14
NEWS / WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
RESEARCH
Student recognized for green chemistry
Ryan Waggoner/KANSAN
Madhav Ghanta, a graduate student from Hyderbad, India, recently was awarded the Kenneth G. Hancock Memorial Award in Green Chemistry. Ghanta is the first student from the university to win the award.
BY MEGAN RUPP mrupp@kansan.com
Plastic bottles, antifreeze, paints and detergents — all common household items that contribute to the increasing rate of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. A few KU researchers, though, are working to lessen that effect.
Madhav Ghanta, a doctoral student in chemical and petroleum engineering, received national recognition for his work in green technology that makes the production of plastic less environmentally adverse.
For two years Ghanta, from Hyderbad, India, and his research team experimented with alternative ways to produce ethylene-oxide, an industrial chemical used in consumer goods.
"There's a lot of emphasis on environmentally benign and clean technologies." Ghanta said. "It's very exciting to see my work on the same platform as those that are already impactive."
The American Chemical Society presented Ghanta the Kenneth G. Hancock Memorial Award in Green Chemistry last month in Washington, D.C. He collaborated with Hyun-Jin Lee, a postdoctoral researcher, and worked under the guidance of Bala Subramaniam, a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, and Daryle Busch, a professor of chemistry, at the University's Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis to develop the greener technology.
Ghanta said existing technologies produced an environmentally adverse and economically inefficient carbon dioxide by-product, contributing to the 3.4 million total tons of CO2 annually. The amount of CO2 emissions equates to the annual pollution created by about 900,000 cars, more than 11 times the amount generated from the 79,270 registered cars in Douglas County. Ghanta said
their technology produced ethyleneoxide, without generating the CO2 by-product.
Subramaniam said he was proud to see that Ghanta's work had led to a technological breakthrough.
"We don't have to produce materials the way we always have, we can find ways to lessen the environmental footprint for the next generations," Subramaniam said.
Ghanta said there has been a lot of interest in the technology, but there was still a lot of work to do. He's now running an economic analysis to determine his technology's commercial potential. He said he hoped it would be cheaper because of decreased waste and less energy use. Ultimately, he said he needed to assess whether rhenium, the metal he used, had a longer lifespan
than the traditionally used and less expensive silver.
"It can't be commercially successful if it's not economically viable so companies make money out of the deal," Ghanta said. "The objective is to develop green technology that is environmentally sustainable, but to do that you need to see commercial success."
Ghanta said dense populations and high pollution in India drove him to investigate sustainability. He said the 1984 Bhopal gas leak motivated him and served as a reminder that obsolete technologies can be harmful to both the environment and populations. The largest industrial catastrophe to date cost thousands of Bhopalis their lives. More than 20 years later, the Dow Chemical Company still faces legal
After receiving his undergraduate degree in India, Ghanta said he was eager to study at the University.
repercussions.
"I had heard about the engineering department and I knew I wanted to study here, I just hoped they would take me," Ghanta said.
He said he would eventually return to India where the market is rapidly growing, commercial demand is changing and most chemical companies have research centers.
"Everyone in the U.S. has access to environmentally friendly commercial commodities, but if you look at the market in India, the billion people living there do not," Ghanta said.
Ghanta said that as product demand increased, his commitment to cleaner production also increased.
Claudia Bode, education director at the center, said demand for similar products will continue to increase as it has in past years.
"The volume of things used with this chemical continues to grow, especially as other countries like India and China begin to grow and their standard of living goes up," Bode said.
Subramanian agreed that as demand increased, the production of CO2 would increase proportionately. He said the increase couldn't be predetermined, but as other countries showed greater interest in green technology, technological impacts could be significant.
The Center focuses on high-volume commodity chemicals, like ethylene-oxide, because they are in high demand worldwide. Minimizing CO2 waste generated in their production could have a broad effect in creating more sustainable lifestyles for the global community in the long-term, Bode said.
Still, she said because increased consumption was also a significant concern, large industries and individual consumers needed to find ways to reduce waste and consumption.
Shannon O'Lear, a professor of environmental studies and geography, said other ways of addressing environmental concerns, like decreasing consumption, were uncomfortable and politically messy. She said the green movement was centralized around issues like CO2 emissions that were quantitatively tangible, but allowed people to overlook measures of how much populations consume, how they generate waste and if they should consume at such high levels.
"Just thinking about your carbon footprint is like only focusing on not eating sugar for your diet," O'Lear said. "Research that deals with lessening CO2 is important, but it's not the silver bullet."