Divya Chalise

Bio: Divya Chalise is a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, working with Professors Arun Majumdar and Yi Cui. He completed his PhD at UC Berkeley under Dr. Ravi Prasher. His research focuses on the intersection of chemistry and thermal physics. At Stanford, he has been studying thermochemical methods of converting agricultural waste into stable carbonaceous materials. For his PhD, he worked on developing new electrochemical-thermal methods to study spatially resolved electrochemical properties with thermal metrology. In addition, he has also worked on developing thermal models for temperature prediction in lithium-ion batteries, developing time-resolved inverse calorimetry of large batteries, studying the effect of lithium intercalation on graphite thermal conductivity and generalizing the 3-omega method for high-throughput applications.

Accelerator Project: Conversion of agricultural waste biomass into stable carbon materials for gigaton scale carbon storage.
Every year, 10 billion tons of crop waste (like wheat, rice, and corn) are left over after harvesting. This waste stores nearly 15-billion-ton carbon dioxide, which is greater than a third of net annual carbon dioxide released in the atmosphere. Normally, the waste is burned or left to decompose, releasing carbon dioxide back into the air. But, if we can convert the waste into a stable form called biochar, the carbon can be stored for hundreds of years. Currently, making biochar is expensive, complicated and requires a very high temperature (200-500 deg C). Through this work, we are producing biochar through a novel method, making the process much cheaper ($10-$50 per ton), environmentally friendly and scalable to gigatons scale.

Flagship Destination: Greenhouse Gas Removal

Advisors: Arun Majumdar, Mechanical Engineering | Yi Cui, Materials Science and Engineering