Development of green energy technologies: An alternative approach to promote green energy and waste management

Title : Development of green energy technologies: An alternative approach to promote green energy and waste management

Abstract:

Currently, a number of global challenges are associated with the extensive use of non-renewable fossil fuels. The main challenges are global warming, energy crisis, environmental pollution, instability of economy, biodiversity, dependence on other countries and many others. These challenges stimulated us to develop an alternative and green energy technologies. Therefore, a number of approaches have been developed to mitigate these challenges. Biohydrogen was produced from wastewater and converted to electrical energy by the development of microbial fuel cells (MFCs). Bioethanol have been produced from bagasse and waste fruits that was used to power the gasoline engine. A detailed study of the emission of gases was conducted during the combustion of bioethanol-gasoline blends and compare with the combustion of gasoline. In addition, biodiesel was produced by the transesterification of oils obtained from different feedstocks including castor oil, waste fish oil, seaweeds oil and waste cooking oil. Various heterogeneous catalysts were produced from waste materials like waste marble, egg shell, mollusca shell and waste catalysts from metallurgical industries and used for the conversion of oil to biodiesel. These reactions were conducted by renewable and green concentrated solar thermal (CST) energy. Furthermore, different waste materials like human hairs, animal hairs, waste fish, coconut shell, waste diapers and e-wastes were converted to synthetic fuels by pyrolysis. These renewable and green approaches will be helpful to overcome the current demerits of fossil fuels.
Keywords: Bioelectricity, bioethanol, biodiesel, synthetic fuels, solar energy.

Biography:

Prof. Dr. Abdul Majeed Khan is a Professor (BPS-21) in the Department of Chemistry at the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science & Technology (FUUAST), Pakistan. He currently serves as In-Charge of the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Campus and Chairman of the Affiliation Committee, and has previously held leadership positions as Dean of the Faculty of Chemical and Earth Sciences and Chairman of the Department of Chemistry. He is also an Editor of the FUUAST Journal of Biology. He earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Karachi and completed his PhD in Marine Natural Product Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, followed by a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in X-Ray Crystallography at the H.E.J. Research Institute of Chemistry. His doctoral work received excellent evaluations from international experts. Prof. Khan’s research interests include green and renewable energy, waste-to-energy technologies, biofuels, and marine chemistry. He has published extensively in international journals, supervised numerous graduate and postgraduate students, and led several funded research projects. In recognition of his academic excellence, he has received the Best University Teacher Award (2011) from the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and has been recognized as a Productive Scientist of Pakistan.