Indian-Origin Researcher Receives $3.3 Million For Battery Waste Management

Vaibhav Kapadia - Sep 23, 2019

Veena Sahajwalla, an Indian-origin professor, has been awarded $3.3 million grant to transform waste and resource recovery industry.

An Indian-origin researcher from UNSW (University of New South Wales), has been given a grant worth $3.3 million for managing the battery waste to expand the manufacturing capabilities.

The leader of the research hub will be Professor Veena Sahajwalla. She is also the Founding Director of Centre for SMaRT at the University of New South Wales.

Professor-Sahajwalla — Professor Veena Sahajwalla is called the waste warrior for her incredible research on waste.

As UNSW stated before, another research hub will be led by Professor Rebecca Guy. She is an outstanding epidemiologist who is working at the UNSW Medicine and Kirby Institute. The project focuses on developing an integrated pharmaceutical and diagnostic approach for antibiotic resistance. About $5 million has been given as a grant for this research.

In conclusion, the UNSW in Sydney has been awarded a sum of $8.3 million grant this year from ARC and ITRP. The money is funded in 5 years to deal with two demanding challenges: antimicrobial resistance as well as issues on global waste and recycling

Dan Tehan, the Minister for Education implied that this research hub investment is for broadening our knowledge as well as finding out the best solutions that can not only benefit Australians but also improve the capacity of industrial sectors and UNSW.

Professor Sahajwalla's team will be working with Molycop-mining manufacturer as well as other industry partners to bring about new information about waste reactions at high temperature. Information about transforming waste into different valuable products and materials such as carbon, oxides or metallic alloys, using selective synthesis techniques will also be delivered.

The Professor stated that if we wanted to reduce our dependence on finite resources, which are running out quickly, we should start changing our attitudes towards materials we have created, produced, used, and discarded, to view them as renewable resources.

Thanks to the industry contributions, the project has received another $2.6 million.

The professor also believes that the supply chains and manufacturing industry can be boosted dramatically once the waste materials can be transformed. In other words, this battery waste work would assist in creating circular economies.