A special virtual edition of TEDx Gateway Countdown 2021 was hosted as a global initiative to address and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis and turning ideas into action. SHALINI SAKSENA chats up a few action-takers
‘Biofuel is the future’
SHRIKUMAR SURYANARAYAN (RESEARCHER & INNOVATOR)
He has a list of accomplishments and not a name to be trifled with when it comes to development of technology for offshore biomass production and conversion to a variety of bio-products including agricultural bio-stimulants, renewable fuels and chemicals. The words are heavy and so is his work. Meet Shrikumar Suryanarayanthe MD-co-founder of Sea6 Energy, Bangalore.
The company was founded in 2010 in Chennai by several alumni of IIT-Madras. Shrikumar, formerly the President of Research and Development and Chief Scientific Advisor at Biocon Limited, Bangalore the largest life-science company in India for over 25 years has served as the CEO for the Translational Health Sciences Institute at the Delhi-NCR Biosciences Cluster.
He has BTech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a Masters in Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Shrikumar was conferred the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 2009 and was chosen as Entrepreneur of the Year by Bio Spectrum in 2012. If this was not enough to add to his credentials, he is also the present President of the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises of India.
Explaining what his company does, Shrikumar tells you that at present his company is involved in production of all things that are biological.
“Let’s take an example of biological matter — plant matter. Biological matter can be derived from plants or animals. From this we can get protein and take it further and get energy from it. In other words, you can get energy from plant matter. If we take a step back, we can make all kinds of bio-products — from simple to complex bio-products. One such product is ethanol — a biofuel. Once you make this, one can make several petro-chemical products from this. There are several technologies that can do this,” Shrikumar tells you.
What this translates into is that if you have an unlimited source of plant matter, you can make a whole variety of products. However, there is a catch here.
“You need to have a large unlimited supply of plant matter. So why should we go out in the sea and make plant matter? The answer is simple. Let’s make a calculation. India imported a little over 198 million tonnes of crude in 2020-21. When this is burnt carbon dioxide is released leading to global warming. A good solution is to switch to bio-fuels. But to make this shift we will need four times the plant matter — for every kg of crude oil, we will need 4 kg of biomass,” Shrikumar says.
The country will need one billion tonnes of plant matter to make the substitute from crude oil to biofuel. One can use agricultural waste. But the entire output of agriculture in India stands at less than one billion tonnes a year.
“One can only imagine the waste we will get. Obviously not enough. If the entire land is used to make biofuel, what will we eat? So instead of picking up the sunlight that falls on the land why not pick it from the sea? There are many plants that grow. Nature is versatile. Seaweed is one of them and can be converted into biofuels. But we need a billion tonnes of it. Just like we cultivate the land for agriculture, we have to cultivate the sea,” Shrikumar explains. And says biofuels are the future.
Does India have enough sea space to cultivate a billion tonnes of plant matter and infringe on international waters? The answer is a yes. “To satisfy India’s demand for crude oil, we need one lakh sq km of cultivation. We only need sea space the size that is less than the area Tamil Nadu or Punjab. India is lucky since we get so much sunlight all the year around. We can definitely produce enough bio-fuel. Our company does precisely this.”
“We have the technology to cultivate on sea. At present, we have a small portion of the sea in India and Indonesia. While we are waiting for our farm to grow and making more sea farms, we are making using seaweed that can be used in agriculture. The produce grows faster and gives more yield from the same acre. Farmers can feed more people and there is no soil pollution. Also, since there is more yield, they need more carbon dioxide. For every `1 spent on buying our product, the farmer gets a benefit of anywhere between `5 to `25,” Shrikumar says.
It is time to go green
VIDYUT MOHAN (INNOVATOR)
What if it was possible to convert waste crop residue into value-added chemicals like activated carbon on-site? Vidyut Mohan, co-founder of Takachar has created technology that turns waste crop residue which can mitigate smoke emissions. At the same time it creates extra income for marginalised farmers. His company is a social enterprise enabling farmers to prevent open burning of their waste farm residues.
Passionate about energy access and supporting rural livelihood, Vidyut became interested in biomass-based energy/chemical development due to its untapped potential and close association with farmers.
After completing his master’s thesis at TU Delft, he came back to India to work with village communities in the Himalayas. This work led him to discover a way to scale farm residue utilisation through technology, as well as to support farm-based livelihood which in turn led to the formation of Takachar.
He tells you that the mission of his company is to drastically scale the utilisation of agricultural and forest waste to reduce air pollution, create livelihood and mitigate and prevent carbon emissions.
“We have developed small low-cost equipment that can be used in a decentralised way to process this waste into useful products and fertilisers. Our team has developed these equipment that were lab designed by my co-founder and myself,” Vidyut says.
He did his masters in sustainable energy technology and specialise in biomass technology and sustainable entrepreneurship. He was also named an Unleash Energy Talent in 2017 and is a fellow at the School for Social Entrepreneurs India. Vidyut is also a 2019 Echoing Green Fellow.
His interest to convert agricultural and forest waste came when he did a pilot project in the Himalayas — to convert pine needle waste into a marketable charcoal-based product.
“The success from this project is what motivated me to venture into this field and continue to do so. The people in the region managed to earn a livelihood — managed to double their income — from the waste and also prevented forest fires during the pilot. The pine needles were used to make charcoal using our equipment,” Vidyut tells you.
The idea to convert pine needles came while he was pursuing his masters.
“I was deeply interested in biomass because I thought it had a lot of potential. It was an interesting research question for me to explore. India is a great space for exploring this as there is a lot of biomass generated when it comes to agriculture and forest waste. I focused on technical development but I didn’t want to limit my thesis to this alone. We worked with an organisation in Uttrakhand who hosted us. They were using pine needles to generate electricity in the region. That’s how we ended up making charcoal,” Vidyut recounts.
The reason to come back to India and work here was easy enough for him. Though he had a one-year visa and he could always go back to Europe, he just found a field that had him hook, line and sinker.
“I just found a field where I loved working in. The whole idea of also exploring my venture and working on the pilot was exciting. I feel that what I studied is something that can be applied in developing countries. The challenges are so much more here. We need to grow and economically bring people out of poverty and at the same time, fight climate change,” Vidyut tells you.
This year, his company was among five winners of the first-ever Earthshot Prizes instituted by Prince William to reward innovators with £1 million each for developing groundbreaking solutions to the world’s greatest environmental challenges.
“Basically, we take any type of agricultural waste and put it into a machine. It undergoes a roasting process. It heats the waste between 200-350°C in a controlled amount of air. This, after a certain process, can be used to make fuels, fertilisers and even speciality chemicals like activated carbon. For example rice waste can be used to make fertiliser,” Vidyut says.