Indian Science and Technology Developments : Updates and Discussions

BHEL demonstrates tech to create methanol from high ash coal

By Press Trust of India | New Delhi | Last Updated at September 09 2021 19:44 IST
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(Representative Image)

State-run engineering firm BHEL has successfully demonstrated a facility to create methanol from high ash Indian coal, an official statement said on Thursday. Methanol is utilised as a motor fuel, to power ship engines, and to generate clean power all over the world.

"With four years of hard work BHEL successfully demonstrated a facility to create 0.25 TPD methanol from high ash Indian coal using a 1.2 TPD Fluidized bed gasifier. The methanol purity of the crude methanol produced is between 98 and 99.5 per cent," it said.

Speaking on the occasion, NITI Aayog member V K Saraswat said this endeavour led to the formation of in-house design expertise in BHEL for designing greater capacity coal gasification facilities. This in-house capability will assist India's coal gasification mission and coal-to-hydrogen production for Hydrogen Mission, he added.

The statement said after achieving this feat BHEL is further developing in -house some critical processes such as catalytic conversion of syngas to methanol. Methanol is also used to generate di-methyl ether (DME), a liquid fuel that is very similar to diesel existing diesel engines simply need to be minimally changed to use DME instead of diesel.

The majority of worldwide methanol production is derived from natural gas, which is a relatively easy process. Since India doesn't have much of the natural gas reserves, producing methanol from imported natural gas lead to outflow of foreign exchange and sometimes uneconomical due to excessive prices of natural gas.

BHEL demonstrates tech to create methanol from high ash coal
 
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India gets first herbicide-tolerant & non-GM rice varieties; launch today

The varieties — Pusa Basmati 1979 and Pusa Basmati 1985 — contain a mutated acetolactate synthase (ALS) gene making it possible for farmers to spray Imazethapyr, a broad-spectrum herbicide, to control weeds.

Written by Harish Damodaran | New Delhi | Updated: September 28, 2021; 7:37:06 AM
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IARI director AK Singh at a trial field containing both herbicide-tolerant basmati and normal basmati (left plot), whose plants have been killed along with weeds after spraying Imazethapyr. (Photo by Harish Damodaran)

The Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) has developed the country’s first-ever non-GM (genetically modified) herbicide-tolerant rice varieties that can be directly seeded and significantly save water and labour compared to conventional transplanting.

The varieties — Pusa Basmati 1979 and Pusa Basmati 1985 — contain a mutated acetolactate synthase (ALS) gene making it possible for farmers to spray Imazethapyr, a broad-spectrum herbicide, to control weeds. This dispenses with the need to prepare nurseries where paddy seeds are first raised into young plants, before being uprooted and replanted 25-35 days later in the main field.

The two new varieties are scheduled to be officially released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.

Paddy transplantation is both labour- and water-intensive. The field where the seedlings are transplanted has to be “puddled” or tilled in standing water. For the first three weeks or so after transplanting, the plants are irrigated almost daily to maintain a water depth of 4-5 cm. Farmers continue giving water every two-three days even for the next four-five weeks when the crop is in tillering (stem development) stage.

“Water is a natural herbicide that takes care of weeds in the paddy crop’s early-growth period. The new varieties simply replace water with Imazethapyr and there’s no need for nursery, puddling, transplanting and flooding of fields. You can sow paddy directly, just like wheat,” said A K Singh, director of IARI.

Imazethapyr, effective against a range of broadleaf, grassy and sedge weeds, can’t be used on normal paddy, as the chemical does not distinguish between the crop and the invasive plants. The ALS gene in rice codes for an enzyme (protein) that synthesises amino acids for crop growth and development. The herbicide sprayed on normal rice plants binds itself to the ALS enzymes, inhibiting their production of amino acids.

The new basmati varieties contain an ALS gene whose DNA sequence has been altered using ethyl methanesulfonate, a chemical mutant. As a result, the ALS enzymes no longer have binding sites for Imazethapyr and amino acid synthesis isn’t inhibited. The plants can also now “tolerate” application of the herbicide, and hence it kills only the weeds.

“This is herbicide-tolerance through mutation breeding, not GM. There isn’t any foreign gene here,” Singh pointed out.

Both Pusa Basmati 1979 and 1985 have been bred by crossing existing popular varieties — Pusa 1121 and Pusa 1509, respectively — with ‘Robin’. The latter is a mutant line derived from Nagina 22, an upland drought-tolerant rice variety. The mutant was identified for Imazethapyr-tolerance by S Robin, a rice breeder from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore.

Farmers in Punjab and Haryana are already adopting direct seeding of rice (DSR) in response to labour shortages and depleting water tables. This year alone, roughly 6 lakh of the total 44.3 lakh hectares area under paddy in the two states has come under DSR.

DSR cultivation is currently based on two herbicides, Pendimethalin (applied within 72 hours of sowing) and Bispyribac-sodium (after 18-20 days). As Singh pointed out, “These are costlier than Imazethapyr (Rs 1,500 versus Rs 300/acre). Imazethapyr, moreover, has a wider weed-control range and is safer, as the ALS gene isn’t present in humans and mammals. Even in the herbicide-tolerant rice, the chemical will target only the weeds.”

India gets first herbicide-tolerant & non-GM rice varieties; launch today
 

A joint Indo-Spanish team of scientists finds explosion reason of a compact neutron star, 20-30 times heavier than sun​

A team of scientists led by an Indian and a Spanish scientist explored the reasons for short duration explosion of Magnetar—a neutron compact star, which could be 20-30 times heavier than the sun, but less than the size of Delhi, and releases energy almost 100000 times more than the energy of Sun.

This is for the first time that scientists studied this Magnetar in detail and found clues to understand the sudden violent short duration flares in a fraction of a few milliseconds, claimed a senior officer of the Ministry of Science and Technology here on Thursday.

The present magnetar (GRB20014155) studied by the scientists exploded on April 15 last year. It lasted only one-tenth of a second and released energy equivalent to the energy that the Sun would radiate in one lakh years, said a senior officer of the Ministry of Science and Technology here on Thursday.

He said, the two Indian Institutes—The Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Science (ARIES) and Institute of Department of Science and Technology, worked in close coordination with the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics (IAA-SCIS) studied the magnetars eruption in detail to throw the light on the mysterious eruption of these compact neutron stars.

While the Indian team was led by Dr. Shashi Bhushan Pande (ARIES), the Spanish team was headed by Professor Alberto J Castro-Tirado (IAA-CSIS). They jointly published their research work in an international science journal—Nature.

The team studied a compact star (magnetars) of a rare category located thirteen million light-years away and reported the possible causes of their short and intense bursts—which has been surprising scientists for several decades.

So far, only 30 such magnetars have yet been recorded by scientists in our galaxy, the officer said, claiming that such explosions release transient x-ray pulses of energies—several times that of the Sun released in a fraction of millisecond to a few microseconds.

“When massive stars like supergiant stars with a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses collapse they might form neutron stars. Among neutron stars, stands out a small group with the most intense magnetic field known: magnetars,” the officer said.

“These objects, of which only thirty are known so far, suffer violent eruptions that are still little known due to their unexpected nature and short duration, of bare tenths of a second,” he said.

“The observations revealed multiple pulses, with a first pulse appearing only about tens of microseconds, much faster than other extreme astrophysical transients,” said Alberto J. Castro-Tirado, IAA-CSIC.

Professor Tirado said it was believed that eruptions in magnetars might be due to instabilities in their magnetosphere or to a kind of “earthquakes” (”starquakes”) produced in their crust, a rigid and elastic layer about a kilometer thick.

The eruption was detected by the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) instrument, onboard the International Space Station. The scientific team was able to solve the temporal structure of the event, by analyzing the minute scale of data for over a year. “Though several papers have been published about the event, as ASIM was the only mission that detected the main burst phase in the entire energy range of photons without saturation, it puts the ASIM instrument in a unique position to unveil some of the secrets surrounding magnetars,” claimed the team of scientists which studied this phenomenon.
www.thestatesman.com

A joint Indo-Spanish team of scientists finds explosion reason of a compact neutron star, 20-30 times heavier than sun

While the Indian team was led by Dr. Shashi Bhushan Pande (ARIES), the Spanish team was headed by Professor Alberto J Castro-Tirado (IAA-CSIS).
www.thestatesman.com www.thestatesman.com
 
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WHO seeks India’s help to test monkeypox cases in south-east Asia​

ICMR- NIV, Pune Director says this is not first time India is extending its diagnostic support to countries of this region​


The World Health Organisation Country Office for India has sought the assistance of India’s — ICMR-National Institute of Virology, Pune, — help to test suspected cases of monkeypox for the south-east Asia region (SEAR) member-states.

The SEAR accounts for one-quarter of the world’s population, 40% of the global poor and already bears approximately 30% of the overall global disease burden.

The request comes at a time when more than 10 countries, where monkeypox is not endemic, have reported outbreaks of the viral disease, with more than 100 confirmed or suspected infections, mostly in Europe.

ICMR- NIV, Pune detected the first SARS-CoV-2 case in the country and subsequently isolated the virus, including the variants of concern.
Its Director Priya Abraham said: “This is not the first time India is extending its laboratory and diagnostic support to countries of this region. We have done it during COVID also. For monkeypox testing, we have agreed in principle to help out and will await more formal requests from individual countries”.

‘Unusual outbreaks’​

Stating that India has not yet reported a case of monkeypox, she said “recent monkeypox outbreaks are unusual because they are occurring in countries where the virus has not been endemic”.

“For now we are adopting a wait-and-watch policy. We have two of our Institute’s laboratory groups ready to do the testing. We are equipped and prepared.”

Dr. Abraham added that monkeypox is not as transmissible as SARS-CoV-2 and the present outbreak gives no cause for undue panic.

Transmission between humans takes place through close contact with respiratory secretions (large droplets), skin lesions, or recently contaminated objects. Hence, health care workers, members of households, and other close contacts of active cases of monkeypox are at increased risk, she said.

Endemic in Africa​

Monkeypox virus was first discovered in 1958 and is known to be endemic in 12 countries in Africa, four of which have reported cases to the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the period from December 15, 2021 to May 1, 2022.

FIND, a global alliance for diagnostics, in its communication, explained that the emergence of monkeypox underlines the need for sustained global surveillance systems that can detect emerging viruses in every country in the world.

“The focus on diagnostics for COVID-19 has boosted testing and surveillance capacity worldwide that can be useful for monkeypox, but dramatic inequities remain in low- and middle-income countries,” it said. It added that the disease is not easily contracted, and in most cases is not life-threatening.
www.thehindu.com

WHO seeks India’s help to test monkeypox cases in south-east Asia

ICMR- NIV, Pune Director says this is not first time India is extending its diagnostic support to countries of this region
www.thehindu.com www.thehindu.com
 
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