Watch a video about youth working on carbon capture ideation!
In November of 2021, Riya alongside colleagues Taira Mehta and Anupra Chandran spoke at the largest innovation and technology event in the world, Web Summit, about their carbon capture project called Kaptis, which focuses on extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it into graphene.
"The number one thing we do right now after capturing CO2 is burying it into the ground and that isn't efficient, because there is no economic incentive, so we wanted to use carbon instead as a resource. Currently, carbon is being turned into many different products; from diesel fuels to industrial materials such as concrete.
We thought outside the box a little and realized that there are methods being used to produce graphene, but our method uses light instead of heat (lowering energy requirements and cost of the conversion process). Based on our predictions, this catalysis can reduce the graphene manufacturing approach by thousands of dollars, saving more room to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and make use of it."
Watch the video by going to the Voices of Youth page.