Binoy Sarkar (PhD Student)
University of South Australia

Project Title
Remediation of organic and inorganic contaminants by novel bio-reactive organoclays

Biography
Binoy has been fascinated by life sciences and chemistry since his school days, leading him to choose agriculture for his undergraduate course (BSc Honours). A specialisation in biochemistry and agricultural chemicals in his BSc taught him the integrated aspects of life sciences within chemistry required to solve diverse problems in the soil environment. His interest in this subject contributed to his success in securing the Junior Research Fellowship from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research for pursuing his post graduate studies (MSc) at the prestigious Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi (2004-2006). His MSc dissertation saw him working on the impact of genetically modified cotton on soil chemical and biological processes. He later worked as a research assistant (2006-2007) at the Department of Agricultural Biotechnology in the Seoul National University, South Korea. Now studying in Australia, his PhD involves the combination of clay mineralogy with microbiology in order to develop an effective remediation technology for environmental contaminants.
Besides working in the lab, Binoy loves to watch movies, listen to music, watch cricket and play soccer.

Start Date
September 2007

Project Details
The scientific field of Binoy's proposed thesis revolves around the use of clays and their modified products in combination with novel microbes for environmental remediation. Soil and water environments have continuously been polluted with numerous pollutants of both organic and inorganic origins. Binoy's PhD project will attempt to develop a remediating material efficient to remediate some of those pollutants. To achieve this, naturally abundant clay minerals will be used as the scope of their environmental application has not been fully explored. They will be modified with certain organic molecules. The resulting products are known as organoclays. Microbial species will be introduced into the organoclays to remediate the contaminants biologically and thus the final products will be bio-reactive. As target contaminants, BTEX and phenol will be selected from an organic group, whereas chromium and arsenic will be selected from an inorganic group. This project is expected not only to come up with a new kind of remediation product, but also to open a profitable commercial avenue for developing value-added products from the natural clay resources.