Credit: Oksana Bali / Maksim Safaniuk / Ksolstudios via Shutterstock
The MIT Startup Exchange was created more than eight years ago to support MIT-connected startups as they grow and help solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. Here are eight of the exchange’s sustainability-focused startups that were featured at last month’s 2024 MIT Sustainability Conference.
3D Architech
Market pain points: Data centers could consume 13% of the world’s electricity by 2030. And 40% of the electricity consumed by data centers comes from their heat-sink cooling systems. These systems have inefficient fluid flow because their design is optimized only at the millimeter scale.
Solution: A lithography-based metal 3D printing system that optimizes heat sink design at the micrometer scale.
How it works: A light-based 3D printer can be used to create a 3D structure made of proprietary gel materials that is then converted into metal. Compared with traditionally manufactured heat sinks, 3D Architech’s optimized structures have more surface area for improved cooling performance. This design cuts almost 60% of the electricity cost for cooling and improves the output of green hydrogen production by 30%.
Allonnia
Market pain point: Electrification can’t happen without greater quantities of metals, particularly rare earth elements (REEs) like copper, lithium, cobalt, and nickel. But the mining industry accounts for 10% to 20% of global carbon emissions today. Currently, 90% to 95% of the REE global supply is controlled by China, which uses a process that is environmentally and chemically intensive to extract those REEs.
Solution: Recovering REEs from mine-impacted water using proteins.
How it works: Allonnia uses a protein called lanmodulin, which is attached to beads that are put in a column akin to an ion exchange column. Mine-impacted water is run through the column, where the proteins extract the REEs. The proteins can be reused for up to 10 cycles.
Electrified Thermal Solutions
Market pain point: There are no affordable options for zero-carbon electric heating systems, especially for industry.
Solution: The Joule Hive Thermal Battery, made of electrically conductive fire bricks.
How it works: The thermal battery takes in electricity straight through the conductive bricks and heats them up almost to flame temperature. Then air or other gas flows straight through the brick chamber and comes out hot — at up to 1,800 degrees Celsius — without any materials oxidizing, burning out, or breaking down. Electrified Thermal Solutions claims that this process is at least three times cheaper than producing hydrogen.
Emvolon
Market pain point: Liquid green fuels — fuels that are produced from renewable biological sources and act as a substitute for fossil fuels — are needed to decarbonize sectors that cannot electrify, such as shipping and aviation. However, producing liquid green fuels and chemicals at a reasonable cost has been difficult.
Solution: Converting methane emissions into liquid green fuels with a portable, modular chemical plant located on-site, eliminating the need for additional infrastructure.
How it works: Emvolon repurposes internal combustion engines as small-scale compressors and reactors. This way, it can essentially fit a chemical plant into a portable 40-foot container. The container can be placed in a landfill, farm, or industrial plant to convert methane emissions into green methanol — for which there is an established market currently valued at $40 billion. Methanol is growing exponentially as a potential green fuel for shipping.
Femto Energy
Market pain point: Current energy alternatives — wind, solar, or even nuclear on the grid — are often not easily scalable or adaptable to industrial processes or remote, off-grid locations.
Solution: A transportable, air-cooled nuclear battery that can operate for three to 10 years without refueling.
How it works: Femto Energy is working with established nuclear reactor companies to design a small nuclear fission reactor that’s zero-carbon in operation. The energy density of the fuel is millions of times higher than that of fossil fuel, so there is no need for frequent refueling. The nuclear batteries can be air-cooled, so they don’t need to be in proximity to a body of water, and they can fit in shipping containers, so they’re easily and safely transportable. While nuclear energy is not the cheapest option, costs become quite predictable once a system has been built.
Helix Carbon
Market pain point: A third of global carbon emissions comes from heavy industry. With the rise of carbon taxes and regulations around the world, production costs have increased significantly.
Solution: An electrochemical system that takes carbon dioxide from flue gas and converts it into a variety of value-added industrial gases.
How it works: The carbon dioxide flows into a modular, self-contained carbon-capture and ‑conversion system. The system converts carbon dioxide into industrial fuels. This way, companies don’t need to source these gases from coal or natural gas, and transportation costs are eliminated. The system can run for thousands of hours.
Noya
Market pain point: Removing historic emissions through carbon capture is an industry that needs to be scaled by about 50% year over year for the next 25 years in order to meet UN climate targets.
Solution: A gigaton-scale direct air carbon capture system that’s all-electric, interruptible, and water-positive.
How it works: The system works by moving air into contact with material that’s reactive with both carbon dioxide and water. Electricity is added to release carbon dioxide and water from the material. The resulting carbon dioxide is injected underground for permanent removal and storage.
Sesame Sustainability
Market pain point: Planning a sustainability project, whether it’s a new asset deployment or a change in assets, is a difficult task. Different teams and stakeholders need to come together, create a scenario analysis, and make decisions from an informed perspective.
Solution: A software platform that streamlines assessments of different technologies, supply chains, renewable integrations, and more.
How it works: The platform layers life cycle assessment and cost analysis so that companies can calculate Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions for all possible project pathways. All models are first-principles- and physics-based.
