Mohali Scientist Makes Fireworks With Cow Urine

CHANDIGARH: A year after a team of scientists from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Mohali developed the country’s first smoke-free, fragrance-based crackers out of plastic bottles, they have now developed cheaper ‘green’ crackers using distilled cow urine.

Explaining his decision to use cow urine for green crackers, IISER chemical scientist, Prof Samrat Ghosh said it was basically due to its current popularity among scientists keen to explore the ‘big’ claims around it. “This is currently a topic of interest, so I thought to experiment with it. It all happened when my dad, who is suffering from cancer, asked me about its effectiveness in healing. Simultaneously, I was working on how to make ingredients in my previous green firecrackers cheaper. So, as a scientist I thought to connect the two.”

Use of urine has reduced the cost of these green crackers by 50%, says Ghosh. Wary about security of the new formulation, the IISER team has not patented the idea and plans to mass produce these cow urine firecrackers under the institute’s technology business incubator scheme.

“This would provide a unique opportunity to our students to do start-ups and become entrepreneurs and contribute to job creation,” said Ghosh.

A Noida-based company had last year shown interest in manufacturing the IISER team’s green crackers and is now supplying material for the upscale. “We are making some components for him and once the Supreme Court clears the components for the green crackers, these can be commercialized,” said Ghosh, proprietor of the company.

Approval for the chemical composition of ‘green’ crackers developed by National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) is awaited by April-end, but Ghosh is clear that these will not help curb pollution.

“Once these less polluting smoke-less (25-30% less) are introduced into the market as green crackers, people will burst them in even larger numbers. They will not be restrained by the fact that these are only 30% less polluting (than traditional fireworks). The misleading ‘green’ tag will cause more harm and create more pollution and smoke compared to conventional firecrackers,” explains Ghosh.

Unlike the formulation developed by NEERI, which can reduce emission of pollutant particulate matter (PM) 2.5 by 25-30 per cent, the IISER scientist claims his organic ‘green’ crackers are smoke-free, PM-free and debris-less.

The green crackers, made from plastic water bottles, developed last year by a team under leadership of Ghosh, used combustible material that was expensive and not readily available. “The newly-developed crackers have distilled urine, which is used for therapeutic purpose and is readily available and cheap. It is truly organic and sustainable. There is no change in performance of my super-green organic firecrackers, in terms of sound, light and flight,” said the scientist.

As only gaseous fuels are used in these green firecrackers, there is no PM emission. However, to understand which gases are been released during the combustion, Vinayak Sinha, associate professor, earth sciences/chemical sciences, at IISER has conducted an emission study. “We are at the stage of analyzing the data of gases that comes after burning the green crackers developed at IISER. At this moment I cannot reveal more,” said Sinha.

Source: ToI

Image Courtesy: HT