Bioethanol : Fuel of the future by Saurabh kumar of LPU

Bioethanol is a product considered by many to be the fuel of the future.  A biofuel made by fermenting various plant sugars, its main advantage is that it's more eco-friendly and it seems one Master's student from India is an expert on its production.

Saurabh Kumar from Lovely Professional University (LPU) represented India at the 27th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition (EUBCE) in Lisbon, Portugal. At an event where most papers were presented by scientists or Ph.D. scholars, he was one of the youngest research publishers present.

Singh's research on 'Comparative evaluation of methods for Bioethanol production from co-cultures of Zymomonas mobilis and Saccharomyces cerevisiae' aims to enable large-scale production of Bioethanol using yeast and bacteria.

He believes he has a way to upscale production for the petroleum substitute.

Why is Bioethanol - the fuel of the future?

Made from plants rich in sucrose like cane sugar, beet, sweet sorghum, or those rich in starch like corn, wheat or potatoes, the advantages of bioethanol are plenty. For one, it's renewable, unlike petroleum. It's also clean and much less toxic than other fuels, generating far less CO2 given that it's made from plants that absorb it in the first place. This makes the net balance of emissions they produced positive.

Bioethanol compounds are manufactured by fermenting the sucrose and starch-rich parts of crops left over after a harvest.

"Biofuels are the need of the hour, however, the biggest challenge in their adoption is their production and availability in large amounts," Singh said. "We all want to live in a greener and cleaner world and nothing would give me more pleasure than my research playing a role in accelerating the production of biofuels."

About Saurabh Kumar 

Saurabh Kumar from Lovely Professional University (LPU) doing his master's degree in Biotechnology from Uttar Pradesh. Saurabh Kumar was looking for a way to mass-produce the compound in order to replace automobile petroleum.

He says Indian farmers should be encouraged (through perhaps things like government incentives) to cultivate crops like sugarcane, beetroot, and corn. The waste from these crops after they've been harvested can then be used to produce bioethanol.