Mr. Guhananthan Arulprakash is a PhD candidate at Applied Materials Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. His doctoral research focuses on developing metal oxide-based electrocatalysts for water splitting applications. He believes that hydrogen energy would be the next alternative fuel to combat demand for fossil fuels and to reduce over-reliance on battery technology.
Guhananthan holds an integrated MSc Chemistry degree from Amrita Vishwa Vidhyapeetham, Coimbatore, India with a first-class distinction. After his masters, he worked as a Junior Research Fellow (JRF) in PSG Institute of Advanced Studies, Coimbatore, India under a DST-funded project where he worked on nanobubble technology. During his tenure as a JRF, he had the opportunity to work in collaboration with industry partners and designed a pilot-scale plant for the industry. This helped him to connect laboratory results with real world problems, and motivated him to research an alternative fuel, which is the current global demand.
As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellow at the clean energy systems lab at Arizona State University, Guhananthan is working on developing new Ruddlesden Popper type perovskite oxides for electrocatalytic water splitting application. His research will also address the current challenges in sea water splitting, such as corrosion and other side reactions. His research will contribute to affordable green hydrogen production from sea water which is an ambitious goal for both USA and India.