Aston University Postgraduate Student wins Future Game Changers Award

Congratulations to Prince Okoro from Aston University who was announced as the inaugural winner of the Future Game Changers Award for postgraduate students at the Gala Awards Dinner in Birmingham on 9 June 2022.

Organised and hosted by the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, this new award for this year’s British Renewable Energy Awards, sponsored by Glennmont Partners – Nuveen Infrastructure, was launched to find postgraduate students who will be ‘Future Game Changers’ in the field of renewable energy and technology.

An open competition invited postgraduate students to present an innovative idea or concept that can accelerate the race to achieve net zero. The entries were shortlisted by a panel of judges on a range of criteria and exhibited at the Gala Awards Dinner where guests had the opportunity to vote for their favourite idea.

The finalists and links to their video entries are as follows:

Akshay Bagde: Hydrogen production from municipal solid waste with net negative carbon.
Natalia Hartono: End-of-life EV batteries: a circular approach.
Prince Okoro: Gasification system in Nigeria converting rice husk to heat and electricity.
Sina Fadaie: Early warning sensing system of stability of the ground in Civil Engineering made from bio-derived wastes or biochar based materials.
Toulope Falope: Harnessing solar powered refrigeration to reduce food wastage from the farm to the marketplace.
Victoria Huntington: Going circular with soil! An evironmentally friendly way to recover critical metals to reduce our reliance on foreign imports and boost the UK economy.

Prince Okoro’s video on ‘Bebeque biopower’ focusing on bioenergy in Nigeria, received the most votes from guests attending the Awards dinner. Bebeque biopower is a cost efficient gasification system that coverts rice husk to heat and electricity, addressing the challenge of the unutilised rice husk which is estimated at 54,655 tonnes per year in the Ebonyi State in Nigeria and generates millions of tonnes of CO2 when burned.

Prince was presented with the ‘Future Game Changers’ Award along with a bursary of £2,000.