Coal India Limited

Coal India Limited (CIL) has awarded Breathe and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre For Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), where collaborative work is being in progress for “Scaling up the conversion of CO2 to methanol and other value-added chemicals (500 kg per day capacity)”. The project explores the opportunity of tapping post combustion flue gas, where pre-treatments are carried out to capture the greenhouse gas– carbon dioxide, from the effluents of combustion products. The captured carbon dioxide, which is a feedstock along with hydrogen, is fed to carbon utilization unit, where the unit efficiently makes use of heterogeneous catalysis process to convert them to value added products, case in point Methanol.

BPCL

BPCL funded project for conversion of Carbon dioxide to Dimethyl ether, a promising fuel that has found niche in household and industry applications wherein it stands out as a substitute for propane in case of LPG and also as a blend stock in propane auto gas as well as diesel engines, which is a cetane booster. The project challenges in terms of catalyst development, where a tandem based arrangement of catalyst needs to be designed for the process of firstly, converting the carbon dioxide to methanol and concurrently converting the methanol to Dimethyl ether.

CO2 Methanation

Also dubbed as “Sabatier reaction” where CO2 is converted to marsh gas (CH4) and water with the aid of hydrogen at elevated temperature and optimized pressure in presence of Nickel based catalyst. Hence this process/reaction plays an important role in the Carbon Capture and its Sequestration.

Methane, primary component of natural gas, and also a greenhouse gas has found its potential as fuel in automobiles, water heater, ovens, as a rocket fuel in refined liquid form and as a common ingredient in fertilizers etc. which makes it a significant in research field.

The project demands the development of a catalyst that can be active at relatively low pressure, highly selective towards methane and that can be achieved by support modification, promoter addition, as well as utilizing new class of materials.