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      in Energy

      Study reveals a reaction at the heart of many renewable energy technologies

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      A key chemical reaction — in which the movement of protons between the surface of an electrode and an electrolyte drives an electric current — is a critical step in many energy technologies, including fuel cells and the electrolyzers used to produce hydrogen gas.

      For the first time, MIT chemists have mapped out in detail how these proton-coupled electron transfers happen at an electrode surface. Their results could help researchers design more efficient fuel cells, batteries, or other energy technologies.

      “Our advance in this paper was studying and understanding the nature of how these electrons and protons couple at a surface site, which is relevant for catalytic reactions that are important in the context of energy conversion devices or catalytic reactions,” says Yogesh Surendranath, a professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study.

      Among their findings, the researchers were able to trace exactly how changes in the pH of the electrolyte solution surrounding an electrode affect the rate of proton motion and electron flow within the electrode.

      MIT graduate student Noah Lewis is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Chemistry. Ryan Bisbey, a former MIT postdoc; Karl Westendorff, an MIT graduate student; and Alexander Soudackov, a research scientist at Yale University, are also authors of the paper.

      Passing protons

      Proton-coupled electron transfer occurs when a molecule, often water or an acid, transfers a proton to another molecule or to an electrode surface, which stimulates the proton acceptor to also take up an electron. This kind of reaction has been harnessed for many energy applications.

      “These proton-coupled electron transfer reactions are ubiquitous. They are often key steps in catalytic mechanisms, and are particularly important for energy conversion processes such as hydrogen generation or fuel cell catalysis,” Surendranath says.

      In a hydrogen-generating electrolyzer, this approach is used to remove protons from water and add electrons to the protons to form hydrogen gas. In a fuel cell, electricity is generated when protons and electrons are removed from hydrogen gas and added to oxygen to form water.

      Proton-coupled electron transfer is common in many other types of chemical reactions, for example, carbon dioxide reduction (the conversion of carbon dioxide into chemical fuels by adding electrons and protons). Scientists have learned a great deal about how these reactions occur when the proton acceptors are molecules, because they can precisely control the structure of each molecule and observe how electrons and protons pass between them. However, when proton-coupled electron transfer occurs at the surface of an electrode, the process is much more difficult to study because electrode surfaces are usually very heterogenous, with many different sites that a proton could potentially bind to.

      To overcome that obstacle, the MIT team developed a way to design electrode surfaces that gives them much more precise control over the composition of the electrode surface. Their electrodes consist of sheets of graphene with organic, ring-containing compounds attached to the surface. At the end of each of these organic molecules is a negatively charged oxygen ion that can accept protons from the surrounding solution, which causes an electron to flow from the circuit into the graphitic surface.

      “We can create an electrode that doesn’t consist of a wide diversity of sites but is a uniform array of a single type of very well-defined sites that can each bind a proton with the same affinity,” Surendranath says. “Since we have these very well-defined sites, what this allowed us to do was really unravel the kinetics of these processes.”

      Using this system, the researchers were able to measure the flow of electrical current to the electrodes, which allowed them to calculate the rate of proton transfer to the oxygen ion at the surface at equilibrium — the state when the rates of proton donation to the surface and proton transfer back to solution from the surface are equal. They found that the pH of the surrounding solution has a significant effect on this rate: The highest rates occurred at the extreme ends of the pH scale — pH 0, the most acidic, and pH 14, the most basic.

      To explain these results, researchers developed a model based on two possible reactions that can occur at the electrode. In the first, hydronium ions (H3O+), which are in high concentration in strongly acidic solutions, deliver protons to the surface oxygen ions, generating water. In the second, water delivers protons to the surface oxygen ions, generating hydroxide ions (OH-), which are in high concentration in strongly basic solutions.

      However, the rate at pH 0 is about four times faster than the rate at pH 14, in part because hydronium gives up protons at a faster rate than water.

      A reaction to reconsider

      The researchers also discovered, to their surprise, that the two reactions have equal rates not at neutral pH 7, where hydronium and hydroxide concentrations are equal, but at pH 10, where the concentration of hydroxide ions is 1 million times that of hydronium. The model suggests this is because the forward reaction involving proton donation from hydronium or water contributes more to the overall rate than the backward reaction involving proton removal by water or hydroxide.

      Existing models of how these reactions occur at electrode surfaces assume that the forward and backward reactions contribute equally to the overall rate, so the new findings suggest that those models may need to be reconsidered, the researchers say.

      “That’s the default assumption, that the forward and reverse reactions contribute equally to the reaction rate,” Surendranath says. “Our finding is really eye-opening because it means that the assumption that people are using to analyze everything from fuel cell catalysis to hydrogen evolution may be something we need to revisit.”

      The researchers are now using their experimental setup to study how adding different types of ions to the electrolyte solution surrounding the electrode may speed up or slow down the rate of proton-coupled electron flow.

      “With our system, we know that our sites are constant and not affecting each other, so we can read out what the change in the solution is doing to the reaction at the surface,” Lewis says.

      The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences. More

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Environment

      Researchers release open-source space debris model

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      MIT’s Astrodynamics, Space Robotics, and Controls Laboratory (ARCLab) announced the public beta release of the MIT Orbital Capacity Assessment Tool (MOCAT) during the 2023 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Space Forum Workshop on Dec. 14. MOCAT enables users to model the long-term future space environment to understand growth in space debris and assess the effectiveness of debris-prevention mechanisms.

      With the escalating congestion in low Earth orbit, driven by a surge in satellite deployments, the risk of collisions and space debris proliferation is a pressing concern. Conducting thorough space environment studies is critical for developing effective strategies for fostering responsible and sustainable use of space resources. 

      MOCAT stands out among orbital modeling tools for its capability to model individual objects, diverse parameters, orbital characteristics, fragmentation scenarios, and collision probabilities. With the ability to differentiate between object categories, generalize parameters, and offer multi-fidelity computations, MOCAT emerges as a versatile and powerful tool for comprehensive space environment analysis and management.

      MOCAT is intended to provide an open-source tool to empower stakeholders including satellite operators, regulators, and members of the public to make data-driven decisions. The ARCLab team has been developing these models for the last several years, recognizing that the lack of open-source implementation of evolutionary modeling tools limits stakeholders’ ability to develop consensus on actions to help improve space sustainability. This beta release is intended to allow users to experiment with the tool and provide feedback to help guide further development.

      Richard Linares, the principal investigator for MOCAT and an MIT associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics, expresses excitement about the tool’s potential impact: “MOCAT represents a significant leap forward in orbital capacity assessment. By making it open-source and publicly available, we hope to engage the global community in advancing our understanding of satellite orbits and contributing to the sustainable use of space.”

      MOCAT consists of two main components. MOCAT-MC evaluates space environment evolution with individual trajectory simulation and Monte Carlo parameter analysis, providing both a high-level overall view for the environment and a fidelity analysis into the individual space objects evolution. MOCAT Source Sink Evolutionary Model (MOCAT-SSEM), meanwhile, uses a lower-fidelity modeling approach that can run on personal computers within seconds to minutes. MOCAT-MC and MOCAT-SSEM can be accessed separately via GitHub.

      MOCAT’s initial development has been supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA’s Office of Technology and Strategy.

      “We are thrilled to support this groundbreaking orbital debris modeling work and the new knowledge it created,” says Charity Weeden, associate administrator for the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy at NASA headquarters in Washington. “This open-source modeling tool is a public good that will advance space sustainability, improve evidence-based policy analysis, and help all users of space make better decisions.” More

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      in Energy

      The future of motorcycles could be hydrogen

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      MIT’s Electric Vehicle Team, which has a long record of building and racing innovative electric vehicles, including cars and motorcycles, in international professional-level competitions, is trying something very different this year: The team is building a hydrogen-powered electric motorcycle, using a fuel cell system, as a testbed for new hydrogen-based transportation.

      The motorcycle successfully underwent its first full test-track demonstration in October. It is designed as an open-source platform that should make it possible to swap out and test a variety of different components, and for others to try their own versions based on plans the team is making freely available online.

      Aditya Mehrotra, who is spearheading the project, is a graduate student working with mechanical engineering professor Alex Slocum, the Walter M. May  and A. Hazel May Chair in Emerging Technologies. Mehrotra was studying energy systems and happened to also really like motorcycles, he says, “so we came up with the idea of a hydrogen-powered bike. We did an evaluation study, and we thought that this could actually work. We [decided to] try to build it.”

      Team members say that while battery-powered cars are a boon for the environment, they still face limitations in range and have issues associated with the mining of lithium and resulting emissions. So, the team was interested in exploring hydrogen-powered vehicles as a clean alternative, allowing for vehicles that could be quickly refilled just like gasoline-powered vehicles.

      Unlike past projects by the team, which has been part of MIT since 2005, this vehicle will not be entering races or competitions but will be presented at a variety of conferences. The team, consisting of about a dozen students, has been working on building the prototype since January 2023. In October they presented the bike at the Hydrogen Americas Summit, and in May they will travel to the Netherlands to present it at the World Hydrogen Summit. In addition to the two hydrogen summits, the team plans to show its bike at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month.

      “We’re hoping to use this project as a chance to start conversations around ‘small hydrogen’ systems that could increase demand, which could lead to the development of more infrastructure,” Mehrotra says. “We hope the project can help find new and creative applications for hydrogen.” In addition to these demonstrations and the online information the team will provide, he adds, they are also working toward publishing papers in academic journals describing their project and lessons learned from it, in hopes of making “an impact on the energy industry.”

      Play video

      For the love of speed: Building a hydrogen-powered motorcycle

      The motorcycle took shape over the course of the year piece by piece. “We got a couple of industry sponsors to donate components like the fuel cell and a lot of the major components of the system,” he says. They also received support from the MIT Energy Initiative, the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the MIT Edgerton Center.

      Initial tests were conducted on a dynamometer, a kind of instrumented treadmill Mehrotra describes as “basically a mock road.” The vehicle used battery power during its development, until the fuel cell, provided by South Korean company Doosan, could be delivered and installed. The space the group has used to design and build the prototype, the home of the Electric Vehicle Team, is in MIT’s Building N51 and is well set up to do detailed testing of each of the bike’s components as it is developed and integrated.

      Elizabeth Brennan, a senior in mechanical engineering, says she joined the team in January 2023 because she wanted to gain more electrical engineering experience, “and I really fell in love with it.” She says group members “really care and are very excited to be here and work on this bike and believe in the project.”

      Brennan, who is the team’s safety lead, has been learning about the safe handling methods required for the bike’s hydrogen fuel, including the special tanks and connectors needed. The team initially used a commercially available electric motor for the prototype but is now working on an improved version, designed from scratch, she says, “which gives us a lot more flexibility.”

      As part of the project, team members are developing a kind of textbook describing what they did and how they carried out each step in the process of designing and fabricating this hydrogen electric fuel-cell bike. No such motorcycle yet exists as a commercial product, though a few prototypes have been built.

      That kind of guidebook to the process “just doesn’t exist,” Brennan says. She adds that “a lot of the technology development for hydrogen is either done in simulation or is still in the prototype stages, because developing it is expensive, and it’s difficult to test these kinds of systems.” One of the team’s goals for the project is to make everything available as an open-source design, and “we want to provide this bike as a platform for researchers and for education, where researchers can test ideas in both space- and funding-constrained environments.”

      Unlike a design built as a commercial product, Mehrotra says, “our vehicle is fully designed for research, so you can swap components in and out, and get real hardware data on how good your designs are.” That can help people work on implementing their new design ideas and help push the industry forward, he says.

      The few prototypes developed previously by some companies were inefficient and expensive, he says. “So far as we know, we are the first fully open-source, rigorously documented, tested and released-as-a-platform, [fuel cell] motorcycle in the world. No one else has made a motorcycle and tested it to the level that we have, and documented to the point that someone might actually be able to take this and scale it in the future, or use it in research.”

      He adds that “at the moment, this vehicle is affordable for research, but it’s not affordable yet for commercial production because the fuel cell is a very big, expensive component.” Doosan Fuel Cell, which provided the fuel cell for the prototype bike, produces relatively small and lightweight fuel cells mostly for use in drones. The company also produces hydrogen storage and delivery systems.

      The project will continue to evolve, says team member Annika Marschner, a sophomore in mechanical engineering. “It’s sort of an ongoing thing, and as we develop it and make changes, make it a stronger, better bike, it will just continue to grow over the years, hopefully,” she says.

      While the Electric Vehicle Team has until now focused on battery-powered vehicles, Marschner says, “Right now we’re looking at hydrogen because it seems like something that’s been less explored than other technologies for making sustainable transportation. So, it seemed like an exciting thing for us to offer our time and effort to.”

      Making it all work has been a long process. The team is using a frame from a 1999 motorcycle, with many custom-made parts added to support the electric motor, the hydrogen tank, the fuel cell, and the drive train. “Making everything fit in the frame of the bike is definitely something we’ve had to think about a lot because there’s such limited space there. So, it required trying to figure out how to mount things in clever ways so that there are not conflicts,” she says.

      Marschner says, “A lot of people don’t really imagine hydrogen energy being something that’s out there being used on the roads, but the technology does exist.” She points out that Toyota and Hyundai have hydrogen-fueled vehicles on the market, and that some hydrogen fuel stations exist, mostly in California, Japan, and some European countries. But getting access to hydrogen, “for your average consumer on the East Coast, is a huge, huge challenge. Infrastructure is definitely the biggest challenge right now to hydrogen vehicles,” she says.

      She sees a bright future for hydrogen as a clean fuel to replace fossil fuels over time. “I think it has a huge amount of potential,” she says. “I think one of the biggest challenges with moving hydrogen energy forward is getting these demonstration projects actually developed and showing that these things can work and that they can work well. So, we’re really excited to bring it along further.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Security

      A new way to swiftly eliminate micropollutants from water

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

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

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

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

      Seeking a sustainable solution

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Supporting a “high-risk” project

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • 50 Shares99 Views

      in Energy

      Shell joins MIT.nano Consortium

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Energy

      MIT researchers outline a path for scaling clean hydrogen production

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      On definitions and disagreements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Getting policy right

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      in Energy

      AI meets climate: MIT Energy and Climate Hack 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      in Environment

      Hearing Amazônia: MIT musicians in Manaus, Brazil

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      On Dec. 13, the MIT community came together for the premiere of “We Are The Forest,” a documentary by MIT Video Productions that tells the story of the MIT musicians who traveled to the Brazilian Amazon seeking culture and scientific exchange.

      The film features performances by Djuena Tikuna, Luciana Souza, Anat Cohen, and Evan Ziporyn, with music by Antônio Carlos Jobim. Fred Harris conducts the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble and MIT Wind Ensemble and Laura Grill Jaye conducts the MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble.

      Play video

      “We Are The Forest”Video: MIT Video Productions

      The impact of ecological devastation in the Amazon reflects the climate crisis worldwide. During the Institute’s spring break in March 2023, nearly 80 student musicians became only the second student group from MIT to travel to the Brazilian Amazon. Inspired by the research and activism of Talia Khan ’20, who is currently a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, the trip built upon experiences of the 2020-21 academic year when virtual visiting artists Luciana Souza and Anat Cohen lectured on Brazilian music and culture before joining the November 2021 launch of Hearing Amazônia — The Responsibility of Existence.

      This consciousness-raising project at MIT, sponsored by the Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST), began with a concert featuring Brazilian and Amazonian music influenced by the natural world. The project was created and led by MIT director of wind and jazz ensembles and senior lecturer in music Frederick Harris Jr.

      The performance was part eulogy and part praise song: a way of bearing witness to loss, while celebrating the living and evolving cultural heritage of Amazonia. The event included short talks, one of which was by Khan. As the first MIT student to study in the Brazilian Amazonia (via MISTI-Brazil), she spoke of her research on natural botanical resins and traditional carimbó music in Santarém, Pará, Brazil. Soon after, as a Fulbright Scholar, Khan continued her research in Manaus, setting the stage for the most complex trip in the history of MIT Music and Theater Arts.“My experiences in the Brazilian Amazon changed my life,” enthuses Khan. “Getting to know Indigenous musicians and immersing myself in the culture of this part of the world helped me realize how we are all so connected.”

      “Talia’s experiences in Brazil convinced me that the Hearing Amazônia project needed to take a next essential step,” explains Harris. “I wanted to provide as many students as possible with a similar opportunity to bring their musical and scientific talents together in a deep and spiritual manner. She provided a blueprint for our trip to Manaus.”

      An experience of a lifetime

      A multitude of musicians from three MTA ensembles traveled to Manaus, located in the middle of the world’s largest rainforest and home to the National Institute of Amazonian Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, or INPA), the most important center for scientific studies in the Amazon region for international sustainability issues.

      Tour experiences included cultural/scientific exchanges with Indigenous Amazonians through Nobre Academia de Robótica and the São Sebastião community on the Tarumã Açu River, INPA, the Cultural Center of the Peoples of the Amazon, and the Museu da Amazônia. Musically, students connected with local Indigenous instrument builders and performed with the Amazonas State Jazz Orchestra and renowned vocalist and Indigenous activist Djuena Tikuna.

      “Hearing Amazônia: Arte ê Resistência,” a major concert in the famed 19th century opera house Teatro Amazonas, concluded the trip on March 31. The packed event featured the MIT Wind Ensemble, MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble, vocalist Luciana Souza, clarinetist Anat Cohen, MIT professor and composer-clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, and local musicians from Manaus. The program ended with “Nós Somos A Floresta (We Are The Forest) — Eware (Sacred Land) — Reflections on Amazonia,” a large-scale collaborative performance with Djuena Tikuna. The two songs were composed by Tikuna, with Eware newly arranged by Israeli composer-bassist Nadav Erlich for the occasion. It concluded with all musicians and audience members coming together in song: a moving and beautiful moment of mediation on the sacredness of the earth.

      “It was humbling to see the grand display of beauty and diversity that nature developed in the Amazon rainforest,” reflects bass clarinetist and MIT sophomore Richard Chen. “By seeing the bird life, sloths, and other species and the flora, and eating the fruits of the region, I received lessons on my harmony and connection to the natural world around us. I developed a deeper awareness of the urgency of resolving conflicts and stopping the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and to listening to and celebrating the stories and experiences of those around me.”

      Indigenous musicians embodying the natural world

      “The trip expanded the scope of what music means,” MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble member and biomedical researcher Autumn Geil explains. “It’s living the music, and you can’t feel that unless you put yourself in new experiences and get yourself out of your comfort zone.”

      Over two Indigenous music immersion days, students spent time listening to, and playing and singing with, musicians who broadened their scope of music’s relationship to nature and cultural sustainability. Indigenous percussionist and instrument builder Eliberto Barroncas and music producer-arranger César Lima presented contrasting approaches with a shared objective — connecting people to the natural world through Indigenous instruments.

      Barroncas played instruments built from materials from the rainforest and from found objects in Manaus that others might consider trash, creating ethereal tones bespeaking his life as one with nature. Students had the opportunity to play his instruments and create a spontaneous composition playing their own instruments and singing with him in a kind of “Amazonia jam session.”

      “Eliberto expressed that making music is visceral; it’s best when it comes from the gut and is tangible and coming from one’s natural environment. When we cannot understand each other using language, using words, logic and thinking, we go back to the body,” notes oboist and ocean engineer Michelle Kornberg ’20. “There’s a difference between teaching music as a skill you learn and teaching music as something you feel, that you experience and give — as a gift.”

      Over the pandemic, César Lima developed an app, “The Roots VR,” as a vehicle for people to discover over 100 Amazonia instruments. Users choose settings to interact with instruments and create pieces using a variety of instrumental combinations; a novel melding of technology with nature to expand the reach of these Indigenous instruments and their cultural significance.

      At the Cultural Center of the Peoples of the Amazon, students gathered around a tree, hand-in-hand singing with Djuena Tikuna, accompanied by percussionist Diego Janatã. “She spoke about being one of the first Indigenous musicians ever to sing in the Teatro Amazonas, which was built on the labor and blood of Indigenous people,” recalls flutist and atmospheric engineer Phoebe Lin, an MIT junior. “And then to hold hands and close our eyes and step back and forth; a rare moment of connection in a tumultuous world — it felt like we were all one.”

      Bringing the forest back to MIT

      On April 29, Djuena Tikuna made her MIT debut at “We Are the Forest — Music of Resilience and Activism,” a special concert for MIT President Sally Kornbluth’s inauguration, presenting music from the Teatro Amazonas event. Led and curated by Harris, the performance included new assistant professor in jazz and saxophonist-composer Miguel Zenón, director of the MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble; Laura Grill Jaye; and vocalist Sara Serpa, among others. 

      “Music unites people and through art we can draw the world’s attention to the most urgent global challenges such as climate change,” says Djuena Tikuna. “My songs bring the message that every seed will one day germinate to reforest hearts, because we are all from the same village.”

      Hearing Amazônia has set the stage for the blossoming of artistic and scientific collaborations in the Amazon and beyond.

      “The struggle of Indigenous peoples to keep their territories alive should concern us all, and it will take more than science and research to help find solutions for climate change,” notes President Kornbluth. “It will take artists, too, to unite us and raise awareness across all communities. The inclusivity and expressive power of music can help get us all rowing in the same direction — it’s a great way to encourage us all to care and act!” More