Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Shroff S R Rotary Institute of Chemical Technology, India

Biography: Dr. Shina Gautam obtained her PhD from University of Newcastle, Australia in 2013, investigating bubble-particle attachment and detachment behavior in a flotation cell. She is currently working as an Associate Professor and R&D and patent cell coordinator in Shroff S R Rotary Institute of Chemical Technology, Ankleshwar, Gujarat, India. She is working on different industrial waste treatment and recovery of valuable material from waste funded by Institution of Engineers India and Government of Gujarat India. Prime area of research is heavy metals (precious, ferrous and non-ferrous) extraction and recovery. She is working on one of the industrial project on recovery of polyhydroxyalkanoates medium chain length and short chain length from a wastewater treatment plant waste. Different polymers has been recovered successfully for end application in food packaging. She has about 35 papers in national, international journals and conferences and one patent filed in India.

Speech Title: Biopolymer- A beginning towards back to nature
Abstract: Biopolymer is a general name of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) recovered from biomass that is from bacterial cell. PHAs are naturally conserved in the cytoplasm of the bacterial cell during the growth. Intracellular stored compounds are tightly linked with entire cell resulting difficulty of separation. The work aims to extract PHAs from biomass effectively.
Chemical and mechanical separation of PHA can be done from biomass. A pretreatment of cells before chemical and mechanical separation is also effective for separation. Chemical extraction of PHA includes digestion of cell wall in acidic or alkaline medium and releasing PHA in broth later sedimentation recover PHA. In mechanical process dried cell walls were broken in bead mill and dried material undergo for dissolved air flotation where PHAs are carried away by air bubbles.
In recent work chemical and mechanical process, both were carried out to extract PHA of medium chain length. Sodium hypochlorite was used to denature the protein and chloroform was used for extraction of PHA. Three different layers of chloroform, sodium hypochlorite and protein were observed. PHA was recovered from chloroform by evaporation. Mixed strain of Pseudomonas and Alcaligene were optimized by the process. A recovery of 72% of PHA by dried weight of cell was obtained which is quite high as reported in literature.
Characterization of dried polymer was done in TGA for glass transition temperature and melting point of PHA to analyze number of carbons. FTIR spectra revealed that polymer structure is of 5-6 carbon with single and double bonds. XRD of the sample confirmed presence of different compounds of polymer essentially required for a medium chain length polymer. A PHA extracted will be further utilized for biodegradable packaging for food and medical.