Mumbai, Feb 7 (IANS): The IIT Bombay has established India's first 'National Centre of Excellence in Carbon Capture and Utilisation' (NCECCU) with support and funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology, an official said here on Monday.

Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage is a crucial climate change mitigation solution that is constantly advancing in its technology readiness levels for operational feasibility and economic viability.

A co-benefit application of this is enhanced oil and gas recovery, whereby CO2 is used to increase natural resource production while a good part of the CO2 is stored in the sub-surface.

This has often been stated as the apt technology solution to decarbonise the existing and forthcoming energy-intensive industries, said the IITB Director Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri.

He added that the decarbonisation of ahard-to-abate' industries would need outstanding efforts to achieve the net-zero goals.

"IIT Bombay has undertaken leadership to address several science and engineering grand challenges and develop their end-to-end solutions. The National Centre shall cexplore and unlock the potential of CCU technologies to lead India in this potential sunshine industrial sector to evolve as a circular carbon economy," Prof. Chaudhuri said.

Last year, the IITB team won the prestigious X-PRIZE Award, supported by the Elon Musk Foundation for 'demonstration of carbon dioxide removal', announced at the Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP-26, he added

The NCECCU would act as a multi-disciplinary, long-term research and development, collaboration and capacity-building hub in the field of carbon capture and utilisation, and will be nodal for state-of-the-art research and application-oriented initiatives in this field.

The cross-disciplinary training through the centre will develop a deep understanding and problem-oriented approach in next-generation researchers through outreach and capacity building programmes.

Its primary research focus would be understanding the role of CO2 emitted from the industrial and energy sector, ranging from advances in capture technologies to its subsequent utilisation, besides priority case studies, experimental investigation and simulation, etc.