Ganapati V. Shanbhag

 

Associate Professor & HOD
Materials Science & Catalysis

Email: shanbhag [at] ppisr.res.in

 

 

 







 

RESEARCH INTEREST:

Heterogeneous catalysis

AlwinMittasch, a German chemist and scientific historian remarked in the early 20th century that “chemistry without catalysis would be like a sword without hilt, like a bell without ringing....” Nowadays, catalysts play a vital role in providing society fuels, commodity and fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, polymers and means for protecting the environment. Around 90 % of all industrial chemical processes are catalytic. Among the catalysts, heterogeneous catalysts have advantages over homogenous counterparts such as easy catalyst separation, recyclability, no product contamination and environmentally benign. Though catalysis is the area of applied chemistry and has a lot of commercial importance, basic research in this area has also gained a lot of prominence. During 2001-2010, four Nobel prizes have gone to inventions on catalysts which itself shows the academic importance of the subject.However, direct inspiration for doing research in Catalysis can be drawn by its importance in solving the problems of social relevance like desire for green and renewable fuels, reducing environmental pollution by making clean chemical processes andimproving the product yield by designing better catalysts leads to cheaper products.Designing an efficient catalyst for reactions involving a lot of complexity is always a challenge for catalyst researcher. Methane to methanol, CO2 conversion to hydrocarbons, aromatization of LPG, biomass to chemicals and fuels, aerobic oxidations are some examples which pose a challenge till today to design efficient catalysts for these reactions.

1.     Catalyst design for biofuel synthesis

The research in the present decade is mainly dedicated to “energy” because of the concerns over diminishing fossil fuels like LPG, petrol and diesel. A lot of efforts are going on to make new biofuels from renewable sources such as non-edible vegetable oils, wet biomass and wood-based biomass. Biodiesel synthesized from catalytic transesterification of vegetable oilwasalready tested to be fit to use as a blend with diesel. Biomass processing with multiple steps like hydropyrolysis and gasificationyields mixture of hydrocarbons and oxygenated compounds which upon refining can yield biofuels with desired quality. However, easier said than done, it is a challenge to design catalysts to selectively produce the desired biofuels with high efficiency.

2.     Novel catalytic materials

There are many reactions for which existing catalysts have some drawbacks and could not give good efficiency for required products. Also, there are many reactions for which homogeneous catalysts are used till today and need to be replaced with heterogeneous catalysts. Catalysis research is never stagnant and requires constant efforts to find new catalysts better than existing ones. New materials always open up a lot of research to study their unknown properties.

3.     Chemical fixation of CO2 by converting into valuable chemicals.

Industrial and automobile effluent gas, CO2 conversion to hydrocarbons over catalysts has been shown very little research and development attention so far, as other technologies has been much cheaper and efficient in yielding hydrocarbons. However, nowadays, with the increasing awareness of the impact CO2 is having on the environment,a lot of attention is being directed at the methods to mitigate the effects CO2 as a greenhouse gas.Electricity generation from coal flue gas from chemical industries and running automobiles contribute to a great extent in generating CO2. Hence it is necessary to convert CO2 from industrial flue gas into valuable chemicals instead of leaving it into atmosphere. However, CO2 being an inert gas, its activation and conversion into valuable chemicals is a challenge and require a design of catalyst to make these processes feasible.