Jai Rathod

Biocore Environmental

jairathod1759800@gmail.com

Supervisors: Mr. James Russell and Prof. Vivek V. Ranade

Brief Bio

Jai is a MSCA Doctoral Network Fellow working on biomass pretreatment using hydrodynamic cavitation to enhance valorisation potential. He is conducting this research under the joint partnership and guidance of Mr. James Russell at Biocore Environmental Ltd. and Prof. Vivek V. Ranade at the University of Limerick. Jai holds a Master's in Technology (Thermal and Energy Systems Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Jammu. During his time there, he was awarded the DAAD-KOSPIE scholarship to complete his thesis on the "Techno-economic assessment of methane-fired sCO₂ power cycle layouts incorporating CO₂ separation and storage," supervised by Sr. Prof. Kannan Iyer (IIT Jammu) and Dr. Ing. Sebastian Unger at the Institute of Fluid Dynamics, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). His work involved modeling a highly efficient power cycle with supercritical CO₂ as the working fluid. Jai completed his Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from Vidyavardhini's College of Engineering and Technology, India. He is also passionate about singing, playing musical instruments, and sketching.

Project Description

It is essential to valorise biomass to reduce CO₂ emissions, arrest climate change and promote circular economy. Inherent nature of biomass however resists valorisation because of complex structure of ligno-cellulose. An effective pre –treatment is necessary to disrupt the biomass structure and release value added products. Although a variety of techniques have been suggested for biomass pre-treatment, this step is still very expensive and requires high temperature and chemicals to obtain efficient results. This doctoral project aims to harness HC for the disruption of biomass structure and for enhancing its valorisation potential. The key objectives are: 1) Demonstrate that HC can be used for treatment of lignocellulosic biomass for enhanced valorization; 2) Understand the effect of HC on biomass fractionation and optimize conditions to obtain maximum release of valuable products and minimum formation of inhibitors for further valorisation; 3) Develop computational models to interpret the pre-treatment data and provide scale-up methodology. The key expected results are: : 1) Quantitative data on influence of HC treatment on lignocellulosic structure of biomass – subsequent release of valuable products; 2) Optimal process conditions for biomass treatment; 3) Benchmarking of the developed HC technology with other biomass pre-treatment techniques.