, some of the iconic buildings in IITH campus will carry the signature of Japanese architecture.

IITH creates a unique holistic ecosystem for education that offers interactive learning, a very flexible academic structure, cutting-edge research, strong industry collaboration, and entrepreneurship. This is an environment which enables students and faculty to translate their dreams into realities.

IIT Hyderabad

Electrocatalytic water splitting to produce green hydrogen is a promising approach for clean energy generation. However, the commercial aspect of this approach is limited due to catalysts cost and feedstock. Thus design of an inexpensive and noble metal-free (Pt, Rh, Ir etc.) catalyst is desirable. Moreover, wastewater as a feedstock for hydrogen generation is not explored to its full potential for green hydrogen generation, which otherwise is also a problem to be managed especially in developing countries. In the present work, we have investigated an inexpensive catalyst i.e. candle soot-derived carbon as an electrocatalyst for H2 generation from textile wastewater utilizing methylene blue as a model pollutant. The carbon catalyst is synthesized from the candle soot and is characterized for its structural and morphological properties. Carbon soot coated onto the nickel foam (CS@NF) proves as an efficient hydrogen evolution catalyst due to its excellent electrical conductivity and large active surface area. CS2.5@NF (with the loading of 2.5 mg cm−2) shows an overpotential and Tafel slope of 117 mV and 43.85 mV/dec, respectively in an acidic medium containing textile pollutants. Under optimal condition, ∼62% degradation is achieved within ∼90 min, along with the stable hydrogen production of ∼0.158 mmol per hour. These preliminary findings demonstrate the potential usage of an inexpensive non-noble metal free catalyst for simultaneous wastewater treatment as well as hydrogen generation. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

World University root node

Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids

A noble metal-free candle soot derived carbon electrocatalyst for simultaneous H2 generation and wastewater treatment

We show that a vertical viscosity stratification at a localized region caused by a chemical reaction yields an inconspicuous shear layer. A chemo-hydrodynamic Kelvin-Helmholtz instability or cat-eye-shaped morphology develops at one reaction front, while the other front diffuses steadily over time. Through linear stability and nonlinear simulations, the existence of such instabilities is established if the log-mobility ratio exceeds a critical value. We find unique scalings between the stable and unstable zones that demonstrate how the influence of variations in solute diffusion on instability can be eliminated. The observed unstable patterns agree with existing experimental results. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Journal of Fluid Mechanics

Reaction-induced Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in a layered channel flow

A membrane-free low cost microfluidic fuel cell (μFFC) consisting a trident shaped channel is molded into a poly(dimethyl siloxane) block and Ni wires affixed therein that doubled up as the catalyst and electrical connectors. Streams of aqueous acidic solutions of formic acid as the anolyte (fuel), KMnO4 as the catholyte (oxidant) and an acid electrolyte, flown through the respective channels at a constant rate ensured laminar flow across the length of the channels, while being in contact with the Ni wires, thereby tapping its’ catalytic activity for good electrochemical performance. The effect of varying fuel or oxidant concentration on the μFFC performance is studied. In the chronopotentiometric mode, the high catalytic activity of Ni allows high currents of the order of 1.25 mA to be sustained by the cell, particularly when the surface is fresh, and this current drops when the deposition of Mn, K, and S occurs. A flow rate of 150 μL/min. is found to be optimal, as the highest open-circuit voltage (OCV) of 1.33 V is attained at this flow rate. While the cell performance is largely unaffected by formic acid concentration, but it is controlled by KMnO4 concentration. Higher oxidant concentrations yielded higher OCVs, due to more amount of the five-electron reaction, occurring at the cathode enhancing the charge separation and hence the OCV. DRT studies of the EIS data resolved two different time constants for the anodic and cathodic processes. The μFFC delivers a maximum power density of 2.1 mW/cm2 and a stable current of 3.5 mA/cm2 for more than 10 min. at 0.6 V, thus validating its deployment in a variety of applications like diagnostic devices and as an independent power supply for MEMS devices. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Department of Chemistry

Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry

Performance evaluation of HCOOH micro-fluidic fuel cell using Ni wire electrode

Microbial production of 2,3-butanediol (BDO) has received considerable attention as a promising alternate to fossil-derived BDO. In our previous work, BDO concentration &gt;100 g/L was accumulated using brewer’s spent grain (BSG) via microbial routes which was followed by techno-economic analysis of the bioprocess. In the present work, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for BDO production from the fermentation of BSG to identify the associated environmental impacts. The LCA was based on an industrial-scale biorefinery processing of 100 metric tons BSG per day modeled using ASPEN plus integrated with pinch technology, a tool for achieving maximum thermal efficiency and heat recovery from the process. For the cradle-to-gate LCA, the functional unit of 1 kg of BDO production was selected. One-hundred-year global warming potential of 7.25 kg CO2/kg BDO was estimated while including biogenic carbon emission. The pretreatment stage followed by the cultivation and fermentation contributed to the maximum adverse impacts. Sensitivity analysis revealed that a reduction in electricity consumption and transportation and an increase in BDO yield could reduce the adverse impacts associated with microbial BDO production. © 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.

ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering

Life Cycle Assessment of Microbial 2,3-Butanediol Production from Brewer’s Spent Grain Modeled on Pinch Technology

Mineral processing includes various processes and unit operations that involve particle flow, turbulent fluid flow, and their interactions. These multiphase systems and interactions are opaque and quite difficult to study and hence quite challenging to optimize. Empirical models suffer from an inherent drawback of not being useful beyond the range of conditions for which they are developed. This has made the use of first principle computational methods, such as discrete element modeling, computational fluid dynamics, and population balance modeling, very popular. This chapter describes the principles behind these commonly used numerical-modeling tools; Though these tools have been widely used in many mineral-processing areas, this chapter mainly gives an overview of their application in mixing, classification, grinding, and heavy media separation. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mineral Processing: Beneficiation Operations and Process Optimization through Modeling

Numerical methods in mineral processing: an overview

Drug discovery for CNS disorders is a uniquely challenging endeavor, where calcium (Ca2+) imaging is being actively studied to evaluate the effect of GPCR-targeting drugs in vivo and in vitro. However, the quantification of drug efficacy and targetting corresponding to drug dose and drug type remains challenging. The heterogeneity in the population behavior makes it difficult to decipher the distributions of patterns corresponding to lower and higher drug doses. Herein, we demonstrate the quantification and visualization of Ca2+. imaging data using microstate analysis. This method generalizes the various states of the system at various points in time into fewer defined numbers of microstates appearing in the given data. These microstates and the pattern of their appearance helps to study complex system with a large number of spiking states. Such microstate decomposition can help us to understand and compare the spatiotemporal data. Using this approach, we have attempted to study the heterogeneity in Ca2+ -imaging data obtained from live-cell imaging of rat hippocampal neurons. We have investigated how the nature of microstates changes with respect to drug treatment, size of cell population, and cell sparsity. This analysis can be useful in drug discovery and comparison of the efficacy of different doses of the drug. © 2023 IEEE.

International IEEE/EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering, NER

Microstate analysis of GABABand mGluR Mediated Modulation of Calcium Spiking in Hippocampal Neurons

A thermodynamically consistent mechanistic rate model for steam reforming (SRM) and catalytic partial oxidation (CPOx) of a synthetic biogas mixture on a Ni catalyst is derived in this work. A microkinetic model (MKM) consisting of 42 irreversible reactions served as the starting point for the development of the model equations presented in this study. A global sensitivity analysis based on ANOVA using Sobol sampling is conducted on the MKM to identify important reactions that describe SRM, CPOx, and water-gas shift reaction (WGSR), which occur alongside CH4 reforming. The unimportant reactions are eliminated to obtain a reduced elementary reaction model, which is subjected to validation by reproducing the predictions of 42 reactions of the MKM. The rate-determining steps (rds) are identified for SRM, WGSR, and CPOx, from the reduced mechanism by using a net reaction rate and partial equilibrium analysis. Mechanistic rate expressions are derived from the identified rds by adopting the Langmuir-Hinshelwood-Hougen-Watson approach. The parameters of these mechanistic rate models for SRM, WGSR, and CPOx are estimated by using a real coded genetic algorithm. The rate models with the estimated parameters could reproduce the experimental observations with good accuracy. The predictive capability of the derived rate models is established by comparing the model predictions with the experimental measurements of SRM, combined steam and dry reforming, and trireforming. The reforming experiments were performed for a synthetic biogas mixture containing CH4/CO2 = 2, in a packed bed reactor using 10 wt % Ni/γ-Al2O3. Overall the mechanistic models were able to predict the experimental measurements with good accuracy. © 2023 American Chemical Society

Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research

Investigating Reforming Kinetics of a Synthetic Biogas Mixture on Ni: Model Development and Experimental Validation

Photocatalysts suffer from limited light absorption and rapid electron-hole recombination which can be overcome by fabricating a suitable Z-scheme heterojunction. A facile hydrothermal process is employed to synthesize copper bismuth oxide and molybdenum disulfide (CBO@MoS2) composites which show a significantly high hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) production rate of 1457 μM h−1, which is an order of magnitude higher than that exhibited by their pure components. In addition, the hydrogen evolution reaction exhibited a current density of −1.6 mA cm−2 at 0.1 V which is also double than that exhibited by pure CBO. The improved photocatalytic activity of CBO@MoS2 is mainly attributed to the efficient separation of electron-hole pairs due to the staggered band alignment and the formation of a Z-scheme heterojunction that retains the strong redox ability of both CBO and MoS2. A detailed study using a superoxide scavenger indicates that the production of H2O2 takes a two-step route. Photoluminescence, Mott-Schottky analysis, scavenger study and kinetic modelling led to an understanding of the mechanistic aspects of H2O2 production. © 2023 The Royal Society of Chemistry

Journal of Materials Chemistry A

Mechanistic insights into enhanced photocatalytic H2O2 production induced by a Z-scheme heterojunction of copper bismuth oxide and molybdenum sulfide

In search of improved advanced energy storage systems to meet our fast-growing energy demands for large-scale applications, potassium-sulfur batteries (KSBs) provide an essential alternative due to their high specific capacity apart from the low cost and abundance of potassium and sulfur. However, the insulating nature of sulfur, volume changes, and shuttle effect impede the development of these batteries. Further, the binder, carbon additives, and current collector used in the assembly of cells in a conventional approach decrease the energy density of cells. To overcome these challenges, we propose a binder-free and free-standing carbonized bacterial cellulose (CBC) as a cathode host that not only provides a conducting pathway but also has a porous network that is resilient to volume change. To ensure the uniform loading of sulfur, CBC was dipped into the sulfur/carbon disulfide solution, followed by melt diffusion at 160 °C to prepare a sulfur-infused CBC (S-CBC) cathode. This S-CBC cathode with an interconnected fiber network delivers a significantly high reversible capacity of 1311 mA h g-1 at a current density of 50 mA g-1. While connected for long-term cycling, the potassium sulfur cell delivers an initial reversible capacity of 475 mA h g-1 at 100 mA g-1. Once the cell is stabilized after 80 cycles, it maintains a capacity of 123 mA h g-1 with a capacity retention of 86% after 500 cycles. This enhanced electrochemical performance of flexible and free-standing S-CBC cathode is further analyzed using first-principles calculations. Moreover, the efficacy of the S-CBC cathode is also tested under high sulfur loading (1.6 and 2.4 mg cm-2, respectively) for the practical development of KSBs. © 2023 American Chemical Society.

Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering

ACS Applied Energy Materials

Carbonized Bacterial Cellulose-Derived Binder-Free, Flexible, and Free-Standing Cathode Host for High-Performance Stable Potassium-Sulfur Batteries

This paper reports a facile approach for the synthesis of graphene stabilised zero valent iron (nZVI) via carbothermal reduction method using bio-waste materials. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed the formation of nZVI, which was further supported by magnetic susceptibility measurements. The process of Cr(VI) removal was revealed by analysing nZVI/graphene before and after the Cr(VI) adsorption process. nZVI/graphene reduces Cr(VI) to Cr(III), which was adsorbed on the graphene sheet, avoiding the passivation of nZVI. Graphene provides good electrical conductivity, skeletal support, and has long-term electron releasing characteristics, which can accelerate the reduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III) and demonstrates a quick and high removal capacity of Cr(VI) from an aquifer. The influence of Cr(VI) initial concentration, adsorbent dosages, equilibrium studies, solution pH, kinetics, adsorption isotherms, and thermodynamic parameters was also investigated. Synopsis. The green synthesis of nZVI/graphene composites for Cr(VI) reduction has not been well investigation. This paper reports a facile eco-friendly synthesis of nZVI/graphene composites for the removal of heavy metal contaminants from aquifers. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

Separation and Purification Technology

Bio-waste assisted phase transformation of Fe3O4/carbon to nZVI/graphene composites and its application in reductive elimination of Cr(VI) removal from aquifer