Zahira Yaakob

By Zahira Yaakob, Anila Gopalakrishnan, Silija Padikkaparambil, Binitha N. Narayanan and Resmi M. Ramakrishnan

Part of the book: Solar Power

By Ehsan Ali and Zahira Yaakob

Part of the book: Electrolysis

By Sri Rizki Putri Primandari, A.K.M. Aminul Islam, Zahira Yaakob and Swapan Chakrabarty

Jatropha curcas L. is cultivated for its oil utilization as fuel feedstock. This main purpose is achieved with the biomass waste after oil extraction. The biomass wastes are leaf and stem from pruning, fruit hull, seed husk, and oily-cake. This paper discusses the utilization of the waste in order to achieve zero waste of jatropha and develop the jatropha utilizations. Jatropha waste is also utilized as fertilizer, briquettes, adsorbent, resin, and bioactive compost. It can also be utilized as feedstock for production of polymer composite, combustion for gasifier, biogas, liquid oil, and dye. These wide utilizations make jatropha very suitable for biofuel proposes.

Part of the book: Advances in Biofuels and Bioenergy

By Abul Kalam Mohammad Aminul Islam, Sri Rizki Putri Primandari and Zahira Yaakob

Biodiesel derived from plant species has been a major renewable source of energy and has received global interest mainly due to climate change issue. It has increasingly received worldwide attention as a promising alternative fuel. Growing interest in biodiesel production from edible oil brings scarcity in food supply. To overcome this problem, utilization of non-edible oils could be explored. Non-edible oil as biodiesel feedstock impressed in many factors such as energy sustainability and independence in certain areas, especially in rural community, creating job opportunities, elevating environmental merits, and avoiding monoculture of fuel resources. The present chapter reviews several such potentials, including fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) or biodiesel production process of non-edible oil resources as biodiesel feedstock in South-East Asian geographical region. The South-East Asian countries fall in the tropical region of the world and have many species as non-edible oil, viz., jatropha, karanja, polanga, neem, rubber, and mahua. The oils derived from these species have shown considerable potential as biodiesel feedstock.

Part of the book: Advances in Biofuels and Bioenergy

By Swapan Chakrabarty, Abul Kalam Mohammad Aminul Islam, Zahira Yaakob and Abul Kalam Mohammad Mominul Islam

Castor belongs to a monotypic genus Ricinus and subtribe Ricininae. It is one of the oldest plants, getting importance as an agricultural crop for subtropical and tropical countries in the world. Castor is a hardy plant, requires low input, tolerates marginal soils, is easy to establish in the field, is resistant to drought, and gives yield 350–900 kg oil per hectare. Castor oil shows great functional value in energy sector, industry, and pharmaceutical. In recent years, it received increasing demand in the international market for its more than 700 uses, ranging from medicine and cosmetics to biodiesel, plastic, and lubricants. The oil is significant for many industrial uses compared with other oils from plant sources because of its high and low temperature-tolerant properties. This chapter has been written to provide botanical descriptions, ecology, agro-technology, and versatile industrial uses.

Part of the book: Agroecosystems

By Abul Kalam Mohammad Aminul Islam, Swapan Chakrabarty, Zahira Yaakob, Mohammad Ahiduzzaman and Abul Kalam Mohammad Mominul Islam

The demand of petroleum fuel is increasing day by day. To meet up the energy demand, people of developing countries like Bangladesh basically used energy from indigenous sources, which are reducing quickly. Hence, it should be emphasized to explore unconventional fuel to overwhelm the crisis of petroleum fuels. Koroch (Pongamia pinnata L. Pierre) is a quick-growing leguminous tree that has the ability to grow on marginal land. Higher oil yield as well as physicochemical properties increases the suitability of using Pongamia as a promising substitute for supplying feedstock of biofuel production. Besides biofuel production, P. pinnata has multipurpose uses as traditional medicine to animal feed, bio-pesticides, and bio-fertilizers. A better understanding and knowledge on the ecological distribution, botanical characteristics, physiology, and mode of reproduction along with physicochemical properties, and biosynthesis of oil is essential for sustainable production of biofuel from P. pinnata. In this chapter, we discuss overall biological and physicochemical properties as well as cultivation and propagation methods that provide a fundamentals for exploiting and improving of P. pinnata as a promising renewable source of biofuel feedstock.

Part of the book: Forest Biomass

By Buthainah Ali Al-Timimi and Zahira Yaakob

The possibility of alleviation of methane and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are of major global interest. One of the alternatives that attracts much scientific attention is their chemical utilization, especially because both of these gases are components of the biogas. Thus, the rapid and extensive shale gas development makes them abundant raw materials. The development of an effective catalytic process that could be scaled-up for industrial purposes remains a great challenge for catalysis. As well, understanding of the mechanisms of molecular activation and the reaction pathways over active centers on heterogeneous catalysts needs to be advanced. It has been shown that biogas is a very interesting source of renewable energy. Because of its elevated methane content, biogas has excellent potential, as reflected in its year-over-year rise in production. This is because its manufacturing promotes the use of organic waste, prevents uncontrolled dumping and minimizes atmospheric methane and carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, its use as an energy source is in some cases an alternative to fossil fuels and can help to minimize energy dependence. Another aspect of interest is that it can be used in situ, allowing agro-livestock farms or small industrial plants to achieve energy self-sufficiency.

Part of the book: Natural Gas

By Vijayasree Haridas, Zahira Yaakob and Binitha N. Narayanan

The extended applications of the supercapacitor are possible with the attainment of a wide potential window since then it can exhibit high energy density too. Thus, organic electrolytes are more feasible in supercapacitors due to the accessibility of wide potential windows and the resultant higher storage/release of energy. A high-performance supercapacitor electrode material is prepared here via an eco-friendly procedure using a combination of Fe2O3, gum acacia derived porous carbon, and a ball-mill synthesized graphene for the first time. The synergistic action of the metal oxide and the carbon materials provided excellent specific capacitance values to the ternary nanocomposite. An appreciable specific capacitance of 433 F/g has been displayed by the composite coated glassy carbon electrode at a current density of 6 A/g in tetraethylammonium tetrafluoroborate—acetonitrile electrolyte at a wide potential window of 2.5 V. The material showed outstanding cyclic stability of 109% of the initial specific capacitance after 5000 repeated cycles.

Part of the book: Green Chemistry