Banwari Lal (biotechnologist)


Banwari Lal is an Indian environmental and industrial biotechnologist and the director of the Environmental and Industrial Biotechnology Division at The Energy and Resources Institute. Known for the development of oilzapper technology, Lal is the chief operating officer of ONGC-TERI Biotech Limited, a collaborative venture between TERI and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences in 2004.

Biography

Banwari Lal, born on 1 July 1960 in the Indian state of Rajasthan, completed his undergraduate studies at The University of Rajasthan in 1981 and continued at the university to earn an MSc in microbiology in 1983. His doctoral studies were also at the same university and after securing a PhD in microbial biotechnology in 1987, he joined the TERI School of Advanced Studies as a member of faculty. He has served The Energy and Resources Institute in various capacities and
is the director of the Environmental and Industrial Biotechnology. In 1996, when the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and TERI formed ONGC TERI Biotech Limited for exploiting the commercial prospects of technologies developed by Lal, he became the chief operating officer of the newly formed company. He is associated with Glori Energy, a Houston-based energy firm, as the chief scientist and is a member of scientific panels of the Food Authority of India and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, both government agencies working under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Legacy

Banwari Lal's research interests covered the fields of bioresources as well as environmental and industrial biotechnology. He is known to have made contributions in the areas of clean technology development, bioremediation of oil contaminated sites, oil recovery using microbes, and preventive protocol development for blocking paraffin deposition in oil well flow lines. The team led by him developed an oilzapper technology, a bioremediative and organic technology for cleaning the oil spills using microbes and bacteria, which was later employed for cleaning the 2010 Mumbai oil spill. The technology is reported to be cost-effective and most of major oil companies in India such as the Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Oil India, Indian Petrochemicals Corporation and Reliance Petroleum as well as Abu Dhabi National Oil Company employ it. His studies have been documented by way of a number of articles and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 141 of them. Besides, he has published one book, Wealth from waste : trends and technologies. He holds 8 patents for the processes developed by him and is a member of the American Society for Microbiology, the Society of Applied Microbiology, the Society of General Microbiology, the International Water Association, the Society for Industrial Microbiology and the Association of Microbiologists of India.

Awards and honors

Banwari Lal received the AIBA Award from the All India Biotech Association in 2001 and he was chosen to receive three awards in 2002 namely, the Biotech Product and Process Development for Commercialization Award of the Department of Biotechnology, the Jawarharlal Nehru Memorial National Gold Medal Award of the International Greenland Society and the Burhani Foundation-NEERI Award for the development of oilzapper technology. The National Petroleum Management Association presented him the Program Award in 2003 and he was one of the finalists shortlisted for the 2004 World Technology Award of the World Technology Network. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2004. The same year, he received the NRDC Innovation Award of the National Research Development Corporation. The Department of Biotechnology honored him again with a second Biotech Product and Process Development for Commercialization Award in 2008, the award presented to him by the then President of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.

Selected bibliography

Books

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