Cosmic aid for miners

by Hansraj Agrawal | Apr 19, 2026 | Science

Why muon tomography is sought after by mining companies

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When the grid becomes an all-knowing data system

by Hansraj Agrawal | Apr 19, 2026 | Science

The transition to renewable energy is remaking India’s power grid at a level that generation capacity figures do not capture. Integrating variable solar and wind power at scale requires continuous, real-time data exchange between generation sources, storage systems and grid operators. Battery storage must respond to grid signals within milliseconds.

Demand response, peer-to-peer energy trading and distributed generation require the grid to function as an information system. Each of these capabilities connects what engineers call operational technology to information networks.

The equipment that manages voltage, frequency and power flow, previously isolated from external networks by design, is now networked by operational requirement. Every new connection extends the boundary of what is reachable from outside.

The draft National Electricity Policy (NEP), 2026, addresses this through two provisions that pull against each other. Section 12 mandates that all infrastructure and control systems storing or processing power sector data should be physically located within India, explicitly including battery management systems. Section 13 requires the same sectoral entities to share their operational and market data under regulatory safeguards to enable AI applications, analytics and innovation.

Territorial control over the data layer is the objective of one; circulation of that data is the objective of the other. The India Energy Stack, named in Section 7 as a foundational framework for interoperable energy systems and financial settlements, is the architecture intended to hold both requirements together.

Embedded security

Battery management systems illustrate how the security logic works at the component level. A battery management system continuously monitors cell behaviour: Charge and discharge rates, thermal conditions, capacity degradation and grid response characteristics. For a grid-scale installation, this data constitutes a detailed operational profile of critical infrastructure across a range of conditions, including emergencies. The mandate to keep this data within Indian jurisdiction is a security measure embedded in technical specification: Operational intelligence on grid behaviour under stress cannot be routed to servers outside Indian control.

The supervisory control and data acquisition systems running India’s load despatch centres present a structurally difficult problem. These are continuous operational systems managing live grid infrastructure, sourced from vendors including ABB, Siemens and GE Vernova. NEP 2026 proposes that the Grid Controller of India Limited and State load despatch centres endeavour to transition to indigenously developed systems by 2030. The transition requires replacing live control systems on infrastructure that cannot be taken offline, against a four-year timeline, with a domestic software and hardware supply chain that does not yet exist at the required scale or reliability.

The policy’s governing logic is clear: Open at the data layer, sovereign at the infrastructure layer. The India Energy Stack is expected to be the framework that will operationalise this principle.

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Published on April 20, 2026

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Half the capex, less carbon: The molten magic inside Tata Steel’s HIsarna bet

by Hansraj Agrawal | Apr 19, 2026 | Science

HIsarna furnace for steel making

It costs about a billion dollars (₹9,000 crore) to set up a steel plant with a capacity of one million tonnes. But Tata Steel is planning one at Jamshedpur for roughly ₹4,000 crore.

This is magic made possible by an entirely new steel-making process — HIsarna. Tata Steel had a big hand in its development and now owns the patent.

HIsarna has the potential to revolutionise steel making — once perfected in a commercial plant, it is expected to elbow out all other conventional methods of steel making, such as blast furnace or electric arc furnace.

Its advantages are striking. First, it eliminates two unavoidable steps in traditional steel-making processes — coke-making and the agglomeration of iron ore (into sinter or pellets). That alone knocks off chunks of capital cost. Second, HIsarna doesn’t care about ore quality — low-grade iron ore, abundantly available in eastern India, works just as well. Third, carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to be about 20 per cent lower than in a conventional plant of comparable size. Moreover, the carbon dioxide stream is relatively pure, making carbon capture easier and cheaper, without any need for separation from other flue gases.

How does HIsarna achieve this? The answer lies in its architecture.

Leaving aside the minutiae, the HIsarna furnace has two chambers, one above the other. Powdered iron ore is injected into the top chamber, where it spirals downward. The spiralling keeps it longer in the chamber, which is essential. The powder injection is also the technology’s biggest challenge: The iron ore particles must neither fly out nor fall straight through.

Non-coking coal is injected into the lower, smelting vessel. Oxygen is introduced at multiple points. The coal reacts with oxygen to produce carbon monoxide (CO), which rises to the top chamber. There it meets oxygen again, burns into carbon dioxide, and releases intense heat. This heat melts the ore, which then drips into the lower chamber.

Iron ore (ferric oxide or Fe₂O₃) must be reduced — its oxygen removed — to yield iron. In HIsarna, this happens in two stages. In the upper chamber, ferric oxide is partly reduced to ferrous oxide (FeO) as it encounters the rising CO and injected oxygen; the heat generated also melts the ore. The molten ferrous oxide then falls into the lower chamber, where it reacts with the carbon in coal. The oxygen bonds with carbon, leaving behind molten iron. The outputs are liquid iron and a relatively pure stream of carbon dioxide.

Light footprint

The process can use low-grade ore, which would otherwise be discarded. The plant footprint is about half that of a comparable blast furnace setup. The slag can go straight into a cement kiln, unlike the blast furnace slag. Taken together, these factors could lower operating costs by around 10 per cent, according to Subodh Pandey, Vice-President (Technology, R&D, NMB and Graphene) at Tata Steel. The HIsarna plant in Jamshedpur is expected to go on stream by 2030.

How did Tata Steel get here? “Perseverance,” says Pandey — and there’s a story behind that.

The idea of a new steel-making route was first pursued in Europe under the Ultra-Low CO₂ Steelmaking (ULCOS) initiative, a consortium of 48 companies. One of them was Koninklijke Hoogovens, which later merged with British Steel to form Corus Group and was acquired by Tata Steel in 2007.

The construction of a pilot plant in the Netherlands began in 2010, followed by years of trials. Rio Tinto, the British-Australian mining major, joined in 2011, bringing its HIsmelt technology (the bottom chamber). Tata Steel acquired the technology from Rio Tinto in 2017.

Initially, there were many setbacks — refractories failed, operations proved unstable — and most partners lost interest. In 2021, Tata Steel, along with US company Nucor, revived the effort with new operating protocols. The results improved. “We have reached higher operating capacity than originally planned: 14 tonnes of ore per hour against 12 tonnes,” Pandey says.

Perseverance paid off for Tata Steel — in results and in patents. For Nucor, which largely produces steel from scrap, HIsarna offers a route to higher-end products that are not easily made via scrap. Nucor holds rights to build a HIsarna plant in the US, subject to a licence fee — and intends to do so.

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The Artemis 2 mission will fly a figure-eight pattern that will take the crew around the Earth and then around the moon

Published on April 20, 2026

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Efficient brakes and EV range

by Hansraj Agrawal | Apr 19, 2026 | Science

Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, have developed a control framework for electric vehicle (EV) traction systems that can extend driving range by improving the efficiency of regenerative braking, without requiring hardware changes.

Regenerative braking allows EVs to recover energy during deceleration, but it becomes ineffective below a certain speed. In most systems, this low-speed cut-off is fixed using empirical methods that do not adapt to operating conditions, leading to energy loss.

The IIT-Madras team addresses this by introducing an analytical method to determine the speed below which regenerative braking should be disabled. It is derived from first principles and computed offline, avoiding additional computational load during real-time vehicle operation.

In addition, the researchers developed a model-based algorithm that dynamically adjusts the motor’s magnetic flux depending on speed and torque conditions. This replaces conventional fixed-flux operation, reducing power losses and extending the effective range over which regenerative braking can function.

The framework has been tested using both international and Indian driving cycles, including the modified Indian drive cycle (MIDC). Results show a reduction in traction system losses of up to 13 per cent under MIDC conditions and about 7 per cent under the US EPA highway cycle.

The paper, published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, was co-authored by research scholar MK Deepa, Prof Srikanthan Sridharan and Prof CS Shankar Ram.

The team plans to test the framework on full-scale EVs to assess system-level effects, including battery performance and thermal behaviour, and explore its integration with battery state-of-charge management.

Stable aluminium-ion battery

Researchers have developed a composite electrode material that improves the durability of aluminium-ion batteries, potentially making them cheaper, safer and longer-lasting.

Aluminium batteries are being explored as an alternative to lithium-ion systems because aluminium is abundant, inexpensive and can store more charge per atom. However, poor durability is a major hindrance: The electrode material tends to crack or dissolve into the electrolyte during repeated charging and discharging cycles, leading to rapid loss of performance.

A commonly used cathode material, vanadium oxide, can store high energy and allows aluminium ions to move through its layered structure. But in water-based aluminium batteries, it dissolves into the electrolyte, causing the battery to lose capacity quickly.

To address this, a team led by Kavita Pandey at the Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences, working with researchers from the Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, combined vanadium oxide with MXene, a highly conductive, ultra-thin material.

In this composite, MXene forms a conductive network that stabilises the vanadium oxide and provides smooth pathways for ion movement. “This significantly reduces the dissolution of vanadium into the electrolyte — from 28.3 ppm in pure vanadium oxide to 5.4 ppm in the composite,” says a press release.

As a result, battery performance improves markedly. The composite retains over 73 per cent of its original capacity after 100 charge cycles and about 59 per cent even after 500 cycles, substantially better than conventional designs.

Further analysis showed that the MXene framework helps preserve the electrode’s structure during operation, preventing the cracks and damage that typically degrade aluminium-ion batteries.

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Published on April 20, 2026

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Micro-mining for critical rare earth minerals

by Hansraj Agrawal | Apr 19, 2026 | Science

Rare earth elements (REEs) are critical to the manufacture and working of electric vehicles, wind turbines, and defence equipment. However, mining for these minerals harms the environment, not to mention the lack of mature and patented refining processes in India, unlike in China.

Enter biometallurgy — namely the recovery of metals using microbes. It is a sustainable, low-carbon means of extracting critical rare earth minerals from sources such as electronic waste and industrial byproducts.

The recovery process typically involves several biological steps. In bioleaching, microbes make metals soluble with the aid of molecules such as siderophores and lanthanophores, or dissolve them through the secretion of organic acids.

Biosorption is the process in which living or dead microbial biomass acts as a ‘sponge’ — negatively charged functional groups on cell walls trap positively charged REE ions.

Lanmodulin — a game changer

The discovery of the protein lanmodulin has helped ramp up the ability to selectively weed out REE minerals, since it has 100 million times more affinity for REEs than common metals such as calcium.

Unlikely feedstock

Research has shown that laterite and coal/lignite mines are good sources of REEs. These deposits contain REE in way higher concentrations than land surface.

Research at Cornell University identifies microbes that offer ‘two-for-one’ benefit: harvesting REEs while simultaneously capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Certain bacteria use carbon dioxide to build biomass, secreting the acids required for leaching while permanently fixing the carbon into organic matter. Currently these successes have been achieved under lab conditions and may require more testing and proofs of concept before transferring to the real world.

Research shows that a consortium of microbes is 20 per cent more effective at dissolving magnets than single strains. Growing microbes in a nutrient-rich environment before adding waste prevents metal toxicity, allowing for higher processing densities. The biological process requires 90 per cent less energy than traditional smelting, while making use of cheap ‘fuels’ such as elemental sulphur.

For India, these advancements are essential to help cut dependence on imports for REEs.

The side effects of mining include toxic orange water or acid mine drainage which, together with other unsafe byproducts such as coal ash, can be transformed into a resource refinery for high-purity REE magnets.

Akhilesh Bagaria, co-founder of NavPrakriti, a company that mines discarded batteries for materials, says ‘bio-hydrometallurgy’ is the next frontier in extracting value from waste. “Integrating biological processes like bioleaching with established hydrometallurgical techniques isn’t just about cutting emissions” but also changing how we extract value from waste. The company is exploring collaborations with research institutions to adapt microbial technologies for Indian conditions.

Will his company adopt bio-filters such as lanmodulin in its processes? “For India, where strategic resource recovery is critical, these bio-based filters could redefine standards for purity and efficiency. NavPrakriti sees real potential for adapting them to local industrial processes.”

He adds that the ultimate test for sustainable recycling is “not just in what we recover, but also how responsibly we do it. For us, carbon-negative recovery isn’t just an ambition, it’s also the next logical step”. The way forward involves integrating carbon dioxide capture and exploring bioleaching approaches that can sequester carbon, he says.

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Published on April 20, 2026

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Artemis-2: Hurtling moon-ward on an epochal mission

by Hansraj Agrawal | Apr 5, 2026 | Science

The Artemis 2 mission will fly a figure-eight pattern that will take the crew around the Earth and then around the moon
| Photo Credit:
NASA/JSC/Goddard

As you are reading this, three Americans (including a woman) and a Canadian are hurtling moon-ward on an epochal mission, whose success will ginger up global deep-space activities.

Apollo, after whom the moon missions between 1969 and 1972 were named, was the son of Zeus, the mythical Greek king of gods, and Leto.

More than half a century after the last Apollo mission, it is the turn of twin sister, Artemis, to lend her name to a moon mission.

Artemis-2 is truly wow. Since the Orion capsule — the temporary residence of the four astronauts — will circle the moon without entering the moon’s orbit, the team will go farther than any human ever has — close to 4,00,000 km from the Earth to the moon, and nearly 4,000 km beyond the far side of the moon — slightly exceeding the record set by Apollo 13.

Like Apollo 8, which took humans around the moon for the first time ever, Artemis-2 will fly by the moon during its 10-day mission.

Along the way, it will have to brave many demons such as van belt radiation, unexpected solar storms and galactic cosmic rays, and guard against even the tiniest of errors in navigation that could lead it astray.

And its return to the earth’s atmosphere will be anything but easy — zipping in from that distance, the speed at re-entry will be far more than in a low-earth orbit mission, calling for ultra-advanced heat shields.

The success of Artemis-2 will mean that humans will walk again on the moon soon.

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INSIDE A TOKAMAK. The doughnut-shaped nuclear fusion reactor chamber

Published on April 6, 2026

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