Over the years, the human lifestyle has become more focused towards the use of organic and naturally-derived products. Due to great demand of natural and clean label products, the market of isolated essential oil and fats e.g. spice oil and oleoresins is increasing day by day consequently, spent spice waste is also increasing year by year. However, some percentage of spice spent may be find application as: (i) veterinary feeds, (ii) blending with pure spice powder which has low nutritional value compared to the pure spice and (iii) source for dietary fibre. Despite all, million tons of spice spent is either sent to landfills or incineration which poses environmental threat. The natural degradation process is extremely slow and incomplete, thus giving rise to toxicity problems. Hence this project includes the utilization of spice industry waste to produce bio-oil by means of Catalytic Pyrolysis method. In this process, novel catalyst derived from the Tannery sludge is used as catalyst to enhance the quality of bio-oil and reduce the oxygenated compounds present in bio-oil. Catalytic pyrolysis produces low-grade fuel in spite of showing promising characteristics to be used as alternative to conventional gasoline or engine oil. Hence fuel characteristics of pyrolysis bio-oil should be upgraded to meet the quality specifications defined by the ASTM D7544 standard. This project is intended to utilize the spent spice waste as a feedstock for the integrated catalytic pyrolysis and catalytic cracking process to produce high-grade bio diesel for direct use as engine oil. 

Funding: CST-UP Grant 2022-2024

PI: Dr Priyanka Katiyar, Co-PI: Dr V M Rajesh