SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Department of Physical, Inorganic and Structural Chemistry, Stockholm University

Postal address: Arrhenius Laboratory, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
Visiting Address: Svante Arrhenius väg 12, Frescati
Web page: http://www.fos.su.se/

Contact person: Professor Gunnar Svensson, phone: +46 (0)8 161254. Personal web page.

South Asia related research

Prof. Gunnar Svensson is involved in an Indo-Swedish collaborative research project on ”Carbon membranes from unburned carbon in fly ash for environmental applications”. The collaboration partner on the Indian side is Dr. Vidya Batra, Energy-Environment Technology Division at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) University in New Delhi. In November 2008 this project was granted 570 000 SEK from the Swedish Research Links (Asian–Swedish research partnership programme) for the three years period 2009–11 by Sida and the Swedish Research Council. More information on the Swedish Research Links grants 2008.
Project abstract: Unburned carbon present in biomass (bagasse) fly ash was found to be a suitable precursor for activated carbon in the planning grant study carried out by the applicants in 2007. Activation of the unburned carbon produced activated carbon with high surface area having a combination of meso and micropores. This study proposes to use the unburned carbon along with fly ash for developing membranes, which have a porous carbon top layer and a fly ash support layer. The support layer has already been developed by the international applicant. The developed membranes would have several applications in the environmental field such as gas separation, catalyst support, and pollutant removal. The activities involve preparation of membranes by coating carbon on inorganic supports made from biomass fly ash, characterization of porous carbon membrane and assessment of its suitability for different applications. The porous carbon membranes proposed in this study is expected to have tailor made pore size distribution comparable to that available commercially. The benefit of this study is the use of a waste material (fly ash and unburned carbon) from a renewable source (biomass) for both support and top layers. This will lead to low cost carbon membranes, value added utilization of waste fly ash and environmental benefit from the application of these membranes.