Energy

“If one advance could transform America's prospects, it would be ready access, at scale, to a range of affordable, renewable, low-carbon energy technologies. Only one path will lead to such transformative technologies: research.”                                                                                       - Susan Hockfield

June 19, 2014

The Hoover Institution and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative (MITEI) released on June 17 the product of a multiyear collaboration: "Game Changers: Energy on the Move...

June 13, 2014

The co-founders of MIT spinout KGS Buildings have a saying: “All buildings are broken.” Energy wasted through faulty or inefficient equipment, they say, can lead to hundreds of thousands of...

June 09, 2014

New observations by researchers at MIT have revealed the inner workings of a type of electrode widely used in lithium-ion batteries. The new findings explain the unexpectedly high power and long...

June 02, 2014

A team led by Jacopo Buongiorno, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the Chicago Bridge and...

June 01, 2014

Nanotubes — microscopic cylinders the shape of drinking straws, but just one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair — have been the subject of intensive research, with potential uses ranging from...

May 29, 2014

While laptops continue to shrink in size and weight, the “power bricks” that charge them remain heavy and bulky. But now, MIT spinout FINsix has invented an adapter that’s roughly one-quarter the...

May 29, 2014

While laptops continue to shrink in size and weight, the “power bricks” that charge them remain heavy and bulky. But now, MIT spinout FINsix has invented an adapter that’s roughly one-quarter the...

May 28, 2014

You can quickly run out of fingers and toes counting the many ways we waste energy. Take our sewage systems, for example: The energetic content of wastewater is about 10 times the amount of...

May 27, 2014

Solar-cell technology has advanced rapidly, as hundreds of groups around the world pursue more than two dozen approaches using different materials, technologies, and approaches to improve...

May 23, 2014

Graphene’s promise as a material for new kinds of electronic devices, among other uses, has led researchers around the world to study the material in search of new applications. But one of the...

May 21, 2014

Vast amounts of excess heat are generated by industrial processes and by electric power plants; researchers around the world have spent decades seeking ways to harness some of this wasted energy....

May 15, 2014

For Altaeros Energies, a startup launched out of MIT, the sky’s the limit when it comes to wind power.

Founded by alumni Ben Glass ’08, SM ’10 and Adam Rein MBA ’10, Altaeros has...

May 13, 2014

Lorna Ogolla Omondi, from Kenya, has won an international Gates Cambridge Scholarship, a competitive full-cost scholarship that will allow her to pursue an MPhil in management science and...

May 13, 2014

Doctoral candidate Yan Chen wants to improve the world. She doesn’t say this directly, but her five years of research on catalytic surfaces for use in high-temperature fuel cells say it for her....

May 07, 2014

When sunlight shines on today’s solar cells, much of the incoming energy is given off as waste heat rather than electrical current. In a few materials, however, extra energy produces extra...

May 01, 2014

Copper is so valuable that its theft from worksites and power substations has become a national problem. Replacing the lost copper with new metal produced by the traditional method of cooking...

April 30, 2014

On May 10, the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship will convene accomplished entrepreneurs, successful investors, insightful scholars, and influential business leaders from...

April 30, 2014

Researchers around the world have been working to harness the unusual properties of graphene, a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms. But graphene lacks one important characteristic that would...

April 29, 2014

An MIT team whose integrated chip restores lost power to partially shaded solar panels — achieving double the energy capture improvement of similar technologies — won big on Monday night at the...

April 25, 2014

Each day, breweries and wineries produce thousands of gallons of wastewater, which is either poured down the drain or shipped to treatment facilities at a high cost to the companies.

...

April 16, 2014

A quasiparticle called an exciton — responsible for the transfer of energy within devices such as solar cells, LEDs, and semiconductor circuits — has been understood theoretically for decades. But...

April 16, 2014

When an earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant complex in 2011, neither the quake nor the inundation caused the ensuing contamination. Rather, it was the aftereffects —...

April 13, 2014

It’s an obvious truism, but one that may soon be outdated: The problem with solar power is that sometimes the sun doesn’t shine.

Now a team at MIT and Harvard University has come...

April 03, 2014

The electrochemical reactions inside the porous electrodes of batteries and fuel cells have been described by theorists, but never measured directly. Now, a team at MIT has figured out a way to...

April 02, 2014

Developing better methods for extracting materials – from everyday elements like copper, to rare earth elements like cerium, to essential nutrients like potassium — keeps MIT professor Antoine...

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