Surpassing the debate on climate change, the world has set course to put climate change mitigation on war footing. However, the current actions of different government and non-government organizations seem to yield too little too slow. Increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in the industrial era is the major contributor toward increasing global temperatures. To reverse course, one billion billion ton of CO2 must be captured every year. Let us try to view this number differently. A fully grown tree removes ~20 kg of CO2 every year. At present, we have 148 million square kilometer of forest area on the earth. Assuming that we can grow 250,000 new trees on one square kilometer land, we need 192 million square kilometer of additional forest area to capture the one billion billion ton of extra CO2. Additionally, only a 15 to 20 year old tree is capable of capturing 20 kg of CO2 per year. It doesn’t take much to figure out why planting trees can no longer be our primary strategy. We need disruptive technologies to make any visible dent toward the adverse effects of climate change.
Among various technologies developed over the last decade for CO2-capture, “amine-based” technologies have emerged as the leader. Amine-based operating units can capture one ton or more CO2 per day, making it as effective as 18,000 fully grown trees over a period of one year. Unfortunately, such a unit requires about 100 times more space than a tree, which results into huge cost of construction and maintenance. A deep dive into this technology raises more questions over its effectiveness and feasibility. The energy intensive core chemical reaction and subsequent processes makes the technology less efficient and less economical. The bet on amine-based technologies to win against the climate change loses heat even faster after considering waste management and other operational issues.
Here comes a group of young researchers led by two young faculties at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. They demonstrated a prototype CO2-capture unit at the 2023 TechFest that was no bigger than a large pedestal fan or a 5’3″ human being with a CO2-capture capacity of one third of a ton per day. With design optimization under way, their one-ton unit is going to be of comparable size to the prototype. How did they topple the challenges associated with the amine-based technology? One of the lead innovator Arnab explained that, “one molecule of CO2 requires one molecule of amine, but a tiny amount of catalyst can capture a huge amount of CO2 in our method.” More importantly, their catalyst works at room temperature, requiring no heating or cooling processes compared to amine-based technologies. The CO2 is captured in the form of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). CaCO3 is one of the most abundant and benign naturally occurring minerals on the earth. It is also a very useful raw material in a wide range of industries. Capturing CO2 as calcium carbonate eliminates waste management worries and provides monetization opportunities to the users. Additionally, the UrjanovaC technology uses sewer or waste water to carry the dissolved CO2 to the catalytic chamber and returns purified water that can be safely released to natural water bodies.
Founded by the lead innovators, Arnab Dutta and Vikram Vishal, the company UrjanovaC‘s dream is to fast-track the use of this deep technology in creating an economical and sustainable solution for industries with significantly large carbon footprints. The word “Urja” in Hindi means “energy”, “nova” means “new” in Latin and the “C” at the end emphasizes their objective of mitigating climate change through CO2-capture. This highly effective technology comes with a long list of value propositions, including:
- low installation, operational and maintenance cost
- practically zero waste-management
- production of valuable by-products
- customizable to all types industry requirements
Motivated by their success and the massive response from global experts and industry leaders, the team has been developing a series of catalysts for capturing CO2 from different sources, including the direct air capture (DAC).
“The desire that guides me in all I do is the desire to harness the forces of nature to the service of mankind.” – Nikola Tesla
UrjanovaC promises to produce a series of deep technology-based products to mitigate climate change effects. But more importantly, Arnab and Vikram are bringing about changes in academia that is absolutely necessary to foster the next generation of innovations. “We want our students to become passionate innovators, not thoughtless workers running after publishing papers and grants”, responded Vikram while speaking on the current status of academic research across the globe. Both Arnab and Vikram encourage their students to generate and test new research ideas on their own, which resulted into highly collaborative and creative laboratory environments. While a lot of young minds pursuing research lose motivation in their struggle to get good grades and publish papers, I saw a bunch of excited faces at Arnab’s lab, hungry for knowledge and daring to explore crazy ideas.
In the age of deep learning and artificial intelligence, researchers are often tempted to apply them carelessly without proper considerations and sometimes to cover up their lack of understanding of a problem. In contrast, Arnab and Vishal are utilizing simple yet fundamental scientific concepts with a deep understanding of the problem to create technologies that can truly reshape the world.