IIT Bombay’s four students, two professors win 2.5 lakh dollars XPrize grant: Report

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay’s two professors and four students have won 2.5 lakh US dollars XPrize grant for developing a new tri-modular technology for feasible, and efficient capture of carbon dioxide from point sources of emission and changing them into salts, the Hindustan Times reported.

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The grant has been given by the XPRIZE Foundation in partnership with the Elon Musk Foundation. The announcement was done on November 11 at the Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP-26 in Glasgow, the report said.

A team of students—Srinath Iyer (PhD student), Anwesha Banerjee (PhD student), Srushti Bhamare (BTech+MTech student) and Shubham Kumar (Junior Research fellow-Earth Science) is the only single institute from the country to have received this award, the report said.

According to the report, XPRIZE and the Musk Foundation announced a grant of US$100 million (approximately Rs 745 crore) in April this year for anyone who can come up with sustainable technology for removal of carbon from the atmosphere, ocean, land, etc. Of this, US$5 million (approximately Rs 37 crore) was a student award where participants have won under two categories.

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“Our suggestion on capturing carbon dioxide at its source (in industries) and then turning it into carbonate salts with potential future usage to once again use it in a way that it does not enter the atmosphere as gaseous CO2, has won us this recognition,” Vikram Vishal, department of earth sciences and Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies (IDPCS) at IIT Bombay, and one of the two mentors part of this project was quoted as saying by HT.

This four-year global competition asked researchers and innovators to develop and demonstrate solutions that can remove Co2 directly from the atmosphere or oceans, the report said.

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The participants had to demonstrate a working solution at a scale of at least 1,000 tonnes removed per year and exhibit a track to achieve gigatons per year in the coming years in order to win the prize, the report said.