The centre is established as a national consortium on clean coal research and development under Indian Institute of Science’s leadership
Minister of Science & Technology Harsh Vardhan inaugurated the National Centre for Clean Coal Research and Development at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru. Photo: Twitter Minister of Science & Technology Harsh Vardhan inaugurated the National Centre for Clean Coal Research and Development at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru on September 16, 2019. The centre has been established as a national consortium on clean coal research and development with IISc leading it.
The new centre is aimed at addressing several critical R&D challenges towards the development of clean coal technologies in tandem with developing supercritical power plant technologies, both at material and system level.
The minister also formally launched an Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research (ICER) equipped with modern facilities to conduct a wide spectrum of energy research through knowledge network of elite researchers.
“The breakthrough research being pursued at IISc in clean coal domain could potentially be a game changer for meeting the energy needs of the country in terms of higher efficiency and capacity at lower operating costs and size,” the minister said.
He also hoped the new centre would enable India realise its vision of affordable, efficient, compact and reliable clean energy systems.
Ashutosh Sharma, secretary, Department of Science & Technology, emphasised the need for accelerated clean energy innovation.
“Creation of an ecosystem for R&D and innovations involving all stakeholders is a priority and DST plans to have novel instruments and mechanisms for engaging stakeholders and developing appropriate partnership based on ‘Technology Readiness Level’ stages,” said Sharma.
ICER has plans to expand its activities in several energy-related areas with an emphasis on process and material development, incollaboration with the manufacturing industry, said Anurag Kumar, director, IISc.
Translational research carried out by ICER faculty has resulted in technology transfers in India and abroad. The centre is focused on developing sustainable technologies for renewable energy, combustion, concentrated solar power, next-generation solar photovoltaic, novel energy storage technologies, hydrogen, bio-fuels and bio-mass.
Development of clean coal technologies is necessary to achieve international targets on climate change by minimising anthropogenic emissions while simultaneously addressing energy demand. This could be achieved by shifting towards high-efficiency advanced ultra-supercritical steam power plants as well as supercritical carbon dioxide plants, along with exploration of new combustion and gasification technologies. (India Science Wire)
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