Coppe welcomes Indian professor for partnership in ethanol production from the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide
Planeta COPPE / Chemical Engineering / News
Date: 12/09/2024
In the last two weeks, Coppe/UFRJ welcomed professor Sumit H. Dhawane, from the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (Manit – Bhopal, India), as visiting professor to the Chemical Engineering Program (PEQ). Dhawane, who is at Coppe through the internationalization program Capes-Print, is collaborating with the Catalysis Center [Núcleo de Catálise] (Nucat) in a sino-indo-brazilian cooperation project aimed at the production of ethanol from the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide.
On September 6th, professor Dhawane delivered the seminar “Development of Sustainable Technologies for Waste-to-Chemical Conversions via Machine Learning-Driven Process Optimization”.
The partnership with Coppe was established during the 8th BRICS Young Scientists Forum, held in South Africa in August of 2023. In September, Dhawane and professor Fabio Toniolo (PEQ) participated in a public notice launched by the Indian government that required the inclusion of at least one partner from another Brics member country (bloc formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
“The project has as its focus ethanol production from the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide. The collaboration involves, on the Brazilian side, the development and evaluation of new catalysts, and on the Indian side, the mathematical modeling of the new process and the application of Artificial Intelligence (machine learning) to reduce the number of experiments required, optimizing the study”, explained the Coppe professor at the time.
In February, professor Fabio Toniolo participated in the International Conference on Sustainable Energy and Environment (ICSEE) 2024, held in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, in India, therefore further strengthening the partnership between Coppe and the Manit institute.
