Sindhu Raveendran

Thangal Kunju Musaliar Institute of Technology | TKMIT · Department of Food Technology

α- amylases is one of the most important industrial enzyme which contributes to 25 % of the industrial enzyme market. Though it is produced by plant, animals and microbial source, those from microbial source seems to have potential applications due to their stability and economic viability. However a large number of α-amylases from different source...

Sugarcane is a major crop cultivated globally and the residue left over after the crop harvest and extraction of juice is a good biomass source that can be used for the production of several useful chemicals. The sugarcane bagasse is an excellent substrate for the production of various biochemicals and enzymes through fermentation. Now major intere...

The increasing fossil fuel scarcity has led to an urgent need to develop alternative fuels. One of the most promising alternatives to petroleum for the production of fuels is microbial production. Yeasts are highly efficient producer of bioethanol with several superior traits over bacterial counterparts. Tools of synthetic biology has revolutionise...

The present study investigates the operational conditions for organosolvent pretreatment and hydrolysis of rice straw. Among the different organic acids and organic solvents tested, acetone was found to be most effective based on the fermentable sugar yield. Optimiza-tion of process parameters for acetone pretreatment were carried out. The structur...

The agri-food industry creates a vast amount of waste each year. This is not just a problem for waste management, in terms of finding space to store waste and preventing escape of harmful waste into the environment; it also represents a loss of resources: the chemicals and energy which have gone into the production of this waste. If current waste s...

The need for a sustainable and circular bioeconomy model is imperative due to petroleum non-renewability, scarcity and environmental impacts. Biorefineries systems explore biomass to its maximum, being an important pillar for the development of circular bioeconomy. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) can take advantage of biorefineries, as they can be pro...

Bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) is a highly crystalline, highly polymerized material with a high aspect ratio, excellent flexibility, high water holding capacity, tensile strength,and other unique features. High purity cellulose can be produced with a variety of physio-chemical properties based on that growth medium and kinds of fermentation processe...

Biowaste is a major source of organic material that can be converted into energy through various processes such as anaerobic digestion, composting, and pyrolysis. However, emerging pollutants, such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, herbicides, and personal and household products, are a growing concern in wastewater treatment that can be effectively r...

Extraction of bioactive compounds for application in nutraceuticals is gaining popularity. For this, there is a search for low-cost substrates that would make the end product and the process more economical. Mushroom waste (stalk, cap, stem etc.) is one such high valued substrate that has received much attention recently due to its rich reserves of...

2,5-Furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) is one of the platform chemicals and monomers used in plastic industries, currently synthesized by carcinogenic and toxic chemical processes with high pressure and temperature. The aim of this study was to develop a bioprocess for the production of FDCA. 5-(Hydroxymethyl)furfural (HMF) was synthesized (22.67 ± 1.36...

In this study, the effects of peach shell biochar (PSB) and microbial agent (EM) amendment on nitrogen conservation and bacterial dynamics during sheep manure (SM) composting were examined. Six treatments were performed including T1 (control with no addition), T2 (EM), T3 (EM + 2.5 %PSB), T4 (EM + 5 %PSB), T5 (EM + 7.5 %PSB), and T6 (EM + 10 %PSB)....

In this study, explored the influence of different proportion (0%, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, and 10%) peach shell biochar (PSB) with microbial agents (EM) on the carbon transformation, humification process and fungal community dynamics during sheep manure (SM) composting. And no additives were used as control. The results manifested that the CO2 and CH4 emis...

Biosensors are nowadays being used in various fields including disease diagnosis and clinical analysis. The ability to detect biomolecules associated with disease is vital not only for accurate diagnosis of disease but also for drug discovery and development. Among the different types of biosensors, electrochemical biosensor is most widely used in...

Due to resource scarcity, current industrial systems are switching from waste treatment, such as wastewater treatment and biomass, to resource recovery (RR). Biofuels, manure, pesticides, organic acids, and other bioproducts with a great market value can be produced from wastewater and activated sludge (AS). This will not only help in the transitio...

This article provides an overview of biochar application for organic waste co-composting and its biochemical transformation mechanism. As a composting amendment, biochar work in the adsorption of nutrients, the retention of oxygen and water, and the promotion of electron transfer. These functions serve the micro-organisms (physical support of niche...

The study aim was to reveal the mechanism of impact of two type biochar on composting of hen manure (HM) and wheat straw (WS). Biochar derived from coconut shell and bamboo used as additives to reduce antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) in HM compost. The results manifested that effect of biochar amendment was significant to reduce ARB in HM compos...

Microplastics (MPs) as a kind of emerging contaminants, widely exists in various kinds of medium, sewage sludge (SS) is no exception. In the sewage treatment process, a large number of microplastics will be deposited in SS. More seriously, microplastics in sewage sludge can migrate to other environmental media and threaten human health. Therefore,...

Many technical, climatic, environmental, biological, financial, educational, and regulatory factors are typically involved in solid waste management (SWM). Artificial Intelligence techniques have lately gained attraction in providing alternative computational methods for resolving problems of solid waste management. The purpose of this review is to...

The Citrus fruits belong to the category where the groups of fruits are recognized to be an admirable repository of bioactive elements and phytochemical constituents, with strong biological potentials. The prominent use of Citrus fruits for nutrition as well as food processing has led to the release of a large amount of waste into the environment a...

The consumption of energy levels has increased in association with economic growth and concurrently increased the energy demand from renewable sources. The need under Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) intends to explore various technological advancements for the utilization of waste to energy. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) has been reported as cons...

Nanocellulose, a subset of nanomaterials made from cellulose, one of the world's most plentiful natural resources, has the potential to offer environmentally friendly, renewable, and sustainable building blocks with enhanced properties for a variety of applications in the nanotechnology field. This article describes the impact of glutaraldehyde (GA...

The worsening of our environment followed by the necessity of energy security are prominently noted to be the fundamental perspectives associated with the fossil-based linear economy. However, the constant efforts by the scientific community in this regard result in the emergence of a prominent view targeting the transformation towards the sustaina...

Environmental contamination is considered a major issue with the growing urbanization and industrialization. In this context, the scientific society is engaged in searching for a sustainable, safe, and eco-friendly solution. Sustainable materials such as biochar play an important role in environmental contamination. It has some specific properties...

It is ironic that the world suffers from water scarcity even with more than 70% of Earth being covered by water. This has majorly been attributed to the lack of cost-effective and less energy intensive desalination technologies that would enable easy conversion of seawater to freshwater for safe consumption. Several strides have been made in the de...

Food matrices contain bioactive compounds that have health benefits beyond nutritional value. The bulk of bioactive chemicals are still present in agro-industrial by-products as food matrices. Throughout the food production chain, there is a lot of agro-industrial waste that, if not managed effectively, could harm the environment, company, and how...

The scientific community has profoundly relied on the recovery of various elements with special inference on the renewable energy-powered desalination of wastewater. Advanced developments in modern science and technology allow them to accomplish the aforesaid target using the various desalination approaches including zero discharge technology, mult...

The sustainable utilization of agricultural wastewater is a major global challenge. This study evaluated the impact of agricultural fertilizer on the biomass potential of Nitzschia sp. for metabolite production, antibacterial activity, and as biofertilizer. Cultivation of Nitzschia sp in agriculture wastewater (0.5 mg ml-1) exhibited maximum cell d...

Wastewater management has emerged as an uprising concern that demands immediate attention from environmentalists worldwide. Indiscriminate and irrational release of industrial and poultry wastes, sewage, pharmaceuticals, mining, pesticides, fertilizers, dyes and radioactive wastes, contribute immensely to water pollution. This has led to the aggrav...

The adaptive responses to moderate environmental challenges by the biological systems have usually been credited to hormesis. Since the hormetic biphasic dose-response illustrates a prominent pattern towards biological responsiveness, the studies concerning such aspects will get much more significance in risk assessment practices and toxicological...

Restoration of environmental health is a major concern to the healthy sustenance of life on Earth. Multidirectional efforts in this direction are envisaged to this common aim and the use of versatile adsorbents to remove the wide variety of pollutants is the need of the hour. The current paper describes the potential of chitosan particles, modified...

The increasing population has raised the demand for pharmaceutical and personal care products to maintain a good health. Gemfibrozil (GEM), is extensively used as a lipid regulator and is frequently detected in wastewater treatment systems and poses deleterious health and ecological effects. Hence, the current study employing Bacillus sp. N2 report...

Tropical fruit wastes (TFW) are considered as the major source of food and nutrition in the topical countries. In the recent years, modernization of agriculture has increased the tropical fruit production. Higher fruit production led to an increasing abundance in the tropical fruit waste. In general, the tropical fruit waste has no economic value a...

This chapter provides a holistic view of technologies of composting and vermicomposting in recent years. The flexible apply of different methods, biochar, additives and bulking agents is summarized, especially highlighting the distinguished contribution of earthworms and microbes to the composting process. Earthworms can improve the porosity of com...

Biosurfactants are natural surface-active materials created by microorganisms. Biosurfactants can contribute several properties including antibacterial, antioxidant, emulsifying, and antiadhesive activities to the food in which they are incorporated. Biosurfactants have been employed in food formulations to enhance viscosity, extending the shelf li...

Filamentous fungi serve as potential candidates in the production of different value-added products. In the context of food, there are several advantages of using filamentous fungi for food. Among the main advantages is that the fungal biomass used food not only meets basic nutritional requirements but that it is also rich in protein, low in fat, a...

5-Hydroxymethyl furfural (HMF) is regarded as a very important platform chemical with versatile application. Sucrose derived from sorghum syrup was successfully explored for the synthesis of HMF. The current study employed a chemo-catalytic approach for the conversion of hexose component of sorghum syrup to HMF. The main objective of this study was...

The recent scenario has witnessed the augmenting demand for energy precursors primarily from renewable ways in respect of the natural environment. The high energy along with the cost-intensive nature of the conventional approaches directed the researchers to find out an effective and promising method that principally uses the microwave for the pret...

Bioenergy, as a perspective of the global energy paradigm, makes a significant contribution to the increase in global energy demand and the development of technologies for converting biomass into energy. Biomass gasification is the most preferred option for thermochemical processing. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of biomass gasification and...

The gradually increasing need for fossil fuels demands renewable biofuel substitutes. This has fascinated an increasing investigation to design innovative energy fuels that have comparable Physico-chemical and combustion characteristics with fossil-derived fuels. The efficient microbes for bioenergy synthesis desire the proficiency to consume a lar...

Problems with food security result from increased population, global warming, and decrease in cultivable land. With the advancements in synthetic biology, microbial synthesis of food is considered to be an efficient alternate approach that could permit quick food biosynthesis in an eco-friendly method. Furthermore, synthetic biology can be assumed...

Fast growth of bamboo species make them a suitable candidate for eco-restoration, while its lignocellulosic substrate could be used for production of high-value green products such as biofuels, chemicals, and biomaterials. Within these frameworks, this review comprehensively explored the thermochemical and biological conversion of bamboo biomass to...

This study demonstrates the importance of lemon peel powder in the formation of ZnO nanoparticles. The facile synthesis of core-shell morphological ZnO/MCM41 was achieved in a one-pot approach. The catalyst formation was confirmed by XRD, nitrogen adsorption–desorption studies, TGA, DSC, and SEM analysis. Jatropha to biodiesel production was concis...

Shrimp meat is consumed globally on a large scale, and their processing releases a large amount of shell waste. The major constituents of shrimp shells are chitin, proteins, calcium carbonate, and lipids. To extract chitin from the shrimp shell, it has to undergo deproteination (DP) to remove the proteins and demineralization (DM) to separate the m...

Proteins comprising of hormones, ligands, enzymes, or inhibitors are responsible for initiating the cellular mechanisms and are useful for the treatment of human diseases by alternating physiochemical properties. Proteins are administered as drugs/bioactive ingredients and are bioencapsulated to prevent the degradation by stomach acids and enzymes....

This study explored the feasibility of thermosonication (TS)-prestressed inoculum with different fermentation patterns for regulating microbial (post)-fermentation acidification kinetics. Through a Box-Behnken design, stimulative (20 min, 400 W, 33 kHz, 25 oC) and inhibitive (10 min, 600 W, 33 kHz, 20 oC) effects on the acidification capability of...

The enormous production and widespread applications of non -biodegradable plastics lead to their accumulation and toxicity to animals and humans. The issue can be addressed by the development of eco-friendly strategies for the production of biopolymers by utilization of waste residues like agro residues. This will address two societal issues - wast...

The valorization of agricultural and industrial wastes for fuel and chemical production benefits environmental sustainability. 2, 3-Butanediol (2,3-BDO) is a value-added platform chemical covering many industrial applications. Since the global market is increasing drastically, production rates have to increase. In order to replace the current petro...

Lignocellulosic biomass serves as an alternative renewable feed stock for the production of bioethanol using biochemical platform. Ethanol yield can be improved by adopting strategies such as simultaneous enzymatic saccharification and fermentation (SSF) using pneumatic bioreactors, robust yeast and biomass pretreated with hydrothermal process. In...

In this “plastic era” with the increased use of plastic in day today's life the accumulation of its degraded products like microplastics or plastic additives such as Bisphenol A(BPA) is also increasing. BPA is an endocrine-disrupting chemical used as a plasticizing agent in clear plastic, building materials, coatings, and epoxy resin. Several enzym...

Microalgae are photosynthetic microbes that can synthesize compounds of therapeutic potential with wide applications in the food, bioprocessing and pharmaceutical sector. Recent research advances have therefore, focused on finding suitable economic substrates for the sustainable cultivation of microalgae. Among such substrates, food derived waste s...

Current experimental evidence has revealed that pomegranate peel is a significant source of essential bio compounds, and many of them can be transformed into valorized products. Pomegranate peel can also be used as feedstock to produce fuels and biochemicals. We herein review this pomegranate peel conversion technology and the prospective valorized...

Diatom algae are increasingly explored as an alternative sustainable source for functional biomolecules likes fucoxanthin, and eicosapentaenoic acid. But biomolecule quantity and quantity are influenced by growth conditions. So, effect of differential silica concentration (0-120 mg L-1) and medium pH (5.5-9.5) on growth and cellular biochemical com...

The global climate crisis and the ongoing increase in fossil-based fuels have led to an alternative solution of using biomass for fuel production. Sugarcane bagasse (SCB) is an agricultural residue with a global production of more than 100 million metric tons and it has various applications in a biorefinery concept. This review brings forth the com...

Hydrogen gas has a lot of potential as an ecologically friendly and efficient vehicle fuel. Nearly all hydrogen gas is generated using non-renewable fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. As a result of climate change and declining oil supplies linked to fossil fuel use, hydrogen production from renewable energy sources is becoming a viab...

(S)-1-(1-naphthyl) ethanol (SNE) is a chiral drug intermediate for the production of mevinic acid analog, a potent cholesterol agent. It acts as an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor and is hence used in the synthesis of statins. Statins are lipid-lowering drugs used to lower cholesterol in the body. In our present study, we carried out whole-cell bioredu...

The development of sustainable and low carbon impact processes for a suitable management of waste and by-products coming from different factors of the industrial value chain like agricultural, forestry and food processing industries. Implementing this will helps to avoid the negative environmental impact and global warming. The application of the c...

Increases in population and urbanization leads to generation of a large amount of food waste (FW) and its effective waste management is a major concern. But putrescible nature andhigh moisture content is a major limiting factor for cost effective FW valorization. Bioconversion of FWfor the production of value added products is an eco-friendly and e...

The citric acid (CA) is an organic acid with a global market value of USD 3.6 billion. Due to its non-toxic and biodegradable nature, it is widely used in the food industry and various other industries such as pharmaceutical, biomedical, textile, and leather industries. CA is predominantly produced by Aspergillus niger due to its higher yield and a...

This review provides an update on the state-of-the art technologies for the valorization of solid waste and its mechanism to generate various bio-products. The organic content of these wastes can be easily utilized by the microbes and produce value-added compounds. Microbial fermentation techniques can be utilized for developing waste biorefinery p...

Phytases are a group of digestive enzymes which are commonly used as feed enzymes. These enzymes are used exogenously in the feeds of monogastric animals thereby it improves the digestibility of phosphorous and thus reduces the negative impact of inorganic P excretion on the environment. Even though these enzymes are widely distributed in many life...

The enormous use of synthetic antibiotic and personal care products has impacted the natural microbiome and ecosystem. Overtime, treatment technologies developed suffered due to incomplete removal hence, a pilot dual-chambered microbial peroxide-producing cell that degrades ampicillin catalyzed by homogenous Fenton-reaction was designed. The system...

In a desperate attempt to find organic alternatives to synthetic fertilizers, agricultural scientists are increasingly using biochar as a soil amendment. Using chemical fertilizers results in enormous financial burdens and chronic health problems for plants and soils. Global concerns have also increased over the prolonged consumption of foods grown...