3 researchers get patent for generating bioenergy through lab waste

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: The Patent Office of the Government of India (GoI)granted a patent to three teachers and researchers for their innovation titled ‘Process for Utilisation of Waste Microbial Culture Media as a feed for Anaerobic Digester’ for 20 years.

The innovation helps in bioenergy generation from laboratory waste through an anaerobic digestion process. The names of the researchers are Dr Arvind Deshmukh (president of Microbiologists Society, India), Dr Anil Bhuktar (head, of Department of Botany, Vivekanand College) and Dr Nitin Adhapure (head, Department of Biotechnology and Microbiology, Vivekanand College).

They said that they applied for the Government of India’s patient in 2017 while it was granted only on Tuesday for a pretreatment process to waste microbial culture media to facilitate the bioenergy generation.

They said that Technology Development and Transfer (TDT), the Division of Department of Science and Technology (DST) of GoI had funded scale-up studies in 2020-21 for the research.

“A plant working on ‘laboratory waste to bioenergy' is working in our institutional campus, in which, we are procuring waste culture media from industries, pretreating the obtained waste culture media (patented process), feeding the pretreated material to anaerobic digester, obtaining the biogas and converting it to electricity,” they said.

The researchers said that it is a routine practice to discard the waste (used) microbial culture media in dustbins, draining it out or giving the waste to a third party for subsequent incineration.

“This is a scenario of almost every academic, research or industrial organisation which are using microbial culture media. The industries using microbial culture media, are not only pharma but also include dairy, food and tissue culture. By discarding the culture media in the traditional ways, we are not only increasing the burden of disposal on waste treatment plants but also wasting the energy generation potential,” they said.