Ahmedabad University Professor Receives IFI-funded Fellowship for Visit and Research Collaboration in France on Green Hydrogen Generation

Green hydrogen has attracted experts’ attention for its ability to reduce emissions and increase energy efficiency by bringing down the overall dependency on fossils. This led Professor Aditi Singhal from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Ahmedabad University to study the characterisation of the electrocatalysts developed for electrochemical water splitting, a technology that can generate green hydrogen.

Having been selected for the Scientific High-Level Visiting Fellowship at the Université of Lille, France, Professor Singhal will continue her research in person at the Université alongside Professor Jean-Philippe Dacquin, who is engaged in concomitant research studies.

The Fellowship programme, introduced by the French Institute in India, the educational, scientific, and cultural wing of the Embassy of France in India, aims to nurture and strengthen Franco-Indian research networks by facilitating short visits by Indian researchers to laboratories in France.

Professor Singhal specialises in the area of electrocatalysis, using various metal oxides as catalysts. These materials are also used by Professor Jean-Philippe Dacquin at the Université of Lille, an expert in similar materials and their characterisation, who is also interested in establishing an electrochemical facility. Professor Singhal will leverage her visit to develop a long-term collaboration with the Université of Lille to analyse the catalytic compositions developed in the laboratory at Ahmedabad University.

Professor Singhal follows a lattice oxygen activation approach to develop the electrocatalysts. This intensifies the overall water splitting process, eventually enabling hydrogen generation. She works on perovskite and substituted metal oxides for Oxygen Evolution Research (OER), which show good conductivity, presence of sufficient active oxygen, and excellent stability, essential for OER kinetics and system longevity. She will discuss her findings with Professor Dacquin, thereby advancing the research by designing many more catalytic formulations for the OER process.