A Monash University student team has been awarded US$250,000 as one of the winners of the XPRIZE Carbon Removal Student Competition, sponsored by Elon Musk and the XPRIZE Foundation.
The Monash Carbon Capture and Conversion (MC³) student team was established in April 2021 and is the only Victorian team to receive the XPRIZE Carbon Removal Student Award. The competition recognises student teams for their ability to tackle climate change by developing new technical solutions around atmospheric carbon capture and conversion.
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The four-year global competition invites innovators and teams from around the world to create a solution that can pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans and store it away permanently in an environmental way.
MC³ was one of 23 global teams who took out the Carbon Removal Student Competition and was awarded $250,000 USD from a total of US$5 million available to competing teams.
Chief executive officer of MC³ and fourth year Bachelor of Engineering and Commerce student, Emily Qiao, said the team’s key focus was on the capture of CO2 via bio-sequestration.
“We submitted a BioTechnology proposal that consisted of biologically-assisted carbon capture and conversion methods which focused on the capture of CO2 from the ocean and air via artificial forestry and microalgae cultures in novel designed floating photobioreactors,” she explained.
“The biomass produced from these carbon farms will then be utilised downstream, powered by bioenergy, in their transformation into cross-laminated timber, for sustainable buildings, and biochar, a charcoal that can be used for soil amendment.”
“It’s incredible to see this student team’s work receive international support and recognition from the likes of Elon Musk and XPRIZE. For a relatively new student team to achieve this milestone just as they begin their journey to develop sustainable carbon capture technologies, is an astounding feat,” Woodside Monash Energy Partnership director Professor Paul Webley said.
The objective of XPRIZE is to inspire and help scale-up efficient solutions to collectively achieve the 10 gigaton per year carbon removal target by 2050, to help fight climate change and restore the Earth’s carbon balance.
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The Monash Carbon Capture and Conversion team’s focus will adapt to the next phase of the XPRIZE Carbon Removal Competition, which will conclude on February 1, 2022. MC³ will be up against leading carbon capture, utilisation and storage organisations in the global community endeavouring to progress their technologies through tangible and verifiable means.
Recipients of the Elon Musk-funded XPRIZE awards will be announced at the Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP26.
