Neetu Jha turns dead flowers into high-performance electrodes

Every day, hundreds of thousands of people visit India’s temples, mosques, and gurdwaras. Their offerings of flowers become floral waste, with most going to landfills and over 8 million metric tons dumped into bodies of water each year. But some of those flowers find their way to Neetu Jha’s laboratory at the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai (ICT), where they are converted into high-performance green energy solutions.

Jha uses secondary flower waste—leftovers she receives after a collaborator’s lab extracts the plants’ nutraceutical components. What’s left over is a dry, fibrous material that is great for making electrodes. “We do pyrolysis to convert it into a carbon material that looks powdery to the naked eye but spongy under the microscope,” she says. “We then activate [the material] using chemical treatment.” These carbon-based materials can be employed as catalyst supports because of their high surface area, optimal porosity, and good electrical conductivity.

Jha is principal investigator at ICT’s Nano Energy Lab, which is focused on the development of electronic materials for energy storage devices like fuel cells, supercapacitors, and zinc-ion batteries. Jha’s other research interest is in water treatment. “We use biomass-based materials—such as secondary floral waste, diesel soot, and sweet lime peel–derived soot,” she says.

Jha has a locomotor disability, which makes it difficult for her to walk long distances or climb stairs. She became disabled after she contracted polio at the age of 12. She needed 2 years of physiotherapy before she could walk again, albeit with difficulty.

But growing up with three rambunctious sisters meant she never felt left behind because of her disability. She played soccer, learned to swim, cycled everywhere, and got into trouble just as much as the others. “There were other things more important than thinking about my disability,” she says.

These days, she tells people that she’s different the same way that everyone is different from one another: “Some are tall; some are short. Some walk straight; I don’t.” That said, getting accommodations hasn’t been easy. When Jha joined ICT in 2012, she had to ask the institute for basic mobility-related accessibility. Modifications included railings on staircases, elevators wherever possible, and railings to access the stage or dais to teach. She also advocated for the addition of women’s washrooms on every floor of the institute.

“These small changes are good for everyone,” she says. “Not just me, but also other students, faculty, and scientists around me—for older people, or someone who has sprained their ankle.”

Jha has also made her lab more accessible by adding stools and chairs near all scientific equipment. “I feel that many times we [people with disabilities] try to adjust, but over time I have learned that we have to speak out for ourselves,” she says. “It takes a lot of courage because when you are new, when you are the only one speaking about these things, you don’t get acceptance very easily.”

By law, disabled people in India have the right to have access to education at all levels, and there are government-issued guidelines and standards for accessibility (PDF). But educational institutions are only just beginning to think about accommodations (PDF). Back when she was a student, Jha often had to depend on the kindness of teachers and fellow students. Today, though, she would like to see more inclusive spaces.

“I would like everyone to make the atmosphere inclusive for people around if they are different,” she says. It would be great if people could speak for themselves, she adds, but if someone doesn’t have the courage to do so, others should speak up for them.

Beyond advocacy, Jha has also made a name for herself as a researcher. The Indian government recently awarded a combined grant to Jha and Ashish Kumar Mishra, a materials scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) Varanasi, to develop India’s electric vehicle R&D. Mishra and Jha have been working together since their PhD days, and he speaks highly of her work, both as a researcher and as a teacher. “Neetu is methodical and systematic in handling any research task,” he says. “The quality of her work is evident from her awards and the PhDs she has guided.”

Jha can’t think of anything more exciting than looking at materials, trying to understand their microstructures and why they behave in a particular way, and then tweaking their properties. Currently, she is working on zinc-ion batteries. India is one of the largest producers of zinc, and she wants to show how the metal could be channeled into a clean energy solution.

And the zinc isn’t the only interesting part of the battery. Jha’s team is also trying to incorporate biomass waste material into one of the electrodes. The researchers feel it’s a necessary part of the global energy transition. “As members of the scientific community, it is our responsibility to take action for the future of our planet,” Jha says.