Energy and the Environment
by Dean Thomas L. Magnanti, Vol. 4, No. 2, March 2007
"Biomedicine has done amazing things for human health. Now we need to focus on planetary health. It's preventive medicine for the Earth, basically. The challenge is orders of magnitude greater."
– Sallie (Penny) Chisholm, MIT Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Biology, at MIT Museum Soap Box, November 2006
As I write in mid-February, our single major snowstorm this winter hit Boston with a relatively modest accumulation. But a day's drive from here, near where I grew up, upstate New Yorkers measured the snowfall in many feet, and the storm wrought great devastation there and in the Midwest. Only a few short weeks before, we had witnessed cherry blossoms on campus in January, while around the same time, cold temperatures ruined fruit crops in southern California.
Many are attributing dramatic changes in weather patterns both around the country and around the world in recent years to environmental changes. An MIT survey released last fall says that 50 percent of Americans now see climate change as our No. 1 environmental concern, up from three years ago when it ranked No. 6, and are asking: "What are we going to do about this?"
Speaking on how to begin immediately addressing global warming and achieving a sustainable energy future, Director of the Center for 21st Century Energy and Professor of Mechanical Engineering John Heywood has encouraged three broad approaches: conservation, improving mainstream technology, and finding new ways to produce and use energy. (See MIT World video.) Following Professor Heywood's lead (always a good idea!), I'd like to provide you with a sampling of activities on campus that are aligned with each of these approaches.
Early last summer, I wrote about "'Energy' for Energy," discussing the report of the MIT Energy Research Council and the School of Engineering's extensive involvement in energy research. How might some of our research lead to significant and signature contributions, especially in reducing environmental impact? Our faculty, researchers, and students across all departments have responded to the challenges in characteristically energetic fashion. Let's see how!
Conservation
- Professor Leon Glicksman, who holds appointments in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Architecture, is working with other researchers to develop computer-based tools to help architects design commercial buildings that use natural breezes rather than air-conditioning for cooling. Adopting such an approach could cut energy consumption by commercial buildings by as much as a third.
- Professor Timothy Gutowski and colleagues in Mechanical Engineering and the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity are working on various "green" projects, including efforts to move toward sustainable materials use, environmentally benign manufacturing processes, system analysis for environmental performance, and product design for recycling.
- Professor Randolph Kirchain, Jr. of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and the Engineering Systems Division (ESD) is researching the environmental and economic implications of materials selection and the sustainability of current and emerging materials systems in the life cycles of automobiles and electronics. He is conducting an extensive study of the automotive manufacturing system for reclaiming materials from end-of-life vehicles.
- Professor Sallie (Penny) Chisholm, who holds appointments both in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and in Biology, is working with phytoplanktons, organisms that play a critical role in climate control. Among these microbes in the sea are tiny, abundant photosynthetic cells that take carbon from the atmosphere and deposit it safely to the ocean floor -- the "ultimate recyclers."
Our students' efforts
Speaking of recycling, a group of engineering students is leading an initiative known as Biodiesel@MIT that proposes to process used vegetable oil on campus into certifiable biodiesel. The resultant fuel could then be pumped into the tanks of MIT's growing fleet of diesel-powered vehicles. The MIT team has won first place for colleges in a national contest sponsored by GE Ecoimagination and mtvU, MTV's 24-hour college network. Biodiesel@MIT hopes to be in operation by April.
You might have read about the MIT Vehicle Design Summit that a few of our students organized last summer. It drew 73 students from 21 countries to campus to work on designing and building vehicles that would travel at least 500 miles per gallon of fuel. A few months ago, close to 100 students gathered in a similar spirit to launch the "Student Generator" dedicated to "walking the talk" on issues of energy and the environment on campus. In fact, Biodiesel@MIT is one of many student-led efforts initially begun with the Generator, which was held again recently as the "Re-Generator." I'd encourage you to look at the list of working groups that have been formed. Truly, our students are motivated to make a difference.
Mainstream technologies
What are some of the approaches our faculty and researchers are pursuing to change or enhance mainstream technologies that could have a significant impact on energy and the environment?
- Professor Joel Clark of DMSE and ESD is creating a framework to analyze the dynamic behavior of supply, demand, and prices in mineral markets.
- Professor Paul Barton of Chemical Engineering is part of a team of MIT engineers working with a major energy company that has developed and is testing a mathematical model for use in natural gas production. The model could help with the more efficient production of that fuel and ensure a more reliable supply.
- MIT researchers have developed a half-sized gasoline engine that performs like a full-sized version while offering the fuel efficiency of a hybrid electric car, at a far lower cost (Professor John Heywood of Mechanical Engineering with colleagues from the Plasma Science and Fusion Center). Currently being tested and further developed with collaborators at Ford Motor Company, the small engine controls the injection of ethanol directly into its cylinders when there's a need for additional power.
- A team led by Aeronautics and Astronautics Professor Edward Greitzer in collaboration with Cambridge University researchers has proposed a conceptual design for a silent, environmentally friendly passenger plane. Unveiled a few months ago, the design could lead to significant reduction in airplane noise with the potential for nearly a 25 percent increase in fuel efficiency.
- Along with other MIT colleagues, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture Paul Sclavounos has proposed a design for deep-sea wind turbines that would be built on large floating structures, like those currently used for deep-sea oil and gas exploration. Such an approach would allow giant windmills to be installed farther out to sea than currently proposed offshore wind-farms and located where the winds are strong and steady and the structures would be out of sight from those onshore.
- Professor Jacopo Buongiorno of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) is leading an effort that uses nanofluids to change the thermal properties of water, potentially contributing to nuclear power plants' safety while increasing their capacity for energy production. In addition, Dr. Pavel Hejzlar and Professor Mujid Kazimi, also of NSE, are working with changing the shape of the fuel for one kind of nuclear reactor – the pressurized water reactor (PWR) – a change that could lead to more than a 50 percent increase in the power that could be extracted from a unit volume of the reactor core.
A number of our research efforts that look to environmental impact also concern the problem of what to do with carbon dioxide, one of the major greenhouse gases indicated in global climate change.
- NSE Professors Mujid Kazimi and Andrew Kadak and Professor Emeritus Michael Driscoll are investigating how to use nuclear energy to reduce CO2 emissions from the transportation sector. They are examining the role that nuclear plants might play in supplying heat and/or hydrogen extracted from water to replace natural gas as a source for energy and also the use of hydrogen for extraction of unconventional oil sources (such as Canadian tar sands) and production of usable fuels at refineries.
- Professor Donald Sadoway of DMSE is leading a team of MIT engineers that has demonstrated a process for iron production that eliminates the greenhouse gases usually generated. Producing iron by carbon-free molten oxide electrolysis generates no carbon dioxide; only oxygen is released.
- In CEE, Professor Charles Harvey is researching how deep-sea sediments might safely store man-made carbon dioxide, potentially sealing the nation's emissions below the surface for thousands of years to come. Also in CEE, Professor Ruben Juanes, along with research collaborators from two other universities, has proposed a process for capturing CO2 emissions from a power plant and injecting the gas into a natural sublayer in the ground consisting of porous rock, saturated with saltwater. There it would be trapped naturally as tiny bubbles and safely stored.
- When cement, a key component of concrete, the world's most widely used building material, is manufactured, it releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—about 5 to 10 percent of the world's total emissions. Professor Franz-Josef Ulm of CEE and Georgios Constantinides, a postdoctoral researcher in DMSE, are investigating the behavior of the nanostructure of cement, in hopes that a different mineral or nanoengineered substitute could be used to produce a material with the same packing density as concrete but without requiring the same high temperatures during production that currently result in high CO2 emissions.
New ways to produce and use energy
Finally, let me offer a few examples from among our faculty and researchers' investigations that could have a significant impact on the environment through new methods of energy production and use.
- Recently, an MIT-led panel of energy experts, geologists, and drilling specialists from around the world released a comprehensive study that indicates that "heat mining" could provide a substantial portion of our nation's energy needs. Led by Professor Jefferson Tester of Chemical Engineering, the study states that mining the immense stores of heat that are stored as thermal energy in the Earth's rock crust could supply a significant part of future U.S. electricity needs, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact.
- MIT researchers in the laboratories of Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos of Chemical Engineering and Professor Gerald Fink of the Whitehead Institute have developed a new strain of yeast that can improve the speed and efficiency of producing ethanol. Facilitating an improved process for the production of ethanol could aid in making biofuels a significant contributor to the country's energy resources.
- Professor Angela Belcher, who holds appointments both in DMSE and in Biological Engineering, is investigating ancient ocean organisms as a possible large source of clean energy. Her research at the nano-scale seeks to direct the self-construction of these organisms by manipulating DNA to create a kind of energy generator that would also ensure environmentally friendly processing, producing little waste.
Conclusion
In providing these brief snapshots, I hope I've conveyed some of the breadth and depth of our efforts in energy and the environment, although this is not an exhaustive list. Although I've focused here on our research efforts, we also have a robust portfolio of educational offerings. Take a look at the database of environmental classes developed for the MIT community by the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment.
I hope this has provided you a glimpse into the wide-ranging, exciting, and important work being conducted on campus. Energy and the environment are among the most pressing problems facing society. As such, they are topics that the MIT School of Engineering should, indeed, must, aggressively address.