Dr. Gaurav Sant, Associate Professor and Henry Samueli Fellow, welcomes Wall Street Journal’s Jason Bellini to UCLA as they discuss carbon.
WSJ’s Bellini explores the trends, technologies, ideas and challenges that are headed our way in a weekly video series. In December 2017, Bellini explores, “Carbon: From Pollutant to Product” by taking an inside look at how businesses and scientists are trying to capture carbon dioxide and convert it into sellable products.
Bellini spoke to Dr. Gaurav Sant about his Carbon Upcycling Team which develops innovative solutions to combat climate change utilizing a multidisciplinary approach.
As featured in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Newsletter, UCLA is competing for the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE by developing a process for capturing CO2 and converting it into a material that can be used in building and construction. The team is led by C&EE Associate Professor Gaurav Sant and includes team members J.R. DeShazo, Director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, and C&EE Professor Mathieu Bauchy, C&EE Assistant Professor and other UCLA faculty members. The international competition was launched to encourage the development of breakthrough technologies to fight climate change. UCLA’s Carbon Upcycling team has advanced to the semifinals by demonstrating a process for capturing CO2 emissions from power plant smokestacks, the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions. The trapped emissions will be used to create a CO2–neutral building material called CO2NCRETE, which can replace traditional concrete which is responsible for 9% of global CO2 emissions.
View the WSJ video.