Carbon Zero Challenge 2017-18 Award Winners

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Carbon Zero Challenge 2017-18 Award Winners

Hi all,

The CZeroC team is extremely glad to share everyone that the grand finale of Carbon Zero Challenge 2017-18 took place in a grand manner on Feb 9, 2018 at IC&SR Auditorium, IIT Madras.  Honourable dignitaries present at the event were

  • Shri Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director – IIT Madras
  • Shri Vikram Kapur, IAS, TN Energy Dept Principal Secretary
  • Shri Robert Burgess, US CG, Chennai
  • Shri Kris Canekeratne, Co-founder, Chairman & CEO, Virtusa Corporation
  • Shri K Baskaran, Chairman, IWMA
  • Shri Raghuttama Rao, CEO, Gopalkrishna Deshpande Innovation Centre, IIT Madras

Honourable Dignitaries

The awards presentation ceremony started with the invocation and lighting of lamp. This was followed by the welcome address by Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director – IIT Madras. Dr. Indumathi Nambi from Dept. of Civil Engg. briefed about the CZC competition and a short video was played which took the gathering through the CZC journey.  Honourable dignitaries released the Carbon Zero Challenge 2017-18 Souvenir and addressed the gathering. An audio visual on CZC finalist teams was played which revealed some winners. This was followed by the main part of the entire event – Prize Distribution. The shortlisted teams expressed their heartfelt thanks to the entire CZC team – Organizers, Sponsors, Coordinators, Partners, Judges, Jury and Mentors.

Release of Souvenir by Honourable Dignitaries

Carbon Zero Challenge 2017-18 Award Winners

The award winners of CZeroC 2017-18 were selected and categorized by the Jury Panel under the following four categories.

Award Category Teams Awarded
CZeroC Innovation Excellence Award Winners with Funding for Incubation Support
  • Team U2 – Innovative Building and Cooling Systems – IIT Madras
  • Team I1 – Turbo T – Dayanand Sagar College of Engg, Bengaluru
  • Team W11 – Enviro – IIT Madras
CZeroC 2017-18 Innovation Excellence Award Winners
  • Team A1 – Blue Wave – Startup from Bengaluru
  • Team U12 – Ozone – Kongu Engineering College, Erode
CZeroC 2017-18 Technical Excellence Award Winners
  • Team U3 – Intelligent Lighting Systems – IIT Madras
  • Team I7 – STEP Recoder – IIT Madras
  • Team I12 – Solarize – CSIR
  • Team W6 – Electrochem – IIT Madras
  • Team U16 – U-Farm Technologies – Startup from Puducherry
CZeroC 2017-18 Noteworthy Mention Award Winners
  • Team I6 – Grawy – Startup from Bengaluru
  • Team U11 – Integrative Design Solutions – Startup from Delhi
  • Team T9 – VisionX – PES University, Bengaluru
  • Team I5 – Vent Tech – Loyola ICAM College of Engg & Technology, Chennai

CZeroC Innovation Excellence Award Winners with Funding for Incubation Support:

1.  Team U2 – Innovative Building and Cooling Systems – IIT Madras

According to IEO 2013, building sector consumes one fifth of the total global energy consumption, and India resembles the same. In India, more than 60% of all the buildings projected for 2030 is yet to build and expected to have increased levels of thermal comfort demand. Thus, HVAC sector is expected to share about 40 – 50 % of the total building energy consumption.

In order to reduce the energy consumption in the building sector, the team came up with the project “Comfortable Low Energy Buildings made up of GFRG with Passive Cooling Systems”. The proposed solution is focused on an alternative, energy efficient cooling technology-Thermally Activated building System (TABS), Building material – Glass Fibre Reinforced Gypsum (GFRG), Specific roof design.



2. Team I1 – Turbo T – Dayanand Sagar College of Engg, Bengaluru

The objective of the team’s project “Auto-adjusting & Positioning of Light-sensitive Roof Panels Maximize Day-lighting in Buildings” is to reduce power consumption for lighting in commercial and residential buildings. The prototype is of a commercial/industrial building with self-adjusting roof panels to maximize day-lighting throughout the day. In addition, the model may use other techniques such as a light shelf to optimize natural lighting throughout the day.


3. Team W11 – Enviro – IIT Madras

In India, 140,000 tonnes of waste is generated daily, in which only 29% is treated. >15,000 tonnes of plastic waste generated everyday, of which 6,000 tonnes remain uncollected & littered. Segregation of waste, insufficient land fill area, high operational costs and environmental impacts have caused failure of existing centralized waste treatment facilities.

To solve this issue, the team has developed a community level off-grid plastic pyrolysis unit which helps convert the solid waste to fuel products in less time with minimized environmental impacts.


CZeroC 2017-18 Innovation Excellence Award Winners:

1. Team A1 – Blue Wave – Startup from Bengaluru

This team, a Bengaluru based startup has come up with a unique and innovative product “Aquahorse” which is a portable onshore device to convert ocean energy into usable clean energy for fishing community and commercial establishments along the seashores. It is primarily designed to run cold storage on clean energy extracted from ocean energy.

2. Team U12 – Ozone – Kongu Engineering College, Erode

Reducing CO2 emissions, increasing the rate at which the buildings are currently constructed and increasing the durability and strength of construction materials are the main objectives of this project “In-Situ CO2 Sand Bricks In-Built with Sodium Silicate as a Self-Curing Agent” proposed by this team.

CZeroC 2017-18 Technical Excellence Award Winners:

Following are the teams that fall under this category.

1. Team U3 – Intelligent Lighting Systems – IIT Madras

Streets, parks and other public facilities serve as a major drain on a city’s energy resources. Chennai city uses 27.61MW of power which is around 20% of the total energy on street-lighting. This is ~233 tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere per day. Globally 18-38% of the total electric power is consumed by street lighting. At the same time, the global demand for electricity keeps increasing day by day.

Decreasing the energy consumed by streetlights is essential at this juncture. This could be achieved by the IITM team Intelligent Lighting Systems’ idea “Efficient Management of Energy Consumption by Public Street Lights” using i-lighting sensor based interactive system.

2. Team I7 – STEP Recoder – IIT Madras

Electroplating industry is a high carbon and water footprint industry. Hence students from IITM thought of using solar thermal energy for potential resource recovery from industrial wastewater. This new technique is a solar based energy efficient treatment technology for cleaner production and near zero carbon footprint. This concept can be further extended to any potential industry for wastewater treatment and resource recovery depending on the process and requirement.

3. Team I12 – Solarize – CSIR

In India, 2% (1 million tonne per year) of the oil is consumed for low temperature industrial process heating, spending around 30 billion INR. This can be easily replaced by renewable energy based solution to reduce carbon footprint. This renewable energy based solution is elongated low concentrating PV thermal system (ELCPVT) which is proposed by this team. All industries using fossil fuels for low temperature heating could be the potential target segment for this technique.

4. Team W6 – Electrochem – IIT Madras

“Sustainable Zero-Energy Prototype for Desalination Coupled Wastewater Treatment” was the project of this team. Owing to urbanization and population growth, we face inherent water crisis. Further, extensive mismanagement of water also leads to water crisis. In order to meet the growing demand of water and prevent the misuse of limited freshwater resources, there is an urgent need to treat the contaminated water.

The prototype developed by this team uses electrochemical (redox) process for water and wastewater treatment which have small footprint, making them attractive for decentralized water/wastewater treatment.

5. Team U16 – U-Farm Technologies – Startup from Puducherry

One major problem the world is facing today is with respect to getting fresh food products. This is due to the following factors:

  • Lack of fresh, nutritious, pesticide-free food products
  • Lack of connection between farming and food in urban areas
  • Unsustainable farming practices to meet the rising demand of population
  • Energy and food wastage during transportation and storage

This can be solved with the help of the new technique devised by the team U-Farm Technologies and their product is “FoodBox”. It is a fully automated IoT enabled small scale vertical farming appliance for homes to provide nutritious and organic vegetables all year long.

CZeroC 2017-18 Noteworthy Mention Award Winners:

The teams awarded under this category include

1. Team I6 – Grawy – Startup from Bengaluru

Grawy, a startup team from Bengaluru felt that there is an urgent need to reduce CO2 emissions and increase the availability of clean energy throughout the world. Hence they came up with the project “Wave Abater” where the currently underutilized wave energy could be harnessed with a simpler, cost-effective machine without harming the ocean ecosystem. This energy, in turn, could meet the increasing demands for clean energy.

2. Team U11 – Integrative Design Solutions – Startup from Delhi

This team, a student-startup team from IITM and Delhi came up with the idea of “Low Carbon Approach to Energy Efficient and Comfortable Affordable Housing for the Warm-humid Climate in India” to reduce the overall energy consumption in residential sectors.

Two solutions were proposed by the team – indirect-direct evaporative cooling and controls for efficient space conditioning. The uniqueness of this solution is that it can be aligned with the flagship missions of India like Housing for all, solar mission, energy efficiency, make in India etc.


3. Team T9 – VisionX – PES University, Bengaluru

Owing to lack of sustainable energy infrastructure, people are becoming aware of electric vehicles and affordability of solar energy systems is also possible these days. Clearly, there is a necessity for a truly “green” solution that provides clean energy accessible to everybody, and a mobility solution that utilizes this clean energy.

This green solution could soon become commercial by the concept “Sustainable Mobility” developed by team VisionX from PES University, Bengaluru.


4. Team I5 – Vent Tech – Loyola ICAM College of Engg & Technology, Chennai

“Integrating Data Acquisition Techniques with Demand Controlled Ventilation (DCV) in Air Conditioners” was the idea of Vent Tech, a students’ team from Loyola ICAM College of Engg & Technology, Chennai. In current AC systems, where fresh air is required, e.g. Basements and cold storage facilities, the fresh air dilution process is constant. The constant fresh air is a waste and we have to identify ration required for human comfort. Implementing the above idea would automatically control the cooling by sensing human occupancy.

By | 2018-02-16T10:31:45+00:00 February 15th, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments

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