Browsing by Author "Gunasekaran, M."

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    Enhanced biohydrogen generation through calcium peroxide engendered efficient ultrasonic disintegration of waste activated sludge in low temperature environment
    (Elsevier, 2022-10-27) Banu, J. Rajesh; Preethi; Gunasekaran, M.; Kumar, Vinod; Bhatia, Shashi Kant; Kumar, Gopalakrishnan
    Waste activated sludge is a renewable source for biohydrogen production, whereas the presence of complex biopolymers limits the hydrolysis step during this process, and thus pretreatment is required to disintegrate the sludge biomass. In this study, the feasibility of utilizing waste activated sludge to produce biohydrogen by improving the solubilization by means of thermo CaO2 engendered sonication disintegration (TCP-US) was studied. The optimized condition for extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) dissociation was obtained at the CaO2 dosage of 0.05 g/g SS at 70 °C. The maximum disintegration after EPS removal was achieved at the sonic specific energy input of 1612.8 kJ/kg TS with the maximum solubilization and SS reduction of 23.7% and 18.14%, respectively, which was higher than the US alone pretreatment. Thus, this solubilization yields higher biohydrogen production of 114.3 mLH2/gCOD in TCP-US sample.
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    Polyhydroxyalkanoates synthesis using acidogenic fermentative effluents
    (Elsevier, 2021-11-11) Banu, J. Rajesh; Ginni, G.; Kavitha, S.; Kannah, R. Yukesh; Kumar, Vinod; Kumar, S. Adish; Gunasekaran, M.; Tyagi, Vinay Kumar; Kumar, Gopalakrishnan
    Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are natural polyesters synthesized by microbes which consume excess amount of carbon and less amount of nutrients. It is biodegradable in nature, and it synthesized from renewable resources. It is considered as a future polymer, which act as an attractive replacement to petrochemical based polymers. The main hindrance to the commercial application of PHA is the high manufacturing cost. This article provides an overview of different cost-effective substrates, their characteristics and composition, major strains involved in economical production of PHA and biosynthetic pathways leading to accumulation of PHA. This review also covers the operational parameters, various fermentative modes including batch, fed-batch, repeated fed-batch and continuous fed-batch systems, along with advanced feeding strategies such as single pulse carbon feeding, feed forward control, intermittent carbon feeding, feast famine conditions to observe their effects for improving PHA synthesis and associated challenges. In addition, it also presents the economic analysis and future perspectives for the commercialization of PHA production process thereby making the process sustainable and lucrative with the possibility of commercial biomanufacturing.