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      in Energy

      Cobalt-free batteries could power cars of the future

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      Many electric vehicles are powered by batteries that contain cobalt — a metal that carries high financial, environmental, and social costs.

      MIT researchers have now designed a battery material that could offer a more sustainable way to power electric cars. The new lithium-ion battery includes a cathode based on organic materials, instead of cobalt or nickel (another metal often used in lithium-ion batteries).

      In a new study, the researchers showed that this material, which could be produced at much lower cost than cobalt-containing batteries, can conduct electricity at similar rates as cobalt batteries. The new battery also has comparable storage capacity and can be charged up faster than cobalt batteries, the researchers report.

      “I think this material could have a big impact because it works really well,” says Mircea Dincă, the W.M. Keck Professor of Energy at MIT. “It is already competitive with incumbent technologies, and it can save a lot of the cost and pain and environmental issues related to mining the metals that currently go into batteries.”

      Dincă is the senior author of the study, which appears today in the journal ACS Central Science. Tianyang Chen PhD ’23 and Harish Banda, a former MIT postdoc, are the lead authors of the paper. Other authors include Jiande Wang, an MIT postdoc; Julius Oppenheim, an MIT graduate student; and Alessandro Franceschi, a research fellow at the University of Bologna.

      Alternatives to cobalt

      Most electric cars are powered by lithium-ion batteries, a type of battery that is recharged when lithium ions flow from a positively charged electrode, called a cathode, to a negatively electrode, called an anode. In most lithium-ion batteries, the cathode contains cobalt, a metal that offers high stability and energy density.

      However, cobalt has significant downsides. A scarce metal, its price can fluctuate dramatically, and much of the world’s cobalt deposits are located in politically unstable countries. Cobalt extraction creates hazardous working conditions and generates toxic waste that contaminates land, air, and water surrounding the mines.

      “Cobalt batteries can store a lot of energy, and they have all of features that people care about in terms of performance, but they have the issue of not being widely available, and the cost fluctuates broadly with commodity prices. And, as you transition to a much higher proportion of electrified vehicles in the consumer market, it’s certainly going to get more expensive,” Dincă says.

      Because of the many drawbacks to cobalt, a great deal of research has gone into trying to develop alternative battery materials. One such material is lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP), which some car manufacturers are beginning to use in electric vehicles. Although still practically useful, LFP has only about half the energy density of cobalt and nickel batteries.

      Another appealing option are organic materials, but so far most of these materials have not been able to match the conductivity, storage capacity, and lifetime of cobalt-containing batteries. Because of their low conductivity, such materials typically need to be mixed with binders such as polymers, which help them maintain a conductive network. These binders, which make up at least 50 percent of the overall material, bring down the battery’s storage capacity.

      About six years ago, Dincă’s lab began working on a project, funded by Lamborghini, to develop an organic battery that could be used to power electric cars. While working on porous materials that were partly organic and partly inorganic, Dincă and his students realized that a fully organic material they had made appeared that it might be a strong conductor.

      This material consists of many layers of TAQ (bis-tetraaminobenzoquinone), an organic small molecule that contains three fused hexagonal rings. These layers can extend outward in every direction, forming a structure similar to graphite. Within the molecules are chemical groups called quinones, which are the electron reservoirs, and amines, which help the material to form strong hydrogen bonds.

      Those hydrogen bonds make the material highly stable and also very insoluble. That insolubility is important because it prevents the material from dissolving into the battery electrolyte, as some organic battery materials do, thereby extending its lifetime.

      “One of the main methods of degradation for organic materials is that they simply dissolve into the battery electrolyte and cross over to the other side of the battery, essentially creating a short circuit. If you make the material completely insoluble, that process doesn’t happen, so we can go to over 2,000 charge cycles with minimal degradation,” Dincă says.

      Strong performance

      Tests of this material showed that its conductivity and storage capacity were comparable to that of traditional cobalt-containing batteries. Also, batteries with a TAQ cathode can be charged and discharged faster than existing batteries, which could speed up the charging rate for electric vehicles.

      To stabilize the organic material and increase its ability to adhere to the battery’s current collector, which is made of copper or aluminum, the researchers added filler materials such as cellulose and rubber. These fillers make up less than one-tenth of the overall cathode composite, so they don’t significantly reduce the battery’s storage capacity.

      These fillers also extend the lifetime of the battery cathode by preventing it from cracking when lithium ions flow into the cathode as the battery charges.

      The primary materials needed to manufacture this type of cathode are a quinone precursor and an amine precursor, which are already commercially available and produced in large quantities as commodity chemicals. The researchers estimate that the material cost of assembling these organic batteries could be about one-third to one-half the cost of cobalt batteries.

      Lamborghini has licensed the patent on the technology. Dincă’s lab plans to continue developing alternative battery materials and is exploring possible replacement of lithium with sodium or magnesium, which are cheaper and more abundant than lithium. More

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      in Security

      A new way to swiftly eliminate micropollutants from water

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      “Zwitterionic” might not be a word you come across every day, but for Professor Patrick Doyle of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, it’s a word that’s central to the technology his group is developing to remove micropollutants from water. Derived from the German word “zwitter,” meaning “hybrid,” “zwitterionic” molecules are those with an equal number of positive and negative charges.

      Devashish Gokhale, a PhD student in Doyle’s lab, uses the example of a magnet to describe zwitterionic materials. “On a magnet, you have a north pole and a south pole that stick to each other, and on a zwitterionic molecule, you have a positive charge and a negative charge which stick to each other in a similar way.” Because many inorganic micropollutants and some organic micropollutants are themselves charged, Doyle and his team have been investigating how to deploy zwitterionic molecules to capture micropollutants in water. 

      In a new paper in Nature Water, Doyle, Gokhale, and undergraduate student Andre Hamelberg explain how they use zwitterionic hydrogels to sustainably capture both organic and inorganic micropollutants from water with minimal operational complexity. In the past, zwitterionic molecules have been used as coatings on membranes for water treatment because of their non-fouling properties. But in the Doyle group’s system, zwitterionic molecules are used to form the scaffold material, or backbone within the hydrogel — a porous three-dimensional network of polymer chains that contains a significant amount of water. “Zwitterionic molecules have very strong attraction to water compared to other materials which are used to make hydrogels or polymers,” says Gokhale. What’s more, the positive and negative charges on zwitterionic molecules cause the hydrogels to have lower compressibility than what has been commonly observed in hydrogels. This makes for significantly more swollen, robust, and porous hydrogels, which is important for the scale up of the hydrogel-based system for water treatment.

      The early stages of this research were supported by a seed grant from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS). Doyle’s group is now pursuing commercialization of the platform for both at-home use and industrial scale applications, with support from a J-WAFS Solutions grant.

      Seeking a sustainable solution

      Micropollutants are chemically diverse materials that can be harmful to human health and the environment, even though they are typically found at low concentrations (micrograms to milligrams per liter) relative to conventional contaminants. Micropollutants can be organic or inorganic and can be naturally-occurring or synthetic. Organic micropollutants are mostly carbon-based molecules and include pesticides and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as “forever chemicals.” Inorganic micropollutants, such as heavy metals like lead and arsenic, tend to be smaller than organic micropollutants. Unfortunately, both organic and inorganic micropollutants are pervasive in the environment.

      Many micropollutants come from industrial processes, but the effects of human-induced climate change are also contributing to the environmental spread of micropollutants. Gokhale explains that, in California, for example, fires burn plastic electrical cables and leech micropollutants into natural ecosystems. Doyle adds that “outside of climate change, things like pandemics can spike the number of organic micropollutants in the environment due to high concentrations of pharmaceuticals in wastewater.”

      It’s no surprise then, that over the past few years micropollutants have become more and more of a concern. These chemicals have garnered attention in the media and led to “significant change in the environmental engineering and regulatory landscape” says Gokhale. In March 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a strict, federal standard that would regulate six different PFAS chemicals in drinking water. Just last October, the EPA proposed banning the micropollutant trichloroethylene, a cancer-causing chemical that can be found in brake cleaners and other consumer products. And as recently as November, the EPA proposed that water utilities nationwide be required to replace all of their lead pipes to protect the public from lead exposure. Internationally, Gokhale notes the Oslo Paris Convention, whose mission is to protect the marine environment of the northeast Atlantic Ocean, including phasing out the discharge of offshore chemicals from the oil and gas industries. 

      With each new, necessary regulation to protect the safety of our water resources, the need for effective water treatment processes grows. Compounding this challenge is the need to make water treatment processes that are sustainable and energy-efficient. 

      The benchmark method to treat micropollutants in water is activated carbon. However, making filters with activated carbon is energy-intensive, requiring very high temperatures in large, centralized facilities. Gokhale says approximately “four kilograms of coal are needed to make one kilogram of activated carbon, so you lose a significant amount of carbon dioxide to the environment.” According to the World Economic Forum, global water and wastewater treatment accounts for 5 percent of annual emissions. In the U.S. alone, the EPA reports that drinking water and wastewater systems account for over 45 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

      “We need to develop methods which have smaller climate footprints than methods which are being used industrially today,” says Gokhale.

      Supporting a “high-risk” project

      In September 2019, Doyle and his lab embarked on an initial project to develop a microparticle-based platform to remove a broad range of micropollutants from water. Doyle’s group had been using hydrogels in pharmaceutical processing to formulate drug molecules into pill format. When he learned about the J-WAFS seed grant opportunity for early-stage research in water and food systems, Doyle realized his pharmaceutical work with hydrogels could be applied to environmental issues like water treatment. “I would never have gotten funding for this project if I went to the NSF [National Science Foundation], because they would just say, ‘you’re not a water person.’ But the J-WAFS seed grant offered a way for a high-risk, high-reward kind of project,” Doyle says.

      In March 2022, Doyle, Gokhale, and MIT undergraduate Ian Chen published findings from the seed grant work, describing their use of micelles within hydrogels for water treatment. Micelles are spherical structures that form when molecules called surfactants (found in things like soap), come in contact with water or other liquids. The team was able to synthesize micelle-laden hydrogel particles that soak up micropollutants from water like a sponge. Unlike activated carbon, the hydrogel particle system is made from environmentally friendly materials. Furthermore, the system’s materials are made at room temperature, making them exceedingly more sustainable than activated carbon.

      Building off the success of the seed grant, Doyle and his team were awarded a J-WAFS Solutions grant in September 2022 to help move their technology from the lab to the market. With this support, the researchers have been able to build, test, and refine pilot-scale prototypes of their hydrogel platform. System iterations during the solutions grant period have included the use of the zwitterionic molecules, a novel advancement from the seed grant work.  

      Rapid elimination of micropollutants is of special importance in commercial water treatment processes, where there is a limited amount of time water can spend inside the operational filtration unit. This is referred to as contact time, explains Gokhale. In municipal-scale or industrial-scale water treatment systems, contact times are usually less than 20 minutes and can be as short as five minutes. 

      “But as people have been trying to target these emerging micropollutants of concern, they realized they can’t get to sufficiently low concentrations on the same time scales as conventional contaminants,” Gokhale says. “Most technologies focus only on specific molecules or specific classes of molecules. So, you have whole technologies which are focusing only on PFAS, and then you have other technologies for lead and metals. When you start thinking about removing all of these contaminants from water, you end up with designs which have a very large number of unit operations. And that’s an issue because you have plants which are in the middle of large cities, and they don’t necessarily have space to expand to increase their contact times to efficiently remove multiple micropollutants,” he adds.

      Since zwitterionic molecules possess unique properties that confer high porosity, the researchers have been able to engineer a system for quicker uptake of micropollutants from water. Tests show that the hydrogels can eliminate six chemically diverse micropollutants at least 10 times faster than commercial activated carbon. The system is also compatible with a diverse set of materials, making it multifunctional. Micropollutants can bind to many different sites within the hydrogel platform: organic micropollutants bind to the micelles or surfactants while inorganic micropollutants bind to the zwitterionic molecules. Micelles, surfactants, zwitterionic molecules, and other chelating agents can be swapped in and out to essentially tune the system with different functionalities based on the profile of the water being treated. This kind of “plug-and-play” addition of various functional agents does not require a change in the design or synthesis of the hydrogel platform, and adding more functionalities does not take away from existing functionality. In this way, the zwitterionic-based system can rapidly remove multiple contaminants at lower concentrations in a single step, without the need for large, industrial units or capital expenditure. 

      Perhaps most importantly, the particles in the Doyle group’s system can be regenerated and used over and over again. By simply soaking the particles in an ethanol bath, they can be washed of micropollutants for indefinite use without loss of efficacy. When activated carbon is used for water treatment, the activated carbon itself becomes contaminated with micropollutants and must be treated as toxic chemical waste and disposed of in special landfills. Over time, micropollutants in landfills will reenter the ecosystem, perpetuating the problem.

      Arjav Shah, a PhD-MBA candidate in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and the MIT Sloan School of Management, respectively, recently joined the team to lead commercialization efforts. The team has found that the zwitterionic hydrogels could be used in several real-world contexts, ranging from large-scale industrial packed beds to small-scale, portable, off-grid applications — for example, in tablets that could clean water in a canteen — and they have begun piloting the technology through a number of commercialization programs at MIT and in the greater Boston area.

      The combined strengths of each member of the team continue to drive the project forward in impactful ways, including undergraduate students like Andre Hamelberg, the third author on the Nature Water paper. Hamelberg is a participant in MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Gokhale, who is also a J-WAFS Fellow, provides training and mentorship to Hamelberg and other UROP students in the lab.

      “We see this as an educational opportunity,” says Gokhale, noting that the UROP students learn science and chemical engineering through the research they conduct in the lab. The J-WAFS project has also been “a way of getting undergrads interested in water treatment and the more sustainable aspects of chemical engineering,” Gokhale says. He adds that it’s “one of the few projects which goes all the way from designing specific chemistries to building small filters and units and scaling them up and commercializing them. It’s a really good learning opportunity for the undergrads and we’re always excited to have them work with us.”

      In four years, the technology has been able to grow from an initial idea to a technology with scalable, real-world applications, making it an exemplar J-WAFS project. The fruitful collaboration between J-WAFS and the Doyle lab serves as inspiration for any MIT faculty who may want to apply their research to water or food systems projects.

      “The J-WAFS project serves as a way to demystify what a chemical engineer does,” says Doyle. “I think that there’s an old idea of chemical engineering as working in just oil and gas. But modern chemical engineering is focused on things which make life and the environment better.” More

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      in Energy

      Shell joins MIT.nano Consortium

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      MIT.nano has announced that Shell, a global group of energy and petrochemical companies, has joined the MIT.nano Consortium.

      “With an international perspective on the world’s energy challenges, Shell is an exciting addition to the MIT.nano Consortium,” says Vladimir Bulović, the founding faculty director of MIT.nano and the Fariborz Maseeh (1990) Professor of Emerging Technologies. “The quest to build a sustainable energy future will require creative thinking backed by broad and deep expertise that our Shell colleagues bring. They will be insightful collaborators for the MIT community and for our member companies as we work together to explore innovative technology strategies.”

      Founded in 1907 when Shell Transport and Trading Co. merged with Royal Dutch, Shell has more than a century’s worth of experience in the exploration, production, refining, and marketing of oil and natural gas and the manufacturing and marketing of chemicals. Operating in over 70 countries, Shell has set a target to become a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050. To achieve this, Shell is supporting developments of low-carbon energy solutions such as biofuels, hydrogen, charging for electric vehicles, and electricity generated by solar and wind power.

      “In line with our Powering Progress strategy, our research efforts to become a net-zero emission energy company by 2050 will require intense collaboration with academic leaders across a wide range of disciplines,” says Rolf van Benthem, Shell’s chief scientist for materials science. “We look forward to engaging with the top-notch PIs [principal investigators] at MIT.nano who excel in fields like materials design and nanoscale characterization for use in energy applications and carbon utilization. Together we can work on truly sustainable solutions for our society.”

      Shell has been engaged in research collaborations with MIT since 2002 and is a founding member of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI). Recent MIT projects supported by Shell include an urban building energy model with the MIT Sustainable Design Laboratory that explores energy-saving building retrofits, a study of the role and impact of hydrogen-based technology pathways with MITEI, and a materials science and engineering project to design better batteries for electric vehicles.

      The MIT.nano Consortium is a platform for academia-industry collaboration centered around research and innovation emerging from nanoscale science and engineering at MIT. Through activities that include quarterly industry consortium meetings, Shell will gain insight into the work of MIT.nano’s community of users and provide advice to help guide and advance nanoscale innovations at MIT alongside the 11 other consortium companies:

      Analog Devices;
      Draper;
      Edwards;
      Fujikura;
      IBM Research;
      Lam Research;
      NC;
      NEC;
      Raith;
      UpNano; and
      Viavi Solutions.
      MIT.nano continues to welcome new companies as sustaining members. For more details, visit the MIT.nano Consortium page. More

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      in Energy

      MIT researchers outline a path for scaling clean hydrogen production

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      Hydrogen is an integral component for the manufacture of steel, fertilizer, and a number of chemicals. Producing hydrogen using renewable electricity offers a way to clean up these and many other hard-to-decarbonize industries.

      But supporting the nascent clean hydrogen industry while ensuring it grows into a true force for decarbonization is complicated, in large part because of the challenges of sourcing clean electricity. To assist regulators and to clarify disagreements in the field, MIT researchers published a paper today in Nature Energy that outlines a path to scale the clean hydrogen industry while limiting emissions.

      Right now, U.S. electric grids are mainly powered by fossil fuels, so if scaling hydrogen production translates to greater electricity use, it could result in a major emissions increase. There is also the risk that “low-carbon” hydrogen projects could end up siphoning renewable energy that would have been built anyway for the grid. It is therefore critical to ensure that low-carbon hydrogen procures electricity from “additional” renewables, especially when hydrogen production is supported by public subsidies. The challenge is allowing hydrogen producers to procure renewable electricity in a cost-effective way that helps the industry grow, while minimizing the risk of high emissions.

      U.S. regulators have been tasked with sorting out this complexity. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is offering generous production tax credits for low-carbon hydrogen. But the law didn’t specify exactly how hydrogen’s carbon footprint should be judged.

      To this end, the paper proposes a phased approach to qualify for the tax credits. In the first phase, hydrogen created from grid electricity can receive the credits under looser standards as the industry gets its footing. Once electricity demand for hydrogen production grows, the industry should be required to adhere to stricter standards for ensuring the electricity is coming from renewable sources. Finally, many years from now when the grid is mainly powered by renewable energy, the standards can loosen again.

      The researchers say the nuanced approach ensures the law supports the growth of clean hydrogen without coming at the expense of emissions.

      “If we can scale low-carbon hydrogen production, we can cut some significant sources of existing emissions and enable decarbonization of other critical industries,” says paper co-author Michael Giovanniello, a graduate student in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program. “At the same time, there’s a real risk of implementing the wrong requirements and wasting lots of money to subsidize carbon-intensive hydrogen production. So, you have to balance scaling the industry with reducing the risk of emissions. I hope there’s clarity and foresight in how this policy is implemented, and I hope our paper makes the argument clear for policymakers.”

      Giovanniello’s co-authors on the paper are MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Principal Research Scientist Dharik Mallapragada, MITEI Research Assistant Anna Cybulsky, and MIT Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer Tim Schittekatte.

      On definitions and disagreements

      When renewable electricity from a wind farm or solar array flows through the grid, it’s mixed with electricity from fossil fuels. The situation raises a question worth billions of dollars in federal tax credits: What are the carbon dioxide emissions of grid users who are also signing agreements to procure electricity from renewables?

      One way to answer this question is via energy system models that can simulate various scenarios related to technology configurations and qualifying requirements for receiving the credit.

      To date, many studies using such models have come up with very different emissions estimates for electrolytic hydrogen production. One source of disagreement is over “time matching,” which refers to how strictly to align the timing of electric hydrogen production with the generation of clean electricity. One proposed approach, known as hourly time matching, would require that electricity consumption to produce hydrogen is accounted for by procured clean electricity at every hour.

      A less stringent approach, called annual time matching, would offer more flexibility in hourly electricity consumption for hydrogen production, so long as the annual consumption matches the annual generation from the procured clean electricity generation. The added flexibility could reduce the cost of hydrogen production, which is critical for scaling its use, but could lead to greater emissions per unit of hydrogen produced.

      Another point of disagreement stems from how hydrogen producers purchase renewable electricity. If an electricity user procures energy from an existing solar farm, it’s simply increasing overall electricity demand and taking clean energy away from other users. But if the tax credits only go to electric hydrogen producers that sign power purchase agreements with new renewable suppliers, they’re supporting clean electricity that wouldn’t have otherwise been contributing to the grid. This concept is known as “additionality.”

      The researchers analyzed previous studies that reached conflicting conclusions, and identified different interpretations of additionality underlying their methodologies. One interpretation of additionality is that new electrolytic hydrogen projects do not compete with nonhydrogen demand for renewable energy resources. The other assumes that they do compete for all newly deployed renewables — and, because of low-carbon hydrogen subsidies, the electrolyzers take priority.

      Using DOLPHYN, an open-source energy systems model, the researchers tested how these two interpretations of additionality (the “compete” and “noncompete” scenarios) impact the cost and emissions of the alternative time-matching requirements (hourly and annual) associated with grid-interconnected hydrogen production. They modeled two regional U.S. grids — in Texas and Florida — which represent the high and low end of renewables deployment. They further tested the interaction of four critical policy factors with the hydrogen tax credits, including renewable portfolio standards, constraints of renewables and energy storage deployment, limits on hydrogen electrolyzer capacity factors, and competition with natural gas-based hydrogen with carbon capture.

      They show that the different modeling interpretations of additionality are the primary factor explaining the vastly different estimates of emissions from electrolyzer hydrogen under annual time-matching.

      Getting policy right

      The paper concludes that the right way to implement the production tax credit qualifying requirements depends on whether you believe we live in a “compete” or “noncompete” world. But reality is not so binary.

      “What framework is more appropriate is going to change with time as we deploy more hydrogen and the grid decarbonizes, so therefore the policy has to be adaptive to those changes,” Mallapragada says. “It’s an evolving story that’s tied to what’s happening in the rest of the energy system, and in particular the electric grid, both from the technological as policy perspective.”

      Today, renewables deployment is driven, in part, by binding factors, such as state renewable portfolio standards and corporate clean-energy commitments, as well as by purely market forces. Since the electrolyzer is so nascent, and today resembles a “noncompete” world, the researchers argue for starting with the less strict annual requirement. But as hydrogen demand for renewable electricity grows, and market competition drives an increasing quantity of renewables deployment, transitioning to hourly matching will be necessary to avoid high emissions.

      This phased approach necessitates deliberate, long-term planning from regulators. “If regulators make a decision and don’t outline when they’ll reassess that decision, they might never reassess that decision, so we might get locked into a bad policy,” Giovanniello explains. In particular, the paper highlights the risk of locking in an annual time-matching requirement that leads to significant emissions in future.

      The researchers hope their findings will contribute to upcoming policy decisions around the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits. They started looking into this question around a year ago, making it a quick turnaround by academic standards.

      “There was definitely a sense to be timely in our analysis so as to be responsive to the needs of policy,” Mallapragada says.

      The researchers say the paper can also help policymakers understand the emissions impacts of companies procuring renewable energy credits to meet net-zero targets and electricity suppliers attempting to sell “green” electricity.

      “This question is relevant in a lot of different domains,” Schittekatte says. “Other popular examples are the emission impacts of data centers that procure green power, or even the emission impacts of your own electric car sourcing power from your rooftop solar and the grid. There are obviously differences based on the technology in question, but the underlying research question we’ve answered is the same. This is an extremely important topic for the energy transition.” More

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      in Energy

      AI meets climate: MIT Energy and Climate Hack 2023

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      The MIT Energy and Climate Hack brought together participants from myriad fields and disciplines to develop rapid, innovative solutions to one of the most complex challenges facing society today: the global energy and climate crisis. Hundreds of students from MIT and colleges across the globe convened on MIT’s campus and virtually for this year’s event, which was held Nov. 10-12.

      Established in 2013, the MIT Energy and Climate Hack has been the launchpad for innovative and sustainable solutions for a decade; an annual reminder that exciting new ideas are always just around the corner.

      According to Claire Lorenzo, an MIT student organizer and communications director for this year’s Energy and Climate Hack, “There were a lot of people from a lot of places who showed up; both virtually and in person. It was encouraging to see how driven everyone was. How passionate they were about finding great solutions. You could see these ideas starting to form immediately.”

      On the first day, representatives from companies across numerous industries presented participants with their most pressing energy and climate-related challenges. Once the gathering broke into teams, participants had two days to “hack the challenge” they were assigned and present their solution to company representatives, fellow hackers, and judges.  

      The focus areas at this year’s event were energy markets, transportation, and farms and forests. Participating corporate sponsors included Google, Crusoe, Ironwood, Foothill Ventures, Koidra, Mitra Chem, Avangrid, Schneider Electric, First Solar, and Climate Ledger. 

      This year’s event also marked the first time that artificial intelligence emerged as a viable tool for developing creative climate solutions. Lorenzo observed, “I’m studying computer science, so exploring how AI could be harnessed to have a positive impact on the climate was particularly exciting for me. It can be applicable to virtually any domain. Like transportation, [with emissions] for example. In agriculture, too.”

      Energy and Climate Hack organizers identified the implementation of four core AI applications for special consideration: the acceleration of discovery (shortening the development process while simultaneously producing less waste), optimizing real-world solutions (utilizing automation to increase efficiency), prediction (using AI to improve prediction algorithms), and processing unstructured data (using AI to analyze and scale large amounts of data efficiently).

      “If there was a shared sentiment among the participants, it would probably be the idea that there isn’t a singular solution to climate change,” says Lorenzo, “and that requires cooperation from various industries, leveraging knowledge and experience from numerous fields, to make a lasting impact.”

      After the initial round of presentations concluded, one team from each challenge advanced from the preliminary presentation judging session to the final presentation round, where they pitched their solutions to a crowded room of attendees. Once the semi-finalists had pitched their solutions, the judges deliberated over the entries and selected team Fenergy, which worked in the energy markets sector, as the winners. The team, consisting of Alessandro Fumi, Amal Nammouchi, Amaury De Bock, Cyrine Chaabani, and Robbie Lee V, said, “Our solution, Unbiased Cathode, enables researchers to assess the supply chain implications of battery materials before development begins, hence reducing the lab-to-production timeline.”

      “They created a LLM [large language model]-powered tool that allows innovative new battery technologies to be iterated and developed much more efficiently,” Lorenzo added.

      When asked what she will remember most about her first experience at the MIT Energy and Climate Hack, Lorenzo replied, “Having hope for the future. Hope from seeing the passion that so many people have to find a solution. Hope from seeing all of these individuals come so far to tackle this challenge and make a difference. If we continue to develop and implement solutions like these on a global level, I am hopeful.”

      Students interested in learning more about the MIT Energy and Climate Hackathon, or participating in next year’s Hack, can find more information on the event website. More

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      in Environment

      Merging science and systems thinking to make materials more sustainable

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      For Professor Elsa Olivetti, tackling a problem as large and complex as climate change requires not only lab research but also understanding the systems of production that power the global economy.

      Her career path reflects a quest to investigate materials at scales ranging from the microscopic to the mass-manufactured.

      “I’ve always known what questions I wanted to ask, and then set out to build the tools to help me ask those questions,” says Olivetti, the Jerry McAfee Professor in Engineering.

      Olivetti, who earned tenure in 2022 and was recently appointed associate dean of engineering, has sought to equip students with similar skills, whether in the classroom, in her lab group, or through the interdisciplinary programs she leads at MIT. Those efforts have earned her accolades including the Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching, a MacVicar Faculty Fellowship in 2021, and the McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising in 2023.

      “I think to make real progress in sustainability, materials scientists need to think in interdisciplinary, systems-level ways, but at a deep technical level,” Olivetti says. “Supporting my students so that’s something that a lot more people can do is very rewarding for me.”

      Her mission to make materials more sustainable also makes Olivetti grateful [EAO1] she’s at MIT, which has a long tradition of both interdisciplinary collaboration and technical know-how.

      “MIT’s core competencies are well-positioned for bold achievements in climate and sustainability — the deep expertise on the economics side, the frontier knowledge in science, the computational creativity,” Olivetti says. “It’s a really exciting time and place where the key ingredients for progress are simmering in transformative ways.”

      Answering the call

      The moment that set Olivetti on her life’s journey began when she was 8, with a knock at her door. Her parents were in the other room, so Olivetti opened the door and met an organizer for Greenpeace, a nonprofit that works to raise awareness of environmental issues.

      “I had a chat with that guy and got hooked on environmental concerns,” Olivetti says. “I still remember that conversation.”

      The interaction changed the way Olivetti thought about her place in the world, and her new perspective manifested itself in some unique ways. Her elementary school science fair projects became elaborate pursuits of environmental solutions involving burying various items in the backyard to test for biodegradability. There was also an awkward attempt at natural pesticide development, which lead to a worm hatching in her bedroom.

      As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, Olivetti gravitated toward classes in environmentalism and materials science.

      “There was a link between materials science and a broader, systems way of framing design for environment, and that just clicked for me in terms of the way I wanted to think about environmental problems — from the atom to the system,” Olivetti recalls.

      That interest led Olivetti to MIT for a PhD in 2001, where she studied the feasibility of new materials for lithium-ion batteries.

      “I really wanted to be thinking of things at a systems level, but I wanted to ground that in lab-based research,” Olivetti says. “I wanted an experiential experience in grad school, and that’s why I chose MIT’s program.”

      Whether it was her undergraduate studies, her PhD, or her ensuing postdoc work at MIT, Olivetti sought to learn new skills to continue bridging the gap between materials science and environmental systems thinking.

      “I think of it as, ‘Here’s how I can build up the ways I ask questions,’” Olivetti explains. “How do we design these materials while thinking about their implications as early as possible?”

      Since joining MIT’s faculty in 2014, Olivetti has developed computational models to measure the cost and environmental impact of new materials, explored ways to adopt more sustainable and circular supply chains, and evaluated potential materials limitations as lithium-ion battery production is scaled. That work helps companies increase their use of greener, recyclable materials and more sustainably dispose of waste.

      Olivetti believes the wide scope of her research gives the students in her lab a more holistic understanding of the life cycle of materials.

      “When the group started, each student was working on a different aspect of the problem — like on the natural language processing pipeline, or on recycling technology assessment, or beneficial use of waste — and now each student can link each of those pieces in their research,” Olivetti explains.

      Beyond her research, Olivetti also co-directs the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, which has established a set of eight areas of sustainability that it organizes coalitions around. Each coalition involves technical leaders at companies and researchers at MIT that work together to accelerate the impact of MIT’s research by helping companies adopt innovative and more sustainable technologies.

      “Climate change mitigation and resilience is such a complex problem, and at MIT we have practice in working together across disciplines on many challenges,” Olivetti says. “It’s been exciting to lean on that culture and unlock ways to move forward more effectively.”

      Bridging divides

      Today, Olivetti tries to maximize the impact of her and her students’ research in materials industrial ecology by maintaining close ties to applications. In her research, this means working directly with aluminum companies to design alloys that could incorporate more scrap material or with nongovernmental organizations to incorporate agricultural residues in building products. In the classroom, that means bringing in people from companies to explain how they think about concepts like heat exchange or fluid flow in their products.

      “I enjoy trying to ground what students are learning in the classroom with what’s happening in the world,” Olivetti explains.

      Exposing students to industry is also a great way to help them think about their own careers. In her research lab, she’s started using the last 30 minutes of meetings to host talks from people working in national labs, startups, and larger companies to show students what they can do after their PhDs. The talks are similar to the Industry Seminar series Olivetti started that pairs undergraduate students with people working in areas like 3D printing, environmental consulting, and manufacturing.

      “It’s about helping students learn what they’re excited about,” Olivetti says.

      Whether in the classroom, lab, or at events held by organizations like MCSC, Olivetti believes collaboration is humanity’s most potent tool to combat climate change.

      “I just really enjoy building links between people,” Olivetti says. “Learning about people and meeting them where they are is a way that one can create effective links. It’s about creating the right playgrounds for people to think and learn.” More

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      How to decarbonize the world, at scale

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      The world in recent years has largely been moving on from debates about the need to curb carbon emissions and focusing more on action — the development, implementation, and deployment of the technological, economic, and policy measures to spur the scale of reductions needed by mid-century. That was the message Robert Stoner, the interim director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), gave in his opening remarks at the 2023 MITEI Annual Research Conference.

      Attendees at the two-day conference included faculty members, researchers, industry and financial leaders, government officials, and students, as well as more than 50 online participants from around the world.

      “We are at an extraordinary inflection point. We have this narrow window in time to mitigate the worst effects of climate change by transforming our entire energy system and economy,” said Jonah Wagner, the chief strategist of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office, in one of the conference’s keynote speeches.

      Yet the solutions exist, he said. “Most of the technologies that we need to deploy to stay close to the international target of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming are proven and ready to go,” he said. “We have over 80 percent of the technologies we will need through 2030, and at least half of the technologies we will need through 2050.”

      For example, Wagner pointed to the newly commissioned advanced nuclear power plant near Augusta, Georgia — the first new nuclear reactor built in the United States in a generation, partly funded through DOE loans. “It will be the largest source of clean power in America,” he said. Though implementing all the needed technologies in the United States through mid-century will cost an estimated $10 trillion, or about $300 billion a year, most of that money will come from the private sector, he said.

      As the United States faces what he describes as “a tsunami of distributed energy production,” one key example of the strategy that’s needed going forward, he said, is encouraging the development of virtual power plants (VPPs). The U.S. power grid is growing, he said, and will add 200 gigawatts of peak demand by 2030. But rather than building new, large power plants to satisfy that need, much of the increase can be accommodated by VPPs, he said — which are “aggregations of distributed energy resources like rooftop solar with batteries, like electric vehicles (EVs) and chargers, like smart appliances, commercial and industrial loads on the grid that can be used together to help balance supply and demand just like a traditional power plant.” For example, by shifting the time of demand for some applications where the timing is not critical, such as recharging EVs late at night instead of right after getting home from work when demand may be peaking, the need for extra peak power can be alleviated.

      Such programs “offer a broad range of benefits,” including affordability, reliability and resilience, decarbonization, and emissions reductions. But implementing such systems on a wide scale requires some up-front help, he explained. Payment for consumers to enroll in programs that allow such time adjustments “is the majority of the cost” of establishing VPPs, he says, “and that means most of the money spent on VPPs goes back into the pockets of American consumers.” But to make that happen, there is a need for standardization of VPP operations “so that we are not recreating the wheel every single time we deploy a pilot or an effort with a utility.”

      The conference’s other keynote speaker, Anne White, the vice provost and associate vice president for research administration at MIT, cited devastating recent floods, wildfires, and many other extreme weather-related crises around the world that have been exacerbated by climate change. “We saw in myriad ways that energy concerns and climate concerns are one and the same,” she said. “So, we must urgently develop and scale low-carbon and zero-carbon solutions to prevent future warming. And we must do this with a practical, systems-based approach that considers efficiency, affordability, equity, and sustainability for how the world will meet its energy needs.”

      White added that at MIT, “we are mobilizing everything.” People at MIT feel a strong sense of responsibility for dealing with these global issues, she said, “and I think it’s because we believe we have tools that can really make a difference.”

      Among the specific promising technologies that have sprung from MIT’s labs, she pointed out, is the rapid development of fusion technology that led to MIT spinoff company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which aims to build a demonstration unit of a practical fusion power reactor by the decade’s end. That’s an outcome of decades of research, she emphasized — the kinds of early-stage risky work that only academic labs, with help from government grants, can carry out.

      For example, she pointed to the more than 200 projects that MITEI has provided seed funds of $150,000 each for two years, totaling over $28 million to date. Such early support is “a key part of producing the kind of transformative innovation we know we all need.” In addition, MIT’s The Engine has also helped launch not only Commonwealth Fusion Systems, but also Form Energy, a company building a plant in West Virginia to manufacture advanced iron-air batteries for renewable energy storage, and many others.

      Following that theme of supporting early innovation, the conference featured two panels that served to highlight the work of students and alumni and their energy-related startup companies. First, a startup showcase, moderated by Catarina Madeira, the director of MIT’s Startup Exchange, featured presentations about seven recent spinoff companies that are developing cutting-edge technologies that emerged from MIT research. These included:

      Aeroshield, developing a new kind of highly-insulated window using a unique aerogel material;
      Sublime, which is developing a low-emissions concrete;
      Found Energy, developing a way to use recycled aluminum as a fuel;
      Veir, developing superconducting power lines;
      Emvolom, developing inexpensive green fuels from waste gases;
      Boston Metal, developing low-emissions production processes for steel and other metals;
      Transaera, with a new kind of efficient air conditioning; and
      Carbon Recycling International, producing cheap hydrogen fuel and syngas.
      Later in the conference, a “student slam competition” featured presentations by 11 students who described results of energy projects they had been working on this past summer. The projects were as diverse as analyzing opposition to wind farms in Maine, how best to allocate EV charging stations, optimizing bioenergy production, recycling the lithium from batteries, encouraging adoption of heat pumps, and conflict analysis about energy project siting. Attendees voted on the quality of the student presentations, and electrical engineering and computer science student Tori Hagenlocker was declared first-place winner for her talk on heat pump adoption.

      Students were also featured in a first-time addition to the conference: a panel discussion among five current or recent students, giving their perspective on today’s energy issues and priorities, and how they are working toward trying to make a difference. Andres Alvarez, a recent graduate in nuclear engineering, described his work with a startup focused on identifying and supporting early-stage ideas that have potential. Graduate student Dyanna Jaye of urban studies and planning spoke about her work helping to launch a group called the Sunrise Movement to try to drive climate change as a top priority for the country, and her work helping to develop the Green New Deal.

      Peter Scott, a graduate student in mechanical engineering who is studying green hydrogen production, spoke of the need for a “very drastic and rapid phaseout of current, existing fossil fuels” and a halt on developing new sources. Amar Dayal, an MBA candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management, talked about the interplay between technology and policy, and the crucial role that legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act can have in enabling new energy technology to make the climb to commercialization. And Shreyaa Raghavan, a doctoral student in the Institute of Data, Systems, and Society, talked about the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to climate issues, including the important role of computer science. She added that MIT does well on this compared to other institutions, and “sustainability and decarbonization is a pillar in a lot of the different departments and programs that exist here.”

      Some recent recipients of MITEI’s Seed Fund grants reported on their progress in a panel discussion moderated by MITEI Executive Director Martha Broad. Seed grant recipient Ariel Furst, a professor of chemical engineering, pointed out that access to electricity is very much concentrated in the global North and that, overall, one in 10 people worldwide lacks access to electricity and some 2.5 billion people “rely on dirty fuels to heat their homes and cook their food,” with impacts on both health and climate. The solution her project is developing involves using DNA molecules combined with catalysts to passively convert captured carbon dioxide into ethylene, a widely used chemical feedstock and fuel. Kerri Cahoy, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, described her work on a system for monitoring methane emissions and power-line conditions by using satellite-based sensors. She and her team found that power lines often begin emitting detectable broadband radio frequencies long before they actually fail in a way that could spark fires.

      Admir Masic, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, described work on mining the ocean for minerals such as magnesium hydroxide to be used for carbon capture. The process can turn carbon dioxide into solid material that is stable over geological times and potentially usable as a construction material. Kripa Varanasi, a professor of mechanical engineering, said that over the years MITEI seed funding helped some of his projects that “went on to become startup companies, and some of them are thriving.” He described ongoing work on a new kind of electrolyzer for green hydrogen production. He developed a system using bubble-attracting surfaces to increase the efficiency of bioreactors that generate hydrogen fuel.

      A series of panel discussions over the two days covered a range of topics related to technologies and policies that could make a difference in combating climate change. On the technological side, one panel led by Randall Field, the executive director of MITEI’s Future Energy Systems Center, looked at large, hard-to-decarbonize industrial processes. Antoine Allanore, a professor of metallurgy, described progress in developing innovative processes for producing iron and steel, among the world’s most used commodities, in a way that drastically reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Greg Wilson of JERA Americas described the potential for ammonia produced from renewable sources to substitute for natural gas in power plants, greatly reducing emissions. Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor in materials science and engineering, described ways to decarbonize cement production using a novel low-temperature process. And Guiyan Zang, a research scientist at MITEI, spoke of efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of producing ethylene, a major industrial chemical, by using an electrochemical process.

      Another panel, led by Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering, explored the brightening future for expansion of nuclear power, including new, small, modular reactors that are finally emerging into commercial demonstration. “There is for the first time truly here in the U.S. in at least a decade-and-a-half, a lot of excitement, a lot of attention towards nuclear,” Buongiorno said. Nuclear power currently produces 45 to 50 percent of the nation’s carbon-free electricity, the panelists said, and with the first new nuclear power plant in decades now in operation, the stage is set for significant growth.

      Carbon capture and sequestration was the subject of a panel led by David Babson, the executive director of MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges program. MIT professors Betar Gallant and Kripa Varanasi and industry representatives Elisabeth Birkeland from Equinor and Luc Huyse from Chevron Technology Ventures described significant progress in various approaches to recovering carbon dioxide from power plant emissions, from the air, and from the ocean, and converting it into fuels, construction materials, or other valuable commodities.

      Some panel discussions also addressed the financial and policy side of the climate issue. A panel on geopolitical implications of the energy transition was moderated by MITEI Deputy Director of Policy Christopher Knittel, who said “energy has always been synonymous with geopolitics.” He said that as concerns shift from where to find the oil and gas to where is the cobalt and nickel and other elements that will be needed, “not only are we worried about where the deposits of natural resources are, but we’re going to be more and more worried about how governments are incentivizing the transition” to developing this new mix of natural resources. Panelist Suzanne Berger, an Institute professor, said “we’re now at a moment of unique openness and opportunity for creating a new American production system,” one that is much more efficient and less carbon-producing.

      One panel dealt with the investor’s perspective on the possibilities and pitfalls of emerging energy technologies. Moderator Jacqueline Pless, an assistant professor in MIT Sloan, said “there’s a lot of momentum now in this space. It’s a really ripe time for investing,” but the risks are real. “Tons of investment is needed in some very big and uncertain technologies.”

      The role that large, established companies can play in leading a transition to cleaner energy was addressed by another panel. Moderator J.J. Laukatis, MITEI’s director of member services, said that “the scale of this transformation is massive, and it will also be very different from anything we’ve seen in the past. We’re going to have to scale up complex new technologies and systems across the board, from hydrogen to EVs to the electrical grid, at rates we haven’t done before.” And doing so will require a concerted effort that includes industry as well as government and academia. More

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      3 Questions: What should scientists and the public know about nuclear waste?

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      Many researchers see an expansion of nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse gas emissions from its power generation, as an essential component of strategies to combat global climate change. Yet there is still strong resistance to such expansion, and much of that is based on the issue of how to safely dispose of the resulting radioactive waste material. MIT recently convened a workshop to help nuclear engineers, policymakers, and academics learn about approaches to communicating accurate information about the management of nuclear waste to students and the public, in hopes of allaying fears and encouraging support for the development of new, safer nuclear power plants around the world.

      Organized by Haruko Wainwright, an MIT assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering and of civil and environmental engineering, the workshop included professors, researchers, industry representatives, and government officials, and was designed to emphasize the multidisciplinary nature of the issue. MIT News asked Wainwright to describe the workshop and its conclusions, which she reported on in a paper just published in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity.

      Q: What was the main objective of the this workshop?

      A: There is a growing concern that, in spite of much excitement about new nuclear reactor deployment and nuclear energy for tackling climate change, relatively less attention is being paid to the thorny question of long-term management of the spent fuel (waste) from these reactors. The government and industry have embraced consent-based siting approaches — that is, finding sites to store and dispose nuclear waste through broad community participation with equity and environmental justice considered. However, many of us in academia feel that those in the industry are missing key facts to communicate to the public.

      Understanding and managing nuclear waste requires a multidisciplinary expertise in nuclear, civil, and chemical engineering as well as environmental and earth sciences. For example, the amount of waste per se, which is always very small for nuclear systems, is not the only factor determining the environmental impacts because some radionuclides in the waste are vastly more mobile than others, and thus can spread farther and more quickly. Nuclear engineers, environmental scientists, and others need to work together to predict the environmental impacts of radionuclides in the waste generated by the new reactors, and to develop waste isolation strategies for an extended time.

      We organized this workshop to ensure this collaborative approach is mastered from the start. A second objective was to develop a blueprint for educating next-generation engineers and scientists about nuclear waste and shaping a more broadly educated group of nuclear and general engineers.

      Q: What kinds of innovative teaching practices were discussed and recommended, and are there examples of these practices in action?

       A: Some participants teach project-based or simulation-based courses of real-world situations. For example, students are divided into several groups representing various stakeholders — such as the public, policymakers, scientists, and governments — and discuss the potential siting of a nuclear waste repository in a community. Such a course helps the students to consider the perspectives of different groups, understand a plurality of points of view, and learn how to communicate their ideas and concerns effectively. Other courses may ask students to synthesize key technical facts and numbers, and to develop a Congressional testimony statement or an opinion article for newspapers. 

      Q: What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about nuclear waste, and how do you think these misconceptions can be addressed?

      A: The workshop participants agreed that the broader and life-cycle perspectives are important. Within the nuclear energy life cycle, for example, people focus disproportionally on high-level radioactive waste or spent fuel, which has been highly regulated and well managed. Nuclear systems also produce secondary waste, including low-level waste and uranium mining waste, which gets less attention.

      The participants also believe that the nuclear industry has been exemplary in leading the environmental and waste isolation science and technologies. Nuclear waste disposal strategies were developed in the 1950s, much earlier than other hazardous waste which began to receive serious regulation only in the 1970s. In addition, current nuclear waste disposal practices consider the compliance periods of isolation for thousands of years, while other hazardous waste disposal is not required to consider beyond 30 years, although some waste has an essentially infinite longevity, for example, mercury or lead. Finally, there is relatively unregulated waste — such as CO2 from fossil energy, agricultural effluents and other sources — that is released freely into the biosphere and is already impacting our environment. Yet, many people remain more concerned about the relatively well-regulated nuclear waste than about all these unregulated sources.

      Interestingly, many engineers — even nuclear engineers — do not know these facts. We believe that we need to teach students not just cutting-edge technologies, but also broader perspectives, including the history of industries and regulations, as well as environmental science.

      At the same time, we need to move the nuclear community to think more holistically about waste and its environmental impacts from the early stages of design of nuclear systems. We should design new reactors from the “waste up.”  We believe that the nuclear industry should continue to lead waste-management technologies and strategies, and also encourage other industries to adopt lifecycle approaches about their own waste to improve the overall sustainability. More