AE Seminar-Dr Maanasa Bhat: Low-cost and Low-emissions Strategies for Resolving Challenges in the Hydrogen Supply Chain

Abstract:

The Net Zero Emissions 2050 (NZE 2050) initiative sets an ambitious target to eliminate net CO₂ within the next two decades. Achieving this goal demands widespread decarbonization across energy, transportation, residential, and industrial sectors. Carbon-free and carbon-neutral fuels are central to this effort. Hydrogen, an abundant, high-energy-density, carbon-free fuel is expected to play a critical role in this transition. While hydrogen is already used in sectors such as chemical production and refining, expanding its role into transportation and electricity generation requires significant infrastructure development. Key challenges include improving production technologies, enhancing storage safety, enabling long-distance transport, and ensuring economic viability.

The current talk discusses low-cost and low-emissions strategies to tackle challenges across three stages of the hydrogen supply chain: production, storage, and transportation. Both experimental methodology and big-picture techno-economic and life cycle analysis approaches are utilized as needed. For the production stage, a low-cost spray synthesis method is investigated for manufacturing mixed metal oxides for potential catalyst use. For hydrogen storage, improvement of operational safety is discussed by studying the development of highly sensitive hydrogen leak detection sensors working on the chemiresistive principle. For transportation, a techno-economic and life cycle assessment of intercontinental hydrogen delivery from Australia to Japan is conducted to evaluate the feasibility of using hydrogen carriers such as methanol, e-LNG and ammonia. Together, these contributions present economically and environmentally viable strategies to support hydrogen infrastructure development by improving production efficiency, ensuring safe storage, and enabling long-distance transportation, thereby accelerating progress toward NZE 2050 goals.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Maanasa Bhat is a recent PhD graduate from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge MA, USA. She conducted her PhD research at the Deng Energy and Nanotechnology Group (PI: Prof. Sili Deng) and the MIT Energy Initiative (PI: Dr. Guiyan Zang). Her research focus is on the development of materials and processes for applications in energy storage and conversion. She is particularly interested in clean energy applications, focusing on carbon-free fuels and Li-ion batteries. Her approach utilizes both experimental methodologies to tackle fundamental questions and techno-economic and life cycle analysis for problem-solving on a larger scale. She graduated with a Master of Technology (By Research) in 2019 from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. She was a recipient of the NASAS medal for best academic performance. She has a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from R.V College of Engineering, Bengaluru. In addition to research, she has a keen interest in community engagement and has served in leadership roles as the President of the Indian Students Association at MIT and Chairman of IISc Kannada Sangha Nityotsava.