Sir Mark Walport, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, has announced major funding towards sustainable fuels during a visit to India. Over £4M of UK funding, with matched resource from India, has been awarded to four research projects that bring together expertise in sustainable bioenergy and biofuels from both countries.
The funding is a result of the Sustainable Bioenergy and Biofuels (SuBB) initiative funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research council (BBSRC) in the UK and Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in India.
Professor Jackie Hunter, BBSRC Chief Executive, said: "This funding has enabled cross-disciplinary projects that underpin the generation and implementation of sustainable, advanced, bioenergy in order to address the urgent need to find alternatives to fossil fuels."
The announcement was made as a part of Sir Mark Walport's keynote address during RCUK India's fifth anniversary celebrations in New Delhi this week. These new projects form a part of the £150M strong UK-India research portfolio that RCUK India has facilitated since 2008.
The University of Nottingham and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology will collaborate to engineer enzymes, bacteria and bioconversion processes that will help to produce advanced biofuels from waste rice straw. The project, led by Professor Nigel Minton and Dr Syed Shams Yazdani, will receive £1.4M from BBSRC with matched resources from DBT.
Professor Nigel Minton said: "Rice is the third biggest crop grown in the world and the major staple crop for most tropical nations. Rice straw, left over from rice harvests in large quantities, doesn't have many agricultural uses and so hundreds of millions of tons is burned to dispose of it each year. This is wasteful and polluting, particularly if rice straw could be used to create biofuels."
Dr John Bothwell from Durham University will work with Prof Arvind M Lali from the Institute of Chemical Technology in a bid to produce biofuel from seaweed. £1M was awarded by BBSRC with matched resources from DBT.
Dr Seetharaman Vaidyanathan at the University of Sheffield and Prof Lakshmanan Uma at Bharathidasan University will investigate the possibility of using smaller water dwelling 'microalgae' to convert solar energy and carbon dioxide into the precursors of fuel. The project will receive £1.2M from BBSRC with matched resources from DBT.
Dr Carole Llewellyn from Plymouth Marine Laboratory and Dr N Thajuddin of Bharathidasan University will also look at microalgae thanks to £700k from BBSRC and matched resources from DBT.