IIT Kharagpur student wins prestigious award at energy conference in Paris

Kolkata: A fourth-year undergraduate student of the IIT Kharagpur has won an award at an international conference on 'Clean and Green Energy' in Paris, an IIT KGP statement said on Wednesday.

Ankur Mehta, a chemical engineering student, was awarded the 'Best (Oral) Presentation Certificate' in the seventh edition of the three-day International Conference on Clean and Green Energy (ICCGE-2018) in Paris from February 7, it said.

The ICCGE is a premier forum for leading global scientists and engineers to present their new theoretical, experimental and applied research projects on clean and green energy.

While undergraduates do participate in this conference, it is rare for an undergraduate student to top the presentation category while competing with senior researchers and faculty, it said.

Ankur was chosen the best speaker in the 'Energy and Power Engineering' session after he presented his research paper.

Ankur’s B.Tech thesis project was on producing bio-ethanol from bamboo shavings.

The session in which Ankur topped had representations from eight countries and the presenters ranged from undergraduate students to professors, the statement said.

The substrate used to make bio-fuel is a non-edible lignocellulosic waste material which does not conflict with food sources, Ankur said

He thanked his research supervisor Professor Saikat Chakraborty of the Department of Chemical Engineering for guiding him to work intensively on optimising the process of bio-fuel production.

"Since bamboo shavings are abundantly available across the tropics, this process of converting them to second generation bio-fuel has a significant potential for commercialisation," Chakraborty said.

Ankur has the option to publish his paper either in the 'IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science' or the 'Journal of Clean Energy Technologies'.

Since the ICCGE conference is in the IITKGP's 'Best Conference' list, Ankur’s travel and registration expenses were funded by the institute, it said.