Applied Biotechnology for Emerging Pollutants Remediation and Energy Conversion

This contributed volume comprises of detailed chapters covering the biotechnological approaches employed for the removal of toxic recalcitrant xenobiotics such as petroleum hydrocarbons, textile dyes, microplastics and synthetic polymers that pose serious threat to the environment. It also includes the waste to energy conversion strategies that provides a deep insight on the need for waste circular economy for different developing countries and its implication on sustainable development goals such as SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production) SDG 14 (Life below water); and SDG 15 (Life on land).

Emerging pollutants sourced from both industries and anthropogenic activity have created havoc in recent years for public health and destruction of biodiversity at multiple levels. The alarming increase in the global population and rapid industrialization might aggravate the problems associated with these hazardous pollutants in near future. Effluent from different industries may contain high amounts of xenobiotic hazardous contaminants such as dyes, hydrocarbons, synthetic surfactants, microplastics, etc. Industries and public sewers handling such waste streams are facing a plethora of challenges in the effluent treatment and solid waste disposal due to various factors that start from production to adoption of appropriate technologies. Therefore, there is an immediate circumvention of bottlenecks through sustainable mitigation strategies.

This book is of interest to teachers, researchers, climate change scientists, capacity builders and policymakers. Also, the book serves as additional reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture, forestry, ecology, soil science, and environmental sciences. National and international agricultural scientists, policy makers also find this to be a useful read.

Dr B. Samuel Jacob, currently working as Assistant Professor at Department of Biotechnology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, India. He did his Ph.D. in Microbial Biotechnology, Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, IIT Kharagpur, India. He worked as Senior Research Fellow in a project at Agricultural Food Engineering Department and PK Sinha Centre for Bioenergy, IIT Kharagpur, India sponsored by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Energy Centre, New Delhi for 3 years 6 months.

Dr. K. Ramani is an Environmental Biotechnologist and currently working as Associate professor at Department of Biotechnology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, India. Her research interest includes development of sustainable technologies for the various industrial solid and liquid waste management, recovery of high value-added biomolecules from wastes for the industrial applications. She is having more than 10 years of research experience and 7 years of teaching experience. She was awarded “Tamil Nadu young Women Scientist Award” by the Government of Tamil Nadu, India for her outstanding research in the field of Environmental Sciences.

Dr. V. Vinoth Kumar is working as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biotechnology at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, since June 2013. His research projects focus on designing integrated bioprocess approaches for the production of industrial enzymes, biosurfactants, biofuels, and platform chemicals for the biomass valorization and removal of contaminants from aqueous systems using dedicated lab/field experiments. Over the past 12 years, Dr. Vinoth has been involved in fruitful research and made significant contributions towards the development of various formulations of bioproducts for agro-biotech and food biotech industries.