Name of the center: A Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Polymer Industry through Research Innovation & Training (CoE – SPIRIT©).

Coordinator: Dr. A. K. Lele (PL); Mr. H. V. Pol (co-PL)

Participants: Dr. K. Vanka, Dr. P. Doshi, Dr. V. Ranade, Dr. K. Guruswamy, Dr. S. Chikkali, Mrs. D. Dhoble, Dr. V. Premnath, Dr. B. Idage

About the center:  CSIR-NCL envisages the CoE as being the resource center of choice for the petrochemical industry.  The Center of Excellence drives two flagship programs, one focused on performing fundamental and applied research of the highest quality, and the second focused on training PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and industry personnel thereby supplying and upgrading high quality human resources for the petrochemical industry.

Scientific goals: The objectives of the “Research and Scientific Services Program” of the CoE are described as: Under this program the CoE will focus on two thrust areas: Petrochemicals based polymers and Biodegradable polymers. Two specific fundamental research programs are planned in these areas: (i) Reactor-Structure-Property Relationships (RSPR) in polyolefins, and (ii) High melt strength poly(lactic acid) for packaging applications (HMS-PLA).

Scientific Achievements:

Research Projects: (1) Extrusion Film Casting Studies on Polyethylenes (2) Development studies on Long-chain branched Polypropylene (3) Development of PLA for Packaging and bio-based applications

Publications and Patents (only important):
(1) Pol et al., Necking in extrusion film casting: The role of macromolecular architecture, J. Rheol. 57, 559 (2013);

(2) Jugal Kumawat, Virendrakumar Gupta*, Kumar Vanka*, New Insights Into the Nature of the Active Sites in Ziegler-Natta Olefin Polymerization: A DFT Study. Manuscript under review.

(3) Non-monotonic size dependence of diffusion and levitation effect: A mode-coupling theory analysis"
Manoj Kumar Nandi, Atreyee Banerjee and Sarika Maitra Bhattacharyya,  J. Chem. Phys. Vol 138, Page-124505 (2013)

(4) Souvik Chakraborty, Chandan Choudhury, S.Roy, Morphology and Dynamics of Carbon Nanotube in Polycarbonate Carbon Nanotube Composite From Dissipative Particle Dynamics Simulation, Macromolecules, ASAP, 2013