Media Release

Karkala, Jul 31: A team of students of the department of Biotechnology of NMAM Institute of Technology (NMAMIT ) won the ‘Best Project of the year 2018-19’ award at the 42nd annual Student Project Seminar and Exhibition conducted by Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST), IISc Bengaluru, held at KLE Society's Dr M S Sheshgiri College of Engineering and Technology, Belagavi on July 26 and 27.

Inchara Crasta, Ashwini Shenoy, Soumya Rao and Udbhavi of the team received this award for their final year project ‘Process intensification of bioethanol production through simultaneous saccharification and extractive fermentation’ under Biofuels category.

The project was guided by Venkatesh Kamath H, assistant professor and Dr C Vaman Rao, professor and head of Biotechnology department. Dr Udipi Shrinivasa, emeritus professor of Mechanical Engineering, IISc Bengaluru, a pioneer in biofuel revolution in India presented the award to the students. The award includes a cash prize, citation and certificate.

Earlier, the project team had also received KSCST student project grant and VTU student project grant for their innovative projects. In this project, the team had demonstrated the production of bioethanol from Pongamia (Honge) oil cake using an integrated technique to solve system complexities and to reduce operation cost. They had also designed and fabricated two different lab-scale bioreactor modules for this operation.