News: Environment

A fix for foulants

Researchers devise a practical solution for preventing corrosive CRUD buildup in nuclear systems.  

Carbon Building Blocks

Coal could someday be used to make a variety of useful devices, researchers suggest.  

Finding local fertilizer alternatives

Professor Antoine Allanore and his research team have demonstrated a new method of fertilizer production can better suit the needs of farms in Africa and around the globe.  

A new way to provide cooling without power

MIT researchers have devised a new way of providing cooling on a hot sunny day, using inexpensive materials and requiring no fossil fuel-generated power. The passive system, which could be used to supplement other cooling systems to preserve food and medications in hot, off-grid locations, is essentially a high-tech version of a parasol.  

A new concept for thermal energy storage

More than half of all the energy used to power mechanical, chemical, and other processes is expelled into the environment as heat. Power plants, car engines, and industrial processes, for example, produce vast amounts of heat but use a relatively small fraction of it to actually do work. And…  

Aluminum production could get much better for the environment

You probably don’t think about aluminum very much. But you should. The ubiquitous metal is in airplanes, iPhones, and engine blocks made by General Motors, to name just a few uses. A 12-inch MacBook, for example, consists of over half a pound of aluminum. And since the late 19th century, the…  

Investing in Tech That’s Worth the Wait

Innovations in fields like energy and transportation often take time—and extra support—to develop. The Engine at MIT is helping them make the leap from the lab to the marketplace. Liquid separation wouldn’t top most people’s lists of world-changing technologies. But consider this: every…  

A new approach to rechargeable batteries

A type of battery first invented nearly five decades ago could catapult to the forefront of energy storage technologies, thanks to a new finding by researchers at MIT. The battery, based on electrodes made of sodium and nickel chloride and using a new type of metal mesh membrane, could be used…