Pune: Sentient Labs, ARI collaborate to generate hydrogen from agri residue for use in fuel cell-powered vehicles

“Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology is estimated to be the next big step in the direction of sustainable mobility as it provides a large operating range, is suitable for commercial vehicles, and leaves a minimal environmental footprint. The need of the hour in crude oil-importing nations is to rapidly move towards self-reliant energy sources and sustainable mobility. The hydrogen generated from this technology will be utilized to power fuel cell vehicles that emit only water, thus making the entire cycle pollution-free,” Ravi Pandit, Chairman, Sentient Labs said.

This hydrogen generation technology uses agricultural residue rich in cellulose and hemicellulose content – in likes of paddy, wheat, or maize residue. The process uses microbial culture for the direct generation of hydrogen from agricultural residues. It further generates methane, which is utilized for producing additional hydrogen by steam methane reformation. This process can avoid the burning of bio-mass generated in large measure in the Indian countryside and generate organic manure and CO2, which finds applications in various industries.

In India, approximately 200 million tons of unutilized agricultural residue is generated. This agricultural residue, which is burnt in most of the cases, can be fed into this process to generate hydrogen. “We incubated Sentient Labs to work on technology R&D projects related to mobility and energy. This breakthrough of generating hydrogen from unutilized agricultural residue will help us become self-reliant on energy resources. It will also add a major stream of revenue to the farmer community. We will continue R&D and invite partners to come on board for production and commercialising the same,” Pandit said.

Dr. Prashant Dhakephalkar, Director, Agharkar Research Institute, said, “Our technology is 25 per cent more efficient as compared to conventional anaerobic digestion processes used today. The innovative two stage process eliminates the pre-treatment of the biomass, thus making the process economical and environment friendly. This biologically benign process generates digestate rich in nutrients which can be used as organic fertilizer. Its by-products can be used as soil conditioners while undigested solids for briquetting that can be sold as solid fuel.”

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