IISC & IOC R&D signed MoU to develop affordable hydrogen fuel 

India’s leading research institute, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and the Research and Development Centre of Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOC) have announced their partnership to develop biomass gasification-based hydrogen generation technology to produce affordably priced fuel cell-grade hydrogen.IISC & IOC R&D have signed an MoU to work together. 

IISC & IOC R&D signed MoU 

As per the agreement, both IISC and Indian Oil will work together on and make use of both biomass gasification and hydrogen purification processes. The developed technology will be demonstrated at Indian Oil’s R&D Centre at Faridabad. The hydrogen generated from this process will be used to power the fuel cell buses as part of the bigger projects by Indian Oil.

Indian Oil Corporation’s Director (R&D) Ramakumar said “The current initiative of producing fuel cell grade hydrogen from biomass is another step by Indian Oil together with the IISc, to bring hydrogen fuel into India’s mainstream energy matrix while utilising the agrarian strengths of the country,” This technology is not only cleaner but will also deal with the challenges of biomass waste in the country.

“Hydrogen-based fuel cell technology is a sustainable green mobility solution for India. Fuel cell electric vehicles are powered by hydrogen and emit only pure water as tailpipe emissions. Fuel cell technology for an automotive application requires ultrapure hydrogen with impurities less than ppb level,” he said.

The IOC as a pioneer to hydrogen research in India has recently launched the trials of the 50 buses in Delhi which are powered by hydrogen-CNG.

IISc’s Director G. Rangarajan stated that research for utilising biomass, which would go a long way in meeting de-carbonisation needs.

Prof S. Dasappa the Centre for Sustainable Technologies and currently the Chair at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy said that the hydrogen production technology based on biomass gasification developed by IISc comprises processes for producing hydrogen-rich syngas from biomass and separation of hydrogen from syngas.

IISc & Wipro partnership making an electric autonomous car for India

Last year the Indian Institute of Science and IT major Wipro Ltd have joined their hands to make a driverless, autonomous car for Indian road conditions which is said to be rollout in March 2020.

The collaboration of one year and the three years of efforts to build the autonomous car at Wipro with the help of the data for roads in Europe and the US.

Wipro’s head for AI, autonomous systems and robotics, Dr Ramachandra Budihal said that “We are working on some cutting edge algorithms for Indian conditions. Earlier whatever we worked on was user data from Europe and America but we want to do something for India. We cannot use the systems that we built for the other data sets because the conditions here are unique.”

IOC launched battery swapping facility for EVs

The Indian Oil Corporation Ltd has launched a battery swapping facility for electric vehicles at its petrol pumps. In battery swapping technology the batteries can be fully charged in less than 2 minutes. The battery swapping technology is the best way to save time and helps the owners and the fleet operators and the drivers to make use of the operational hours.

This battery swapping model is initially targeted at commercial vehicles such as electric autos, rickshaws and electric two-wheelers and EVs that are either factory fitted or retrofitted.

It has partnered with Sun Mobility for setting up battery swapping facility, called Quick Interchange Station (QIS).

IOC plans to set up aluminium-air batteries factory

IOC QIS pumps insert fully discharged battery into a dispensing station and get a fully charged one in just 1-2 minutes, he said. The pilot project QIS has 14 batteries, a touch screen for swapping preloaded cards and an electricity sub-meter.This QIS will play an important role in charging electric three-wheelers.

The company commenced this as the pilot project at one of its outlets in Chandigarh and scale it up to 20 stations said the company chairman Sanjiv Singh. 

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