E-Paper
We will have our fully ‘Made in India’ PSA unit ready within a month, says Dr Ashish Lele, director, NCL Pune
NCL developed Pressure Swing Absorption (PSA) technology which allows continual supply of oxygen taken from the air. CSIR NCL has developed this technology and we have set up more than 200 PSA units across the country, which is saving lives of patients in this critical times
Dr Ashish Lele, director, National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) in Pune to Dheeraj Bengrut about the role NCL played during the pandemic and new research projects going on at the institute. Dr Lele was former chief scientist at CSIR-NCL and took charge of NCL on April 1, 2021.
Dr Lele has also served as senior VP and head, Advanced Materials and Alternative Energy Group, Reliance Industries, prior to take this posting.
How do you plan to take NCL forward now that you are director?
In last five months since I have joined NCL, there are few things I am trying to bring in. I am trying to re-emphasise this. These are fundamental things, as there is a purpose for this laboratory, which is why it was started. It is to advance knowledge and use chemical science for the good of people. We actively encourage our scientists and our research students to take a leadership role in science in their own areas. And the second part is to apply science for the good of people, which means we need to take science and convert it for uses for our country, as well globally.
The other thing which we do is work with the industry... we interact with them, work and develop technologies with them. How do we make this happen? For that first we have to choose the right problems to work upon. There are certain important trends happening in India and the planet, for example climate change is a problem. All these are difficult problems and we have to break it up in different parts to work on. We then protect that knowledge of good science, and work towards converting it for real life usage. It is worked in stages - laboratory, bench, pilot experiment and then scale for production.
What new research projects and initiatives are currently related to the Covid pandemic?
NCL developed Pressure Swing Absorption (PSA) technology which allows continual supply of oxygen taken from the air. CSIR NCL has developed this technology and we have set up more than 200 PSA units across the country, which is saving lives of patients in this critical times. There is a material in that PSA unit which actually separates oxygen from air - it is called zeolite, and we are currently importing it from other countries. So we are bujilding the entire plant, but its heart - the zeolite is brought from outside. We took up the challenge to develop zeolite on our own. After I joined, we put a team of 10 to 12 scientists from different divisions on the project. I am happy to tell that we are finally made the ‘zeolite’ material as a pilot and there are many aspects of technology which we called basic engineering. So we will have our fully ‘Made in India’ PSA unit in our country and within a month it will be on the market. This will not stop here and we will continue to develope multiple zeolites and other products.
Another important project which we are working or rather participating in which is done across the country is genome surveillance. It is an all India effort, several institutions are participating in it and every week we collect around 200 Covid samples and we upload data. This surveillance helps us understand the spread of the virus, and who are more vulnerable, among other things.
Any new academic courses or skill development projects for research students coming up at NCL?
We want to go beyond our research Phd students and for that we are offering skilling programmes for industry professionals. So industries send their engineers and young people for traininig and we have a year long calendar every year. This year two new skill development programmes would be added. One about green hydrogen technology to generate energy. And also the sewage surveillance system which we are currently doing for the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). We can always help other research institutes to set up a course and call other scientific institution students to the NCL for training.
