Category: In-Depth

IIT KGP Faculty Makes Purified Drinking Water Available for Rs. 1

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Faculty from IIT KGP has developed a model for purified drinking water supply, costing Rs. 1 per family per day, for a village in Southern Bengal. Dr. Somnath Ghosal from the Rural Development Centre of IIT Kharagpur has involved participatory management offering villagers access to purified drinking water in a sustainable manner, using Water Cards, Water ATM Vending Machine, etc.

The unique set-up has been built in the Porapara village in West Midnapore district of Bengal. He has installed a fully automated multi filtered UV treated drinking water facility which can provide close to 1000 litres of purified drinking water to 60 families every day at Rs. 1 per family. While the land was freely provided by the villages, IIT KGP helped built the required infrastructure and water purification technologies and funded the entire project.

With water borne diseases and the cost of medical treatment, Dr. Ghosal took to the task of making the villagers understand the need for the water filtration unit. “It has been my dream to build up a project that involved community participation,” he said. Since such self-managed purification units require little intervention in maintenance, they require one-time investments that can become part of the CSR initiatives of both public and private enterprises. “We will be happy to do more such things through CSR Funding since the Technology and Process is now well demonstrated in this Pilot Project” added Dr. Ghosal.

The land on which the filtration unit has been installed was donated by a villager, Kshitij Mahato. In other words, it stands on land owned by a villager. The entire operation of the unit, its upkeep and daily management, is done by the villagers who have formed three committees to manage the operations. It is thus an ‘install and self-operate’ arrangement. The current, and future, financial needs are to be met by the villagers from the funds collected in the form of the daily payment (Rs 1 per family per day) for the purified water. A 17-year-old boy, Dhananjay Mahato along with three other youngsters, is in charge of the daily running of the filtration unit and the daily dispensing of filtered water from 5.30 to 8 AM. Full community participation becomes possible only if villagers have a sense of ownership over a project.

“None of this would have happened had they not placed their faith in us and trusted their own abilities. The land belongs to the villagers. They alone are now responsible for the proper functioning of the project,” remarked Dr. Ghosal. He no longer takes any part in the running of the filtration unit. In fact, he takes prior permission of the villagers before visiting the site.

New Indian Monsoon Rainfall Prediction Model Developed by IIT KGP Researchers

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Researchers from Centre for Oceans, Rivers, Atmosphere and Land Sciences (CORAL) of IIT KGP have developed a new statistical model, which can be used to predict variability and trends in rainfall over different climate regions of India taking into consideration both local and remote factors causing weather change.

Many of these, local and remote, factors that affect weather conditions have been known to the scientific community. However, most weather forecast models typically consider local factors or a single factor that affects rainfall or use of statistical models of correlation to establish the impact of various factors. Because of this there used to be significant uncertainties in such predictions as each independent factor has a certain impact, which may not match with actual conditions.

“In our model we have used the multiple linear regression technique to assess contributions of different remote and local climate forcing to seasonal and regional inhomogeneity in rainfall. It removes the impact of individual factors to find the trends in rainfall. The model has three advantages; it can be used to find the contribution of individual factors to the rainfall and can be applied to estimate the trends and variability of rainfall. Apart from these, the model can predict any type of weather conditions, anywhere in the world only by changing the relevant factors affecting the changes. For instance, we have used a similar model for estimating trends in atmospheric trace gases such as ozone,” said Dr. Prijitha J. Nair, the lead researcher, who conceived and coordinated this study.

The novelty of the model has been reported through a research paper “The local and global climate forcing induced inhomogeneity of Indian rainfall” in the much-coveted Scientific Reports by the Nature.

“Our study finds that the Summer Monsoon Rainfall variability is governed by the surface temperatures of the Eastern Pacific, Central Pacific, Atlantic and the north Indian Oceans, and equatorial zonal winds. However, the winter Monsoon Rainfall variability is largely controlled by the surface temperature of the North Atlantic and extratropical oceans,” explained co-researcher Prof. Jayanarayanan Kuttippurath.

The model, which has been developed using data over a period of 38 years, has also predicted significant changes in Indian rainfall in a perspective of global climate change. The data analyses conducted during the study revealed significant positive trends (0.43mm/day/dec) in the North West for summer rainfall during the 1979–2017 period.

“There are scientific evidences of major climate shifts over centuries. These do not happen overnight but through gradual changes in weather conditions over time. The data shows there has been an incremental shift of Indian monsoon from east to west. However, this would require further studies,” said Prof. Arun Chakraborty, who supervised the research.

Dr. Hamza Varikoden, a scientist from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, and Dr. P. A. Francis, a scientist in the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad (both are from the Ministry of Earth Sciences and are renowned for their significant contributions to Indian Monsoon research), are the other researchers participated in the study.

That Guilty Feeling

IIT Kharagpur researchers find that men shop as impulsively as women, but it is the women who feel the guilt

The billing is almost complete, you know that. And yet, you pick up a product lying in front of you – perhaps a box of chocolates, a pack of colourful socks or even a tie you don’t really need – and hand it over to the smiling, accommodative person at the check-out counter. Ever wondered why there are so many things kept near the billing counter? They are there to take advantage of what is known as ‘impulse buying behaviour’. Impulse buying means unplanned buying or a purchase made without any advance planning. Nine out of ten shoppers are seen to occasionally buy on impulse. The behaviour has been attributed to the impulsivity of emotions which overrides long term preferences in favour of short term choices.

For years, women have been known to be particularly susceptible to this form of behaviour, given the widely held perception of their irrational nature. Yet, a study conducted by a research team of the Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur’s management school, have found out that barring two components of the affective and cognitive processes that go into the making of the buying decision and post-purchase decisions, women hardly differ from men when it comes to impulse buying.

The ‘affective processes’ refer to components like an irresistible urge to buy, mood changes and positive emotions about the product. The cognitive processes include deliberations, unplanned buying, etc. The processes are not entirely determined by the consumer’s traits. Often, the shopping store can do a lot to promote unplanned shopping, such as create the right ambience, through product placement (eg. the items near the billing counter), overt friendliness of salespersons and so on.

The study of VGSoM on “Gender effects on impulse buying behaviour”, which has earned the research team the Emerald Literati Award 2018 for outstanding papers in Emerging Markets Case Studies under the category “Highly Commended”, shows that women are significantly different from men when it comes to “mood management” determining their buying behaviour. However, when it comes to determinants such as “irresistible urge to buy”, “positive buying emotion”, “unplanned buying” and “disregard for future”, they are no different from men.

As for post-purchase behaviour – “Should have purchased another one”, “Feeling of guilt”, “Feeling of regret” – women vary from men only in “feeling guilt”.

Prof. Sangeeta Sahney of VGSoM, IIT Kharagpur, who has mentored the research and co-authored the essay, says this is could be because of the “risk” perception that accompanies the buying decision. For women, the risk is not “financial alone, but also related to social, psychological, performance risk and so many others,” says Prof. Sahney. For example, says Prof. Sahney, a woman may think whether a particular dress will suit her or how will it be perceived by others in her milieu.

This study is important because it determines “post-purchase cognitive dissonance reduction strategies” that have to be adopted by the seller to keep the consumer from returning the product, says Prof. Sahney. The study of women consumer behaviour is important given the continued rise in the number of working women who are the choice-makers. So, their impulse buying has a tremendous relevance in an emerging market like India.

The research paper was the result of the collaborative work between Prof. Sahney, Gyan Prakash, Soujanya Kodati and Archana Shrivastava. Prakash has done his MSc in Integrated Chemistry and Kodati has done her MBA from VGSoM.

The magic of spun silk

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IIT Kharagpur researchers use spider silk fibre to device self-powered bio-nanogenerator

You can dismiss Spiderman as a figment of the imagination, but in real life, the web he spins is as powerful as its reel-life version. Spider silk fibres, which have a remarkable protein sequence structure, contain nature’s most outstanding mechanical properties. They have unrivalled elasticity along with biocompatibility and biodegradability.

Using these unique properties of spider silk, scientists at IIT Kharagpur, along with a team of researchers from South Korea, have devised a piezoelectric nanogenerator that is self-powered and can harvest green energy from various mechanical or biomechanical motions. Not merely that, it can also monitor minute physiological signals, such as arterial pulse response. So far, how the amazing structural and out-of-plane (dzz) piezoelectric properties of spider silk fibre could effectively contribute to the performance of a spider-silk based piezoelectric nanogenerator (SSBPNG) was unknown to the world.

Spider silk based piezoelectric nanogenerator

A piezoelectric nanogenerator is an energy harvesting device that converts kinetic energy into electrical energy. Energy harvesting by nature-driven biocompatible and biodegradable materials responding to biomechanical activities – such as the body’s motion, wind and water flow, or sound vibration — has received great attention in developing alternative energy sources. This energy is often employed for powering up different smart portable electronic devices.

There have been attempts to make piezoelectric energy harvesting devices from various nanostructured materials. But the various organic/inorganic toxic and non-biodegradable materials that are used in conventional flexible smart electronics could accumulate enormously portable electronic wastes and thereby create serious ecological problems. It is thus essential to design biocompatible and pollution-free flexible and wearable electronics in the near future. The use of naturally abundant non-toxic bio-piezoelectric material, such as spider silk, is a promising approach towards the development of eco-friendly smart electronics.

It is also important to note that various biomedical applications, such as deep brain stimulators, pacemakers, and neural stimulators require a continuous energy source to avoid the risk factors as well as reduce the expenses during surgery or e-health care monitoring. Thus, use of self-powered bio-nanogenerators would be better alternative to drained commercial batteries. Many bio-based PNGs have been used, such as fish scale, fish bladder, cellulose etc, for harvesting green energy. But these have showed low-energy conversion efficiency and power density. Besides, these are not completely bio-based materials as they are either chemically treated or mixed with other non-biomaterials before device fabrication.

Prof. Jin Kon Kim and Dr. Sandip Maiti (left to right)

The project led by IIT Kharagpur was supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), India and the National Research Foundation of Korea. The detailed results of the research work have been published in the prestigious journal, Nano Energy (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.05.014). This innovation was led by the research group of Prof B.B. Khatua, with his research student, Mr. Sumanta Kumar Karan at IIT Kharagpur, in collaboration with Prof. Jin Kon Kim and Dr. Sandip Maiti (post-doctoral researcher and former PhD student of Prof. Khatua) from POSTECH, South Korea. The piezoelectric nature of the spider-silk was further tested and improvised by the research team of Prof. Yunseok Kim from SKKU, South Korea.

The uniqueness of the invention/research work from the IIT research team lies in the effective utilization of nature-driven spider silk without any further chemical treatment as an efficient PNG for energy harvesting. The fabricated SSBPNG (spider silk based PNG) reveals high output voltage and current, and great energy conversion efficiency (~67 %). The values are the highest among all bio-based PNGs so far reported without any chemical treatment. The fabricated one-dimension fiber type SSBPNG, also shows excellent robustness against bending, stretching, and various mechanical movements. This might be useful as high performance wearable fabric or textile based nanogenerator.

Prof. B.B. Khatua and Mr. Sumanta Karan (left to right)

The SSBPNG have been prepared using the SS (spider silk) after water spraying followed by wrapping. The power generated from a single unit lights up 25 green LEDs instantly. Layer by layer or side wise arrangement of the devices does not alter the generated output voltage, suggesting that SSBPNG can be widely used for harvesting green energy and even for large scale industrial applications.

The self-powered flexible SSBPNG is extremely sensitive to even minute pressure generated from body motions, even the very small pressure arising from arterial pulse(signals arising out of small strains), throat movement during coughing, speaking, and drinking. This shows its potentiality in health care monitoring applications, especially in-vivo condition. Its sensitiveness could also be used to monitor robotic applications.

“Our innovative finding will excite interdisciplinary readers, especially those who are interested in biodegradable and biocompatible natural piezoelectric material and next generation power source for smart electronics and health/biomedical application,” said Prof. Khatua.

And quiet flows the Saradha

An IIT Kharagpur team of researchers finds traces of the mythical river Saradha in Odisha

The recent findings of a team of IIT Kharagpur researchers are bound to add to the aura of the ancient town of Puri, which is also a favourite tourist destination. Researchers from IIT Kharagpur have found evidence that show that the mythical Saradha river, which finds mention in ancient literature, indeed once flowed through Puri in Odisha.

High resolution Google Earth image of the suspected palaeo-channel trail

The trail of this palaeo-channel, or remnants of a once active river or stream now buried by sediment, has been unearthed both beyond and within the heart of Puri town using an integrated study of geology, satellite imagery and ground-penetrating radar or GPR survey.

Many ancient and historical texts refer to a river named Saradha that flowed across the present Grand Road (Badadanda) between the Jagannath and Gundicha temples in Puri, and divided the town into two parts. The aim of the study had been to find if such a palaeo-channel existed, and to see if this corresponded to the ‘lost’ Saradha river of the ancient texts.

Through their interpretation of complex data and field validation, the team of researchers – which included both geologists and social scientists of IIT Kharagpur – has found indications of an extinct river valley, about 128 metres wide, that existed across parts of the Grand Road. The team has also deduced that a large, sinusoidal water body near the sea beach at Puri may represent the last remains of the dried-up channel.

Large water body near Atharanala; field validation

The report, the result of the study conducted by Subhamoy Jana, William Kumar Mohanty, Saibal Gupta, Chirashree Srabani Rath and Priyadarshi Patnaik of the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of IIT Kharagpur has been published in Current Science journal (VOL. 115, NO. 2, 25 JULY 2018), says, “Integration of all these features suggests that a river once existed between Jagannath and Gundicha temples in Puri town…. This river, or a distributary channel emanating from Dhaudia river flowed through Puri town and ultimately reached the Bay of Bengal…. This channel can be correlated with the mythical river Saradha described in ancient texts.”

Several Puranic texts mention the river Saradha while talking of the genesis of the Jagannath Temple. According to Skanda Purana, Brahma Purana and Kapila Samhita, King Indradyumna of the Vaishnava tradition constructed a temple on the Blue Mountain or Neelachala/Neelashaila, where he installed the wooden idols of Lord Jagannath, Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra made from the wooden log floating on the seashore that he found on the guidance of the Lord.

Water body believed to be part of Saradha

Saradha finds mention in Madala Panji, an official chronicle of the Jagannath Temple. The Katakarajavamshabali, a compilation of historical records preserved in the temple archive since the early part of 19th century CE, also refers to a river between the Jagannath Temple and Gundicha Temple. Folklore says Lord Jagannath had instructed the wife of the Raja of Puri, Narasingha Dev, in a dream to close the river by filling it with sand in order to make the Rathayatra smoother. The riverbed is also referred to in various poems of the 16th–18th century CE poets that mention the sacredness of the sand (Saradha Bali) of the river bed in the vicinity of the Gundicha Temple. This continues to be a sacred place of pilgrimage in Puri.

The researchers have used various satellite imagery manipulation techniques – band combination, NDVI, MNDWI, linear spectral unmixing algorithm, density slice and spatial profiling. This became even more necessary given that a large part of the study involved investigation of the dense human settlement in the heart of Puri town.

Prof. William Kumar Mohanty of the Geology and Geophysics Department of IIT Kharagpur, who was one of part of the team, says, “Delicate indicators like moisture content, vegetation pattern and thermal changes matter in detecting the existence of river channels below the ground. It is no problem in open spaces, but investigating the urban, densely populated, built-up area of Puri proved to be the most challenging task for the team.”

Water body draining into the sea; possible remnant of the river Saradha

Using a similar methodology, IIT Kharagpur researchers have also recently identified the palaeo-channel of another ancient river, the Chandrabhaga, in proximity of the Sun Temple at Konark. Both the investigations are part of IIT Kharagpur’s larger project under the SandHI initiative, funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).

The IIT Kharagpur research team believes that the identification of these abandoned river channels is important as they may help in unearthing freshwater pockets within the densely populated areas of the city in the coastal region. In addition, they may also show potential natural pathways for channeling of the drainage system.

The team is of the opinion that the Saradha river was a part of the Mahanadi distributary system and may have dried up simply on account of sand dune migration. Artificial filling of the Saradha channel with sand in the late 14th century, in order to smoothen the journey of Lord Jagannath’s chariot from the Jagannath temple to the Gundicha temple, perhaps removed the last remaining surficial evidence of the river.

IITKGP’s Bioelectronics Research to Develop Coin-sized Biological Computers for Medical Treatment

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IIT Kharagpur has set up India’s pioneering Bioelectronics Innovation Laboratory to develop futuristic battery-free implantable medical devices for treatment of brain, nerve, muscle or spinal cord disorders that are untreatable by using standard medical practices.

Bioelectronics is a new and an exciting field in engineering that is yet to make its mark in India. It utilizes the intersecting knowledge of both electronics and biology. Bioelectronic devices generally target to restore missing neural functions, while utilizing energy efficient and miniaturized engineering systems.

“We aim to implant coin-sized electronic chips with wireless energy supply for rehabilitation and prostheses applications. These chips will solve neural connectivity problems that are otherwise unaddressed by latest medical sciences. Our solutions will incorporate a combination of electrical stimulation, bio-potential recording and neuro-chemical sensing. Unlike the standard pace-makers that require a surgery every 5 to 10 years due to limited battery-life, our solutions depend on wireless power transfer and intelligent communication schemes. This will enhance the lifetime of implants and reduce the number of surgical interventions. The programmable chips will help in adopting with varying physiological conditions in patients. The present line of research targets subjects with blindness, limb paralysis, sensory-motor dysfunction, cognition-loss, Parkinsons tremor, epileptic seizures, and even memory loss. The novel bioelectronic devices will be able to sense bio-signals, process information to make intelligent decisions, and control diseased organs by electrical methods” explained Prof. Sudip Nag from the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering who is heading this initiative at IIT Kharagpur.

The proposed medical devices will help in realizing highly affordable and reliable medical solutions that are accessible to the common population in India and the world. The laboratory will facilitate energy efficient electronic system development, biocompatible packaging, bio-reliability assessment and animal testing rooms as a unified platform for an end-to-end intelligent medical system development. Grants have been received from IIT Kharagpur, under MHRD Imprint program, SFTIG Indo-Canadian Fellowship grant etc. It is in the process of setting up collaborations with several hospitals and institutes in India and abroad.

In addition to innovating new medical devices, the laboratory will open new career avenues in incubating companies for production and marketing and also create an international supply base for medical devices giants like Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Advanced Bionic, Second Sight and Saint Jude’s Medical, opined Prof. Nag. “We are looking forward to technology licensing and commercialization of bioelectronic devices that are being developed in this laboratory,” he said.

Microwave for Clean Fuel

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Kitchen to Cosmos Microwaves these days ring ‘n’ number of bells. IITKGP Researchers have tapped this microwave radiation to create Clean Energy from the nitrogen-rich non-food Sunn Hemp plants.

In the wake of the ongoing initiatives to control pollution, we are often made to think of the proverb ‘prevention is better than cure’. There is an urgency to replace the use of fossil fuels like petrol and diesel which are direct causes of pollution, global warming and climate change. Various clean energy technologies have been developed. Acres of land in the country have been allocated for solar and wind energy, hydel power and geothermal projects have been deployed and expanded over the decades. But India’s fossil fuel import bill still runs high due to non-availability of renewable energy sources at mass scale. Biofuels derived from high-energy non-edible plant sources such as Sunn Hemp on the other hand have the potential of making it available in large scale for replacement of fossil fuel which can find significant use in transportation sector. The main obstacle to its large scale deployment as a future fuel is its highly crystalline structure and long polymer chains, which make the fibres inaccessible to enzymatic and chemical treatments.

Researchers from IIT Kharagpur’s P K Sinha Center for Bioenergy have exacted the issue through the use of microwave radiation. The team from the Bioenergy Lab at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering has successfully converted non-edible lignocellulosic fibres of Sunn Hemp to biofuel precursors, and that too completing the entire conversion – which otherwise takes about 8-10 hours – in only 46 minutes using the microwave reactors in the lab.

“1 kilogram of Sunn hemp fibres containing 756 gram of cellulose produces 595 gram of glucose at 160°C, and 203 gram of hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) at 180°C, in 46 minutes. The glucose is separated and fermented using yeasts to produce 230 g of ethanol-based biofuel which is often used in automobiles as a biofuel additive for gasoline. The platform chemical HMF can also be hydrogenated to furanic biofuels such as dimethylfuran which can be used as a replacement for diesel” explained researcher Souvik Kumar Paul.

Sunn hemp is widely grown in the subtropics of Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka, USA, Uganda. It is grown in almost all states of India, especially Bihar, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The large scale availability of Sunn Hemp in India along with its fast rate of growth and high cellulose (75.6%) and high energy contents (2.5×109 MJ/year) are the key elements of listing it as a top choice for the biofuel industry. Sunn hemp fibres produce 2268 kg dry biomass/acre in only 9–12 weeks, with 19 megajoule of energy/kg dry biomass at a global production of 130,000 MT/year.

“Sunn hemp fibre has the unique potential of being converted to transportation biofuels rather than being merely used as bast fibre for weaving mats, etc. Our research will give its chemical composition the necessary stability for conversion and deployment as liquid biofuels, which can be used by the transportation industry in a large scale,” said Prof. Saikat Chakraborty, lead researcher and faculty at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and P K Sinha Center for Bioenergy.

These chemical reactions are performed by the scientists at IIT Kharagpur in a large microwave digestion system that houses 16 high pressure reactors. By combining the dried Sunn hemp fibres with chemicals such as ionic liquid and metal catalysts, and water at high temperatures, they form large molecular structures in these microwave reactors. This supramolecular complex being polar in nature rotates under the microwave’s alternating polarity and rapidly dissipates the electromagnetic energy through molecular collisions across the reactors. These dipole rotations and intermolecular collisions help rapidly break the polymeric bonds in the Sunn hemp fibres and convert them to biofuel precursors in only 46 minutes.

“Biofuel production costs are minimized by recovering and recycling the ionic liquid,” added Chakraborty. “This conversion process, which can be used for a large spectrum of non-food lignocelluloses apart from Sunn hemp, is particularly suitable for commercialization because it results in a 10-fold decrease in the reaction time. A mixture of biomass can also be processed in these reactors rather than a single biomass without any further increase in the reaction time, which should make this process an attractive option for the biofuel industry.”

While the significant industry potential of this invention has led the scientists to file for a patent, their findings have also appeared in the globally renowned journal Bioresource Technology published by Elsevier.