Sustainability

Symbrosia co-founder and CEO Alexia Akbay, second from left, and co-founder and CTO Jonathan Simonds, fourth from right, pose with members of MIT’s Water Club following the MIT Water Innovation Prize Thursday.

Water Innovation Prize goes to startups targeting methane and wastewater

Student-led startups Symbrosia and SiPure each awarded a $14,000 grand prize.

April 23, 2019

Kenya Water Resources Management Authority workers build a water quality monitoring station on the Mwache River.

Designing water infrastructure for climate uncertainty

A new method identifies opportunities to learn and adapt to changing temperature and precipitation trends.

April 22, 2019

RoCycle can detect if an object is paper, metal, or plastic. CSAIL researchers say that such a system could potentially help enable the convenience of single-stream recycling with lower contamination rates that confirm to China's new recycling standards.

Robots that can sort recycling

CSAIL’s "RoCycle" system uses in-hand sensors to detect if an object is paper, metal or plastic.

April 16, 2019

Steven Lacey, host of The Energy Gang, leads a live taping of the show during the MIT Energy Conference.

MIT Energy Conference explores changes to the grid in coming decades

Student-run event spans energy policy, carbon pricing, storage technologies, and the rise of renewables.

April 9, 2019

MIT researchers used these manganese oxide nanoparticles to catalyze the breakdown of water and the subsequent incorporation of oxygen into useful compounds called epoxides.

Shrinking the carbon footprint of a chemical in everyday objects

New method for synthesizing the epoxides found in plastics, textiles, and pharmaceuticals could be powered by electricity.

April 9, 2019

Janus emulsion droplets are captured in the process of changing form in response to the presence of contamination by a food pathogen in a lab setting. The emulsions can be viewed by the naked eye and, with the aid of a handheld sensor currently in development, can quantify the presence and amount of bacterial contamination in food.

MIT spinout seeks to transform food safety testing

An affordable, easy-to-use handheld sensor, soon to enter the market, can indicate the presence of bacterial contaminants in food in seconds.

April 9, 2019

$Heavy trucks such as these 18-wheelers contribute a significant fraction of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. MIT researchers say these emissions could be drastically reduced by using flex-fuel plug-in hybrid powertrains instead of diesel engines.$

Engineers develop concept for hybrid heavy-duty trucks

Long-haul trucks with electric motors combined with gas-alcohol engines could slash pollution levels and greenhouse gases.

April 9, 2019

MIT researchers have developed a new polymer membrane that can dramatically improve the efficiency of natural gas purification, while reducing its environmental impact.

Greener, more efficient natural gas filtration

Novel membrane material removes more impurities, without the need for toxic solvents.

April 8, 2019

The researchers found that traditional long-term strategies, which employ rigid schedules for future road treatments, may overestimate total life-cycle costs.

Paving ahead: Model aims for infrastructure preservation

MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub researchers outline a new pavement maintenance model that accounts for future uncertainties in cost and deterioration.

April 8, 2019