The academic paper authored by Dr. Pranshu Bhatia, a postdoctoral fellow at Soka University's Faculty of Science and Engineering, alongside co-authors Assistant Professor Masaaki Fujiwara and Professor Tatsuki Toda, was recently published in the esteemed international journal "Fuel" (*1). The paper titled "Anaerobic digestion of an invasive aquatic plant Ludwigia grandiflora by thermal hydrolysis pretreatment: Correlations between methane kinetics and substrate composition"

The paper explores the efficacy of anaerobic digestion (*2) as an effective method for Ludwigia grandiflora, an invasive aquatic weed posing challenges in various countries. Dr. Bhatia's research introduces an environmentally friendly pretreatment approach that enhances anaerobic digestion efficiency by approximately 1.5 times.

This study was conducted within the framework of the SATREPS-EARTH project.

*1 "Fuel" holds a high academic impact, with a Scopus field maximum percentile of 95% in Organic Chemistry.
*2 Anaerobic digestion, as elucidated in the paper, is a bacterial decomposition process occurring in the absence of oxygen.