Cleaner industry Archives - Phonesnews.com

November 7, 2025

MIT Energy Initiative launches Data Center Power Forum

With global power demand from data centers expected to more than double by 2030, the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) in September launched an effort that brings together MIT researchers and industry experts to explore innovative solutions for powering the data-driven future. At its annual research conference, MITEI announced the Data Center Power Forum, a targeted research effort for MITEI member companies interested in addressing the challenges of data center power demand. The Data Center Power Forum builds on lessons from MITEI’s May 2025 symposium on the energy to power the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) and focus panels related to data centers at the fall 2024 research conference.

In the United States, data centers consumed 4 percent of the country’s electricity in 2023, with demand expected to increase to 9 percent by 2030, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. Much of the growth in demand is from the increasing use of AI,

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October 18, 2025

New software designs eco-friendly clothing that can reassemble into new items

It’s hard to keep up with the ever-changing trends of the fashion world. What’s “in” one minute is often out of style the next season, potentially causing you to re-evaluate your wardrobe.

Staying current with the latest fashion styles can be wasteful and expensive, though. Roughly 92 million tons of textile waste are produced annually, including the clothes we discard when they go out of style or no longer fit. But what if we could simply reassemble our clothes into whatever outfits we wanted, adapting to trends and the ways our bodies change?

A team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Adobe are attempting to bring eco-friendly, versatile garments to life. Their new “Refashion” software system breaks down fashion design into modules — essentially, smaller building blocks — by allowing users to draw, plan,

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October 11, 2025

How to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ammonia production

Ammonia is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the world, used mostly as fertilizer, but also for the production of some plastics, textiles, and other applications. Its production, through processes that require high heat and pressure, accounts for up to 20 percent of all the greenhouse gases from the entire chemical industry, so efforts have been underway worldwide to find ways to reduce those emissions.

Now, researchers at MIT have come up with a clever way of combining two different methods of producing the compound that minimizes waste products, that, when combined with some other simple upgrades, could reduce the greenhouse emissions from production by as much as 63 percent, compared to the leading “low-emissions” approach being used today.

The new approach is described in the journal Energy & Fuels, in a paper by MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Director William H.

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October 2, 2025

Concrete “battery” developed at MIT now packs 10 times the power

Concrete already builds our world, and now it’s one step closer to powering it, too. Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black (with nanoscale particles), and electrolytes, electron-conducting carbon concrete (ec3, pronounced “e-c-cubed”) creates a conductive “nanonetwork” inside concrete that could enable everyday structures like walls, sidewalks, and bridges to store and release electrical energy. In other words, the concrete around us could one day double as giant “batteries.”

As MIT researchers report in a new PNAS paper, optimized electrolytes and manufacturing processes have increased the energy storage capacity of the latest ec3 supercapacitors by an order of magnitude. In 2023, storing enough energy to meet the daily needs of the average home would have required about 45 cubic meters of ec3, roughly the amount of concrete used in a typical basement. Now, with the improved electrolyte, that same task can be achieved with about 5 cubic meters,

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September 5, 2025

A greener way to 3D print stronger stuff

3D printing has come a long way since its invention in 1983 by Chuck Hull, who pioneered stereolithography, a technique that solidifies liquid resin into solid objects using ultraviolet lasers. Over the decades, 3D printers have evolved from experimental curiosities into tools capable of producing everything from custom prosthetics to complex food designs, architectural models, and even functioning human organs.

But as the technology matures, its environmental footprint has become increasingly difficult to set aside. The vast majority of consumer and industrial 3D printing still relies on petroleum-based plastic filament. And while “greener” alternatives made from biodegradable or recycled materials exist, they come with a serious trade-off: they’re often not as strong. These eco-friendly filaments tend to become brittle under stress, making them ill-suited for structural applications or load-bearing parts — exactly where strength matters most.

This trade-off between sustainability and mechanical performance prompted researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Hasso Plattner Institute to ask: Is it possible to build objects that are mostly eco-friendly,

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August 30, 2025

New self-assembling material could be the key to recyclable EV batteries

Today’s electric vehicle boom is tomorrow’s mountain of electronic waste. And while myriad efforts are underway to improve battery recycling, many EV batteries still end up in landfills.

A research team from MIT wants to help change that with a new kind of self-assembling battery material that quickly breaks apart when submerged in a simple organic liquid. In a new paper published in Nature Chemistry, the researchers showed the material can work as the electrolyte in a functioning, solid-state battery cell and then revert back to its original molecular components in minutes.

The approach offers an alternative to shredding the battery into a mixed, hard-to-recycle mass. Instead, because the electrolyte serves as the battery’s connecting layer, when the new material returns to its original molecular form, the entire battery disassembles to accelerate the recycling process.

“So far in the battery industry,

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August 19, 2025

A new model predicts how molecules will dissolve in different solvents

Using machine learning, MIT chemical engineers have created a computational model that can predict how well any given molecule will dissolve in an organic solvent — a key step in the synthesis of nearly any pharmaceutical. This type of prediction could make it much easier to develop new ways to produce drugs and other useful molecules.

The new model, which predicts how much of a solute will dissolve in a particular solvent, should help chemists to choose the right solvent for any given reaction in their synthesis, the researchers say. Common organic solvents include ethanol and acetone, and there are hundreds of others that can also be used in chemical reactions.

“Predicting solubility really is a rate-limiting step in synthetic planning and manufacturing of chemicals, especially drugs, so there’s been a longstanding interest in being able to make better predictions of solubility,” says Lucas Attia, an MIT graduate student and one of the lead authors of the new study.

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June 14, 2025

Decarbonizing steel is as tough as steel

The long-term aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change is to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and thereby reduce the frequency and severity of floods, droughts, wildfires, and other extreme weather events. Achieving that goal will require a massive reduction in global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions across all economic sectors. A major roadblock, however, could be the industrial sector, which accounts for roughly 25 percent of global energy- and process-related CO2 emissions — particularly within the iron and steel sector, industry’s largest emitter of CO2.

Iron and steel production now relies heavily on fossil fuels (coal or natural gas) for heat, converting iron ore to iron, and making steel strong. Steelmaking could be decarbonized by a combination of several methods, including carbon capture technology, the use of low- or zero-carbon fuels, and increased use of recycled steel.

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June 3, 2025

AI stirs up the recipe for concrete in MIT study

For weeks, the whiteboard in the lab was crowded with scribbles, diagrams, and chemical formulas. A research team across the Olivetti Group and the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) was working intensely on a key problem: How can we reduce the amount of cement in concrete to save on costs and emissions?

The question was certainly not new; materials like fly ash, a byproduct of coal production, and slag, a byproduct of steelmaking, have long been used to replace some of the cement in concrete mixes. However, the demand for these products is outpacing supply as industry looks to reduce its climate impacts by expanding their use, making the search for alternatives urgent. The challenge that the team discovered wasn’t a lack of candidates; the problem was that there were too many to sort through.

On May 17, the team, led by postdoc Soroush Mahjoubi, published an open-access paper in Nature’s Communications Materials outlining their solution.

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May 31, 2025

New fuel cell could enable electric aviation

Batteries are nearing their limits in terms of how much power they can store for a given weight. That’s a serious obstacle for energy innovation and the search for new ways to power airplanes, trains, and ships. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a solution that could help electrify these transportation systems.

Instead of a battery, the new concept is a kind of fuel cell — which is similar to a battery but can be quickly refueled rather than recharged. In this case, the fuel is liquid sodium metal, an inexpensive and widely available commodity. The other side of the cell is just ordinary air, which serves as a source of oxygen atoms. In between, a layer of solid ceramic material serves as the electrolyte, allowing sodium ions to pass freely through, and a porous air-facing electrode helps the sodium to chemically react with oxygen and produce electricity.

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