India is all set to open its first Centre of Energy Biosciences to find ways to reduce country’s dependence on petroleum fuels and to restrict the emission of greenhouse gases. The Centre will be opened at the University Institute of Chemical Technology (UICT) in Mumbai.

According to the report, the center would primarily work to develop renewable sources of energy within the country. It would also work to create a bioscience and bioengineering platform to develop several practicable technologies for using bioalcohols, biodiesel, biohydrogen and other biofuels for different purposes. Professor Arvind Lali is coordinating the technical program of the centre.

Lali said that the preliminary work at the centre has been started and the center is likely to get a appropriate infrastructure to start working properly. The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) of Ministry of Science and Technology has already sanctioned Rs 24 crore for the center that will be headed by UICT Director J B Joshi.

India reportedly produces about 200 million tonnes of waste biomass, harmful for human and animal consumption, each year. Lali further said that this waste, along with specially developed high-yield energy crops, could be helpful in producing enough alcohol. It will further help to meet country’s demand for liquid fuel.

He said:

There’s no known technology at present that can be used to make the required alcohol from waste biomass. The centre would mainly concentrate on creating viable technologies to produce alcohol in an ecological manner.

The technical programs at center will be started with collaboration of different industrial and academic partners from USA such as School of Chemical Engineering-Purdue University, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering-Centre for Resilience, Ohio State University. The MAHYCO Research Centre and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre would also help the center to develop alternate energy resources.