Financial Times reporter Simon Mundy and Kaori Yoshida spotlight Gradiant, an MIT startup that has developed new methods of handling industrial wastewater. “Gradiant promises customers that its technology will allow them to purify and reuse larger amounts of water, reducing the amount they need to source externally,” write Mundy and Yoshia.
Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman highlights Gradiant, an MIT startup that has developed a water purification system based on natural evaporation and rainfall cycles to clean wastewater at factories and manufacturing facilities.
Gradiant, an MIT startup, is using water technology to “help companies reduce water usage and clean up wastewater for reuse,” reports Simon Jessop for Reuters.
Quaise Energy, an MIT spinout, is developing a millimeter wave drill to “vaporize enough rock to create the world’s deepest holes and harvest geothermal energy at scale to satisfy human energy consumption without the need for fossil fuels,” reports Tim Newcomb for Popular Mechanics.
MIT startup Quaise Energy is developing an energy-based drill to make geothermal power more accessible, reports Catherine Clifford for CNBC. “The solution to drilling is to replace the mechanical grinding process with a pure energy-matter interaction,” says research scientist Paul Woskov. “Sufficient energy intensity will always melt-vaporize rock without need for physical tools.”
MIT spinoff Quaise Energy is transforming a millimeter-wave drilling technique from nuclear fusion experiments to tap geothermal energy, reports Mark Bergen for Bloomberg. “The company’s drill – it is building three prototypes in laboratories – is about 100 feet tall and looks like convential equipment used in the oil and gas industry,” writes Bergen. “Except built into the center of the drill is a gyrotron, an electrical vacuum designed to heat plasma in thermonuclear fusion machines.
Quaise Energy co-founder Carlos Araque BS ’01 MS ’02 speaks with Guy Raz, host of NPR’s How I Built This, about his time on the MIT Electric Vehicle Team, starting his company and the future of geothermal energy. “We would build these cars together, literally from scratch,“ said Araque about the EVT. "Very hands on, a lot of engineering went into that. And it [offered] very early experience with building things that work -- not only work, but work reliantly and consistently.”
Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with Andy Uhler of Marketplace about gasoline process and the crack spread, the difference between the cost of oil and the cost to refine it. “Increases in the crack spread that we’ve seen recently has been just supply and demand,” said Knittel.
Writing for The Conversation, John Reilly, co-director emeritus of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, outlines a roadmap for how the U.S. can meet the Biden administration’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions 50% by 2030 below 2005 levels. “By exploiting declining costs of zero- and low-carbon energy sources in a more aggressive and focused way, the U.S. can meet its target within eight years,” writes Reilly, “all while substantially reducing its dependence on fossil fuels, including high-priced gasoline, and cutting back the air pollution, climate and health impacts resulting from their combustion.”
Prof. Desiree Plata speaks with AccuWeather senior on-air meteorologist Geoff Cornish about her research in using zeolite clay to control and remove methane emissions from the air. “So, the really interesting thing about zeolite is it has these cool pore spaces so when you drop copper into those pore spaces it can grab onto a methane molecule and attach an oxygen atom to it and that helps convert that methane into carbon dioxide which is a much less potent greenhouse gas and so the net benefit to the climate can be quite dramatic,” explains Plata.
MIT researchers have found that zeolite, a material used to soak up odors in kitty litter, can be used to grab methane out of the air, reports Angely Mercado for Gizmodo. “Zeolite has tiny pores that act like sponge, and the clay is pretty multifunctional: It can help improve water retention in soil, and it’s found in natural kitty litter,” explains Mercado.
Wall Street Journal reporter Ryan Dezember visited Prof. Desiree Plata’s lab to learn more about her group’s work developing a new tool to help address climate change. Plata and her colleagues “soaked an odor-eating clay used in cat boxes in a copper solution to create a compound that they say snatches methane from passing air and turns it into carbon dioxide, a much less harmful greenhouse gas.” The new technique has the “potential to greatly reduce the amount of methane in the atmosphere and slow warming temperatures on the planet.”
Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Prof. Simon Johnson and Łukasz Rachel, a research fellow at Princeton University, make the case for implementing a price cap on the cost of Russian oil. “This price cap scheme could run alongside the phase-in of a full EU embargo,” they write. “If the coalition involves non-EU countries, this arrangement will guarantee that Putin receives less money for his oil even after the EU ban kicks in.”
Gas prices in Massachusetts have been spiking since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reports Kristina Rex for CBS Boston. “This is an artificially set price because OPEC controls how much oil they release,” says Prof. Jon Gruber. “[OPEC] like[s] the price going up, but if it goes up too much and people stop driving, it’s bad for them, so at some point they will release more oil and keep the price from going too high.”
In an article for The Los Angeles Times, Prof. Simon Johnson and Oleg Ustenko, an economic advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, make the case that the U.S. needs to lead the way in cutting off oil and gas sales from Russia. “The financial sanctions already in place are important but, by themselves, they will not degrade Russian fossil fuel production capacity,” they write. “The critical issue now is to save Ukrainian lives by cutting off all possible revenue to the Russian state.”