Gaurav is a Professor and the Pritzker Endowed Chair in Sustainability at the Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and the California Nanosystems Institute. Gaurav has published over 200 publications and has an h-index of 60. He is also the Director of UCLA's Institute for Carbon Management (ICM): a cross-campus technology translation institute. Gaurav is the Co-Founder of Equatic Inc., the Grand Prize Winner of the Temasek Foundation’s 2021 Liveability Challenge, a 2023 TIME Best Invention, and a 2024 Finalist for the Earthshot Prize, the Co-Founder of Concrete-AI Inc., the Co-Founder of Nextli Technologies Inc., and the Founder of CarbonBuilt Inc., a Grand Prize Winner of the 2021 NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE. Gaurav has served as an expert providing: a) testimony to the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and the California State Senate, and b) strategic consulting, core R&D, and innovation support to Fortune500 corporations, government agencies, foundations, and industry organizations globally. Gaurav earned his B.S. (2006), M.S. (2007), and Ph.D. (2009) from Purdue University. Gaurav is a Forbes Sustainability Leader, a TIME100 Climate Innovator, and a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, and the National Academy of Inventors.
The trapping of carbon dioxide (CO2) as aqueous (bi)carbonates or as mineral solids is attractive because of favorable thermodynamics, and the durability and permanence of storage. Here, I will describe an approach to rapidly precipitate Ca- and Mg- carbonates and hydroxides from seawater to achieve large-scale, cost-effective CO2 removal. This Equatic process electrolytically forces mineral carbonate precipitation – from seawater – thereby consuming CO2 that is dissolved in seawater by locking it within carbonate minerals, and simultaneously producing alkaline mineral hydroxides that enable the drawdown of atmospheric CO2. Specifically, 1 mol of CO2 is captured per 2 mol of OH– produced by the formation of 1 mol CaCO3. In addition, only 1.2 mol of OH− are required per 1 mol CO2 stored as dissolved HCO3– and CO32– ions. This is because when dissolved into seawater, every mol of Mg(OH)2 leads to the absorption of up to ~1.7 mol of CO2. In addition, I will describe the translational design, fabrication, commissioning and operations of pilot plants in Singapore and Los Angeles which demonstrate a net energy intensity (NEI) of ~1-to-1.5 MWh per tonne of atmospheric CO2 removal.