IIT-Hyderabad to host centre for biomass, waste-energy conversion into Hydrogen

The Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad will host a centre on 'Integrated Clean Energy Material Acceleration Platform on Bioenergy and Hydrogen', which "aims to accelerate the development of ultra-efficient commercially biomass and waste-water to hydrogen conversion and storage systems through accelerated discovery of novel catalysts, novel storage systems and materials and optimised plant condition designs," according to a press release from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. 

The project will be implemented jointly between a team of scientists from 09 partnering institutes, the release says.

This is one of the three Integrated Clean Energy Material Acceleration Platforms that were launched at the MI Annual Gathering session on 4^th April 2022, where new Energy Innovation Collaborations were announced.

These Material Acceleration Platforms set up by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) would leverage emerging capabilities in next-generation computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and robotics to accelerate the pace of materials discovery up to 10 times faster, the release says. The platforms constitute a knowledge network of more than 38 elite institutions and 80 research personnel working on next-generation low-cost advanced energy materials.

In addition, the Science Minister, Dr Jitendra Singh announced funding opportunity of 'Hydrogen Valley Platform', which is also a global initiative to optimise the hydrogen demand and supply by onsite generation and utilisation, utilise the renewable resources effectively, and water excess areas with geographical identity.

 "The H2 Valleys objectives will be achieved through cohorts of clean hydrogen valleys to combine the complete hydrogen value chain (production, storage and transportation) with the aim of reaching critical scale and unlocking learning curve effects. DST has committed to facilitate the delivery of three clean hydrogen valleys in India by 2030," the release says.