Although there exist technologies that can capture CO2 released from the industries, they remain expensive and economically unviable. Emphasising on climate change readiness, the department of science and technology has created two centres of excellence in carbon capture and utilisation in Mumbai and Bangalore to create a roadmap and spearhead innovations in the field.
With high emissions of carbon dioxide driving leading to global warming and climate change, scientists have been working to create processes and technologies that can effectively store and re-utilise the carbon emitted by industries. Although there exist technologies that can capture CO2 released from the industries, they remain expensive and economically unviable.
The centre of excellence at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay will focus on innovations and processes that are industry-oriented and increases readiness of carbon capture and utilisation technologies. Not only capturing, the centre has also been tasked with working on processes for converting the captured carbon dioxide to chemicals, recovering individual hydrocarbons, compressing and transporting it in order to increase the value of the captured CO2.
The IIT Bombay centre will develop and demonstrate efficient CO2 capture from representative flue gas from the effluents of power and biogas plants, according to a statement by the ministry.
The other centre at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bengaluru will work on developing materials and processes for carbon capture and utilization. The centre has been tasked with developing processes that can be used in pilot mode and scaled up to produce hydrocarbons, olefins (hydrocarbons that serve as the building blocks for many products such as plastics and adhesives), and other value-added chemicals and fuels.
βIt will also work on reaching technology readiness level on par with the commercial requirement at the industry level. The centre will promote the CCU research, provide training and consultancy and translate its research excellence into solutions with global economic and social impact,β the release added.
The centres will also keep a watch on international trends and suggest possible collaborative endeavours.
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