Indigenous Micro turbine engine
Heart of GO mobility
Duel fuel – green H2 or CNG
My search for rocket scientists takes me to meet some of India’s most fascinating deeptech startups. Today it was Tapish Agarwal of Hycosys – a deeptech company pursuing the audacious goal of building the worlds first hydrogen powered micro turbines for use in serial hybrid vehicles – on the road, in the water or flying in the air.
Tapish was a delight to meet. After doing a five year integrated BTech/Mtech at the Kanpur campus of IIT, he went to France to do a PhD in jet engine design. It was followed with a post doc at Technion in Israel to study nano and micro turbines. He returned to India to be the co founder of India’s first hydrogen turbine startup.
Kanpur campus of IIT has an air strip and small planes for training. Aeronautical engineers from Kanpur and Bombay (which has an air tunnel in the IIT) rule in the aviation and space domains.
Kanpur super engineers include Ashwani Shukla of Aeron Systems. Of course Bombay is a class apart (desperately trying to make up for absence of serious startups) with Dr Girish Deodhare – head of the Tejas aircraft project and former head of the Aeronautical Development Authority. There is of course Prof Satya Chakravarthy of The ePlane Company in the Chennai campus of IIT. And then you have the stealth mode Ionique and the well funded Chalo hovering shrewdly all over the space.
It is a healthy competition – but regardless of which IIt wins – it is now emerging clearly that it will be an Indian startup which will provide the micro turbine switchable between cng and hydrogen for the GO range of electric vehicles. Buses, Boats or Planes.
For the uninitiated, micro turbine generators are the light, high endurance electricity generators which are fitted in vehicles to increase their range. An electric air ambulance with a serial hybrid configuration can travel from Ladakh to Kanya kumari without needing to stop for charging. This not only demolishes the entry barriers to electrification but has the potential of making drones large enough to carry people and to travel far enough and faster than any road vehicle.