Material Resource Efficiency Division

Increasing occurrences of abnormal weather due to climate change has forced us to look into renewable source of energy. This has also led to an increase in the awareness among people to utilise the materials efficiently. Material Resource Efficiency Division (MRED) was created as a platform to identify and develop processes, which efficiently utilises the waste polymeric materials (industrial and agricultural residues, forest wastes, aquatic biomass, defatted residues, waste sugar streams, industrial lignins etc.) into chemicals and fuels/ energy carriers. The division has people with expertise in biotechnological, and thermochemical areas supported with complete analytical facilities. Several awards received, patents obtained, and papers published in reputed peer reviewed journals are an indication of the huge knowledgebase that this division has gained over the years.

 Vision

To develop deployable, resource efficient and environment friendly technologies, products, systems and provide services for sustainable use of renewable carbon resources benchmarked against leading Global and National alternatives

 Mission

  • Carry out world class research in the area of biotechnological and thermochemical conversion of biomass to produce chemicals, materials, and energy carriers/fuels in a sustainable manner
  • Establish a patent estate that can be measurably leveraged for value to the Institute and the Nation
  • Efficiently use all the material resources generated in the process to produce chain of products where the net loss to landfilling is zero
  • Recycle, recover and reuse materials from processes and from end-of-life goods in areas of National relevance
  • Generate increased output from a specified amount of input (materials and energy) across all unit operations in identified processes
  • Deploy these developed economical and environment friendly processes for societal benefit in line with the sustainable development goals (SDG’s)
  • Carry out life cycle analysis for all technologies, products and services of MRED to understand and validate the carbon, nitrogen, and water footprints and other measurable resource efficiency parameters

Dr Thallada Bhaskar
Chief Scientist & Professor
Academy of Scientific & Innovative Research (AcSIR)
Head of Division
Email: tbhaskar@iip.res.in
Tel: +91 135 2525820 
Google Scholar link: https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=wh5NdbkAAAAJ&hl=en 
Webpage link: http://thalladabhaskar.weebly.com/
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6390-3296
Research gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thallada_Bhaskar

  • Renewable fuels and specialty chemicals from biomass feedstocks by microbial fermentation
  • Design of novel catalytic materials for biomass/Lignin conversion
  • Thermal/Catalytic upgradation of bio-oil(s) for fuel blends and high value chemicals
  • Novel functional materials for adsorbents, super capacitor applications
  • Non-conventional methods for fractionation and effective utilisation of lignocellulosic biomass
  • Lignocellulosic biomass for bio-binder and hydrophobic materials
  • Resource efficiency, Circular economy of renewable and non-renewable materials
  • Computational analysis of microbial systems
  • OMICS informatics and FLUXOMICS
  • Life cycle analysis (LCA, Energy/exergy analysis and Techno economic feasibility studies
  • Virus testing through molecular diagnostics
  • American Chemical Society (ACS)
  • Biotech Research Society, India (BRSI)
  • International Society of Energy, Environment and Sustainability (ISEES)
  • Japan Society of Material Cycles and Waste Management (JSMCWM)
  • Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
  • Biological Engineering Society (BESI)