Pollution

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in Security

      Tiny magnetic beads produce an optical signal that could be used to quickly detect pathogens

      by

      Getting results from a blood test can take anywhere from one day to a week, depending on what a test is targeting. The same goes for tests of water pollution and food contamination. And in most cases, the wait time has to do with time-consuming steps in sample processing and analysis.

      Now, MIT engineers have identified a new optical signature in a widely used class of magnetic beads, which could be used to quickly detect contaminants in a variety of diagnostic tests. For example, the team showed the signature could be used to detect signs of the food contaminant Salmonella.

      The so-called Dynabeads are microscopic magnetic beads that can be coated with antibodies that bind to target molecules, such as a specific pathogen. Dynabeads are typically used in experiments in which they are mixed into solutions to capture molecules of interest. But from there, scientists have to take additional, time-consuming steps to confirm that the molecules are indeed present and bound to the beads.

      The MIT team found a faster way to confirm the presence of Dynabead-bound pathogens, using optics, specifically, Raman spectroscopy. This optical technique identifies specific molecules based on their “Raman signature,” or the unique way in which a molecule scatters light.

      The researchers found that Dynabeads have an unusually strong Raman signature that can be easily detected, much like a fluorescent tag. This signature, they found, can act as a “reporter.” If detected, the signal can serve as a quick confirmation, within less than one second, that a target pathogen is indeed present in a given sample. The team is currently working to develop a portable device for quickly detecting a range of bacterial pathogens, and their results will appear in an Emerging Investigators special issue of the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy.

      “This technique would be useful in a situation where a doctor is trying to narrow down the source of an infection in order to better inform antibiotic prescription, as well as for the detection of known pathogens in food and water,” says study co-author Marissa McDonald, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. “Additionally, we hope this approach will eventually lead to expanded access to advanced diagnostics in resource-limited environments.”

      Study co-authors at MIT include Postdoctoral Associate Jongwan Lee; Visiting Scholar Nikiwe Mhlanga; Research Scientist Jeon Woong Kang; Tata Professor Rohit Karnik, who is also the associate director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab; and Assistant Professor Loza Tadesse of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

      Oil and water

      Looking for diseased cells and pathogens in fluid samples is an exercise in patience.

      “It’s kind of a needle-in-a-haystack problem,” Tadesse says.

      The numbers present are so small that they must be grown in controlled environments to sufficient numbers, and their cultures stained, then studied under a microscope. The entire process can take several days to a week to yield a confident positive or negative result.

      Both Karnik and Tadesse’s labs have independently been developing techniques to speed up various parts of the pathogen testing process and make the process portable, using Dynabeads.

      Dynabeads are commercially available microscopic beads made from a magnetic iron core and a polymer shell that can be coated with antibodies. The surface antibodies act as hooks to bind specific target molecules. When mixed with a fluid, such as a vial of blood or water, any molecules present will glom onto the Dynabeads. Using a magnet, scientists can gently coax the beads to the bottom of a vial and filter them out of a solution. Karnik’s lab is investigating ways to then further separate the beads into those that are bound to a target molecule, and those that are not. “Still, the challenge is, how do we know that we have what we’re looking for?” Tadesse says.

      The beads themselves are not visible by eye. That’s where Tadesse’s work comes in. Her lab uses Raman spectroscopy as a way to “fingerprint” pathogens. She has found that different cell types scatter light in unique ways that can be used as a signature to identify them.

      In the team’s new work, she and her colleagues found that Dynabeads also have a unique and strong Raman signature that can act as a surprisingly clear beacon.

      “We were initially seeking to identify the signatures of bacteria, but the signature of the Dynabeads was actually very strong,” Tadesse says. “We realized this signal could be a means of reporting to you whether you have that bacteria or not.”

      Testing beacon

      As a practical demonstration, the researchers mixed Dynabeads into vials of water contaminated with Salmonella. They then magnetically isolated these beads onto microscope slides and measured the way light scattered through the fluid when exposed to laser light. Within half a second, they quickly detected the Dynabeads’ Raman signature — a confirmation that bound Dynabeads, and by inference, Salmonella, were present in the fluid.

      “This is something that can be used to rapidly give a positive or negative answer: Is there a contaminant or not?” Tadesse says. “Because even a handful of pathogens can cause clinical symptoms.”

      The team’s new technique is significantly faster than conventional methods and uses elements that could be adapted into smaller, more portable forms — a goal that the researchers are currently working toward. The approach is also highly versatile.

      “Salmonella is the proof of concept,” Tadesse says. “You could purchase Dynabeads with E.coli antibodies, and the same thing would happen: It would bind to the bacteria, and we’d be able to detect the Dynabead signature because the signal is super strong.”

      The team is particularly keen to apply the test to conditions such as sepsis, where time is of the essence, and where pathogens that trigger the condition are not rapidly detected using conventional lab tests.

      “There are a lot cases, like in sepsis, where pathogenic cells cannot always be grown on a plate,” says Lee, a member of Karnik’s lab. “In that case, our technique could rapidly detect these pathogens.”

      This research was supported, in part, by the MIT Laser Biomedical Research Center, the National Cancer Institute, and the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab at MIT. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Environment

      How forests can cut carbon, restore ecosystems, and create jobs

      by

      To limit the frequency and severity of droughts, wildfires, flooding, and other adverse consequences of climate change, nearly 200 countries committed to the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. According to the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, achieving that goal will require both large-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction and removal of GHGs from the atmosphere.

      At present, the most efficient and scalable GHG-removal strategy is the massive planting of trees through reforestation or afforestation — a “natural climate solution” (NCS) that extracts atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and soil carbon sequestration.

      Despite the potential of forestry-based NCS projects to address climate change, biodiversity loss, unemployment, and other societal needs — and their appeal to policymakers, funders, and citizens — they have yet to achieve critical mass, and often underperform due to a mix of interacting ecological, social, and financial constraints. To better understand these challenges and identify opportunities to overcome them, a team of researchers at Imperial College London and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change recently studied how environmental scientists, local stakeholders, and project funders perceive the risks and benefits of NCS projects, and how these perceptions impact project goals and performance. To that end, they surveyed and consulted with dozens of recognized experts and organizations spanning the fields of ecology, finance, climate policy, and social science.

      The team’s analysis, which appears in the journal Frontiers in Climate, found two main factors that have hindered the success of forestry-based NCS projects.

      First, the ambition — levels of carbon removal, ecosystem restoration, job creation, and other environmental and social targets — of selected NCS projects is limited by funders’ perceptions of their overall risk. Among other things, funders aim to minimize operational risk (e.g., Will newly planted trees survive and grow?), political risk (e.g., Just how secure is their access to the land where trees will be planted?); and reputational risk (e.g., Will the project be perceived as an exercise in “greenwashing,” or fall way short of its promised environmental and social benefits?). Funders seeking a financial return on their initial investment are also concerned about the dependability of complex monitoring, reporting, and verification methods used to quantify atmospheric carbon removal, biodiversity gains, and other metrics of project performance.

      Second, the environmental and social benefits of NCS projects are unlikely to be realized unless the local communities impacted by these projects are granted ownership over their implementation and outcomes. But while engaging with local communities is critical to project performance, it can be challenging both legally and financially to set up incentives (e.g., payment and other forms of compensation) to mobilize such engagement.

      “Many carbon offset projects raise legitimate concerns about their effectiveness,” says study lead author Bonnie Waring, a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London. “However, if nature climate solution projects are done properly, they can help with sustainable development and empower local communities.”

      Drawing on surveys and consultations with NCS experts, stakeholders, and funders, the research team highlighted several recommendations on how to overcome key challenges faced by forestry-based NCS projects and boost their environmental and social performance.

      These recommendations include encouraging funders to evaluate projects based on robust internal governance, support from regional and national governments, secure land tenure, material benefits for local communities, and full participation of community members from across a spectrum of socioeconomic groups; improving the credibility and verifiability of project emissions reductions and related co-benefits; and maintaining an open dialogue and shared costs and benefits among those who fund, implement, and benefit from these projects.

      “Addressing climate change requires approaches that include emissions mitigation from economic activities paired with greenhouse gas reductions by natural ecosystems,” says Sergey Paltsev, a co-author of the study and deputy director of the MIT Joint Program. “Guided by these recommendations, we advocate for a proper scaling-up of NCS activities from project levels to help assure integrity of emissions reductions across entire countries.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Environment

      Helping the transportation sector adapt to a changing world

      by

      After graduating from college, Nick Caros took a job as an engineer with a construction company, helping to manage the building of a new highway bridge right near where he grew up outside of Vancouver, British Columbia.  

      “I had a lot of friends that would use that new bridge to get to work,” Caros recalls. “They’d say, ‘You saved me like 20 minutes!’ That’s when I first realized that transportation could be a huge benefit to people’s lives.”

      Now a PhD candidate in the Urban Mobility Lab and the lead researcher for the MIT Transit Research Consortium, Caros works with seven transit agencies across the country to understand how workers’ transportation needs have changed as companies have adopted remote work policies.

      “Another cool thing about working on transportation is that everybody, even if they don’t engage with it on an academic level, has an opinion or wants to talk about it,” says Caros. “As soon as I mention I’ve worked with the T, they have something they want to talk about.”

      Caros is drawn to projects with social impact beyond saving his friends a few minutes during their commutes. He sees public transportation as a crucial component in combating climate change and is passionate about identifying and lowering the psychological barriers that prevent people around the world from taking advantage of their local transit systems.

      “The more I’ve learned about public transportation, the more I’ve come to realize it will play an essential part in decarbonizing urban transportation,” says Caros. “I want to continue working on these kinds of issues, like how we can make transportation more sustainable or promoting public transportation in places where it doesn’t exist or can be improved.”

      Caros says he doesn’t have a “transportation origin story,” like some of his peers who grew up in urban centers with robust public transit systems. As a child growing up in the Vancouver suburbs, he always enjoyed the outdoors, which were as close as his backyard. He chose to study engineering as an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia, fascinated by the hydroelectric dams that supply Vancouver with most of its power. But after two projects with the construction company, the second of which took him to Maryland to work on a fossil fuel project, he decided he needed a change.

      Not quite sure what he wanted to do next, Caros sought out the shortest master’s program he could find that interested him. That ended up being an 18-month master’s program in transportation planning and engineering at New York University. Initially intending to pursue the course-based program, Caros was soon offered the chance to be a research assistant in NYU’s Behavioral Urban Informatics, Logistics, and Transport Laboratory with Professor Joseph Chow. There, he worked to model an experimental transportation system of modular self-driving cars that could link and unlink with each other while in motion.

      “It was this really futuristic stuff,” says Caros. “It turned out to be a really cool project to work on because it’s kind of rare to have a blank-slate problem to try and solve. A lot of transportation engineering problems have largely been solved. We know how to make efficient and sustainable transportation systems; it’s just finding the political support and encouraging behavioral change that remains a challenge.”

      At NYU, Caros fell in love with research and the field of transportation. Later, he was drawn to MIT by its interdisciplinary PhD program that spans both urban studies and planning and civil engineering and the opportunity to work with Professor Jinhua Zhao.

      His research focuses on identifying “third places,” locations where some people go if their job gives them the flexibility to work remotely. Previously, transportation needs revolved around office spaces, typically located in city centers. With more people working from home, the first assumption is that transportation needs would decrease. But that’s not what Caros has found.

      “One major finding from our research is that people have changed where they’re going when they go to work,” says Caros. “A lot of people are working from home, but some are also working in other places, like coffee shops or co-working spaces. And these third places are not evenly distributed in Boston.”

      Identifying the concentration of these third places and what locations would benefit from them is the core of Caros’ dissertation. He’s building an algorithm that identifies ideal locations to build more shared workplaces based on both economic and social factors. Caros seeks to answer how you can minimize travel time across the board while leaving room for the spontaneous social interactions that drive a city’s productivity. His research is sponsored by seven of the largest transit agencies in the United States, who are members of the MIT Transit Research Consortium. Rather than a single agency sponsoring a single specific project, funding is pooled to tackle projects that address general topics that can apply to multiple cities.

      These kinds of problems require a multidisciplinary approach that appeals to Caros. Even when diving into the technical details of a solution, he always keeps the bigger picture in mind. He is certain that changing people’s views of public transportation will be crucial in the fight against climate change.

      “A lot of it is not necessarily engineering, but understanding what the motivations of people are,” says Caros. “Transportation is a leading sector for carbon emissions in the U.S., and so figuring out what makes people tick and how you can get them to ride public transit more, for example, would help to reduce the overall carbon cost.”

      Following the completion of his degree, Caros will join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He already spent six months at its Paris headquarters as an intern during a leave from MIT, something his lab encourages all of its students to do. Last fall, he worked on drafting policy guidelines for new mobility services such as vehicle-share scooters, and addressing transportation equity issues in Ghana. Plus, living in Paris gave him the opportunity to practice his French. Growing up in Canada, he attended a French immersion school, and his internship offered his first opportunity to use the language outside of an academic context.

      Looking forward, Caros hopes to keep tackling projects that promote sustainable public transportation. There is an urgency in getting ahead of the curve, especially in cities experiencing rapid growth.

      “You kind of get locked in,” says Caros. “It becomes much harder to build sustainable transportation systems after the fact. But it’s really just a geometry problem. Trains and buses are a way more efficient way to move people using the same amount of space as private cars.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Environment

      Harnessing synthetic biology to make sustainable alternatives to petroleum products

      by

      Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels is going to require a transformation in the way we make things. That’s because the hydrocarbons found in fuels like crude oil, natural gas, and coal are also in everyday items like plastics, clothing, and cosmetics.

      Now Visolis, founded by Deepak Dugar SM ’11, MBA ’13, PhD ’13, is combining synthetic biology with chemical catalysis to reinvent the way the world makes things — and reducing gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions in the process.

      The company — which uses a microbe to ferment biomass waste like wood chips and create a molecular building block called mevalonic acid — is more sustainably producing everything from car tires and cosmetics to aviation fuels by tweaking the chemical processes involved to make different byproducts.

      “We started with [the rubber component] isoprene as the main molecule we produce [from mevalonic acid], but we’ve expanded our platform with this unique combination of chemistry and biology that allows us to decarbonize multiple supply chains very rapidly and efficiently,” Dugar explains. “Imagine carbon-negative yoga pants. We can make that happen. Tires can be carbon-negative, personal care can lower its footprint — and we’re already selling into personal care. So in everything from personal care to apparel to industrial goods, our platform is enabling decarbonization of manufacturing.”

      “Carbon-negative” is a term Dugar uses a lot. Visolis has already partnered with some of the world’s largest consumers of isoprene, a precursor to rubber, and now Dugar wants to prove out the company’s process in other emissions-intensive industries.

      “Our process is carbon-negative because plants are taking CO2 from the air, and we take that plant matter and process it into something structural, like synthetic rubber, which is used for things like roofing, tires, and other applications,” Dugar explains. “Generally speaking, most of that material at the end of its life gets recycled, for example to tarmac or road, or, worst-case scenario, it ends up in a landfill, so the CO2 that was captured by the plant matter stays captured in the materials. That means our production can be carbon-negative depending on the emissions of the production process. That allows us to not only reduce climate change but start reversing it. That was an insight I had about 10 years ago at MIT.”

      Finding a path

      For his PhD, Dugar explored the economics of using microbes to make high-octane gas additives. He also took classes at the MIT Sloan School of Management on sustainability and entrepreneurship, including the particularly influential course 15.366 (Climate and Energy Ventures). The experience inspired him to start a company.

      “I wanted to work on something that could have the largest climate impact, and that was replacing petroleum,” Dugar says. “It was about replacing petroleum not just as a fuel but as a material as well. Everything from the clothes we wear to the furniture we sit on is often made using petroleum.”

      By analyzing recent advances in synthetic biology and making some calculations from first principles, Dugar decided that a microbial approach to cleaning up the production of rubber was viable. He participated in the MIT Clean Energy Prize and worked with others at MIT to prove out the idea. But it was still just an idea. After graduation, he took a consulting job at a large company, spending his nights and weekends renting lab space to continue trying to make his sustainable rubber a reality.

      After 18 months, by applying engineering concepts like design-for-scale to synthetic biology, Dugar was able to develop a microbe that met 80 percent of his criteria for making an intermediate molecule called mevalonic acid. From there, he developed a chemical catalysis process that converted mevalonic acid to isoprene, the main component of natural rubber. Visolis has since patented other chemical conversion processes that turn mevalonic acid to aviation fuel, polymers, and fabrics.

      Dugar left his consulting job in 2014 and was awarded a fellowship to work on Visolis full-time at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab via Activate, an incubator empowering scientists to reinvent the world.

      From rubber to jet fuels

      Today, in addition to isoprene, Visolis is selling skin care products through the brand Ameva Bio, which produces mevalonic acid-based creams by recycling plant byproducts created in other processes. The company offers refillable bottles and even offsets emissions from the shipping of its products.

      “We are working throughout the supply chain,” Dugar says. “It made sense to clean up the isoprene part of the rubber supply chain rather than the entire supply chain. But we’re also producing molecules for skin that are better for you, so you can put something much more sustainable and healthier on your body instead of petrochemicals. We launched Ameva to demonstrate that brands can leverage synthetic biology to turn carbon-negative ingredients into high-performing products.”

      Visolis is also starting the process of gaining regulatory approval for its sustainable aviation fuel, which Dugar believes could have the biggest climate impact of any of the company’s products by cleaning up the production of fuels for commercial flight.

      “We’re working with leading companies to help them decarbonize aviation” Dugar says. “If you look at the lifecycle of fuel, the current petroleum-based approach is we dig out hydrocarbons from the ground and burn it, emitting CO2 into the air. In our process, we take plant matter, which affixes to CO2 and captures renewable energy in those bonds, and then we transfer that into aviation fuel plus things like synthetic rubber, yoga pants, and other things that continue to hold the carbon. So, our factories can still operate at net zero carbon emissions.”

      Visolis is already generating millions of dollars in revenue, and Dugar says his goal is to scale the company rapidly now that its platform molecule has been validated.

      “We have been scaling our technology by 10 times every two to three years and are now looking to increase deployment of our technology at the same pace, which is very exciting.” Dugar says. “If you extrapolate that, very quickly you get to massive impact. That’s our goal.” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Environment

      Study: The ocean’s color is changing as a consequence of climate change

      by

      The ocean’s color has changed significantly over the last 20 years, and the global trend is likely a consequence of human-induced climate change, report scientists at MIT, the National Oceanography Center in the U.K., and elsewhere.  

      In a study appearing today in Nature, the team writes that they have detected changes in ocean color over the past two decades that cannot be explained by natural, year-to-year variability alone. These color shifts, though subtle to the human eye, have occurred over 56 percent of the world’s oceans — an expanse that is larger than the total land area on Earth.

      In particular, the researchers found that tropical ocean regions near the equator have become steadily greener over time. The shift in ocean color indicates that ecosystems within the surface ocean must also be changing, as the color of the ocean is a literal reflection of the organisms and materials in its waters.

      At this point, the researchers cannot say how exactly marine ecosystems are changing to reflect the shifting color. But they are pretty sure of one thing: Human-induced climate change is likely the driver.

      “I’ve been running simulations that have been telling me for years that these changes in ocean color are going to happen,” says study co-author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Center for Global Change Science. “To actually see it happening for real is not surprising, but frightening. And these changes are consistent with man-induced changes to our climate.”

      “This gives additional evidence of how human activities are affecting life on Earth over a huge spatial extent,” adds lead author B. B. Cael PhD ’19 of the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, U.K. “It’s another way that humans are affecting the biosphere.”

      The study’s co-authors also include Stephanie Henson of the National Oceanography Center, Kelsey Bisson at Oregon State University, and Emmanuel Boss of the University of Maine.

      Above the noise

      The ocean’s color is a visual product of whatever lies within its upper layers. Generally, waters that are deep blue reflect very little life, whereas greener waters indicate the presence of ecosystems, and mainly phytoplankton — plant-like microbes that are abundant in upper ocean and that contain the green pigment chlorophyll. The pigment helps plankton harvest sunlight, which they use to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into sugars.

      Phytoplankton are the foundation of the marine food web that sustains progressively more complex organisms, on up to krill, fish, and seabirds and marine mammals. Phytoplankton are also a powerful muscle in the ocean’s ability to capture and store carbon dioxide. Scientists are therefore keen to monitor phytoplankton across the surface oceans and to see how these essential communities might respond to climate change. To do so, scientists have tracked changes in chlorophyll, based on the ratio of how much blue versus green light is reflected from the ocean surface, which can be monitored from space

      But around a decade ago, Henson, who is a co-author of the current study, published a paper with others, which showed that, if scientists were tracking chlorophyll alone, it would take at least 30 years of continuous monitoring to detect any trend that was driven specifically by climate change. The reason, the team argued, was that the large, natural variations in chlorophyll from year to year would overwhelm any anthropogenic influence on chlorophyll concentrations. It would therefore take several decades to pick out a meaningful, climate-change-driven signal amid the normal noise.

      In 2019, Dutkiewicz and her colleagues published a separate paper, showing through a new model that the natural variation in other ocean colors is much smaller compared to that of chlorophyll. Therefore, any signal of climate-change-driven changes should be easier to detect over the smaller, normal variations of other ocean colors. They predicted that such changes should be apparent within 20, rather than 30 years of monitoring.

      “So I thought, doesn’t it make sense to look for a trend in all these other colors, rather than in chlorophyll alone?” Cael says. “It’s worth looking at the whole spectrum, rather than just trying to estimate one number from bits of the spectrum.”

       The power of seven

      In the current study, Cael and the team analyzed measurements of ocean color taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite, which has been monitoring ocean color for 21 years. MODIS takes measurements in seven visible wavelengths, including the two colors researchers traditionally use to estimate chlorophyll.

      The differences in color that the satellite picks up are too subtle for human eyes to differentiate. Much of the ocean appears blue to our eye, whereas the true color may contain a mix of subtler wavelengths, from blue to green and even red.

      Cael carried out a statistical analysis using all seven ocean colors measured by the satellite from 2002 to 2022 together. He first looked at how much the seven colors changed from region to region during a given year, which gave him an idea of their natural variations. He then zoomed out to see how these annual variations in ocean color changed over a longer stretch of two decades. This analysis turned up a clear trend, above the normal year-to-year variability.

      To see whether this trend is related to climate change, he then looked to Dutkiewicz’s model from 2019. This model simulated the Earth’s oceans under two scenarios: one with the addition of greenhouse gases, and the other without it. The greenhouse-gas model predicted that a significant trend should show up within 20 years and that this trend should cause changes to ocean color in about 50 percent of the world’s surface oceans — almost exactly what Cael found in his analysis of real-world satellite data.

      “This suggests that the trends we observe are not a random variation in the Earth system,” Cael says. “This is consistent with anthropogenic climate change.”

      The team’s results show that monitoring ocean colors beyond chlorophyll could give scientists a clearer, faster way to detect climate-change-driven changes to marine ecosystems.

      “The color of the oceans has changed,” Dutkiewicz says. “And we can’t say how. But we can say that changes in color reflect changes in plankton communities, that will impact everything that feeds on plankton. It will also change how much the ocean will take up carbon, because different types of plankton have different abilities to do that. So, we hope people take this seriously. It’s not only models that are predicting these changes will happen. We can now see it happening, and the ocean is changing.”

      This research was supported, in part, by NASA. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Environment

      A clean alternative to one of the world’s most common ingredients

      by

      Never underestimate the power of a time crunch.

      In 2016, MIT classmates David Heller ’18, Shara Ticku, and Harry McNamara PhD ’19 were less than two weeks away from the deadline to present a final business plan as part of their class MAS.883 (Revolutionary Ventures: How to Invent and Deploy Transformative Technologies). The students had connected over a shared passion for using biology to solve climate challenges, but their first few ideas didn’t pan out, so they went back to the drawing board.

      In a brainstorming session, Ticku began to reminisce about a trip to Singapore she’d taken where the burning of forests had cast a dark haze over the city. The story sparked a memory from halfway across the world in Costa Rica, where McNamara had traveled and noticed endless rows of palm plantations, which are used to harvest palm oil.

      “Besides Shara’s experience in Singapore and Harry’s in Costa Rica, palm was a material none of us had seriously thought about,” Heller recalls. “That conversation made us realize it was a big, big industry, and there’s major issues to the way that palm is produced.”

      The classmates decided to try using synthetic biology to create a sustainable alternative to palm oil. The idea was the beginning of C16 Biosciences. Today C16 is fulfilling that mission at scale with a palm oil alternative it harvests from oil-producing yeast, which ferment sugars in a process similar to brewing beer.

      The company’s product, which it sells to personal care brands and directly to consumers, holds enormous potential to improve the sustainability of the personal care and food industries because, as it turns out, the classmates had stumbled onto a massive problem.

      Palm oil is the most popular vegetable oil in the world. It’s used in everything from soaps and cosmetics to sauces, rolls, and crackers. But palm oil can only be harvested from palm trees near the equator, so producers often burn down tropical rainforests and swamps in those regions to make way for plantations, decimating wildlife habitats and producing a staggering amount of greenhouse gas emissions. One recent study found palm expansion in Southeast Asia could account for 0.75 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. That’s not even including the palm expansion happening across west Africa and South America. Among familiar creatures threatened by palm oil deforestation are orangutans, all three species of which are now listed as “critically endangered” — the most urgent status on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, a global endangered species list.

      “To respond to increasing demand over the last few decades, large palm producers usually inappropriately seize land,” Heller explains. “They’ll literally slash and burn tropical rainforests to the ground, drive out indigenous people, they’ll kill or drive out local wildlife, and they’ll replace everything with hectares and hectares of palm oil plantations. That land conversion process has been emitting something like a gigaton of CO2 per year, just for the expansion of palm oil.”

      From milliliters to metric tons

      Heller took Revolutionary Ventures his junior year as one of the few undergraduates in the Media Lab-based class, which is also open to students from nearby colleges. On one of the first days, students were asked to stand in front of the class and explain their passions, or “what makes them tick,” as Heller recalls. He focused on climate tech.

      McNamara, who was a PhD candidate in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology at the time, talked about his interest in applying new technology to global challenges in biotech and biophysics. Ticku, who was attending Harvard Business School, discussed her experience working in fertility health and her passion for global health initiatives. The three decided to team up.

      “The core group is very, very passionate about using biology to solve major climate problems,” says Heller, who majored in biological engineering while at MIT.

      After a successful final presentation in the class, the founders received a small amount of funding by participating in the MIT $100K Pitch Competition and from the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund.

      “MIT Sandbox was one of our first bits of financial support,” Heller says. “We also received great mentorship. We learned from other startups at MIT and made connections with professors whom we learned a lot from.”

      By the time Heller graduated in 2018, the team had experimented with different yeast strains and produced a few milliliters of oil. The process has gradually been optimized and scaled up from there. Today C16 is producing metric tons of oil in 50,000-liter tanks and has launched a consumer cosmetic brand called Palmless.

      Heller says C16 started its own brand as a way to spread the word about the harms associated with palm oil and to show larger companies it was ready to be a partner.

      “The oil palm tree is amazing in terms of the yields it generates, but the location needed for the crop is in conflict with what’s essential in our ecosystem: tropical rainforests,” Heller says. “There’s a lot of excitement when it comes to microbial palm alternatives. A lot of brands have been under pressure from consumers and even governments who are feeling the urgency around climate and are feeling the urgency from consumers to make changes to get away from an oil ingredient that is incredibly destructive.”

      Scaling with biology

      C16’s first offering, which it calls Torula Oil, is a premium product compared to traditional palm oil, but Heller notes the cost of palm oil today is deflated because companies don’t factor in its costs to the planet and society. He also notes that C16 has a number of advantages in its quest to upend the $60 billion palm oil industry: It’s far easier to improve the productivity of C16’s precision fermentation process than it is to improve agricultural processes. C16 also expects its costs to plummet as it continues to grow.

      “What’s exciting for us is we have these economies of scale,” Heller says. “We have the opportunity to expand vertically, in large stainless steel tanks, as opposed to horizontally on land, so we can drive down our cost curve by increasing the size of the infrastructure and improving the optimization of our strain. The timelines for improvement in a precision fermentation process are a fraction of the time it takes in an agricultural context.”

      Heller says C16 is currently focused on partnering with large personal care brands and expects to announce some important deals in coming months. Further down the line, C16 also hopes to use its product to replace the palm oil in food products, although additional regulations mean that dream is still a few years away.

      With all of its efforts, C16 tries to shine a light on the problems associated with the palm industry, which the company feels are underappreciated despite palm oil’s ubiquitous presence in our society.

      “We need to find a way to reduce our reliance on deforestation products,” Heller says. “We do a lot of work to help educate people on the palm oil industry. Just because something has palm oil in it doesn’t mean you should stop using it, but you should understand what that means for the world.” More

    • 63 Shares99 Views

      in Energy

      Powering the future in Mongolia

      by

      Nestled within the Tuul River valley and embraced by the southern Khentii Mountain Range, Ulaanbaatar (UB), Mongolia’s largest city, presents itself as an arena where nature’s forces wage an unrelenting battle against human resilience. The capital city is an icy crucible, with bone-chilling winters that plummet temperatures to an astonishing -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degrees Celsius). Mongolia, often hailed with the celestial moniker of “The Land of the Eternal Blue Sky,” paradoxically succumbs to a veil of pollution and energy struggles during the winter months, obscuring the true shade of the cherished vista.

      To understand the root of these issues, MIT students from classes 22.S094 (Climate and Sustainability Systems: Decarbonizing Ulaanbaatar at Scale) and 21A.S01 (Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale) visited Mongolia to conduct on-site surveys, diving into the diverse tapestry of local life as they gleaned insight from various stakeholder groups. Setting foot on Mongolian soil on a crisp day in January, they wasted no time in shaking off the weariness of their arduous 17-hour flight, promptly embarking on a waiting bus. As they traversed the vast expanse of the countryside, their eyes were captivated by snow-laden terrain.

      That is, until a disconcerting sight unfolded — thick smog, akin to ethereal pillars, permeated the cityscape ahead. These imposing plumes emanated from the colossal smokestacks of Ulaanbaatar’s coal-fired power plants, steadfastly churning electricity and heat to fuel Mongolia’s central and district energy systems. Over 93 percent of the nation’s energy comes from coal-fired power plants, where the most considerable load is caused by household consumption. Nevertheless, with nearly half of Ulaanbaatar’s population disconnected from the central heating networks, one of Mongolia’s most significant sources of pollution comes from coal-burning stoves in the residential settlements known as the ger districts. Over the past three decades, since the democratic revolution in 1990, Mongolians have grappled with escalating concerns surrounding energy provision, accessibility, and sustainability.

      Engineers who think like anthropologists

      “We find ourselves compelled to venture on-site, engaging in direct conversations with the locals, and immersing ourselves in the fabric of daily life to uncover what we don’t know,” emphasized Michael Short, professor in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and faculty lead of MIT’s NEET Climate and Sustainability Systems thread, shortly before heading to Mongolia.

      The Ulaanbaatar Project sprang from a multiyear collaboration between MIT and the National University of Mongolia (NUM). Shedding light on the matter, Professor Munkhbat Byambajav of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at NUM underscored the paramount importance of mitigating environmental pollution at an economic scale to alleviate the heavy burden borne by the people.

      Class 22.S094 is offered through MIT’s New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program, which allows students with multidisciplinary interests to collaborate across departments within four different subject areas, or threads. In this capstone project, students consider ways to decarbonize a city like Ulaanbaatar, transitioning from burning coal briquettes to a more sustainable, energy-efficient solution, given several parameters and constraints set by the local context.

      One of the ideas students have recently explored is a thermal battery made with molten salt that can store enough energy to heat a ger for up to 12 hours with added insulation for cooling curve regulation. The Mongolian ger, meaning home, is a dome-like portable dwelling covered in felt and canvas, held together by ropes traditionally crafted of animal hair or wool. Over several semesters, students have been testing a version of their proposed idea on campus, working with a prototype that weighs around 35 pounds.

      Nathan Melenbrink, the lead instructor of NEET’s Climate and Sustainability Systems (CSS) thread, believes that the complexity of the Ulaanbaatar capstone project allows students to reject the one-way solution approach and instead consider challenges with a nonprescriptive mindset. The uniqueness of the CSS thread is that students are asked to build on the previous findings from the past cohort and iterate on their designs each year. This workflow has allowed the project to mature and advance in ways that may not be feasible within a semester schedule. When asked how the recent trip impacted the ongoing research back on campus, Melenbrink states, “In light of the recent trip to Mongolia, students are beginning to see the impact of cultural immersion and social awareness leveraging the technical scope and rigor of their work.”

      Course 21A.S01, taught by Professor Manduhai Buyandelger of the MIT Anthropology Section, proved instrumental in deepening students’ understanding of the intricate dynamics at play. She asks, “The prototype works in the lab, but does it work in real life once you factor in the challenges in the larger structures of delivery, production, and implementation in Mongolia?”

      This recognition of the social dimensions of engineering permeated the early stages of the UB project, engaging all participants, including students from MIT and NUM, professionals residing in Mongolia, and local nongovernmental organizations, fostering what Buyandelger aptly describes as “a collaboration on multiple scales: trans-disciplinary and transcontinental.” Lauren Bonilla, co-lecturer for the anthropology course, was crucial in devising the first onsite trip to Mongolia. Drawing upon her extensive ethnographic research in Mongolia that spans decades, Bonilla remarks, “To me, engineering is a highly social discipline.” She further stresses how anthro-engineering elevates the social dimensions of engineering by critically questioning the framing of problems and solutions, stating, “It draws on anthropological insights and methods, like ethnography, to bring a human face to the users of a technology and adds complexity and nuance to the social constraints that limit designs.”

      Making of khorkhog

      Amidst the frigid atmosphere, a traditional Mongolian ger stands in front of the Nuclear Science Laboratory at the National University of Mongolia, emitting warm steam from its roof. The faculty and students of NUM organize a welcoming event inside the ger, inviting everyone to partake in a khorkhog cookout. Earlier that week, a remark from the Mongolian energy representative stood out during one of the presentations: “We need powerful heat. Solar is not enough, and electricity is not enough. Mongolians need fire,” he had emphasized.

      Indeed, the culinary delight known as khorkhog demands the relentless embrace of scorching flames. The process involves a large metal jug, stones, fire, and lamb. With skillful precision, the volunteer chef places the fire-heated stones and large pieces of lamb into the cooking container, triggering a cascade of steam that fills the ger, accompanied by the sounds of sizzling and hissing. Everyone waits patiently as the cook carefully inspects the dish, keenly listening for signs of readiness. And when the time comes, a feast is shared among all, complemented by steam-cooked potatoes, freshly sliced onions, and vegetables. In this moment, the presence of fire symbolizes a profound connection with the heart of Mongolian culture, evoking a deep resonance among the gathered crowd as they partake in this cherished staple meal.

      The distance between two points

      Familiar faces form a grid on the computer screen as the standing meeting between the students in Massachusetts and Ulaanbaatar begins. Sharing the morning (evening in Mongolia) for updates has been a critical effort by both sides to stay engaged and make decisions together. NEET CSS students in Cambridge proceeded to share their latest findings.

      Lucy Nester, a nuclear science and engineering major, has been diligently working on developing a high-efficiency electrical heating solution for individual consumers. Her primary focus is leveraging the discounted electricity rates available in the ger districts and utilize existing infrastructure. Recognizing the importance of maximum flexibility in heating the brick, Nester emphasizes the “no one-size-fits-all” solution. She shares the results of her test trials, which involve both inductive and resistive heating methods, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Despite her limited experience in electrical engineering and circuit building, Nester has impressively overcome the steep learning curve. She enthusiastically describes her UB trip as “one of the most remarkable experiences I’ve had during my time at MIT.”

      Darshdeep Grewal, a dedicated materials science and engineering major with a strong passion for data science and computation, has been diligently conducting research on convection heating using COMSOL Multiphysics. In his investigation, Grewal explores the correlation between air temperature and heating, investigates the impact of convecting air arrangement on the heating process, and examines the conditions that may contribute to overheating. Leveraging his expertise in computational workflows, Grewal presents an impressive collection of heatmap simulations derived from the extensive data accumulated by his team throughout the project. Recognizing the immense value of these simulations in modeling complex scenarios, he highlights the importance of running experiments concurrently with simulations to ensure accurate calibration of results, stating, “It’s important to stay rooted in reality.”

      Arina Khotimsky, another materials science and engineering major, has actively engaged in NEET’s Climate and Sustainability Systems thread since her sophomore year. Balancing the demands of her final semester at MIT and the upcoming review of 22.S094, Khotimsky reveals how she has seamlessly integrated her project involvement into her energy studies minor. Reflecting on her journey, she remarks, “Working on the Ulaanbaatar project has taught me the significance of taking local context into account while suggesting solutions as an engineer.” Khotimsky has been tirelessly iterating and refining the insulation box prototype, which holds the thermal battery and controls the rate at which the battery releases heat. In addition, the on-site observations have unveiled another design challenge — ensuring the insulation box functions as a secure and dependable means of transportation. 

      To “engineer” means to contrive through one’s deliberate use of skills. What confronted the UB Project team on site was not the limitations of skill or technology, but the real-world constraints often amiss in the early equation: the people and their everyday lives. With over 6,195 miles of distance between the two groups, it takes more than just dedication to make a collaboration blossom. That may be the desire for a positive impact. Moreover, it may be the goal of cultivating a healthier relationship with energy that spans a million-person scale. No matter where you are, there is no one solution to the complex story of energy. This progressive realization brings the two teams together every two weeks in virtual space, bridging the distance between the two points.  More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Environment

      Advancing material innovation to address the polymer waste crisis

      by

      Products made from polymers — ranging from plastic bags to clothing to cookware to electronics — provide many comforts and support today’s standard of living, but since they do not decompose easily, they pose long-term environmental challenges. Developing polymers, a large class of materials, with a more sustainable life cycle is a critical step in making progress toward a green economy and addressing this piece of the global climate change crisis. The development of biodegradable polymers, however, remains limited by current biodegradation testing methods.

      To address this limitation, a team of MIT researchers led by Bradley D. Olsen, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, has developed an expansive biodegradation dataset to help determine whether or not a polymer is biodegradable.

      Their findings were recently published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), in a paper titled “High-Throughput Experimentation for Discovery of Biodegradable Polyesters.” The MIT team is led by Olsen and PhD candidates Katharina A. Fransen and Sarah H. M. Av-Ron, and also includes postdoc Dylan J. Walsh and undergraduate students Tess R. Buchanan, Dechen T. Rota, and Lana Van Note.

      “Despite polymer waste being a known and significant contributor to the climate crisis, the study of polymer biodegradation has been limited to a small number of polymers because current biodegradation testing methods are time- and resource-intensive,” says Olsen. “This limited scope slows new material innovation, so we are working to open that up to a much broader portfolio of materials.”

      Unique high-throughput approach

      The dataset Olsen’s team has developed, with support from the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC), the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), and DIC Corporation, includes more than 600 distinct polyester chemistries.

      “The ingenuity of our work is pushing the screening to be high-throughput, which accelerates the pace of discovery,” says Av-Ron. High-throughput synthesis methods enable large quantities of samples to be screened rapidly, identifying products with the desired property or function you are looking for. In this case, the high-throughput approach was conducted using a method called clear-zone assay, which detects polymer biofragmentation and identifies polymer degrading bacteria. The biodegradation dataset can then lead to structure-property relationships, a concept central to materials science and engineering, where relationships between the chemical detail and property can be established, and used to build a biodegradation prediction model. When developing these models to predict biodegradation, the researchers were interested in looking into the potential linearity and nonlinearity of the relationships between structure and biodegradability.

      “We consider our scientific breakthrough to be having this large dataset, and the qualitative relationships and predictive models such a substantial  amount of data enabled,” adds Av-Ron. “It was captivating to figure out how to integrate the high complexity of polymer chemical representation with predictive machine-learning models. I was very excited to get a validation accuracy of 82 percent for one representation/model combination. With additional data we might be able to improve our predictions even more.”

      The team’s work focuses largely on polyesters; the development of biodegradable polyesters presents a key opportunity for addressing the polymer sustainability crisis and reducing the environmental burden of the polymer life cycle.

      One strain of bacteria, many chemistries

      The biodegradation test that these data create is accessible and cost-effective to put in place; initial industry feedback has been positive. The datasets are also more reproducible than many other standards in this space.

      “With our method, there is one strain of bacteria, so you know exactly what you’re testing,” says Av-Ron. This speaks to the uniqueness of the team’s approach.

      “When polymers are developed, normally the strength of the material is examined first, and then once the material is developed, whether or not it biodegrades comes second,” says Fransen.

      Olsen and his team are examining the opposite — developing the biodegradability screen first, to help filter and focus what to look for in a material. This way, the team’s infrastructure can assess a lot of different options, quickly.

      “There has been big movement recently in developing sustainable polymers,” concludes Fransen, “and having something like this that is quick, tangible, and relatively inexpensive, could add a lot of value to that community.”

      Fransen received a 2022 J-WAFS Fellowship for this work, and she and Av-Ron together won second place in the 2022 J-WAFS World Food Day Student Video Competition, as this research can be applied to creating more sustainable food packaging. More