The start-up was founded by Prof Sebastian C Peter, faculty, JNCASR, with the support from Rakshith Belur (AirBus) and Prof Umesh V Waghmare (JNCASR).
BENGALURU: The Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research’s (JNCASR) novel Carbon-di-oxide (CO2) reduction technology, which has the capacity of converting 300 kg of CO2 per day into methanol and other useful chemicals, has now been recognised by the Centre.
As reported by TOI earlier, the JNCASR had tied up with an incubation firm, Breathe Applied Sciences, to scale up the technology.
Now, Breathe Applied Sciences has won the National Award 2021 from the Technology Development Board (TDB) of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) for development of promising new technology with potential for commercialisation.
The award carries a cash prize of Rs 15 lakh. “Breathe has translated fundamental research in catalytic chemistry to recycle anthropogenic carbon in the form CO2, into a technological solution to tackle the grand challenge, the global problem of climate change and energy,” the firm told TOI.
Breathe is a technology start-up established in 2016 and incubated by the JNCASR with a goal of commercial solution for conversion of anthropogenic CO2 to chemicals and fuels.
Prof Sebastian C Peter, faculty, JNCASR, founded it with the support from Rakshith Belur (AirBus) and Prof Umesh V Waghmare (JNCASR) to translate the fundamental research in his laboratory to the pilot plant.
Sebastian says the technology is considered as a ‘one-stone-two-birds’ approach. It controls environmental pollution by reducing CO2 and converts it to useful chemicals or a fuel, like methanol, which can be used in several industries and commercial sectors. Methanol can be readily used to blend with fossil fuels in automobiles, and in fuel cells to generate electricity. It has a huge demand globally.
Currently, India imports almost 90% methanol from Iran and China, and its demand is expected to grow rapidly in the near future.
“Breathe is the only start-up in the country to have translated laboratory-scale CO2 conversion to methanol effectively to the pilot scale. Central to this process is the efficient, cyclable and cost-effective catalyst developed by Prof Peter and his team. Breathe has scaled up its synthesis from milligram to kilogram in a single-batch process, which is absolutely a crucial step and at the core of commercial technology,” the firm said.
Breathe holds the IP and the know-how for the catalysts development and process engineering.
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