Indian Science and Technology Developments : Updates and Discussions
- Thread starter Gautam
- Start date
~2000 BCMs
Don't know about Andaman specifically but the western offshore(Andaman SEZ and western mainland SEZ) has around 250 MMTs. Western offshore and Assam has the largest share of oil in India. Assam is relatively explored, western offshore isn't explored at all.
Yes, 2000 Billion cubic meters of oil. Its an estimate of oil fields already discovered.
Crude oil, yes. With refinement volume will decrease. Of course 100 % extraction is not possible.
I don't have much knowledge on this.....so do you have any idea technically how much we can exploit, if we managed to build extraction technologies.
Indonesia is exploiting southern part of indo- Australian plate while we don't....I think Andaman should be avoided cause it's an ecological sensitive area.
We do have extraction technologies. Remember Mumbai High ? That started operation is the 70s. The tech are being improved upon continuously. The import lobby alone is enough to stop us from even trying anything.
Then why are we waiting? To get stronger militarily to fight off possibly interferences from the international pirates (read anglo-saxons)?
1.Russia won't be be a problem. The way they interact with other oil nations like Venezuela, Arabs.
2.Veto won't be a problem (because if we don't need petrodollar then we no longer get dependent on outside since petrodollar is mostly for oil, and with industry development already self-sustained, we are self-sufficient there too).
3.Only problem I see is Anglo-Saxons and their strength is multipled by the fact that our population is dangerously misonfromed and also the weak internal structure. We are only good enough to hold of China, but not USA.
4.Ambani's business affected because of the oil wells he has bought will reduce in value?? But I don't think even Ambani is strong enough to stand against something so important to national interest.
5.Plain incompeteance of babus.
6.Maybe they want to hold it off untill Pak is destroyed so that we can have western support until then atleast.
Is Modi doing anything abut it?? Maybe we will in his next term.
Startup with nano solution for wastewater is ‘Pride of India’
TNN | Updated: Jan 8, 2020, 9:59 IST
BENGALURU: A startup that sprouted here amid unfortunate circumstances nine years ago bagged the ‘Best Startup of Pride of India Expo’ award at Indian Science Congress, 2020, on Tuesday.
In 2011, lakhs of textile workers in Tamil Nadu lost their jobs following a Supreme Court order shutting down factories for discharging effluents into rivers. The water pollution that pushed lakhs of people into joblessness also inspired scientists — Dr SCG Kiruba Daniel, Suthanthira Daniel and their colleagues — to find something to stop the hazard at the source, at a lower cost and with lesser effort. Thus came into existence Nanosolution, the brainchild of their venture JK Solutions, which was launched in Bengaluru in 2017 and incubated at IISc.
Nanosolution is a liquid-based solution consisting of metal nanoclusters which, on being introduced in polluted water, draws foreign particles and sinks to the bottom as organic sludge. The founders claim the method recovers 98% of water. It is at work in BMTC and three dhobi ghats — including at Vyalikaval and Srinagar — where it treats and recycles around 1.5 lakh litres of wastewater everyday.
Daniel said one litre of the solution can treat 1,000 to 2,000 litres of wastewater. “The nanotechnology-based product is a simple, one-step, rapid, low-cost solution,” he said, adding that treatment costs up to Rs 1.30 per litre, one-tenth of the regular cost. JK Solutions claims to have treated over 10 million litres of water for reuse since its inception.
VP: Inventions can ward off threat to food safety
The solution to the growing threat to food security lies in novel ideas, inventions and efforts by the scientific community, Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu said in his valedictory speech at ISC on Tuesday.
Stressing the need to inculcate morals along with science among schoolkids, he said: “When we were young, we had moral science classes. Today, science continues, while morals have vanished,” Naidu said. He said people should “go online, instead of standing in a line”.
“People will stand in a line, shake hands and do much more (grease palms). Direct benefit transfer will avoid it all,” he said.
Startup with nano solution for wastewater is ‘Pride of India’ | Bengaluru News - Times of India
TNN | Updated: Jan 8, 2020, 9:59 IST
BENGALURU: A startup that sprouted here amid unfortunate circumstances nine years ago bagged the ‘Best Startup of Pride of India Expo’ award at Indian Science Congress, 2020, on Tuesday.
In 2011, lakhs of textile workers in Tamil Nadu lost their jobs following a Supreme Court order shutting down factories for discharging effluents into rivers. The water pollution that pushed lakhs of people into joblessness also inspired scientists — Dr SCG Kiruba Daniel, Suthanthira Daniel and their colleagues — to find something to stop the hazard at the source, at a lower cost and with lesser effort. Thus came into existence Nanosolution, the brainchild of their venture JK Solutions, which was launched in Bengaluru in 2017 and incubated at IISc.
Nanosolution is a liquid-based solution consisting of metal nanoclusters which, on being introduced in polluted water, draws foreign particles and sinks to the bottom as organic sludge. The founders claim the method recovers 98% of water. It is at work in BMTC and three dhobi ghats — including at Vyalikaval and Srinagar — where it treats and recycles around 1.5 lakh litres of wastewater everyday.
Daniel said one litre of the solution can treat 1,000 to 2,000 litres of wastewater. “The nanotechnology-based product is a simple, one-step, rapid, low-cost solution,” he said, adding that treatment costs up to Rs 1.30 per litre, one-tenth of the regular cost. JK Solutions claims to have treated over 10 million litres of water for reuse since its inception.
VP: Inventions can ward off threat to food safety
The solution to the growing threat to food security lies in novel ideas, inventions and efforts by the scientific community, Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu said in his valedictory speech at ISC on Tuesday.
Stressing the need to inculcate morals along with science among schoolkids, he said: “When we were young, we had moral science classes. Today, science continues, while morals have vanished,” Naidu said. He said people should “go online, instead of standing in a line”.
“People will stand in a line, shake hands and do much more (grease palms). Direct benefit transfer will avoid it all,” he said.
Startup with nano solution for wastewater is ‘Pride of India’ | Bengaluru News - Times of India
Scientists find a way to simulate quakes in lab
Akhil Kadidal, Jan 13 2020, 00:29 am IST
IISc PhD Student Pradip Bera conducts an experiment using a Rheometer on Jan 8, 2019. Researchers at IISc, Raman Research Institute and ETH Zurich have found a novel way to reproduce earthquake effects under lab conditions.
A study by Bengaluru, France and Zurich-based researchers has determined a way to replicate how earthquakes affect the earth’s crust, which could help identify microscopic precursors of earthquakes.
Working with two distinct soft gel materials such as soap-like molecules and a glass gel hewn out of clay nanoparticles, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), the Raman Research Institute (RRI) and ETH Zurich discovered that these materials reorganise themselves in a manner similar to how the earth’s crust is restructured during earthquakes.
Earthquakes typically occur due to friction between the earth’s tectonic plates, releasing bursts of energy that severely damages the environment.
Pradip Bera, a PhD student at IISc and first author of the study, said the discovery was made accidentally when soft material was sheared between two steel plates.
The finding, the culmination of a decade-long project, is now set to dramatically alter how earthquakes are simulated under laboratory conditions. Right now, scientists are still unable to predict earthquakes or its intensity.
The research sees scientists applying force to rocks or ceramic materials to study how they deform and crack under stress. However, as these materials are solids, it is difficult to determine the changes that take place shortly before they crack open.
“No one can probe the domain structure directly. We could not see what was going on inside the material,” said Sayantan Majumdar, associate professor at RRI.
Dr Ajay Sood, senior author of the paper and DST Year of Science Chair Professor at the Department of Physics, IISc, explained that when soft materials were used, they generated burst-like patterns over time that resemble seismograph data generated by earthquakes.
Using an optical microscope and camera, researchers were able to look closely at how the inside of the material changed over time. They found that the rate at which the material reorganised itself showed burst-like patterns persisting over thousands of seconds, resembling seismic foreshocks and aftershocks. “We were able to observe this phenomenon at about 10 micron scale length. That is a huge advantage,” said Bera.
The paper was published in ‘Nature Communications’.
Scientists find a way to simulate quakes in lab
Akhil Kadidal, Jan 13 2020, 00:29 am IST
IISc PhD Student Pradip Bera conducts an experiment using a Rheometer on Jan 8, 2019. Researchers at IISc, Raman Research Institute and ETH Zurich have found a novel way to reproduce earthquake effects under lab conditions.
A study by Bengaluru, France and Zurich-based researchers has determined a way to replicate how earthquakes affect the earth’s crust, which could help identify microscopic precursors of earthquakes.
Working with two distinct soft gel materials such as soap-like molecules and a glass gel hewn out of clay nanoparticles, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), the Raman Research Institute (RRI) and ETH Zurich discovered that these materials reorganise themselves in a manner similar to how the earth’s crust is restructured during earthquakes.
Earthquakes typically occur due to friction between the earth’s tectonic plates, releasing bursts of energy that severely damages the environment.
Pradip Bera, a PhD student at IISc and first author of the study, said the discovery was made accidentally when soft material was sheared between two steel plates.
The finding, the culmination of a decade-long project, is now set to dramatically alter how earthquakes are simulated under laboratory conditions. Right now, scientists are still unable to predict earthquakes or its intensity.
The research sees scientists applying force to rocks or ceramic materials to study how they deform and crack under stress. However, as these materials are solids, it is difficult to determine the changes that take place shortly before they crack open.
“No one can probe the domain structure directly. We could not see what was going on inside the material,” said Sayantan Majumdar, associate professor at RRI.
Dr Ajay Sood, senior author of the paper and DST Year of Science Chair Professor at the Department of Physics, IISc, explained that when soft materials were used, they generated burst-like patterns over time that resemble seismograph data generated by earthquakes.
Using an optical microscope and camera, researchers were able to look closely at how the inside of the material changed over time. They found that the rate at which the material reorganised itself showed burst-like patterns persisting over thousands of seconds, resembling seismic foreshocks and aftershocks. “We were able to observe this phenomenon at about 10 micron scale length. That is a huge advantage,” said Bera.
The paper was published in ‘Nature Communications’.
Scientists find a way to simulate quakes in lab
IIT-M designs room temperature sodium sulphur battery
By R. Prasad
11 January 2020 18:57 IST
Preventing leakage: The shielding layer helps significantly reduce self-discharge of the battery, say (from left) Ajay Piriya, Ramaprabhu Sundara and Kamaraj Muthusamy
The battery was able to achieve higher charge storage capacity and nearly zero self-discharge when not in use
While conventional sodium sulphur batteries require very high temperature (300 degree C) for operation, researchers at the Indian Institute of technology (IIT) Madras have designed a new sodium sulphur battery that can be operated at room temperature. By operating the battery at room temperature, the team was able to achieve higher charge storage capacity (technically called the specific capacity) and nearly zero self-discharge when the battery is not being used.
Storage and retention
While high temperature sodium sulphur batteries have charge storage capacity of about 558 mAh per gram, the battery designed by the IIT Madras team was able to achieve as much as 1,034 mAh per gram at a current density of 50 mA per gram.
The battery also showed 83% retention of capacity even at the end of 500 cycles of charging and discharging. To assess the capacity retention, the researchers used higher current density of 500 mA per gram. “The charge storage capacity was 650 mAh per gram to start with and after 100 cycles it reduced to 570 mAh per gram, at the end of 500 cycles, the charge storage capacity was 499 mAh per gram,” says Ajay Piriya from IIT Madras and first author of a paper published in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces.
The first step that the team led by Ramaprabhu Sundara from the Department of Physics at IIT Madras took to operate the battery at room temperature was by changing the electrolyte used.
Novel electrolyte
Conventionally, sodium sulphur batteries use a solid electrolyte (sodium beta alumina), which by default reduces the diffusion of sodium ions from the anode to the cathode at room temperature. It is to increase the diffusion of sodium ions that the temperature is raised to about 300 degree C.
So in place of a solid electrolyte the researchers used a glass fibre separator soaked in ether-based electrolyte that allows the battery to be operated at room temperature.
“Changing the electrolyte alone is not sufficient to improve battery performance as there are other problems with sodium sulphur batteries,” says Prof. Sundara. Sodium is supposed to react with sulphur and produce stable sodium sulphide through intermediate steps. Each of the intermediate step produces different sodium polysuphides. “The intermediate sodium polysuphides are unstable and get dissolved into the electrolyte. The dissolved polysuphides cause twin problems that reduce the capacity and durability of the battery,” he explains.
The first problem is that with increasing amount of polysuphides getting dissolved into the electrolyte, there is a net loss in the cathode sulphur. In addition, the dissolved polysuphides move towards the anode and form a coating over it. This reduces the performance of the battery.
Shielding layer
To address the twin problem, the team added a shielding layer very close to the cathode. The shielding layer is made of white graphite mixed in a polymer matrix.
“The polymer allows the sodium ions to pass through while the white graphite added to the polymer matrix prevents the migration of polysuphides to the anode,” says Kamaraj Muthusamy from the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at IIT Madras and a co-author of the paper. The boron and nitrogen present in the layered structure of the white graphite act as binding sites for the polysuphides. The polysuphides that are chemically bound by the polymer composite react with sodium and produce sodium sulphide.
“Nearly all of the sulphur gets converted into sodium suphide when we used the shielding layer between the cathode and the separator,” Ms. Piriya says. “Since the migration of the polysuphides to the sodium anode is prevented by the shielding layer, self-discharge of the battery is significantly reduced.”
The battery was tested for self-discharge by measuring the open circuit potential of a fully charged battery for 16 continuous days. They found the potential remaining constant at 2.35 volt when the shielding layer was used; the voltage dropped without the shielding layer.
While conductive carbons are added to the sulphur to make it electrically conductive in conventional sulphur batteries, the researchers used partially exfoliated multi walled carbon nanotubes.
IIT-M designs room temperature sodium sulphur battery
By R. Prasad
11 January 2020 18:57 IST
Preventing leakage: The shielding layer helps significantly reduce self-discharge of the battery, say (from left) Ajay Piriya, Ramaprabhu Sundara and Kamaraj Muthusamy
The battery was able to achieve higher charge storage capacity and nearly zero self-discharge when not in use
While conventional sodium sulphur batteries require very high temperature (300 degree C) for operation, researchers at the Indian Institute of technology (IIT) Madras have designed a new sodium sulphur battery that can be operated at room temperature. By operating the battery at room temperature, the team was able to achieve higher charge storage capacity (technically called the specific capacity) and nearly zero self-discharge when the battery is not being used.
Storage and retention
While high temperature sodium sulphur batteries have charge storage capacity of about 558 mAh per gram, the battery designed by the IIT Madras team was able to achieve as much as 1,034 mAh per gram at a current density of 50 mA per gram.
The battery also showed 83% retention of capacity even at the end of 500 cycles of charging and discharging. To assess the capacity retention, the researchers used higher current density of 500 mA per gram. “The charge storage capacity was 650 mAh per gram to start with and after 100 cycles it reduced to 570 mAh per gram, at the end of 500 cycles, the charge storage capacity was 499 mAh per gram,” says Ajay Piriya from IIT Madras and first author of a paper published in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces.
The first step that the team led by Ramaprabhu Sundara from the Department of Physics at IIT Madras took to operate the battery at room temperature was by changing the electrolyte used.
Novel electrolyte
Conventionally, sodium sulphur batteries use a solid electrolyte (sodium beta alumina), which by default reduces the diffusion of sodium ions from the anode to the cathode at room temperature. It is to increase the diffusion of sodium ions that the temperature is raised to about 300 degree C.
So in place of a solid electrolyte the researchers used a glass fibre separator soaked in ether-based electrolyte that allows the battery to be operated at room temperature.
“Changing the electrolyte alone is not sufficient to improve battery performance as there are other problems with sodium sulphur batteries,” says Prof. Sundara. Sodium is supposed to react with sulphur and produce stable sodium sulphide through intermediate steps. Each of the intermediate step produces different sodium polysuphides. “The intermediate sodium polysuphides are unstable and get dissolved into the electrolyte. The dissolved polysuphides cause twin problems that reduce the capacity and durability of the battery,” he explains.
The first problem is that with increasing amount of polysuphides getting dissolved into the electrolyte, there is a net loss in the cathode sulphur. In addition, the dissolved polysuphides move towards the anode and form a coating over it. This reduces the performance of the battery.
Shielding layer
To address the twin problem, the team added a shielding layer very close to the cathode. The shielding layer is made of white graphite mixed in a polymer matrix.
“The polymer allows the sodium ions to pass through while the white graphite added to the polymer matrix prevents the migration of polysuphides to the anode,” says Kamaraj Muthusamy from the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at IIT Madras and a co-author of the paper. The boron and nitrogen present in the layered structure of the white graphite act as binding sites for the polysuphides. The polysuphides that are chemically bound by the polymer composite react with sodium and produce sodium sulphide.
“Nearly all of the sulphur gets converted into sodium suphide when we used the shielding layer between the cathode and the separator,” Ms. Piriya says. “Since the migration of the polysuphides to the sodium anode is prevented by the shielding layer, self-discharge of the battery is significantly reduced.”
The battery was tested for self-discharge by measuring the open circuit potential of a fully charged battery for 16 continuous days. They found the potential remaining constant at 2.35 volt when the shielding layer was used; the voltage dropped without the shielding layer.
While conductive carbons are added to the sulphur to make it electrically conductive in conventional sulphur batteries, the researchers used partially exfoliated multi walled carbon nanotubes.
IIT-M designs room temperature sodium sulphur battery
India plans mission on quantum technology to get super-secure communication
India plans mission on quantum technology to get super-secure communication
India plans mission on quantum technology to get super-secure communication
Indian researcher develops a super capacitor, will help to increase military strength
By Shivani Gite
Jan 31 2020 02:14 PM
There has been a constant search for alternatives to increase military strength. Indian researchers are now developing an economical graphene-based super-capacitor, which could emerge as an effective alternative to providing energy to other applications, including state-of-the-art military equipment, mobile devices, and modern vehicles.
According to media reports, super-capacitors, also known as ultra-capacitors or electro-chemical capacitors, are a device used for the storage of electrical energy, whose popularity is growing rapidly. Activated carbon is commonly used to make ultra-capacitors, which is quite expensive. Graphene has been used in the newly developed ultra-capacitors, which has reduced its weight as well as cost by ten times.
Researchers say that the surface area of activated carbon is more, which stores electrical charge. The higher the surface area, the more electrical energy it can store. The cost of activated carbon used in other super-capacitors available in the market is up to Rs 1 lakh per kg. Scientists at the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI), Durgapur, have developed a new technique for making graphene oxide, which is being used to make ultra-capacitors.
Indian researcher develops a super capacitor, will help to increase military strength
By Shivani Gite
Jan 31 2020 02:14 PM
There has been a constant search for alternatives to increase military strength. Indian researchers are now developing an economical graphene-based super-capacitor, which could emerge as an effective alternative to providing energy to other applications, including state-of-the-art military equipment, mobile devices, and modern vehicles.
According to media reports, super-capacitors, also known as ultra-capacitors or electro-chemical capacitors, are a device used for the storage of electrical energy, whose popularity is growing rapidly. Activated carbon is commonly used to make ultra-capacitors, which is quite expensive. Graphene has been used in the newly developed ultra-capacitors, which has reduced its weight as well as cost by ten times.
Researchers say that the surface area of activated carbon is more, which stores electrical charge. The higher the surface area, the more electrical energy it can store. The cost of activated carbon used in other super-capacitors available in the market is up to Rs 1 lakh per kg. Scientists at the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI), Durgapur, have developed a new technique for making graphene oxide, which is being used to make ultra-capacitors.
Indian researcher develops a super capacitor, will help to increase military strength