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    Affordable high-tech windows for comfort and energy savings

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    Imagine if the windows of your home didn’t transmit heat. They’d keep the heat indoors in winter and outdoors on a hot summer’s day. Your heating and cooling bills would go down; your energy consumption and carbon emissions would drop; and you’d still be comfortable all year ’round.AeroShield, a startup spun out of MIT, is poised to start manufacturing such windows. Building operations make up 36 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and today’s windows are a major contributor to energy inefficiency in buildings. To improve building efficiency, AeroShield has developed a window technology that promises to reduce heat loss by up to 65 percent, significantly reducing energy use and carbon emissions in buildings, and the company just announced the opening of a new facility to manufacture its breakthrough energy-efficient windows.“Our mission is to decarbonize the built environment,” says Elise Strobach SM ’17, PhD ’20, co-founder and CEO of AeroShield. “The availability of affordable, thermally insulating windows will help us achieve that goal while also reducing homeowner’s heating and cooling bills.” According to the U.S. Department of Energy, for most homeowners, 30 percent of that bill results from window inefficiencies.Technology development at MITResearch on AeroShield’s window technology began a decade ago in the MIT lab of Evelyn Wang, Ford Professor of Engineering, now on leave to serve as director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). In late 2014, the MIT team received funding from ARPA-E, and other sponsors followed, including the MIT Energy Initiative through the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design in 2016.The work focused on aerogels, remarkable materials that are ultra-porous, lighter than a marshmallow, strong enough to support a brick, and an unparalleled barrier to heat flow. Aerogels were invented in the 1930s and used by NASA and others as thermal insulation. The team at MIT saw the potential for incorporating aerogel sheets into windows to keep heat from escaping or entering buildings. But there was one problem: Nobody had been able to make aerogels transparent.An aerogel is made of transparent, loosely connected nanoscale silica particles and is 95 percent air. But an aerogel sheet isn’t transparent because light traveling through it gets scattered by the silica particles.After five years of theoretical and experimental work, the MIT team determined that the key to transparency was having the silica particles both small and uniform in size. This allows light to pass directly through, so the aerogel becomes transparent. Indeed, as long as the particle size is small and uniform, increasing the thickness of an aerogel sheet to achieve greater thermal insulation won’t make it less clear.Teams in the MIT lab looked at various applications for their super-insulating, transparent aerogels. Some focused on improving solar thermal collectors by making the systems more efficient and less expensive. But to Strobach, increasing the thermal efficiency of windows looked especially promising and potentially significant as a means of reducing climate change.The researchers determined that aerogel sheets could be inserted into the gap in double-pane windows, making them more than twice as insulating. The windows could then be manufactured on existing production lines with minor changes, and the resulting windows would be affordable and as wide-ranging in style as the window options available today. Best of all, once purchased and installed, the windows would reduce electricity bills, energy use, and carbon emissions.The impact on energy use in buildings could be considerable. “If we only consider winter, windows in the United States lose enough energy to power over 50 million homes,” says Strobach. “That wasted energy generates about 350 million tons of carbon dioxide — more than is emitted by 76 million cars.” Super-insulating windows could help home and building owners reduce carbon dioxide emissions by gigatons while saving billions in heating and cooling costs.The AeroShield storyIn 2019, Strobach and her MIT colleagues — Aaron Baskerville-Bridges MBA ’20, SM ’20 and Kyle Wilke PhD ’19 — co-founded AeroShield to further develop and commercialize their aerogel-based technology for windows and other applications. And in the subsequent five years, their hard work has attracted attention, recently leading to two major accomplishments.In spring 2024, the company announced the opening of its new pilot manufacturing facility in Waltham, Massachusetts, where the team will be producing, testing, and certifying their first full-size windows and patio doors for initial product launch. The 12,000 square foot facility will significantly expand the company’s capabilities, with cutting-edge aerogel R&D labs, manufacturing equipment, assembly lines, and testing equipment. Says Strobach, “Our pilot facility will supply window and door manufacturers as we launch our first products and will also serve as our R&D headquarters as we develop the next generation of energy-efficient products using transparent aerogels.”Also in spring 2024, AeroShield received a $14.5 million award from ARPA-E’s “Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential” (SCALEUP) program, which provides new funding to previous ARPA-E awardees that have “demonstrated a viable path to market.” That funding will enable the company to expand its production capacity to tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of units per year.Strobach also cites two less-obvious benefits of the SCALEUP award.First, the funding is enabling the company to move more quickly on the scale-up phase of their technology development. “We know from our fundamental studies and lab experiments that we can make large-area aerogel sheets that could go in an entry or patio door,” says Elise. “The SCALEUP award allows us to go straight for that vision. We don’t have to do all the incremental sizes of aerogels to prove that we can make a big one. The award provides capital for us to buy the big equipment to make the big aerogel.”Second, the SCALEUP award confirms the viability of the company to other potential investors and collaborators. Indeed, AeroShield recently announced $5 million of additional funding from existing investors Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and MassVentures, as well as new investor MassMutual Ventures. Strobach notes that the company now has investor, engineering, and customer partners.She stresses the importance of partners in achieving AeroShield’s mission. “We know that what we’ve got from a fundamental perspective can change the industry,” she says. “Now we want to go out and do it. With the right partners and at the right pace, we may actually be able to increase the energy efficiency of our buildings early enough to help make a real dent in climate change.” More

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      Getting to systemic sustainability

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      Add up the commitments from the Paris Agreement, the Glasgow Climate Pact, and various commitments made by cities, countries, and businesses, and the world would be able to hold the global average temperature increase to 1.9 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, says Ani Dasgupta, the president and chief executive officer of the World Resources Institute (WRI).While that is well above the 1.5 C threshold that many scientists agree would limit the most severe impacts of climate change, it is below the 2.0 degree threshold that could lead to even more catastrophic impacts, such as the collapse of ice sheets and a 30-foot rise in sea levels.However, Dasgupta notes, actions have so far not matched up with commitments.“There’s a huge gap between commitment and outcomes,” Dasgupta said during his talk, “Energizing the global transition,” at the 2024 Earth Day Colloquium co-hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative and MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and sponsored by the Climate Nucleus.Dasgupta noted that oil companies did $6 trillion worth of business across the world last year — $1 trillion more than they were planning. About 7 percent of the world’s remaining tropical forests were destroyed during that same time, he added, and global inequality grew even worse than before.“None of these things were illegal, because the system we have today produces these outcomes,” he said. “My point is that it’s not one thing that needs to change. The whole system needs to change.”People, climate, and natureDasgupta, who previously held positions in nonprofits in India and at the World Bank, is a recognized leader in sustainable cities, poverty alleviation, and building cultures of inclusion. Under his leadership, WRI, a global research nonprofit that studies sustainable practices with the goal of fundamentally transforming the world’s food, land and water, energy, and cities, adopted a new five-year strategy called “Getting the Transition Right for People, Nature, and Climate 2023-2027.” It focuses on creating new economic opportunities to meet people’s essential needs, restore nature, and rapidly lower emissions, while building resilient communities. In fact, during his talk, Dasgupta said that his organization has moved away from talking about initiatives in terms of their impact on greenhouse gas emissions — instead taking a more holistic view of sustainability.“There is no net zero without nature,” Dasgupta said. He showed a slide with a graphic illustrating potential progress toward net-zero goals. “If nature gets diminished, that chart becomes even steeper. It’s very steep right now, but natural systems absorb carbon dioxide. So, if the natural systems keep getting destroyed, that curve becomes harder and harder.”A focus on people is necessary, Dasgupta said, in part because of the unequal climate impacts that the rich and the poor are likely to face in the coming years. “If you made it to this room, you will not be impacted by climate change,” he said. “You have resources to figure out what to do about it. The people who get impacted are people who don’t have resources. It is immensely unfair. Our belief is, if we don’t do climate policy that helps people directly, we won’t be able to make progress.”Where to start?Although Dasgupta stressed that systemic change is needed to bring carbon emissions in line with long-term climate goals, he made the case that it is unrealistic to implement this change around the globe all at once. “This transition will not happen in 196 countries at the same time,” he said. “The question is, how do we get to the tipping point so that it happens at scale? We’ve worked the past few years to ask the question, what is it you need to do to create this tipping point for change?”Analysts at WRI looked for countries that are large producers of carbon, those with substantial tropical forest cover, and those with large quantities of people living in poverty. “We basically tried to draw a map of, where are the biggest challenges for climate change?” Dasgupta said.That map features a relative handful of countries, including the United States, Mexico, China, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Indonesia. Dasgupta said, “Our argument is that, if we could figure out and focus all our efforts to help these countries transition, that will create a ripple effect — of understanding technology, understanding the market, understanding capacity, and understanding the politics of change that will unleash how the rest of these regions will bring change.”Spotlight on the subcontinentDasgupta used one of these countries, his native India, to illustrate the nuanced challenges and opportunities presented by various markets around the globe. In India, he noted, there are around 3 million projected jobs tied to the country’s transition to renewable energy. However, that number is dwarfed by the 10 to 12 million jobs per year the Indian economy needs to create simply to keep up with population growth.“Every developing country faces this question — how to keep growing in a way that reduces their carbon footprint,” Dasgupta said.Five states in India worked with WRI to pool their buying power and procure 5,000 electric buses, saving 60 percent of the cost as a result. Over the next two decades, Dasgupta said, the fleet of electric buses in those five states is expected to increase to 800,000.In the Indian state of Rajasthan, Dasgupta said, 59 percent of power already comes from solar energy. At times, Rajasthan produces more solar than it can use, and officials are exploring ways to either store the excess energy or sell it to other states. But in another state, Jharkhand, where much of the country’s coal is sourced, only 5 percent of power comes from solar. Officials in Jharkhand have reached out to WRI to discuss how to transition their energy economy, as they recognize that coal will fall out of favor in the future, Dasgupta said.“The complexities of the transition are enormous in a country this big,” Dasgupta said. “This is true in most large countries.”The road aheadDespite the challenges ahead, the colloquium was also marked by notes of optimism. In his opening remarks, Robert Stoner, the founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, pointed out how much progress has been made on environmental cleanup since the first Earth Day in 1970. “The world was a very different, much dirtier, place in many ways,” Stoner said. “Our air was a mess, our waterways were a mess, and it was beginning to be noticeable. Since then, Earth Day has become an important part of the fabric of American and global society.”While Dasgupta said that the world presently lacks the “orchestration” among various stakeholders needed to bring climate change under control, he expressed hope that collaboration in key countries could accelerate progress.“I strongly believe that what we need is a very different way of collaborating radically — across organizations like yours, organizations like ours, businesses, and governments,” Dasgupta said. “Otherwise, this transition will not happen at the scale and speed we need.” More

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      H2 underground

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      In 1987 in a village in Mali, workers were digging a water well when they felt a rush of air. One of the workers was smoking a cigarette, and the air caught fire, burning a clear blue flame. The well was capped at the time, but in 2012, it was tapped to provide energy for the village, powering a generator for nine years.The fuel source: geologic hydrogen.For decades, hydrogen has been discussed as a potentially revolutionary fuel. But efforts to produce “green” hydrogen (splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity), “grey” hydrogen (making hydrogen from methane and releasing the biproduct carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere), “brown” hydrogen (produced through the gasification of coal), and “blue” hydrogen (making hydrogen from methane but capturing the CO2) have thus far proven either expensive and/or energy-intensive. Enter geologic hydrogen. Also known as “orange,” “gold,” “white,” “natural,” and even “clear” hydrogen, geologic hydrogen is generated by natural geochemical processes in the Earth’s crust. While there is still much to learn, a growing number of researchers and industry leaders are hopeful that it may turn out to be an abundant and affordable resource lying right beneath our feet.“There’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty about this,” noted Robert Stoner, the founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, in his opening remarks at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Spring Symposium. “But the prospect of readily producible clean hydrogen showing up all over the world is a potential near-term game changer.”A new hope for hydrogenThis April, MITEI gathered researchers, industry leaders, and academic experts from around MIT and the world to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by geologic hydrogen in a daylong symposium entitled “Geologic hydrogen: Are orange and gold the new green?” The field is so new that, until a year ago, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s website incorrectly claimed that hydrogen only occurs naturally on Earth in compound forms, chemically bonded to other elements.“There’s a common misconception that hydrogen doesn’t occur naturally on Earth,” said Geoffrey Ellis, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He noted that natural hydrogen production tends to occur in different locations from where oil and natural gas are likely to be discovered, which explains why geologic hydrogen discoveries have been relatively rare, at least until recently.“Petroleum exploration is not targeting hydrogen,” Ellis said. “Companies are simply not really looking for it, they’re not interested in it, and oftentimes they don’t measure for it. The energy industry spends billions of dollars every year on exploration with very sophisticated technology, and still they drill dry holes all the time. So I think it’s naive to think that we would suddenly be finding hydrogen all the time when we’re not looking for it.”In fact, the number of researchers and startup energy companies with targeted efforts to characterize geologic hydrogen has increased over the past several years — and these searches have uncovered new prospects, said Mary Haas, a venture partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “We’ve seen a dramatic uptick in exploratory activity, now that there is a focused effort by a small community worldwide. At Breakthrough Energy, we are excited about the potential of this space, as well as our role in accelerating its progress,” she said. Haas noted that if geologic hydrogen could be produced at $1 per kilogram, this would be consistent with the DOE’s targeted “liftoff” point for the energy source. “If that happens,” she said, “it would be transformative.”Haas noted that only a small portion of identified hydrogen sites are currently under commercial exploration, and she cautioned that it’s not yet clear how large a role the resource might play in the transition to green energy. But, she said, “It’s worthwhile and important to find out.”Inventing a new energy subsectorGeologic hydrogen is produced when water reacts with iron-rich minerals in rock. Researchers and industry are exploring how to stimulate this natural production by pumping water into promising deposits.In any new exploration area, teams must ask a series of questions to qualify the site, said Avon McIntyre, the executive director of HyTerra Ltd., an Australian company focused on the exploration and production of geologic hydrogen. These questions include: Is the geology favorable? Does local legislation allow for exploration and production? Does the site offer a clear path to value? And what are the carbon implications of producing hydrogen at the site?“We have to be humble,” McIntyre said. “We can’t be too prescriptive and think that we’ll leap straight into success. We have a unique opportunity to stop and think about what this industry will look like, how it will work, and how we can bring together various disciplines.” This was a theme that arose multiple times over the course of the symposium: the idea that many different stakeholders — including those from academia, industry, and government — will need to work together to explore the viability of geologic hydrogen and bring it to market at scale.In addition to the potential for hydrogen production to give rise to greenhouse gas emissions (in cases, for instance, where hydrogen deposits are contaminated with natural gas), researchers and industry must also consider landscape deformation and even potential seismic implications, said Bradford Hager, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Earth Sciences in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.The surface impacts of hydrogen exploration and production will likely be similar to those caused by the hydro-fracturing process (“fracking”) used in oil and natural gas extraction, Hager said.“There will be unavoidable surface deformation. In most places, you don’t want this if there’s infrastructure around,” Hager said. “Seismicity in the stimulated zone itself should not be a problem, because the areas are tested first. But we need to avoid stressing surrounding brittle rocks.”McIntyre noted that the commercial case for hydrogen remains a challenge to quantify, without even a “spot” price that companies can use to make economic calculations. Early on, he said, capturing helium at hydrogen exploration sites could be a path to early cash flow, but that may ultimately serve as a “distraction” as teams attempt to scale up to the primary goal of hydrogen production. He also noted that it is not even yet clear whether hard rock, soft rock, or underwater environments hold the most potential for geologic hydrogen, but all show promise.“If you stack all of these things together,” McIntyre said, “what we end up doing may look very different from what we think we’re going to do right now.”The path aheadWhile the long-term prospects for geologic hydrogen are shrouded in uncertainty, most speakers at the symposium struck a tone of optimism. Ellis noted that the DOE has dedicated $20 million in funding to a stimulated hydrogen program. Paris Smalls, the co-founder and CEO of Eden GeoPower Inc., said “we think there is a path” to producing geologic hydrogen below the $1 per kilogram threshold. And Iwnetim Abate, an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering, said that geologic hydrogen opens up the idea of Earth as a “factory to produce clean fuels,” utilizing the subsurface heat and pressure instead of relying on burning fossil fuels or natural gas for the same purpose.“Earth has had 4.6 billion years to do these experiments,” said Oliver Jagoutz, a professor of geology in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “So there is probably a very good solution out there.”Alexis Templeton, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, made the case for moving quickly. “Let’s go to pilot, faster than you might think,” she said. “Why? Because we do have some systems that we understand. We could test the engineering approaches and make sure that we are doing the right tool development, the right technology development, the right experiments in the lab. To do that, we desperately need data from the field.”“This is growing so fast,” Templeton added. “The momentum and the development of geologic hydrogen is really quite substantial. We need to start getting data at scale. And then, I think, more people will jump off the sidelines very quickly.”  More

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      Q&A: Three Tata Fellows on the program’s impact on themselves and the world

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      The Tata Fellowship at MIT gives graduate students the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research and work with real-world applications in developing countries. Part of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, this fellowship contributes to the center’s goal of designing appropriate, practical solutions for resource-constrained communities. Three Tata Fellows — Serena Patel, Rameen Hayat Malik, and Ethan Harrison — discuss the impact of this program on their research, perspectives, and time at MIT.

      Serena Patel

      Serena Patel graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in energy engineering and a minor in energy and resources. She is currently pursuing her SM in technology and policy at MIT and is a Tata Fellow focusing on decarbonization in India using techno-economic modeling. Her interest in the intersection of technology, policy, economics, and social justice led her to attend COP27, where she experienced decision-maker and activist interactions firsthand.

      Q: How did you become interested in the Tata Fellowship, and how has it influenced your time at MIT?

      A: The Tata Center appealed to my interest in searching for creative, sustainable energy technologies that center collaboration with local-leading organizations. It has also shaped my understanding of the role of technology in sustainable development planning. Our current energy system disproportionately impacts marginalized communities, and new energy systems have the potential to perpetuate and/or create inequities. I am broadly interested in how we can put people at the core of our technological solutions and support equitable energy transitions. I specifically work on techno-economic modeling to analyze the potential for an early retirement of India’s large coal fleet and conversion to long-duration thermal energy storage. This could mitigate job losses from rapid transitions, support India’s energy system decarbonization plan, and provide a cost-effective way to retire stranded assets.

      Q: Why is interdisciplinary study important to real-world solutions for global communities, and how has working at the intersection of technology and policy influenced your research?

      A: Technology and policy work together in mediating and regulating the world around us. Technological solutions can be disruptive in all the good ways, but they can also do a lot of harm and perpetuate existing inequities. Interdisciplinary studies are important to mitigate these interrelated issues so innovative ideas in the ivory towers of Western academia do not negatively impact marginalized communities. For real-world solutions to positively impact individuals, marginalized communities need to be centered within the research design process. I think the research community’s perspective on real-world, global solutions is shifting to achieve these goals, but much work remains for resources to reach the right communities.

      The energy space is especially fascinating because it impacts everyone’s quality of life in overt or nuanced ways. I’ve had the privilege of taking classes that sit at the intersection of energy technology and policy, involving land-use law, geographic representation, energy regulation, and technology policy. In general, working at the intersection of technology and policy has shaped my perspective on how regulation influences widespread technology adoption and the overall research directions and assumptions in our energy models.

      Q: How has your experience at COP27 influenced your approach to your research?

      A: Attending COP27 at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, last November influenced my understanding of the role of science, research, and activism in climate negotiations and action. Science and research are often promoted as necessary for sharing knowledge at the higher levels, but they were also used as a delay tactic by negotiators. I heard how institutional bodies meant to support fair science and research often did not reach intended stakeholders. Lofty goals or financial commitments to ensure global climate stability and resilience still lacked implementation and coordination with deep technology transfer and support. On the face of it, these agreements have impact and influence, but I heard many frustrations over the lack of tangible, local support. This has driven my research to be as context-specific as possible, to provide actionable insights and leverage different disciplines.

      I also observed the role of activism in the negotiations. Decision-makers are accountable to their country, and activists are spreading awareness and bringing transparency to the COP process. As a U.S. citizen, I suddenly became more aware of how political engagement and awareness in the country could push the boundaries of international climate agreements if the government were more aligned on climate action.

      Rameen Hayat Malik

      Rameen Hayat Malik graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering and a Bachelor of Laws. She is currently pursuing her SM in technology and policy and is a Tata Fellow researching the impacts of electric vehicle (EV) battery production in Indonesia. Originally from Australia, she first became interested in the geopolitical landscape of resources trade and its implications for the clean energy transition while working in her native country’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

      Q: How did you become interested in the Tata Fellowship, and how has it influenced your time at MIT?

      A: I came across the Tata Fellowship while looking for research opportunities that aligned with my interest in understanding how a just energy transition will occur in a global context, with a particular focus on emerging economies. My research explores the techno-economic, social, and environmental impacts of nickel mining in Indonesia as it seeks to establish itself as a major producer of EV batteries. The fellowship’s focus on community-driven research has given me the freedom to guide the scope of my research. It has allowed me to integrate a community voice into my work that seeks to understand the impact of this mining on forest-dependent communities, Indigenous communities, and workforce development.

      Q: Battery technology and production are highly discussed in the energy sector. How does your research on Indonesia’s battery production contribute to the current discussion around batteries, and what drew you to this topic?

      A: Indonesia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal, while also having one of the largest nickel reserves in the world — a key mineral for EV battery production. This presents an exciting opportunity for Indonesia to be a leader in the energy transition, as it both seeks to phase out coal production and establish itself as a key supplier of critical minerals. It is also an opportunity to actually apply principles of a just transition to the region, which seeks to repurpose and re-skill existing coal workforces, to bring Indigenous communities into the conversation around the future of their lands, and to explore whether it is actually possible to sustainably and ethically produce nickel for EV battery production.

      I’ve always seen battery technologies and EVs as products that, at least today, are accessible to a small, privileged customer base that can afford such technologies. I’m interested in understanding how we can make such products more widely affordable and provide our lowest-income communities with the opportunities to actively participate in the transition — especially since access to transportation is a key driver of social mobility. With nickel prices impacting EV prices in such a dramatic way, unlocking more nickel supply chains presents an opportunity to make EV batteries more accessible and affordable.

      Q: What advice would you give to new students who want to be a part of real-world solutions to the climate crisis?

      A: Bring your whole self with you when engaging these issues. Quite often we get caught up with the technology or modeling aspect of addressing the climate crisis and forget to bring people and their experiences into our work. Think about your positionality: Who is your community, what are the avenues you have to bring that community along, and what privileges do you hold to empower and amplify voices that need to be heard? Find a piece of this complex puzzle that excites you, and find opportunities to talk and listen to people who are directly impacted by the solutions you are looking to explore. It can get quite overwhelming working in this space, which carries a sense of urgency, politicization, and polarization with it. Stay optimistic, keep advocating, and remember to take care of yourself while doing this important work.

      Ethan Harrison

      After earning his degree in economics and applied science from the College of William and Mary, Ethan Harrison worked at the United Nations Development Program in its Crisis Bureau as a research officer focused on conflict prevention and predictive analysis. He is currently pursuing his SM in technology and policy at MIT. In his Tata Fellowship, he focuses on the impacts of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on global vulnerability and the global energy market.

      Q: How did you become interested in the Tata Fellowship, and how has it influenced your time at MIT?

      A: Coming to MIT, one of my chief interests was figuring out how we can leverage gains from technology to improve outcomes and build pro-poor solutions in developing and crisis contexts. The Tata Fellowship aligned with many of the conclusions I drew while working in crisis contexts and some of the outstanding questions that I was hoping to answer during my time at MIT, specifically: How can we leverage technology to build sustainable, participatory, and ethically grounded interventions in these contexts?

      My research currently examines the secondary impacts of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on low- and middle-income countries — especially fragile states — with a focus on shocks in the global energy market. This includes the development of a novel framework that systematically identifies factors of vulnerability — such as in energy, food systems, and trade dependence — and quantitatively ranks countries by their level of vulnerability. By identifying the specific mechanisms by which these countries are vulnerable, we can develop a map of global vulnerability and identify key policy solutions that can insulate countries from current and future shocks.

      Q: I understand that your research deals with the relationship between oil and gas price fluctuation and political stability. What has been the most surprising aspect of this relationship, and what are its implications for global decarbonization?

      A: One surprising aspect is the degree to which citizen grievances regarding price fluctuations can quickly expand to broader democratic demands and destabilization. In Sri Lanka last year and in Egypt during the Arab spring, initial protests around fuel prices and power outages eventually led to broader demands and the loss of power by heads of state. Another surprising aspect is the popularity of fuel subsidies despite the fact that they are economically regressive: They often comprise a large proportion of GDP in poor countries, disproportionately benefit higher-income populations, and leave countries vulnerable to fiscal stress during price spikes.

      Regarding implications for global decarbonization, one project we are pursuing examines the implications of directing financing from fuel subsidies toward investments in renewable energy. Countries that rely on fossil fuels for electricity have been hit especially hard 
by price spikes from the Ukraine-Russia conflict, especially since many were carrying costly fuel subsidies to keep the price of fuel and energy artificially low. Much of the international community is advocating for low-income countries to invest in renewables and reduce their fossil fuel burden, but it’s important to explore how global decarbonization can align with efforts to end energy poverty and other Sustainable Development Goals.

      Q: How does your research impact the Tata Center’s goal of transforming policy research into real-world solutions, and why is this important?

      A: The crisis in Ukraine has shifted the international community’s focus away from other countries in crisis, such as Yemen and Lebanon. By developing a global map of vulnerability, we’re building a large evidence base on which countries have been most impacted by this crisis. Most importantly, by identifying individual channels of vulnerability for each country, we can also identify the most effective policy solutions to insulate vulnerable populations from shocks. Whether that’s advocating for short-term social protection programs or identifying more medium-term policy solutions — like fuel banks or investment in renewables — we hope providing a detailed map of sources of vulnerability can help inform the global response to shocks imposed by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and post-Covid recovery. More

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      Bringing sustainable and affordable electricity to all

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      When MIT electrical engineer Reja Amatya PhD ’12 arrived in Rwanda in 2015, she was whisked off to a village. She saw that diesel generators provided power to the local health center, bank, and shops, but like most of rural Rwanda, Karambi’s 200 homes did not have electricity. Amatya knew the hilly terrain would make it challenging to connect the village to high-voltage lines from the capital, Kigali, 50 kilometers away.

      While many consider electricity a basic human right, there are places where people have never flipped a light switch. Among the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is global access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy by 2030. Recently, the U.N. reported that progress in global electrification had slowed due to the challenge of reaching those hardest to reach.

      Researchers from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid created Waya Energy Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup commercializing MIT-developed planning and analysis software, to help governments determine the most cost-effective ways to provide electricity to all their citizens.

      The researchers’ 2015 trip to Rwanda marked the beginning of four years of phone calls, Zoom meetings, and international travel to help the east African country — still reeling from the 1994 genocide that killed more than a million people — develop a national electrification strategy and extend its power infrastructure.

      Amatya, Waya president and one of five Waya co-founders, knew that electrifying Karambi and the rest of the country would provide new opportunities for work, education, and connections — and the ability to charge cellphones, often an expensive and inconvenient undertaking.

      To date, Waya — with funding from the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank for Latin America, and the World Bank — has helped governments develop electrification plans in 22 countries on almost every continent, including in refugee camps in sub-Saharan Africa’s Sahel and Chad regions, where violence has led to 3 million internally displaced people.

      “With a modeling and visualization tool like ours, we are able to look at the entire spectrum of need and demand and say, ‘OK, what might be the most optimized solution?’” Amatya says.

      More than 15 graduate students and researchers from MIT and Comillas contributed to the development of Waya’s software under the supervision of Robert Stoner, the interim director at MITEI, and Ignacio Pérez-Arriaga, a visiting professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management from Comillas. Pérez-Arriaga looks at how changing electricity use patterns have forced utilities worldwide to rethink antiquated business models.

      The team’s Reference Electrification Model (REM) software pulls information from population density maps, satellite images, infrastructure data, and geospatial points of interest to determine where extending the grid will be most cost-effective and where other solutions would be more practical.

      “I always say we are agnostic to the technology,” Amatya says. “Traditionally, the only way to provide long-term reliable access was through the grid, but that’s changing. In many developing countries, there are many more challenges for utilities to provide reliable service.”

      Off-grid solutions

      Waya co-founder Stoner, who is also the founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, recognized early on that connecting homes to existing infrastructure was not always economically feasible. What’s more, billions of people with grid connections had unreliable access due to uneven regulation and challenging terrain.

      With Waya co-founders Andres Gonzalez-Garcia, a MITEI affiliate researcher, and Professor Fernando de Cuadra Garcia of Comillas, Pérez-Arriaga and Stoner led a team that developed a set of principles to guide universal regional electrification. Their approach — which they dubbed the Integrated Distribution Framework — incorporates elements of optimal planning as well as novel business models and regulation. Getting all three right is “necessary,” Stoner says, “if you want a viable long-term outcome.”

      Amatya says, “Initially, we designed REM to understand what the level of demand is in these countries with very rural and poor populations, and what the system should look like to serve it. We took a lot of that input into developing the model.” In 2019, Waya was created to commercialize the software and add consulting to the package of services the team provides.

      Now, in addition to advising governments and regulators on how to expand existing grids, Waya proposes options such as a mini-grid, powered by renewables like wind, hydropower, or solar, to serve single villages or large-scale mini-grid solutions for larger areas. In some cases, an even more localized, scalable solution is a mesh grid, which might consist of a single solar panel for a few houses that, over time, can be expanded and ultimately connected to the main grid.

      The REM software has been used to design off-grid systems for remote and mountainous regions in Uganda, Peru, Nigeria, Cambodia, Indonesia, India, and elsewhere. When Tata Power, India’s largest integrated power company, saw how well mini-grids would serve parts of east India, the company created a mini-grid division called Tata Renewables.

      Amatya notes that the REM software enables her to come up with an entire national electrification plan from her workspace in Cambridge. But site visits and on-the-ground partners are critical in helping the Waya team understand existing systems, engage with clients to assess demand, and identify stakeholders. In Haiti, an energy consultant reported that the existing grid had typically been operational only six out of every 24 hours. In Karambi, University of Rwanda students surveyed the village’s 200 families and helped lead a community-wide meeting.

      Waya connects with on-the-ground experts and agencies “who can engage directly with the government and other stakeholders, because many times those are the doors that we knock on,” Amatya says. “Local energy ministries, utilities, and regulators have to be open to regulatory change. They have to be open to working with financial institutions and new technology.”

      The goals of regulators, energy providers, funding agencies, and government officials must align in real time “to provide reliable access to energy for a billion people,” she says.

      Moving past challenges

      Growing up in Kathmandu, Amatya used to travel to remote villages with her father, an electrical engineer who designed cable systems for landlines for Nepal Telecom. She remembers being fascinated by the high-voltage lines crisscrossing Nepal on these trips. Now, she points out utility poles to her children and explains how the distribution lines carry power from local substations to customers.

      After majoring in engineering science and physics at Smith College, Amatya completed her PhD in electrical engineering at MIT in 2012. Within two years, she was traveling to off-grid communities in India as a research scientist exploring potential technologies for providing access. There were unexpected challenges: At the time, digitized geospatial data didn’t exist for many regions. In India in 2013, the team used phones to take pictures of paper maps spread out on tables. Team members now scour digital data available through Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other sources for useful geographical information. 

      It’s one thing to create a plan, Amatya says, but how it gets utilized and implemented becomes a big question. With all the players involved — funding agencies, elected officials, utilities, private companies, and regulators within the countries themselves — it’s sometimes hard to know who’s responsible for next steps.

      “Besides providing technical expertise, our team engages with governments to, let’s say, develop a financial plan or an implementation plan,” she says. Ideally, Waya hopes to stay involved with each project long enough to ensure that its proposal becomes the national electrification strategy of the country. That’s no small feat, given the multiple players, the opaque nature of government, and the need to enact a regulatory framework where none may have existed.

      For Rwanda, Waya identified areas without service, estimated future demand, and proposed the most cost-effective ways to meet that demand with a mix of grid and off-grid solutions. Based on the electrification plan developed by the Waya team, officials have said they hope to have the entire country electrified by 2024.

      In 2017, by the time the team submitted its master plan, which included an off-grid solution for Karambi, Amatya was surprised to learn that electrification in the village had already occurred — an example, she says, of the challenging nature of local planning.

      Perhaps because of Waya’s focus and outreach efforts, Karambi had become a priority. However it happened, Amatya is happy that Karambi’s 200 families finally have access to electricity. More

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      Processing waste biomass to reduce airborne emissions

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      To prepare fields for planting, farmers the world over often burn corn stalks, rice husks, hay, straw, and other waste left behind from the previous harvest. In many places, the practice creates huge seasonal clouds of smog, contributing to air pollution that kills 7 million people globally a year, according to the World Health Organization.

      Annually, $120 billion worth of crop and forest residues are burned in the open worldwide — a major waste of resources in an energy-starved world, says Kevin Kung SM ’13, PhD ’17. Kung is working to transform this waste biomass into marketable products — and capitalize on a billion-dollar global market — through his MIT spinoff company, Takachar.

      Founded in 2015, Takachar develops small-scale, low-cost, portable equipment to convert waste biomass into solid fuel using a variety of thermochemical treatments, including one known as oxygen-lean torrefaction. The technology emerged from Kung’s PhD project in the lab of Ahmed Ghoniem, the Ronald C. Crane (1972) Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.

      Biomass fuels, including wood, peat, and animal dung, are a major source of carbon emissions — but billions of people rely on such fuels for cooking, heating, and other household needs. “Currently, burning biomass generates 10 percent of the primary energy used worldwide, and the process is used largely in rural, energy-poor communities. We’re not going to change that overnight. There are places with no other sources of energy,” Ghoniem says.

      What Takachar’s technology provides is a way to use biomass more cleanly and efficiently by concentrating the fuel and eliminating contaminants such as moisture and dirt, thus creating a “clean-burning” fuel — one that generates less smoke. “In rural communities where biomass is used extensively as a primary energy source, torrefaction will address air pollution head-on,” Ghoniem says.

      Thermochemical treatment densifies biomass at elevated temperatures, converting plant materials that are typically loose, wet, and bulky into compact charcoal. Centralized processing plants exist, but collection and transportation present major barriers to utilization, Kung says. Takachar’s solution moves processing into the field: To date, Takachar has worked with about 5,500 farmers to process 9,000 metric tons of crops.

      Takachar estimates its technology has the potential to reduce carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by gigatons per year at scale. (“Carbon dioxide equivalent” is a measure used to gauge global warming potential.) In recognition, in 2021 Takachar won the first-ever Earthshot Prize in the clean air category, a £1 million prize funded by Prince William and Princess Kate’s Royal Foundation.

      Roots in Kenya

      As Kung tells the story, Takachar emerged from a class project that took him to Kenya — which explains the company’s name, a combination of takataka, which mean “trash” in Swahili, and char, for the charcoal end product.

      It was 2011, and Kung was at MIT as a biological engineering grad student focused on cancer research. But “MIT gives students big latitude for exploration, and I took courses outside my department,” he says. In spring 2011, he signed up for a class known as 15.966 (Global Health Delivery Lab) in the MIT Sloan School of Management. The class brought Kung to Kenya to work with a nongovernmental organization in Nairobi’s Kibera, the largest urban slum in Africa.

      “We interviewed slum households for their views on health, and that’s when I noticed the charcoal problem,” Kung says. The problem, as Kung describes it, was that charcoal was everywhere in Kibera — piled up outside, traded by the road, and used as the primary fuel, even indoors. Its creation contributed to deforestation, and its smoke presented a serious health hazard.

      Eager to address this challenge, Kung secured fellowship support from the MIT International Development Initiative and the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center to conduct more research in Kenya. In 2012, he formed Takachar as a team and received seed money from the MIT IDEAS Global Challenge, MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, and D-Lab to produce charcoal from household organic waste. (This work also led to a fertilizer company, Safi Organics, that Kung founded in 2016 with the help of MIT IDEAS. But that is another story.)

      Meanwhile, Kung had another top priority: finding a topic for his PhD dissertation. Back at MIT, he met Alexander Slocum, the Walter M. May and A. Hazel May Professor of Mechanical Engineering, who on a long walk-and-talk along the Charles River suggested he turn his Kenya work into a thesis. Slocum connected him with Robert Stoner, deputy director for science and technology at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and founding director of MITEI’s Tata Center for Technology and Design. Stoner in turn introduced Kung to Ghoniem, who became his PhD advisor, while Slocum and Stoner joined his doctoral committee.

      Roots in MIT lab

      Ghoniem’s telling of the Takachar story begins, not surprisingly, in the lab. Back in 2010, he had a master’s student interested in renewable energy, and he suggested the student investigate biomass. That student, Richard Bates ’10, SM ’12, PhD ’16, began exploring the science of converting biomass to more clean-burning charcoal through torrefaction.

      Most torrefaction (also known as low-temperature pyrolysis) systems use external heating sources, but the lab’s goal, Ghoniem explains, was to develop an efficient, self-sustained reactor that would generate fewer emissions. “We needed to understand the chemistry and physics of the process, and develop fundamental scaling models, before going to the lab to build the device,” he says.

      By the time Kung joined the lab in 2013, Ghoniem was working with the Tata Center to identify technology suitable for developing countries and largely based on renewable energy. Kung was able to secure a Tata Fellowship and — building on Bates’ research — develop the small-scale, practical device for biomass thermochemical conversion in the field that launched Takachar.

      This device, which was patented by MIT with inventors Kung, Ghoniem, Stoner, MIT research scientist Santosh Shanbhogue, and Slocum, is self-contained and scalable. It burns a little of the biomass to generate heat; this heat bakes the rest of the biomass, releasing gases; the system then introduces air to enable these gases to combust, which burns off the volatiles and generates more heat, keeping the thermochemical reaction going.

      “The trick is how to introduce the right amount of air at the right location to sustain the process,” Ghoniem explains. “If you put in more air, that will burn the biomass. If you put in less, there won’t be enough heat to produce the charcoal. That will stop the reaction.”

      About 10 percent of the biomass is used as fuel to support the reaction, Kung says, adding that “90 percent is densified into a form that’s easier to handle and utilize.” He notes that the research received financial support from the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab and the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, both at MIT. Sonal Thengane, another postdoc in Ghoniem’s lab, participated in the effort to scale up the technology at the MIT Bates Lab (no relation to Richard Bates).

      The charcoal produced is more valuable per ton and easier to transport and sell than biomass, reducing transportation costs by two-thirds and giving farmers an additional income opportunity — and an incentive not to burn agricultural waste, Kung says. “There’s more income for farmers, and you get better air quality.”

      Roots in India

      When Kung became a Tata Fellow, he joined a program founded to take on the biggest challenges of the developing world, with a focus on India. According to Stoner, Tata Fellows, including Kung, typically visit India twice a year and spend six to eight weeks meeting stakeholders in industry, the government, and in communities to gain perspective on their areas of study.

      “A unique part of Tata is that you’re considering the ecosystem as a whole,” says Kung, who interviewed hundreds of smallholder farmers, met with truck drivers, and visited existing biomass processing plants during his Tata trips to India. (Along the way, he also connected with Indian engineer Vidyut Mohan, who became Takachar’s co-founder.)

      “It was very important for Kevin to be there walking about, experimenting, and interviewing farmers,” Stoner says. “He learned about the lives of farmers.”

      These experiences helped instill in Kung an appreciation for small farmers that still drives him today as Takachar rolls out its first pilot programs, tinkers with the technology, grows its team (now up to 10), and endeavors to build a revenue stream. So, while Takachar has gotten a lot of attention and accolades — from the IDEAS award to the Earthshot Prize — Kung says what motivates him is the prospect of improving people’s lives.

      The dream, he says, is to empower communities to help both the planet and themselves. “We’re excited about the environmental justice perspective,” he says. “Our work brings production and carbon removal or avoidance to rural communities — providing them with a way to convert waste, make money, and reduce air pollution.”

      This article appears in the Spring 2022 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative. More

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      Vapor-collection technology saves water while clearing the air

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      About two-fifths of all the water that gets withdrawn from lakes, rivers, and wells in the U.S. is used not for agriculture, drinking, or sanitation, but to cool the power plants that provide electricity from fossil fuels or nuclear power. Over 65 percent of these plants use evaporative cooling, leading to huge white plumes that billow from their cooling towers, which can be a nuisance and, in some cases, even contribute to dangerous driving conditions.

      Now, a small company based on technology recently developed at MIT by the Varanasi Research Group is hoping to reduce both the water needs at these plants and the resultant plumes — and to potentially help alleviate water shortages in areas where power plants put pressure on local water systems.

      The technology is surprisingly simple in principle, but developing it to the point where it can now be tested at full scale on industrial plants was a more complex proposition. That required the real-world experience that the company’s founders gained from installing prototype systems, first on MIT’s natural-gas-powered cogeneration plant and then on MIT’s nuclear research reactor.

      In these demanding tests, which involved exposure to not only the heat and vibrations of a working industrial plant but also the rigors of New England winters, the system proved its effectiveness at both eliminating the vapor plume and recapturing water. And, it purified the water in the process, so that it was 100 times cleaner than the incoming cooling water. The system is now being prepared for full-scale tests in a commercial power plant and in a chemical processing plant.

      “Campus as a living laboratory”

      The technology was originally envisioned by professor of mechanical engineering Kripa Varanasi to develop efficient water-recovery systems by capturing water droplets from both natural fog and plumes from power plant cooling towers. The project began as part of doctoral thesis research of Maher Damak PhD ’18, with funding from the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design, to improve the efficiency of fog-harvesting systems like the ones used in some arid coastal regions as a source of potable water. Those systems, which generally consist of plastic or metal mesh hung vertically in the path of fogbanks, are extremely inefficient, capturing only about 1 to 3 percent of the water droplets that pass through them.

      Varanasi and Damak found that vapor collection could be made much more efficient by first zapping the tiny droplets of water with a beam of electrically charged particles, or ions, to give each droplet a slight electric charge. Then, the stream of droplets passes through a wire mesh, like a window screen, that has an opposite electrical charge. This causes the droplets to be strongly attracted to the mesh, where they fall away due to gravity and can be collected in trays placed below the mesh.

      Lab tests showed the concept worked, and the researchers, joined by Karim Khalil PhD ’18, won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition in 2018 for the basic concept. The nascent company, which they called Infinite Cooling, with Damak as CEO, Khalil as CTO, and Varanasi as chairperson, immediately went to work setting up a test installation on one of the cooling towers of MIT’s natural-gas-powered Central Utility Plant, with funding from the MIT Office of Sustainability. After experimenting with various configurations, they were able to show that the system could indeed eliminate the plume and produce water of high purity.

      Professor Jacopo Buongiorno in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering immediately spotted a good opportunity for collaboration, offering the use of MIT’s Nuclear Reactor Laboratory research facility for further testing of the system with the help of NRL engineer Ed Block. With its 24/7 operation and its higher-temperature vapor emissions, the plant would provide a more stringent real-world test of the system, as well as proving its effectiveness in an actual operating reactor licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an important step in “de-risking” the technology so that electric utilities could feel confident in adopting the system.

      After the system was installed above one of the plant’s four cooling towers, testing showed that the water being collected was more than 100 times cleaner than the feedwater coming into the cooling system. It also proved that the installation — which, unlike the earlier version, had its mesh screens mounted vertically, parallel to the vapor stream — had no effect at all on the operation of the plant. Video of the tests dramatically illustrates how as soon as the power is switched on to the collecting mesh, the white plume of vapor immediately disappears completely.

      The high temperature and volume of the vapor plume from the reactor’s cooling towers represented “kind of a worst-case scenario in terms of plumes,” Damak says, “so if we can capture that, we can basically capture anything.”

      Working with MIT’s Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, Varanasi says, “has been quite an important step because it helped us to test it at scale. … It really both validated the water quality and the performance of the system.” The process, he says, “shows the importance of using the campus as a living laboratory. It allows us to do these kinds of experiments at scale, and also showed the ability to sustainably reduce the water footprint of the campus.”

      Far-reaching benefits

      Power plant plumes are often considered an eyesore and can lead to local opposition to new power plants because of the potential for obscured views, and even potential traffic hazards when the obscuring plumes blow across roadways. “The ability to eliminate the plumes could be an important benefit, allowing plants to be sited in locations that might otherwise be restricted,” Buongiorno says. At the same time, the system could eliminate a significant amount of water used by the plants and then lost to the sky, potentially alleviating pressure on local water systems, which could be especially helpful in arid regions.

      The system is essentially a distillation process, and the pure water it produces could go into power plant boilers — which are separate from the cooling system — that require high-purity water. That might reduce the need for both fresh water and purification systems for the boilers.

      What’s more, in many arid coastal areas power plants are cooled directly with seawater. This system would essentially add a water desalination capability to the plant, at a fraction of the cost of building a new standalone desalination plant, and at an even smaller fraction of its operating costs since the heat would essentially be provided for free.

      Contamination of water is typically measured by testing its electrical conductivity, which increases with the amount of salts and other contaminants it contains. Water used in power plant cooling systems typically measures 3,000 microsiemens per centimeter, Khalil explains, while the water supply in the City of Cambridge is typically around 500 or 600 microsiemens per centimeter. The water captured by this system, he says, typically measures below 50 microsiemens per centimeter.

      Thanks to the validation provided by the testing on MIT’s plants, the company has now been able to secure arrangements for its first two installations on operating commercial plants, which should begin later this year. One is a 900-megawatt power plant where the system’s clean water production will be a major advantage, and the other is at a chemical manufacturing plant in the Midwest.

      In many locations power plants have to pay for the water they use for cooling, Varanasi says, and the new system is expected to reduce the need for water by up to 20 percent. For a typical power plant, that alone could account for about a million dollars saved in water costs per year, he says.

      “Innovation has been a hallmark of the U.S. commercial industry for more than six decades,” says Maria G. Korsnick, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, who was not involved in the research. “As the changing climate impacts every aspect of life, including global water supplies, companies across the supply chain are innovating for solutions. The testing of this innovative technology at MIT provides a valuable basis for its consideration in commercial applications.” More