IIT Bombay team wins $250,000 XPrize, Elon Musk Foundation grant at COP26
Four students and two teachers from IIT Bombay have won a grant of US$250,000 (approximately ₹1.85 crore) for the new-age technology at the Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP-26 in Glasgow.
PremiumAn IIT Bombay team has bagged million dollar price for developing a technology that can remove carbon from the atmosphere. According to a report published in the Hindustan Times--Livemint's sister publication, four students and two teachers from IIT Bombay have won a grant of $250,000 (approximately ₹1.85 crore) for the new-age technology at the Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP-26 in Glasgow.
The grant has come from XPRIZE Foundation in collaboration with Elon Musk Foundation. XPRIZE is the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models to solve the world’s grandest challenges.
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) have created a tri-modular technology that can capture carbon dioxide from point sources of emission and transforming them into salts. It is the only team from India to win this award.
XPRIZE and the Musk Foundation announced a grant of US$100 million (around ₹745 crore) in April this year for anyone who can come up with sustainable technology for carbon removal from the atmosphere. Of this US$5 million (around ₹37 crore) was a student award.
To win the prize, participants had to demonstrate a working solution on a scale of at least 1000 tonnes removed per year and to show a pathway of achieving a scale of gigatones per year in the future.
Arnab Dutta, department chemistry & (IDPCS), one of the two mentors part of this project told the daily that his team has not only tried to capture the carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere but has also turned that into another commercially viable chemicals in industries ensuring a financial benefit to them.
“Our suggestion is to not only capture this CO2 emitted by industries but also turn it into other commercially viable chemicals in industries ensuring a financial benefit to them while implementing this unique CO2 management programme," Datta said.
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