Dr Abhilash, senior Principal scientist with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s National Metallurgical Laboratory (CSIR-NML) in Jamshedpur, is one of the winners of this year’s Vigyan Yuva Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award in the Engineering Sciences category. In this interview, he discusses his innovative work in the extraction of metals.
What I do
I work in the area of metal extraction, specifically metals that are not abundantly available in the earth’s crust in India, and yet have high demand and technological applications. These include rare earths such as uranium, scandium, neodymium and cerium, and rare metals such as lithium, vanadium, cobalt and nickel. India doesn’t have any mine reserves of these elements except for uranium and rare earths (which are of either nil or poor grade) and recently discovered lithium deposits.
How I do it
I have used microorganisms for extracting uranium. These microorganisms are present in the uranium mine itself, and we culture them and use them to extract uranium from the ore. The process I developed was scaled to 2 tonnes at the Uranium Corporation of India in Jharkhand. Of course, we are majorly dependent on uranium imports, but this sustainable practice can be an environmentally-friendly option for India.
To extract metals for which there are no abundant reserves in India, we have developed methods that rely on secondary resources. Take for example vanadium, which has applications in energy storage and steel alloys. We have extracted vanadium from slag from steel plants, waste from the aluminium industry (Bayer’s sludge) and spent catalysts from oil refineries and acid production plants. A jointly patented process for extraction from Bayer’s sludge has been developed at NML in collaboration with Vedanta Aluminium and similarly for catalysts with HZL.
{{/usCountry}}To extract metals for which there are no abundant reserves in India, we have developed methods that rely on secondary resources. Take for example vanadium, which has applications in energy storage and steel alloys. We have extracted vanadium from slag from steel plants, waste from the aluminium industry (Bayer’s sludge) and spent catalysts from oil refineries and acid production plants. A jointly patented process for extraction from Bayer’s sludge has been developed at NML in collaboration with Vedanta Aluminium and similarly for catalysts with HZL.
{{/usCountry}}To extract lithium, we use spent batteries. We at NML have developed and jointly patented a process in collaboration with Renault-Nissan. My colleague Dr Pratima Meshram and I have also developed CSIR’s first patented process that can extract various metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel from any kind of lithium or mixed batteries.
We have extracted scandium, an important metal with applications in fuel cells and cheaper aircraft alloys, from the aluminium industry’s red mud waste. The quantity of accumulated red mud in India is 25-30 million tonnes, with nearly 5 million tonnes annually is generated by three aluminium industries (NALCO, HINDALCO and Vedanta). A NITI Aayog-monitored project funded by the three aluminium industries will hold a demonstration plant for extraction of rare earths (including scandium) from 100kg red mud sooner at NML.