The Department of Science and Technology is gearing up its forces towards India’s target of adding 175 GW of renewable energy production by 2022, by harnessing state- of-art research led innovative and cost effective materials, technologies and processes for clean energy advancement in the country.

In pursuance of this target, the Department of Science & Technology (DST) has firmed up research on energy materials through Materials for Energy Conservation and Storage initiative covering the full breadth of energy research areas. The research covering these areas have been linked both nationally and internationally through a Materials for Energy Conservation and Storage Platform (MECSP).

The MECSP will support research and development for entire spectrum of energy conservation and storage technologies from early stage research to technology breakthroughs in materials, systems and scalable technologies to maximise resource use efficiency.

Four centres have been developed under DST – MECSP on super capacitors, batteries and hydrogen. These centres constitute knowledge networks of more than 20 elite institutions and 80 research personnel working on materials and next generation devices in batteries, super capacitors, solid state hydrogen storage and fuel cells.

These centres will contribute to development of national research network for materials for energy storage.

DST- IIT Delhi Energy Storage Platform on Batteries: 1.54 MB
DST –IIT Delhi Centre on Batteries aims to carry out research and development to develop three different types of novel materials and their application in electrochemical storage devices. The network of researchers engaged in the centre comprise of scientists from IIT Delhi, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology, ARCI - Centre for Fuel Cell Technology (CFCT).

The Centre will develop carbonaceous materials, mixed metal oxides and organic-inorganic hybrid polymer electrolytes with molecular to device-level modelling and optimisation and application to electrochemical storage devices.

DST- IIT Bombay Energy Storage Platform on Hydrogen:11.11 MB
It has been established with an aim to carry out materials and systems research, prototype demonstration, technology development, incubation of innovative ideas, industrial interactions, collaborations, manpower development and information dissemination in the field of hydrogen. The lead organisation is IIT Bombay and has four partnering institutions IIT Guwahati, IIT Kanpur, IIT Tirupati, NIT Rourkela.

The centre will become a source of information as well as nodal point where people in the country working in the area of hydrogen could be provided with mentorship or material or required help and support. Tasks to be undertaken include: process development for scaled up production, research on novel materials, knowledge dissemination and human resource development. The technologies to be developed include hydrogen based: compressor, hydrogen purification, heating & cooling systems, thermal energy storage and backup power.

DST- IISc Energy Storage Platform on Supercapacitors: 1.96 MB
The overarching objective of the DST-IISc Energy Storage Platform on Supercapacitors is to develop techno-economically viable electrical energy storage solutions that have the potential to catapult India to a leadership role in energy storage and clean energy technologies through active collaboration and accelerated technology development. IISc Bangalore, being the nodal centre has four partnering institutes, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Madras, Central Electro-Chemical Research Institute Karaikudi, Pondicherry University.

The center will primarily focus on application-driven research for the development of techno-economically viable electrochemical energy storage solutions with particular emphasis on high power density storage such as supercapacitors. The center’s research will focus on four broad topics in energy storage research: Electrochemical Supercapacitors, Ion-Intercalation Batteries, Redox Flow Batteries and Advanced Battery Chemistries.

DST- NFTDC Energy Storage Platform on Hydrogen: 3.73 MB
The centre will be established at Nonferrous Materials Technology Development Centre, Hyderabad with a core theme of Hydrogen based materials to Energy Devices. The focus of this centre will be specific Hydrogen related systems. The network of researchers engaged in centre comprise of scientists from IISc Bengaluru, IIT Madras, IIT Bhubaneswar, Sri Chitra Thirunal College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram. The Centre started off with three major verticals in Heat and Power Generation via SOFC, solid state storage and cooling solutions.

A noteworthy feature of DST – NFTDC centre is design and fabrication of process equipment’s and test facilities in the project to enable Make in India. DST – NFTDC centre will develop next generation Mg + Carbon materials for solid state hydrogen storage with optimal H2 percent and desorption temperature together with waste heat utilization in specific applications such as hybrid vehicles.

Research at the four centres can provide a stong backbone of research technologies for the renewable energy development in the country.