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      A nonflammable battery to power a safer, decarbonized future

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      Lithium-ion batteries are the workhorses of home electronics and are powering an electric revolution in transportation. But they are not suitable for every application.A key drawback is their flammability and toxicity, which make large-scale lithium-ion energy storage a bad fit in densely populated city centers and near metal processing or chemical manufacturing plants.Now Alsym Energy has developed a nonflammable, nontoxic alternative to lithium-ion batteries to help renewables like wind and solar bridge the gap in a broader range of sectors. The company’s electrodes use relatively stable, abundant materials, and its electrolyte is primarily water with some nontoxic add-ons.“Renewables are intermittent, so you need storage, and to really solve the decarbonization problem, we need to be able to make these batteries anywhere at low cost,” says Alsym co-founder and MIT Professor Kripa Varanasi.The company believes its batteries, which are currently being tested by potential customers around the world, hold enormous potential to decarbonize the high-emissions industrial manufacturing sector, and they see other applications ranging from mining to powering data centers, homes, and utilities.“We are enabling a decarbonization of markets that was not possible before,” Alsym co-founder and CEO Mukesh Chatter says. “No chemical or steel plant would dare put a lithium battery close to their premises because of the flammability, and industrial emissions are a much bigger problem than passenger cars. With this approach, we’re able to offer a new path.”Helping 1 billion peopleChatter started a telecommunications company with serial entrepreneurs and longtime members of the MIT community Ray Stata ’57, SM ’58 and Alec Dingee ’52 in 1997. Since the company was acquired in 1999, Chatter and his wife have started other ventures and invested in some startups, but after losing his mother to cancer in 2012, Chatter decided he wanted to maximize his impact by only working on technologies that could reach 1 billion people or more.The problem Chatter decided to focus on was electricity access.“The intent was to light up the homes of at least 1 billion people around the world who either did not have electricity, or only got it part of the time, condemning them basically to a life of poverty in the 19th century,” Chatter says. “When you don’t have access to electricity, you also don’t have the internet, cell phones, education, etc.”To solve the problem, Chatter decided to fund research into a new kind of battery. The battery had to be cheap enough to be adopted in low-resource settings, safe enough to be deployed in crowded areas, and work well enough to support two light bulbs, a fan, a refrigerator, and an internet modem.At first, Chatter was surprised how few takers he had to start the research, even from researchers at the top universities in the world.“It’s a burning problem, but the risk of failure was so high that nobody wanted to take the chance,” Chatter recalls.He finally found his partners in Varanasi, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Nikhil Koratkar and Rensselaer researcher Rahul Mukherjee. Varanasi, who notes he’s been at MIT for 22 years, says the Institute’s culture gave him the confidence to tackle big problems.“My students, postdocs, and colleagues are inspirational to me,” he says. “The MIT ecosystem infuses us with this resolve to go after problems that look insurmountable.”Varanasi leads an interdisciplinary lab at MIT dedicated to understanding physicochemical and biological phenomena. His research has spurred the creation of materials, devices, products, and processes to tackle challenges in energy, agriculture, and other sectors, as well as startup companies to commercialize this work.“Working at the interfaces of matter has unlocked numerous new research pathways across various fields, and MIT has provided me the creative freedom to explore, discover, and learn, and apply that knowledge to solve critical challenges,” he says. “I was able to draw significantly from my learnings as we set out to develop the new battery technology.”Alsym’s founding team began by trying to design a battery from scratch based on new materials that could fit the parameters defined by Chatter. To make it nonflammable and nontoxic, the founders wanted to avoid lithium and cobalt.After evaluating many different chemistries, the founders settled on Alsym’s current approach, which was finalized in 2020.Although the full makeup of Alsym’s battery is still under wraps as the company waits to be granted patents, one of Alsym’s electrodes is made mostly of manganese oxide while the other is primarily made of a metal oxide. The electrolyte is primarily water.There are several advantages to Alsym’s new battery chemistry. Because the battery is inherently safer and more sustainable than lithium-ion, the company doesn’t need the same safety protections or cooling equipment, and it can pack its batteries close to each other without fear of fires or explosions. Varanasi also says the battery can be manufactured in any of today’s lithium-ion plants with minimal changes and at significantly lower operating cost.“We are very excited right now,” Chatter says. “We started out wanting to light up 1 billion people’s homes, and now in addition to the original goal we have a chance to impact the entire globe if we are successful at cutting back industrial emissions.”A new platform for energy storageAlthough the batteries don’t quite reach the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, Varanasi says Alsym is first among alternative chemistries at the system-level. He says 20-foot containers of Alsym’s batteries can provide 1.7 megawatt hours of electricity. The batteries can also fast-charge over four hours and can be configured to discharge over anywhere from two to 110 hours.“We’re highly configurable, and that’s important because depending on where you are, you can sometimes run on two cycles a day with solar, and in combination with wind, you could truly get 24/7 electricity,” Chatter says. “The need to do multiday or long duration storage is a small part of the market, but we support that too.”Alsym has been manufacturing prototypes at a small facility in Woburn, Massachusetts, for the last two years, and early this year it expanded its capacity and began to send samples to customers for field testing.In addition to large utilities, the company is working with municipalities, generator manufacturers, and providers of behind-the-meter power for residential and commercial buildings. The company is also in discussion with a large chemical manufacturers and metal processing plants to provide energy storage system to reduce their carbon footprint, something they say was not feasible with lithium-ion batteries, due to their flammability, or with nonlithium batteries, due to their large space requirements.Another critical area is data centers. With the growth of AI, the demand for data centers — and their energy consumption — is set to surge.“We must power the AI and digitization revolution without compromising our planet,” says Varanasi, adding that lithium batteries are unsuitable for co-location with data centers due to flammability risks. “Alsym batteries are well-positioned to offer a safer, more sustainable alternative. Intermittency is also a key issue for electrolyzers used in green hydrogen production and other markets.”Varanasi sees Alsym as a platform company, and Chatter says Alsym is already working on other battery chemistries that have higher densities and maintain performance at even more extreme temperatures.“When you use a single material in any battery, and the whole world starts to use it, you run out of that material,” Varanasi says. “What we have is a platform that has enabled us to not just to come up with just one chemistry, but at least three or four chemistries targeted at different applications so no one particular set of materials will be stressed in terms of supply.” More

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      Ensuring a durable transition

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      To fend off the worst impacts of climate change, “we have to decarbonize, and do it even faster,” said William H. Green, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, at MITEI’s Annual Research Conference.“But how the heck do we actually achieve this goal when the United States is in the middle of a divisive election campaign, and globally, we’re facing all kinds of geopolitical conflicts, trade protectionism, weather disasters, increasing demand from developing countries building a middle class, and data centers in countries like the U.S.?”Researchers, government officials, and business leaders convened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sept. 25-26 to wrestle with this vexing question at the conference that was themed, “A durable energy transition: How to stay on track in the face of increasing demand and unpredictable obstacles.”“In this room we have a lot of power,” said Green, “if we work together, convey to all of society what we see as real pathways and policies to solve problems, and take collective action.”The critical role of consensus-building in driving the energy transition arose repeatedly in conference sessions, whether the topic involved developing and adopting new technologies, constructing and siting infrastructure, drafting and passing vital energy policies, or attracting and retaining a skilled workforce.Resolving conflictsThere is “blowback and a social cost” in transitioning away from fossil fuels, said Stephen Ansolabehere, the Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government at Harvard University, in a panel on the social barriers to decarbonization. “Companies need to engage differently and recognize the rights of communities,” he said.Nora DeDontney, director of development at Vineyard Offshore, described her company’s two years of outreach and negotiations to bring large cables from ocean-based wind turbines onshore.“Our motto is, ‘community first,’” she said. Her company works to mitigate any impacts towns might feel because of offshore wind infrastructure construction with projects, such as sewer upgrades; provides workforce training to Tribal Nations; and lays out wind turbines in a manner that provides safe and reliable areas for local fisheries.Elsa A. Olivetti, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT and the lead of the Decarbonization Mission of MIT’s new Climate Project, discussed the urgent need for rapid scale-up of mineral extraction. “Estimates indicate that to electrify the vehicle fleet by 2050, about six new large copper mines need to come on line each year,” she said. To meet the demand for metals in the United States means pushing into Indigenous lands and environmentally sensitive habitats. “The timeline of permitting is not aligned with the temporal acceleration needed,” she said.Larry Susskind, the Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, is trying to resolve such tensions with universities playing the role of mediators. He is creating renewable energy clinics where students train to participate in emerging disputes over siting. “Talk to people before decisions are made, conduct joint fact finding, so that facilities reduce harms and share the benefits,” he said.Clean energy boom and pressureA relatively recent and unforeseen increase in demand for energy comes from data centers, which are being built by large technology companies for new offerings, such as artificial intelligence.“General energy demand was flat for 20 years — and now, boom,” said Sean James, Microsoft’s senior director of data center research. “It caught utilities flatfooted.” With the expansion of AI, the rush to provision data centers with upwards of 35 gigawatts of new (and mainly renewable) power in the near future, intensifies pressure on big companies to balance the concerns of stakeholders across multiple domains. Google is pursuing 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030, said Devon Swezey, the company’s senior manager for global energy and climate.“We’re pursuing this by purchasing more and different types of clean energy locally, and accelerating technological innovation such as next-generation geothermal projects,” he said. Pedro Gómez Lopez, strategy and development director, Ferrovial Digital, which designs and constructs data centers, incorporates renewable energy into their projects, which contributes to decarbonization goals and benefits to locales where they are sited. “We can create a new supply of power, taking the heat generated by a data center to residences or industries in neighborhoods through District Heating initiatives,” he said.The Inflation Reduction Act and other legislation has ramped up employment opportunities in clean energy nationwide, touching every region, including those most tied to fossil fuels. “At the start of 2024 there were about 3.5 million clean energy jobs, with ‘red’ states showing the fastest growth in clean energy jobs,” said David S. Miller, managing partner at Clean Energy Ventures. “The majority (58 percent) of new jobs in energy are now in clean energy — that transition has happened. And one-in-16 new jobs nationwide were in clean energy, with clean energy jobs growing more than three times faster than job growth economy-wide”In this rapid expansion, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is prioritizing economically marginalized places, according to Zoe Lipman, lead for good jobs and labor standards in the Office of Energy Jobs at the DoE. “The community benefit process is integrated into our funding,” she said. “We are creating the foundation of a virtuous circle,” encouraging benefits to flow to disadvantaged and energy communities, spurring workforce training partnerships, and promoting well-paid union jobs. “These policies incentivize proactive community and labor engagement, and deliver community benefits, both of which are key to building support for technological change.”Hydrogen opportunity and challengeWhile engagement with stakeholders helps clear the path for implementation of technology and the spread of infrastructure, there remain enormous policy, scientific, and engineering challenges to solve, said multiple conference participants. In a “fireside chat,” Prasanna V. Joshi, vice president of low-carbon-solutions technology at ExxonMobil, and Ernest J. Moniz, professor of physics and special advisor to the president at MIT, discussed efforts to replace natural gas and coal with zero-carbon hydrogen in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in such major industries as steel and fertilizer manufacturing.“We have gone into an era of industrial policy,” said Moniz, citing a new DoE program offering incentives to generate demand for hydrogen — more costly than conventional fossil fuels — in end-use applications. “We are going to have to transition from our current approach, which I would call carrots-and-twigs, to ultimately, carrots-and-sticks,” Moniz warned, in order to create “a self-sustaining, major, scalable, affordable hydrogen economy.”To achieve net zero emissions by 2050, ExxonMobil intends to use carbon capture and sequestration in natural gas-based hydrogen and ammonia production. Ammonia can also serve as a zero-carbon fuel. Industry is exploring burning ammonia directly in coal-fired power plants to extend the hydrogen value chain. But there are challenges. “How do you burn 100 percent ammonia?”, asked Joshi. “That’s one of the key technology breakthroughs that’s needed.” Joshi believes that collaboration with MIT’s “ecosystem of breakthrough innovation” will be essential to breaking logjams around the hydrogen and ammonia-based industries.MIT ingenuity essentialThe energy transition is placing very different demands on different regions around the world. Take India, where today per capita power consumption is one of the lowest. But Indians “are an aspirational people … and with increasing urbanization and industrial activity, the growth in power demand is expected to triple by 2050,” said Praveer Sinha, CEO and managing director of the Tata Power Co. Ltd., in his keynote speech. For that nation, which currently relies on coal, the move to clean energy means bringing another 300 gigawatts of zero-carbon capacity online in the next five years. Sinha sees this power coming from wind, solar, and hydro, supplemented by nuclear energy.“India plans to triple nuclear power generation capacity by 2032, and is focusing on advancing small modular reactors,” said Sinha. “The country also needs the rapid deployment of storage solutions to firm up the intermittent power.” The goal is to provide reliable electricity 24/7 to a population living both in large cities and in geographically remote villages, with the help of long-range transmission lines and local microgrids. “India’s energy transition will require innovative and affordable technology solutions, and there is no better place to go than MIT, where you have the best brains, startups, and technology,” he said.These assets were on full display at the conference. Among them a cluster of young businesses, including:the MIT spinout Form Energy, which has developed a 100-hour iron battery as a backstop to renewable energy sources in case of multi-day interruptions;startup Noya that aims for direct air capture of atmospheric CO2 using carbon-based materials;the firm Active Surfaces, with a lightweight material for putting solar photovoltaics in previously inaccessible places;Copernic Catalysts, with new chemistry for making ammonia and sustainable aviation fuel far more inexpensively than current processes; andSesame Sustainability, a software platform spun out of MITEI that gives industries a full financial analysis of the costs and benefits of decarbonization.The pipeline of research talent extended into the undergraduate ranks, with a conference “slam” competition showcasing students’ summer research projects in areas from carbon capture using enzymes to 3D design for the coils used in fusion energy confinement.“MIT students like me are looking to be the next generation of energy leaders, looking for careers where we can apply our engineering skills to tackle exciting climate problems and make a tangible impact,” said Trent Lee, a junior in mechanical engineering researching improvements in lithium-ion energy storage. “We are stoked by the energy transition, because it’s not just the future, but our chance to build it.” More

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      Tackling the energy revolution, one sector at a time

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      As a major contributor to global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the transportation sector has immense potential to advance decarbonization. However, a zero-emissions global supply chain requires re-imagining reliance on a heavy-duty trucking industry that emits 810,000 tons of CO2, or 6 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions, and consumes 29 billion gallons of diesel annually in the U.S. alone.A new study by MIT researchers, presented at the recent American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2024 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, quantifies the impact of a zero-emission truck’s design range on its energy storage requirements and operational revenue. The multivariable model outlined in the paper allows fleet owners and operators to better understand the design choices that impact the economic feasibility of battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks for commercial application, equipping stakeholders to make informed fleet transition decisions.“The whole issue [of decarbonizing trucking] is like a very big, messy pie. One of the things we can do, from an academic standpoint, is quantify some of those pieces of pie with modeling, based on information and experience we’ve learned from industry stakeholders,” says ZhiYi Liang, PhD student on the renewable hydrogen team at the MIT K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center (GEAR) and lead author of the study. Co-authored by Bryony Dupont, visiting scholar at GEAR, and Amos Winter, the Germeshausen Professor in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, the paper elucidates operational and socioeconomic factors that need to be considered in efforts to decarbonize heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs).Operational and infrastructure challengesThe team’s model shows that a technical challenge lies in the amount of energy that needs to be stored on the truck to meet the range and towing performance needs of commercial trucking applications. Due to the high energy density and low cost of diesel, existing diesel drivetrains remain more competitive than alternative lithium battery-electric vehicle (Li-BEV) and hydrogen fuel-cell-electric vehicle (H2 FCEV) drivetrains. Although Li-BEV drivetrains have the highest energy efficiency of all three, they are limited to short-to-medium range routes (under 500 miles) with low freight capacity, due to the weight and volume of the onboard energy storage needed. In addition, the authors note that existing electric grid infrastructure will need significant upgrades to support large-scale deployment of Li-BEV HDVs.While the hydrogen-powered drivetrain has a significant weight advantage that enables higher cargo capacity and routes over 750 miles, the current state of hydrogen fuel networks limits economic viability, especially once operational cost and projected revenue are taken into account. Deployment will most likely require government intervention in the form of incentives and subsidies to reduce the price of hydrogen by more than half, as well as continued investment by corporations to ensure a stable supply. Also, as H2-FCEVs are still a relatively new technology, the ongoing design of conformal onboard hydrogen storage systems — one of which is the subject of Liang’s PhD — is crucial to successful adoption into the HDV market.The current efficiency of diesel systems is a result of technological developments and manufacturing processes established over many decades, a precedent that suggests similar strides can be made with alternative drivetrains. However, interactions with fleet owners, automotive manufacturers, and refueling network providers reveal another major hurdle in the way that each “slice of the pie” is interrelated — issues must be addressed simultaneously because of how they affect each other, from renewable fuel infrastructure to technological readiness and capital cost of new fleets, among other considerations. And first steps into an uncertain future, where no one sector is fully in control of potential outcomes, is inherently risky. “Besides infrastructure limitations, we only have prototypes [of alternative HDVs] for fleet operator use, so the cost of procuring them is high, which means there isn’t demand for automakers to build manufacturing lines up to a scale that would make them economical to produce,” says Liang, describing just one step of a vicious cycle that is difficult to disrupt, especially for industry stakeholders trying to be competitive in a free market. Quantifying a path to feasibility“Folks in the industry know that some kind of energy transition needs to happen, but they may not necessarily know for certain what the most viable path forward is,” says Liang. Although there is no singular avenue to zero emissions, the new model provides a way to further quantify and assess at least one slice of pie to aid decision-making.Other MIT-led efforts aimed at helping industry stakeholders navigate decarbonization include an interactive mapping tool developed by Danika MacDonell, Impact Fellow at the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC); alongside Florian Allroggen, executive director of MITs Zero Impact Aviation Alliance; and undergraduate researchers Micah Borrero, Helena De Figueiredo Valente, and Brooke Bao. The MCSC’s Geospatial Decision Support Tool supports strategic decision-making for fleet operators by allowing them to visualize regional freight flow densities, costs, emissions, planned and available infrastructure, and relevant regulations and incentives by region.While current limitations reveal the need for joint problem-solving across sectors, the authors believe that stakeholders are motivated and ready to tackle climate problems together. Once-competing businesses already appear to be embracing a culture shift toward collaboration, with the recent agreement between General Motors and Hyundai to explore “future collaboration across key strategic areas,” including clean energy. Liang believes that transitioning the transportation sector to zero emissions is just one part of an “energy revolution” that will require all sectors to work together, because “everything is connected. In order for the whole thing to make sense, we need to consider ourselves part of that pie, and the entire system needs to change,” says Liang. “You can’t make a revolution succeed by yourself.” The authors acknowledge the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium for connecting them with industry members in the HDV ecosystem; and the MIT K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center and MIT Morningside Academy for Design for financial support. More

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      Startup turns mining waste into critical metals for the U.S.

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      At the heart of the energy transition is a metal transition. Wind farms, solar panels, and electric cars require many times more copper, zinc, and nickel than their gas-powered alternatives. They also require more exotic metals with unique properties, known as rare earth elements, which are essential for the magnets that go into things like wind turbines and EV motors.Today, China dominates the processing of rare earth elements, refining around 60 percent of those materials for the world. With demand for such materials forecasted to skyrocket, the Biden administration has said the situation poses national and economic security threats.Substantial quantities of rare earth metals are sitting unused in the United States and many other parts of the world today. The catch is they’re mixed with vast quantities of toxic mining waste.Phoenix Tailings is scaling up a process for harvesting materials, including rare earth metals and nickel, from mining waste. The company uses water and recyclable solvents to collect oxidized metal, then puts the metal into a heated molten salt mixture and applies electricity.The company, co-founded by MIT alumni, says its pilot production facility in Woburn, Massachusetts, is the only site in the world producing rare earth metals without toxic byproducts or carbon emissions. The process does use electricity, but Phoenix Tailings currently offsets that with renewable energy contracts.The company expects to produce more than 3,000 tons of the metals by 2026, which would have represented about 7 percent of total U.S. production last year.Now, with support from the Department of Energy, Phoenix Tailings is expanding the list of metals it can produce and accelerating plans to build a second production facility.For the founding team, including MIT graduates Tomás Villalón ’14 and Michelle Chao ’14 along with Nick Myers and Anthony Balladon, the work has implications for geopolitics and the planet.“Being able to make your own materials domestically means that you’re not at the behest of a foreign monopoly,” Villalón says. “We’re focused on creating critical materials for the next generation of technologies. More broadly, we want to get these materials in ways that are sustainable in the long term.”Tackling a global problemVillalón got interested in chemistry and materials science after taking Course 3.091 (Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry) during his first year at MIT. In his senior year, he got a chance to work at Boston Metal, another MIT spinoff that uses an electrochemical process to decarbonize steelmaking at scale. The experience got Villalón, who majored in materials science and engineering, thinking about creating more sustainable metallurgical processes.But it took a chance meeting with Myers at a 2018 Bible study for Villalón to act on the idea.“We were discussing some of the major problems in the world when we came to the topic of electrification,” Villalón recalls. “It became a discussion about how the U.S. gets its materials and how we should think about electrifying their production. I was finally like, ‘I’ve been working in the space for a decade, let’s go do something about it.’ Nick agreed, but I thought he just wanted to feel good about himself. Then in July, he randomly called me and said, ‘I’ve got [$7,000]. When do we start?’”Villalón brought in Chao, his former MIT classmate and fellow materials science and engineering major, and Myers brought Balladon, a former co-worker, and the founders started experimenting with new processes for producing rare earth metals.“We went back to the base principles, the thermodynamics I learned with MIT professors Antoine Allanore and Donald Sadoway, and understanding the kinetics of reactions,” Villalón says. “Classes like Course 3.022 (Microstructural Evolution in Materials) and 3.07 (Introduction to Ceramics) were also really useful. I touched on every aspect I studied at MIT.”The founders also received guidance from MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) and went through the U.S. National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program. Sadoway served as an advisor for the company.After drafting one version of their system design, the founders bought an experimental quantity of mining waste, known as red sludge, and set up a prototype reactor in Villalón’s backyard. The founders ended up with a small amount of product, but they had to scramble to borrow the scientific equipment needed to determine what exactly it was. It turned out to be a small amount of rare earth concentrate along with pure iron.Today, at the company’s refinery in Woburn, Phoenix Tailings puts mining waste rich in rare earth metals into its mixture and heats it to around 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit. When it applies an electric current to the mixture, pure metal collects on an electrode. The process leaves minimal waste behind.“The key for all of this isn’t just the chemistry, but how everything is linked together, because with rare earths, you have to hit really high purities compared to a conventionally produced metal,” Villalón explains. “As a result, you have to be thinking about the purity of your material the entire way through.”From rare earths to nickel, magnesium, and moreVillalón says the process is economical compared to conventional production methods, produces no toxic byproducts, and is completely carbon free when renewable energy sources are used for electricity.The Woburn facility is currently producing several rare earth elements for customers, including neodymium and dysprosium, which are important in magnets. Customers are using the materials for things likewind turbines, electric cars, and defense applications.The company has also received two grants with the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program totaling more than $2 million. Its 2023 grant supports the development of a system to extract nickel and magnesium from mining waste through a process that uses carbonization and recycled carbon dioxide. Both nickel and magnesium are critical materials for clean energy applications like batteries.The most recent grant will help the company adapt its process to produce iron from mining waste without emissions or toxic byproducts. Phoenix Tailings says its process is compatible with a wide array of ore types and waste materials, and the company has plenty of material to work with: Mining and processing mineral ores generates about 1.8 billion tons of waste in the U.S. each year.“We want to take our knowledge from processing the rare earth metals and slowly move it into other segments,” Villalón explains. “We simply have to refine some of these materials here. There’s no way we can’t. So, what does that look like from a regulatory perspective? How do we create approaches that are economical and environmentally compliant not just now, but 30 years from now?” More

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      3 Questions: Can we secure a sustainable supply of nickel?

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      As the world strives to cut back on carbon emissions, demand for minerals and metals needed for clean energy technologies is growing rapidly, sometimes straining existing supply chains and harming local environments. In a new study published today in Joule, Elsa Olivetti, a professor of materials science and engineering and director of the Decarbonizing Energy and Industry mission within MIT’s Climate Project, along with recent graduates Basuhi Ravi PhD ’23 and Karan Bhuwalka PhD ’24 and nine others, examine the case of nickel, which is an essential element for some electric vehicle batteries and parts of some solar panels and wind turbines.How robust is the supply of this vital metal, and what are the implications of its extraction for the local environments, economies, and communities in the places where it is mined? MIT News asked Olivetti, Ravi, and Bhuwalka to explain their findings.Q: Why is nickel becoming more important in the clean energy economy, and what are some of the potential issues in its supply chain?Olivetti: Nickel is increasingly important for its role in EV batteries, as well as other technologies such as wind and solar. For batteries, high-purity nickel sulfate is a key input to the cathodes of EV batteries, which enables high energy density in batteries and increased driving range for EVs. As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, the demand for EVs, and consequently for nickel, has increased dramatically and is projected to continue to do so.The nickel supply chain for battery-grade nickel sulfate includes mining nickel from ore deposits, processing it to a suitable nickel intermediary, and refining it to nickel sulfate. The potential issues in the supply chain can be broadly described as land use concerns in the mining stage, and emissions concerns in the processing stage. This is obviously oversimplified, but as a basic structure for our inquiry we thought about it this way. Nickel mining is land-intensive, leading to deforestation, displacement of communities, and potential contamination of soil and water resources from mining waste. In the processing step, the use of fossil fuels leads to direct emissions including particulate matter and sulfur oxides. In addition, some emerging processing pathways are particularly energy-intensive, which can double the carbon footprint of nickel-rich batteries compared to the current average.Q: What is Indonesia’s role in the global nickel supply, and what are the consequences of nickel extraction there and in other major supply countries?Ravi: Indonesia plays a critical role in nickel supply, holding the world’s largest nickel reserves and supplying nearly half of the globally mined nickel in 2023. The country’s nickel production has seen a remarkable tenfold increase since 2016. This production surge has fueled economic growth in some regions, but also brought notable environmental and social impacts to nickel mining and processing areas.Nickel mining expansion in Indonesia has been linked to health impacts due to air pollution in the islands where nickel processing is prominent, as well as deforestation in some of the most biodiversity-rich locations on the planet. Reports of displacement of indigenous communities, land grabbing, water rights issues, and inadequate job quality in and around mines further highlight the social concerns and unequal distribution of burdens and benefits in Indonesia. Similar concerns exist in other major nickel-producing countries, where mining activities can negatively impact the environment, disrupt livelihoods, and exacerbate inequalities.On a global scale, Indonesia’s reliance on coal-based energy for nickel processing, particularly in energy-intensive smelting and leaching of a clay-like material called laterite, results in a high carbon intensity for nickel produced in the region, compared to other major producing regions such as Australia.Q: What role can industry and policymakers play in helping to meet growing demand while improving environmental safety?Bhuwalka: In consuming countries, policies can foster “discerning demand,” which means creating incentives for companies to source nickel from producers that prioritize sustainability. This can be achieved through regulations that establish acceptable environmental footprints for imported materials, such as limits on carbon emissions from nickel production. For example, the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act and the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act could be leveraged to promote responsible sourcing. Additionally, governments can use their purchasing power to favor sustainably produced nickel in public procurement, which could influence industry practices and encourage the adoption of sustainability standards.On the supply side, nickel-producing countries like Indonesia can implement policies to mitigate the adverse environmental and social impacts of nickel extraction. This includes strengthening environmental regulations and enforcement to reduce the footprint of mining and processing, potentially through stricter pollution limits and responsible mine waste management. In addition, supporting community engagement, implementing benefit-sharing mechanisms, and investing in cleaner nickel processing technologies are also crucial.Internationally, harmonizing sustainability standards and facilitating capacity building and technology transfer between developed and developing countries can create a level playing field and prevent unsustainable practices. Responsible investment practices by international financial institutions, favoring projects that meet high environmental and social standards, can also contribute to a stable and sustainable nickel supply chain. More

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      Study: Fusion energy could play a major role in the global response to climate change

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      For many decades, fusion has been touted as the ultimate source of abundant, clean electricity. Now, as the world faces the need to reduce carbon emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change, making commercial fusion power a reality takes on new importance. In a power system dominated by low-carbon variable renewable energy sources (VREs) such as solar and wind, “firm” electricity sources are needed to kick in whenever demand exceeds supply — for example, when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing and energy storage systems aren’t up to the task. What is the potential role and value of fusion power plants (FPPs) in such a future electric power system — a system that is not only free of carbon emissions but also capable of meeting the dramatically increased global electricity demand expected in the coming decades?Working together for a year-and-a-half, investigators in the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) have been collaborating to answer that question. They found that — depending on its future cost and performance — fusion has the potential to be critically important to decarbonization. Under some conditions, the availability of FPPs could reduce the global cost of decarbonizing by trillions of dollars. More than 25 experts together examined the factors that will impact the deployment of FPPs, including costs, climate policy, operating characteristics, and other factors. They present their findings in a new report funded through MITEI and entitled “The Role of Fusion Energy in a Decarbonized Electricity System.”“Right now, there is great interest in fusion energy in many quarters — from the private sector to government to the general public,” says the study’s principal investigator (PI) Robert C. Armstrong, MITEI’s former director and the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering, Emeritus. “In undertaking this study, our goal was to provide a balanced, fact-based, analysis-driven guide to help us all understand the prospects for fusion going forward.” Accordingly, the study takes a multidisciplinary approach that combines economic modeling, electric grid modeling, techno-economic analysis, and more to examine important factors that are likely to shape the future deployment and utilization of fusion energy. The investigators from MITEI provided the energy systems modeling capability, while the PSFC participants provided the fusion expertise.Fusion technologies may be a decade away from commercial deployment, so the detailed technology and costs of future commercial FPPs are not known at this point. As a result, the MIT research team focused on determining what cost levels fusion plants must reach by 2050 to achieve strong market penetration and make a significant contribution to the decarbonization of global electricity supply in the latter half of the century.The value of having FPPs available on an electric grid will depend on what other options are available, so to perform their analyses, the researchers needed estimates of the future cost and performance of those options, including conventional fossil fuel generators, nuclear fission power plants, VRE generators, and energy storage technologies, as well as electricity demand for specific regions of the world. To find the most reliable data, they searched the published literature as well as results of previous MITEI and PSFC analyses.Overall, the analyses showed that — while the technology demands of harnessing fusion energy are formidable — so are the potential economic and environmental payoffs of adding this firm, low-carbon technology to the world’s portfolio of energy options.Perhaps the most remarkable finding is the “societal value” of having commercial FPPs available. “Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C requires that the world invest in wind, solar, storage, grid infrastructure, and everything else needed to decarbonize the electric power system,” explains Randall Field, executive director of the fusion study and MITEI’s director of research. “The cost of that task can be far lower when FPPs are available as a source of clean, firm electricity.” And the benefit varies depending on the cost of the FPPs. For example, assuming that the cost of building a FPP is $8,000 per kilowatt (kW) in 2050 and falls to $4,300/kW in 2100, the global cost of decarbonizing electric power drops by $3.6 trillion. If the cost of a FPP is $5,600/kW in 2050 and falls to $3,000/kW in 2100, the savings from having the fusion plants available would be $8.7 trillion. (Those calculations are based on differences in global gross domestic product and assume a discount rate of 6 percent. The undiscounted value is about 20 times larger.)The goal of other analyses was to determine the scale of deployment worldwide at selected FPP costs. Again, the results are striking. For a deep decarbonization scenario, the total global share of electricity generation from fusion in 2100 ranges from less than 10 percent if the cost of fusion is high to more than 50 percent if the cost of fusion is low.Other analyses showed that the scale and timing of fusion deployment vary in different parts of the world. Early deployment of fusion can be expected in wealthy nations such as European countries and the United States that have the most aggressive decarbonization policies. But certain other locations — for example, India and the continent of Africa — will have great growth in fusion deployment in the second half of the century due to a large increase in demand for electricity during that time. “In the U.S. and Europe, the amount of demand growth will be low, so it’ll be a matter of switching away from dirty fuels to fusion,” explains Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy and a senior research scientist at MITEI. “But in India and Africa, for example, the tremendous growth in overall electricity demand will be met with significant amounts of fusion along with other low-carbon generation resources in the later part of the century.”A set of analyses focusing on nine subregions of the United States showed that the availability and cost of other low-carbon technologies, as well as how tightly carbon emissions are constrained, have a major impact on how FPPs would be deployed and used. In a decarbonized world, FPPs will have the highest penetration in locations with poor diversity, capacity, and quality of renewable resources, and limits on carbon emissions will have a big impact. For example, the Atlantic and Southeast subregions have low renewable resources. In those subregions, wind can produce only a small fraction of the electricity needed, even with maximum onshore wind buildout. Thus, fusion is needed in those subregions, even when carbon constraints are relatively lenient, and any available FPPs would be running much of the time. In contrast, the Central subregion of the United States has excellent renewable resources, especially wind. Thus, fusion competes in the Central subregion only when limits on carbon emissions are very strict, and FPPs will typically be operated only when the renewables can’t meet demand.An analysis of the power system that serves the New England states provided remarkably detailed results. Using a modeling tool developed at MITEI, the fusion team explored the impact of using different assumptions about not just cost and emissions limits but even such details as potential land-use constraints affecting the use of specific VREs. This approach enabled them to calculate the FPP cost at which fusion units begin to be installed. They were also able to investigate how that “threshold” cost changed with changes in the cap on carbon emissions. The method can even show at what price FPPs begin to replace other specific generating sources. In one set of runs, they determined the cost at which FPPs would begin to displace floating platform offshore wind and rooftop solar.“This study is an important contribution to fusion commercialization because it provides economic targets for the use of fusion in the electricity markets,” notes Dennis G. Whyte, co-PI of the fusion study, former director of the PSFC, and the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. “It better quantifies the technical design challenges for fusion developers with respect to pricing, availability, and flexibility to meet changing demand in the future.”The researchers stress that while fission power plants are included in the analyses, they did not perform a “head-to-head” comparison between fission and fusion, because there are too many unknowns. Fusion and nuclear fission are both firm, low-carbon electricity-generating technologies; but unlike fission, fusion doesn’t use fissile materials as fuels, and it doesn’t generate long-lived nuclear fuel waste that must be managed. As a result, the regulatory requirements for FPPs will be very different from the regulations for today’s fission power plants — but precisely how they will differ is unclear. Likewise, the future public perception and social acceptance of each of these technologies cannot be projected, but could have a major influence on what generation technologies are used to meet future demand.The results of the study convey several messages about the future of fusion. For example, it’s clear that regulation can be a potentially large cost driver. This should motivate fusion companies to minimize their regulatory and environmental footprint with respect to fuels and activated materials. It should also encourage governments to adopt appropriate and effective regulatory policies to maximize their ability to use fusion energy in achieving their decarbonization goals. And for companies developing fusion technologies, the study’s message is clearly stated in the report: “If the cost and performance targets identified in this report can be achieved, our analysis shows that fusion energy can play a major role in meeting future electricity needs and achieving global net-zero carbon goals.” More

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      in Environment

      Solar-powered desalination system requires no extra batteries

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      MIT engineers have built a new desalination system that runs with the rhythms of the sun.The solar-powered system removes salt from water at a pace that closely follows changes in solar energy. As sunlight increases through the day, the system ramps up its desalting process and automatically adjusts to any sudden variation in sunlight, for example by dialing down in response to a passing cloud or revving up as the skies clear.Because the system can quickly react to subtle changes in sunlight, it maximizes the utility of solar energy, producing large quantities of clean water despite variations in sunlight throughout the day. In contrast to other solar-driven desalination designs, the MIT system requires no extra batteries for energy storage, nor a supplemental power supply, such as from the grid.The engineers tested a community-scale prototype on groundwater wells in New Mexico over six months, working in variable weather conditions and water types. The system harnessed on average over 94 percent of the electrical energy generated from the system’s solar panels to produce up to 5,000 liters of water per day despite large swings in weather and available sunlight.“Conventional desalination technologies require steady power and need battery storage to smooth out a variable power source like solar. By continually varying power consumption in sync with the sun, our technology directly and efficiently uses solar power to make water,” says Amos Winter, the Germeshausen Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Center at MIT. “Being able to make drinking water with renewables, without requiring battery storage, is a massive grand challenge. And we’ve done it.”The system is geared toward desalinating brackish groundwater — a salty source of water that is found in underground reservoirs and is more prevalent than fresh groundwater resources. The researchers see brackish groundwater as a huge untapped source of potential drinking water, particularly as reserves of fresh water are stressed in parts of the world. They envision that the new renewable, battery-free system could provide much-needed drinking water at low costs, especially for inland communities where access to seawater and grid power are limited.“The majority of the population actually lives far enough from the coast, that seawater desalination could never reach them. They consequently rely heavily on groundwater, especially in remote, low-income regions. And unfortunately, this groundwater is becoming more and more saline due to climate change,” says Jonathan Bessette, MIT PhD student in mechanical engineering. “This technology could bring sustainable, affordable clean water to underreached places around the world.”The researchers report details the new system in a paper appearing today in Nature Water. The study’s co-authors are Bessette, Winter, and staff engineer Shane Pratt.Pump and flowThe new system builds on a previous design, which Winter and his colleagues, including former MIT postdoc Wei He, reported earlier this year. That system aimed to desalinate water through “flexible batch electrodialysis.”Electrodialysis and reverse osmosis are two of the main methods used to desalinate brackish groundwater. With reverse osmosis, pressure is used to pump salty water through a membrane and filter out salts. Electrodialysis uses an electric field to draw out salt ions as water is pumped through a stack of ion-exchange membranes.Scientists have looked to power both methods with renewable sources. But this has been especially challenging for reverse osmosis systems, which traditionally run at a steady power level that’s incompatible with naturally variable energy sources such as the sun.Winter, He, and their colleagues focused on electrodialysis, seeking ways to make a more flexible, “time-variant” system that would be responsive to variations in renewable, solar power.In their previous design, the team built an electrodialysis system consisting of water pumps, an ion-exchange membrane stack, and a solar panel array. The innovation in this system was a model-based control system that used sensor readings from every part of the system to predict the optimal rate at which to pump water through the stack and the voltage that should be applied to the stack to maximize the amount of salt drawn out of the water.When the team tested this system in the field, it was able to vary its water production with the sun’s natural variations. On average, the system directly used 77 percent of the available electrical energy produced by the solar panels, which the team estimated was 91 percent more than traditionally designed solar-powered electrodialysis systems.Still, the researchers felt they could do better.“We could only calculate every three minutes, and in that time, a cloud could literally come by and block the sun,” Winter says. “The system could be saying, ‘I need to run at this high power.’ But some of that power has suddenly dropped because there’s now less sunlight. So, we had to make up that power with extra batteries.”Solar commandsIn their latest work, the researchers looked to eliminate the need for batteries, by shaving the system’s response time to a fraction of a second. The new system is able to update its desalination rate, three to five times per second. The faster response time enables the system to adjust to changes in sunlight throughout the day, without having to make up any lag in power with additional power supplies.The key to the nimbler desalting is a simpler control strategy, devised by Bessette and Pratt. The new strategy is one of “flow-commanded current control,” in which the system first senses the amount of solar power that is being produced by the system’s solar panels. If the panels are generating more power than the system is using, the controller automatically “commands” the system to dial up its pumping, pushing more water through the electrodialysis stacks. Simultaneously, the system diverts some of the additional solar power by increasing the electrical current delivered to the stack, to drive more salt out of the faster-flowing water.“Let’s say the sun is rising every few seconds,” Winter explains. “So, three times a second, we’re looking at the solar panels and saying, ‘Oh, we have more power — let’s bump up our flow rate and current a little bit.’ When we look again and see there’s still more excess power, we’ll up it again. As we do that, we’re able to closely match our consumed power with available solar power really accurately, throughout the day. And the quicker we loop this, the less battery buffering we need.”The engineers incorporated the new control strategy into a fully automated system that they sized to desalinate brackish groundwater at a daily volume that would be enough to supply a small community of about 3,000 people. They operated the system for six months on several wells at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Throughout the trial, the prototype operated under a wide range of solar conditions, harnessing over 94 percent of the solar panel’s electrical energy, on average, to directly power desalination.“Compared to how you would traditionally design a solar desal system, we cut our required battery capacity by almost 100 percent,” Winter says.The engineers plan to further test and scale up the system in hopes of supplying larger communities, and even whole municipalities, with low-cost, fully sun-driven drinking water.“While this is a major step forward, we’re still working diligently to continue developing lower cost, more sustainable desalination methods,” Bessette says.“Our focus now is on testing, maximizing reliability, and building out a product line that can provide desalinated water using renewables to multiple markets around the world,” Pratt adds.The team will be launching a company based on their technology in the coming months.This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, the Julia Burke Foundation, and the MIT Morningside Academy of Design. This work was additionally supported in-kind by Veolia Water Technologies and Solutions and Xylem Goulds.  More

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      in Energy

      Applying risk and reliability analysis across industries

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      On Feb. 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it returned to Earth, killing all seven astronauts on board. The tragic incident compelled NASA to amp up their risk safety assessments and protocols. They knew whom to call: Curtis Smith PhD ’02, who is now the KEPCO Professor of the Practice of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT.The nuclear community has always been a leader in probabilistic risk analysis and Smith’s work in risk-related research had made him an established expert in the field. When NASA came knocking, Smith had been working for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). He pivoted quickly. For the next decade, Smith worked with NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance supporting their increased use of risk analysis. It was a software tool that Smith helped develop, SAPHIRE, that NASA would adopt to bolster its own risk analysis program.At MIT, Smith’s focus is on both sides of system operation: risk and reliability. A research project he has proposed involves evaluating the reliability of 3D-printed components and parts for nuclear reactors.Growing up in IdahoMIT is a distance from where Smith grew up on the Shoshone-Bannock Native American reservation in Fort Hall, Idaho. His father worked at a chemical manufacturing plant, while his mother and grandmother operated a small restaurant on the reservation.Southeast Idaho had a significant population of migrant workers and Smith grew up with a diverse group of friends, mostly Native American and Hispanic. “It was a largely positive time and set a worldview for me in many wonderful ways,” Smith remembers. When he was a junior in high school, the family moved to Pingree, Idaho, a small town of barely 500. Smith attended Snake River High, a regional school, and remembered the deep impact his teachers had. “I learned a lot in grade school and had great teachers, so my love for education probably started there. I tried to emulate my teachers,” Smith says.Smith went to Idaho State University in Pocatello for college, a 45-minute drive from his family. Drawn to science, he decided he wanted to study a subject that would benefit humanity the most: nuclear engineering. Fortunately, Idaho State has a strong nuclear engineering program. Smith completed a master’s degree in the same field at ISU while working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the security department during the swing shift — 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. — at the FBI offices in Pocatello. “It was a perfect job while attending grad school,” Smith says.His KEPCO Professor of the Practice appointment is the second stint for Smith at MIT: He completed his PhD in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) under the advisement of Professor George Apostolakis in 2002.A career in risk analysis and managementAfter a doctorate at MIT, Smith returned to Idaho, conducting research in risk analysis for the NRC. He also taught technical courses and developed risk analysis software. “We did a whole host of work that supported the current fleet of nuclear reactors that we have,” Smith says.He was 10 years into his career at INL when NASA recruited him, leaning on his expertise in risk analysis to translate it into space missions. “I didn’t really have a background in aerospace, but I was able to bring all the engineering I knew, conducting risk analysis for nuclear missions. It was really exciting and I learned a lot about aerospace,” Smith says.Risk analysis uses statistics and data to answer complex questions involving safety. Among his projects: analyzing the risk involved in a Mars rover mission with a radioisotope-generated power source for the rover. Even if the necessary plutonium is encased in really strong material, calculations for risk have to factor in all eventualities, including the rocket blowing up.When the Fukushima incident happened in 2011, the Department of Energy (DoE) was more supportive of safety and risk analysis research. Smith found himself in the center of the action again, supporting large DoE research programs. He then moved to become the director of the Nuclear Safety and Regulatory Research Division at the INL. Smith found he loved the role, mentoring and nurturing the careers of a diverse set of scientists. “It turned out to be much more rewarding than I had expected,” Smith says. Under his leadership, the division grew from 45 to almost 90 research staff and won multiple national awards.Return to MITMIT NSE came calling in 2022, looking to fill the position of professor of the practice, an offer Smith couldn’t refuse. The department was looking to bulk up its risk and reliability offerings and Smith made a great fit. The DoE division he had been supervising had grown wings enough for Smith to seek out something new.“Just getting back to Boston is exciting,” Smith says. The last go-around involved bringing the family to the city and included a lot of sleepless nights. Smith’s wife, Jacquie, is also excited about being closer to the New England fan base. The couple has invested in season tickets for the Patriots and look to attend as many sporting events as possible.Smith is most excited about adding to the risk and reliability offerings at MIT at a time when the subject has become especially important for nuclear power. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring my knowledge and expertise from the last 30 years to the field,” he says. Being a professor of the practice of NSE carries with it a responsibility to unite theory and practice, something Smith is especially good at. “We always have to answer the question of, ‘How do I take the research and make that practical,’ especially for something important like nuclear power, because we need much more of these ideas in industry,” he says.He is particularly excited about developing the next generation of nuclear scientists. “Having the ability to do this at a place like MIT is especially fulfilling and something I have been desiring my whole career,” Smith says. More