About Us

Breathe Applied Sciences Pvt. Ltd. was formed in March 2016 at the Jawaharal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Benagluru, India as a part of NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE competition comprising of Prof. Sebastian C. Peter, Dr. Rakshith Belur and Prof. Wumesh V. Waghmare. The team focuses on the methodology and design of materials targeted to scalable and efficient conversion of waste CO₂ emitted from coal and natural gas power generation to methanol and other value added products. During the course of the technology development, Breathe has been selected as one of the 100 best start-ups by Karnataka State Government in 2017 through the program ELEVATE-100. CleanEquity Monaco (2019) selected our CO₂-to-methanol technology as the best runner up in the category of "Excellence in the Field of Environmental Technology Research"

TECH INFORMATION

The presence of multiple gases in the flue gas stream, such as moisture and air pollutants, affect the efficiency and durability of CO₂ reduction catalysts. Selective conversion to a desired chemical is one of the biggest challenges. The CO₂ reduction process also requires H₂, the generation of which is another major challenge. We have developed new strategic tools to design promising catalytic materials for the efficient and selective conversion of CO₂ into methanol and other value added chemicals. The team has succeeded in integrating several components of the overall technology in a single unit. The technology development was planned in 4 stages: bench, pilot, demo and commercial, having CO₂ processing capacities of 1 kg/day, 5 kg/day, 300 kg/day and 2000 kg/day, respectively. While CO₂ capture technology is well established and readily available, our technology focuses primarily on the conversion technology development and integrating it with different CO₂ capture subsystems to offer a complete solution. The team has been successful for the first three stages completely and remains focuses on scaling up. The team has scaled up the catalyst synthesis and designed the reactor and process engineering to enhance the overall efficiency.

ABOUT TEAM LEADER

Dr. Sebastian C. Peter received his MSc (2000) from St. Thomas College, Thrissur, Calicut University and MTech in Industrial Catalysis (2002) from Cochin University of Science and Technology. He received his PhD in chemistry from the University of Münster, Germany (2006). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Plank Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, Germany (2006-07) and at Northwestern University (2007-10) in the United States. Dr. Peter joined as an Assistant Professor at the New Chemistry Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore in 2010. His broad research interests include the development of solid-state inorganic materials for various applications including industrial catalysis, fuel cells and CO₂ reduction. He has more than 160 peer reviewed publications and five patents. He is the recipient of a Young Investigator award from ACS (2013), RSC (2017) and IOP (2016). He was awarded a Ramanujan fellowship in 2010 and MRSI medal in 2016. In 2018, he received a Swarna Jayanti Fellowship in the category of Chemical Science. He is a member of the American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, ASM International, the Chemical Research Society of India, the Material Research Society of India, the International Union of Crystallography, the Indian National Young Academy of Science and the Society for Material Chemistry of India.