University of Toronto's E-quester Wins $250000 Carbon Removal Students Competition Prize

A team of engineering students at the University of Toronto have been named among the twenty-three (23) winners of $250,000 of this year Xprize $5 million Carbon Removal Students Competition. 

The team of five students who are Celine Xiao, Shijie Liu, Yi (Sheldon) Xu (MIE postdoctoral fellow), Rui Kai (Ray) Miao (MIE PhD candidate) and Colin O’Brien (MIE PhD candidate) competed with teams from 195 education institutions from ten (10) countries. 

The Carbon Removal Students Competition is a novel programme design to support concept capable of removing CO2 from the atmosphere and probably commercialising it.

Xprize -the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition aim at solving worlds challenging problems- is the brain behind the competition while it is funds by Elon Musk foundation.  

According to the University of Toronto, the innovation which won E-quester the $250,000 prize uses electrochemical process to lower the energy cost of capturing CO2 from atmosphere. It work by converting the dissolved carbonates in the liquid directly into CO2 gas thereby skipping the intermediate salt step. 

The $250,000 prize is meant to be channeled toward upgrading the innovation to be able to participate in the subsequent competition with a grand prize of $50 Million.

Team E-quester was supervised by the quad of Professors David Sinton (MIE) and Ted Sargent (ECE), MIE research associate Christine Gabardo, and alumnus Alex Ip (ECE PhD 1T5). 


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