Scientists from CSIR’s National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (CSIR-NIIST), Thiruvananthapuram have been able to turn waste into wealth. They have produced ethanol from discarded cotton-stalks by using a combination of chemical and biological techniques. India has about 9.4 million hectares under cotton cultivation and every hectare generates 2 million tonnes of cotton stalk wastes. The results were published in Bioresource Technology.

The stalks were first treated with an acid, alkali and different enzymes to breakdown the complex organic polymers of the stalk. “The agro-residues are tough in nature and we need chemical pre-treatment to break down the complex structure of the stalk,” explains Meera Christopher, research scholar at NIIST and first author of the paper.

The acid helps to remove hemicellulose, a polymer of the cell wall and the alkali extracts lignin, a binding matrix in the cell wall, made of complex phenolics. These treatments expose cellulose, the major component made of glucose to the action of enzymes....Read more

Source web page: The Hindu