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IIT Guwahati has embarked upon a new project in partnership with NRL. The two bodies will work jointly for developing biodegradable plastic and creating sustainable materials by the utilisation of waste.
The Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT Guwahati) has collaborated with the Numaligarh Refinery Limited (abbreviated as NRL) and initiated a joint venture that will focus on starting the production of a particular type of plastic for commercial use. The plastic that this collaboration aims at producing will be biodegradable and environment-friendly. This venture is a great initiative towards the protection of the environment and it comes as a major help with the government all set to ban the manufacturing and use of single-use plastic products by 2nd October 2019. This is a new project undertaken by one of the famous Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) after successfully carrying out some other researches like developing a rapid bacteria detection device, a device for separating oil and water, their landmark research on breast cancer spreading cells, etc.
The experts at IIT-G have said that the biodegradable plastics will serve as an alternative to the plastic carry bags and other flexible plastic products of single-use that pollute the environment and will be taken off the markets soon. The Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Materials (CoE) at NRL envisions the broad objective of creating sustainable materials from various kinds of waste and its byproducts. This waste is sourced from multiple sectors like bio-refineries, petroleum industries, and agro-industries.
The Director of IIT Guwahati, Professor TG Sitharam, spoke on this alliance and said that it is a first of its kind industrial-academic venture. The CoE will work towards producing biodegradable plastics for the society by utilising the waste and intermediate materials from those existing industries that are based on oil and bio-feedstock. Sitharam said that many such upcoming collaborative research programmes on the development of sustainable materials will come under the umbrella of the CoE. These newly created materials like bioplastics and the other value-added chemicals will come under one platform and assist industries like the NRL in combating environmental pollution.
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Sitharam further said that this joint venture will result in reducing the carbon footprint of these industries by value addition to the waste products in a much greener sense. It will eventually give a boost to the development of sustainable materials on a larger, global scale.
An MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) and MoA (Memorandum of Agreement) have been signed between the two bodies by Professor Sitharam and the Senior Chief General Manager of NRL, Nikunja Borthakur. The Dean of Research and Development, Professor Gopal Das, the Project Coordinator, Professor Vimal Katiyar, and the Head of Chemical Engineering, Professor Anugrah Singh were present at the event.
The department of chemical engineering of IIT Guwahati has been given an initial research grant of a sum of Rs. 4 crores through the “NRL- Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Sustainable Materials”. This grant has been sanctioned by NRL for troubleshooting and providing useful end products by the utilisation of by-products that are generated from NRL and allied industries.
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This project undertaken by IIT-G and NRL is an inspirational step taken towards combating pollution. It will not only give an environment-friendly solution for tackling the large amounts of bio-refinery and oil waste generated from industries but will also fabricate sustainable polymers by utilising this waste.
