National workshop on how to check carbon emission

The IIT Kharagpur on Thursday organised a national workshop on bio-energy to frame a roadmap to check carbon emission that could subsequently reduce global warming.

The two-day workshop that began here is a platform where scientists from different parts of the country would present their ideas to frame a roadmap to reduce carbon emission, said Saikat Chakraborty, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur.

He said bio-fuel is one of the flagship programmes aimed at reducing carbon emission.

Pointing out climate change is not a local but global phenomenon, Chakraborty said if immediate steps are not taken to reduce carbon emission by 2100 AD, many parts of the world will face major calamities while large parts of Bangladesh and gangetic West Bengal will be flooded after 40 years following rise in sea level and swelling of rivers due to melting of Himalayan glaciers.

"There is one solution left. We have to stop abnormal rise in global temperature and this workshop aims at exchanging views. It is a platform of all those people who offer solution for very good technology, for innovation, for entrepreneurship," Prof Mrinal K Maiti of the institute, said.

Head of School of Environmental Science and Engineering Prof Makarand M Ghangrekar said, to reduce carbon emission, the institute has undertaken wastewater treatment plant where wastewater is converted to bio-fuel.

He said faculty members at the P K Sinha Centre for Bioenergy and Renewables at IIT Kharagpur are working in the areas of Bioethanol, Biodiesel, Biohydrogen, Biomethane, Microbial fuel cells.

The Department of Bio-technology (DBT), Government of India, is acting as a catalyst in the research area for innovation and entrepreneurship, the organisers said.

The workshop is an annual event funded by the DBT and organised by one of the IITs.