Random extraction and consumption of fossil fuels have leads to a reduction in petroleum reserves. As for as developing countries like India is connected the need to search for alternative fuels is most urgent as India is heavily dependent upon the import of petroleum to meet its demands for automotive and power sectors. This has inspired curiously in alternative sources for petroleum based fuels. An alternative fuel must be economically competitive and environmentally acceptable. India has great potential for production of biofuels like Biodiesel from vegetable seeds. In the quest to find an alternative to the existing diesel and petrol fuels various Biodiesel and alcohol has been tried and tested in the Internal Compression engine. In this direction, an attempt has been made to investigate the performance and emission characteristic of Biodiesels and compare it with diesel. The Biodiesels considered are Tamanu, Mahua and Pongamia were tested with four stroke diesel engine. A drastic improvement in reduction of Hydrocarbon (HC) and Carbon monoxide (CO) were found for Biodiesels at high engine loads. Smoke and Nitrogen oxides (NOx) were slightly higher for Biodiesels. Biodiesels exposed similar combustion stages to diesel fuel. Therefore use of transesterified vegetable oils can be partially substituted for the diesel fuel at most operating conditions in term of the performance parameters and emissions without any engine modification.

De-oiled cakes (meal) containing proteins and carbohydrates are inevitably produced during extraction of oil from seeds. These cakes are inexpensive, sustainable and renewable sources but have limited applications. In this present study, de-oiled pongamia seed cake was used as substrate to produce protease by Bacillus licheniformis, Acinetobacter pittii, and Aspergillus niger under different culture conditions such as pH and temperature. Furthermore, the influence of diverse carbon and nitrogen sources on enzyme production was studied. Under the optimized conditions but without any additional inducers, the activity of protease produced by Aspergillus niger was 27.5 UmL À1 , which is 34% higher than the activity obtained using B. licheniformis and about 6.7 times higher compared to that obtained using A. pittii. Addition of nitrogen or carbon source leads to an increase in enzyme activity of up to 240% with urea by Aspergillus niger and 163% with fructose by Acinetobacter pittii. Proteases obtained had optimum production at pH 8 and temperature of 30 and 40 C.The enzyme produced was effective in hydrolysing the gelatin layer from used x-ray films, enabling the film to be recycled and was also able to coagulate milk, suggesting that it may be suitable for food applications.