Manufacturing had an enormous summer season. The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into legislation in August, represents an enormous funding in U.S. home manufacturing. The act goals to drastically broaden the U.S. semiconductor trade, strengthen provide chains, and put money into R&D for brand new technological breakthroughs. In accordance with John Hart, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productiveness at MIT, the CHIPS Act is simply the most recent instance of considerably elevated curiosity in manufacturing in recent times.
“You may have a number of forces working collectively: reflections from the pandemic’s influence on provide chains, the geopolitical scenario all over the world, and the urgency and significance of sustainability,” says Hart. “This has now aligned incentives amongst authorities, trade, and the funding group to speed up innovation in manufacturing and industrial expertise.”
Hand-in-hand with this elevated deal with manufacturing is a have to prioritize sustainability.
Roughly one-quarter of greenhouse fuel emissions got here from trade and manufacturing in 2020. Factories and vegetation also can deplete native water reserves and generate huge quantities of waste, a few of which could be poisonous.
To handle these points and drive the transition to a low-carbon economic system, new merchandise and industrial processes have to be developed alongside sustainable manufacturing applied sciences. Hart sees mechanical engineers as taking part in an important position on this transition.
“Mechanical engineers can uniquely clear up important issues that require next-generation {hardware} applied sciences, and know find out how to deliver their options to scale,” says Hart.
A number of fast-growing corporations based by school and alumni from MIT’s Division of Mechanical Engineering supply options for manufacturing’s environmental drawback, paving the trail for a extra sustainable future.
Gradiant: Cleantech water options
Manufacturing requires water, and plenty of it. A medium-sized semiconductor fabrication plant makes use of upward of 10 million gallons of water a day. In a world more and more tormented by droughts, this dependence on water poses a significant problem.
Gradiant provides an answer to this water drawback. Co-founded by Anurag Bajpayee SM ’08, PhD ’12 and Prakash Govindan PhD ’12, the corporate is a pioneer in sustainable — or “cleantech” — water initiatives.
As doctoral college students within the Rohsenow Kendall Warmth Switch Laboratory, Bajpayee and Govindan shared a pragmatism and penchant for motion. They each labored on desalination analysis — Bajpayee with Professor Gang Chen and Govindan with Professor John Lienhard.
Impressed by a childhood spent throughout a extreme drought in Chennai, India, Govindan developed for his PhD a humidification-dehumidification expertise that mimicked pure rainfall cycles. It was with this piece of expertise, which they named Service Fuel Extraction (CGE), that the duo based Gradiant in 2013.
The important thing to CGE lies in a proprietary algorithm that accounts for variability within the high quality and amount in wastewater feed. On the coronary heart of the algorithm is a nondimensional quantity, which Govindan proposes in the future be referred to as the “Lienhard Quantity,” after his doctoral advisor.
“When the water high quality varies within the system, our expertise routinely sends a sign to motors throughout the plant to regulate the movement charges to deliver again the nondimensional quantity to a worth of 1. As soon as it’s introduced again to a worth of 1, you’re operating in optimum situation,” explains Govindan, who serves as chief working officer of Gradiant.
This method can deal with and clear the wastewater produced by a producing plant for reuse, finally conserving hundreds of thousands of gallons of water annually.
As the corporate has grown, the Gradiant workforce has added new applied sciences to their arsenal, together with Selective Contaminant Extraction, a cost-efficient methodology that removes solely particular contaminants, and a brine-concentration methodology referred to as Counter-Stream Reverse Osmosis. They now supply a full expertise stack of water and wastewater remedy options to shoppers in industries together with prescribed drugs, power, mining, meals and beverage, and the ever-growing semiconductor trade.
“We’re an end-to-end water options supplier. We’ve got a portfolio of proprietary applied sciences and can choose and select from our ‘quiver’ relying on a buyer’s wants,” says Bajpayee, who serves as CEO of Gradiant. “Prospects take a look at us as their water companion. We are able to care for their water drawback end-to-end to allow them to deal with their core enterprise.”
Gradiant has seen explosive progress over the previous decade. With 450 water and wastewater remedy vegetation constructed to this point, they deal with the equal of 5 million households’ price of water every day. Latest acquisitions noticed their complete workers rise to above 500.
The range of Gradiant’s options is mirrored of their shoppers, who embody Pfizer, AB InBev, and Coca-Cola. Additionally they depend semiconductor giants like Micron Expertise, GlobalFoundries, Intel, and TSMC amongst their prospects.
“Over the previous few years, we’ve actually developed our capabilities and repute serving semiconductor wastewater and semiconductor ultrapure water,” says Bajpayee.
Semiconductor producers require ultrapure water for fabrication. In contrast to consuming water, which has a complete dissolved solids vary within the components per million, water used to fabricate microchips has a variety within the components per billion or quadrillion.
At present, the common recycling fee at semiconductor fabrication vegetation — or fabs — in Singapore is simply 43 p.c. Utilizing Gradiant’s applied sciences, these fabs can recycle 98-99 p.c of the ten million gallons of water they require day by day. This reused water is pure sufficient to be put again into the manufacturing course of.
“What we’ve accomplished is eradicated the discharge of this contaminated water and almost eradicated the dependence of the semiconductor fab on the general public water provide,” provides Bajpayee.
With new rules being launched, stress is growing for fabs to enhance their water use, making sustainability much more necessary to model house owners and their stakeholders.
Because the home semiconductor trade expands in mild of the CHIPS and Science Act, Gradiant sees a possibility to deliver their semiconductor water remedy applied sciences to extra factories in the US.
Through Separations: Environment friendly chemical filtration
Like Bajpayee and Govindan, Shreya Dave ’09, SM ’12, PhD ’16 targeted on desalination for her doctoral thesis. Below the steering of her advisor Jeffrey Grossman, professor of supplies science and engineering, Dave constructed a membrane that would allow extra environment friendly and cheaper desalination.
An intensive price and market evaluation introduced Dave to the conclusion that the desalination membrane she developed wouldn’t make it to commercialization.
“The present applied sciences are simply actually good at what they do. They’re low-cost, mass produced, and so they labored. There was no room out there for our expertise,” says Dave.
Shortly after defending her thesis, she learn a commentary article within the journal Nature that modified every little thing. The article outlined an issue. Chemical separations which might be central to many manufacturing processes require an enormous quantity of power. Trade wanted extra environment friendly and cheaper membranes. Dave thought she might need an answer.
After figuring out there was an financial alternative, Dave, Grossman, and Brent Keller PhD ’16 based Through Separations in 2017. Shortly thereafter, they had been chosen as one of many first corporations to obtain funding from MIT’s enterprise agency, The Engine.
At present, industrial filtration is finished by heating chemical compounds at very excessive temperatures to separate compounds. Dave likens it to creating pasta by boiling all the water off till it evaporates and all you’re left with is the pasta noodles. In manufacturing, this methodology of chemical separation is extraordinarily energy-intensive and inefficient.
Through Separations has created the chemical equal of a “pasta strainer.” Relatively than utilizing warmth to separate, their membranes “pressure” chemical compounds. This methodology of chemical filtration makes use of 90 p.c much less power than commonplace strategies.
Whereas most membranes are fabricated from polymers, Through Separations’ membranes are made with graphene oxide, which may stand up to excessive temperatures and harsh circumstances. The membrane is calibrated to the shopper’s wants by altering the pore measurement and tuning the floor chemistry.
At present, Dave and her workforce are specializing in the pulp and paper trade as their beachhead market. They’ve developed a system that makes the restoration of a substance generally known as “black liquor” extra power environment friendly.
“When tree turns into paper, solely one-third of the biomass is used for the paper. At present probably the most beneficial use for the remaining two-thirds not wanted for paper is to take it from a reasonably dilute stream to a reasonably concentrated stream utilizing evaporators by boiling off the water,” says Dave.
This black liquor is then burned. Many of the ensuing power is used to energy the filtration course of.
“This closed-loop system accounts for an unlimited quantity of power consumption within the U.S. We are able to make that course of 84 p.c extra environment friendly by placing the ‘pasta strainer’ in entrance of the boiler,” provides Dave.
VulcanForms: Additive manufacturing at industrial scale
The primary semester John Hart taught at MIT was a fruitful one. He taught a course on 3D printing, broadly generally known as additive manufacturing (AM). Whereas it wasn’t his principal analysis focus on the time, he discovered the subject fascinating. So did lots of the college students within the class, together with Martin Feldmann MEng ’14.
After graduating together with his MEng in superior manufacturing, Feldmann joined Hart’s analysis group full time. There, they bonded over their shared curiosity in AM. They noticed a possibility to innovate with a longtime steel AM expertise, generally known as laser powder mattress fusion, and got here up with an idea to understand steel AM at an industrial scale.
The pair co-founded VulcanForms in 2015.
“We’ve got developed a machine structure for steel AM that may construct components with distinctive high quality and productiveness,” says Hart. “And, we’ve built-in our machines in a totally digital manufacturing system, combining AM, postprocessing, and precision machining.”
In contrast to different corporations that promote 3D printers for others to supply components, VulcanForms makes and sells components for his or her prospects utilizing their fleet of commercial machines. VulcanForms has grown to just about 400 workers. Final yr, the workforce opened their first manufacturing manufacturing facility, generally known as “VulcanOne,” in Devens, Massachusetts.
The standard and precision with which VulcanForms produces components is important for merchandise like medical implants, warmth exchangers, and plane engines. Their machines can print layers of steel thinner than a human hair.
“We’re producing parts which might be tough, or in some circumstances unattainable to fabricate in any other case,” provides Hart, who sits on the corporate’s board of administrators.
The applied sciences developed at VulcanForms could assist result in a extra sustainable strategy to manufacture components and merchandise, each immediately by the additive course of and not directly by extra environment friendly, agile provide chains.
A technique that VulcanForms, and AM basically, promotes sustainability is thru materials financial savings.
Lots of the supplies VulcanForms makes use of, equivalent to titanium alloys, require an excessive amount of power to supply. When titanium components are 3D-printed, considerably much less of the fabric is used than in a conventional machining course of. This materials effectivity is the place Hart sees AM making a big influence by way of power financial savings.
Hart additionally factors out that AM can speed up innovation in clear power applied sciences, starting from extra environment friendly jet engines to future fusion reactors.
“Firms in search of to de-risk and scale clear power applied sciences require know-how and entry to superior manufacturing functionality, and industrial additive manufacturing is transformative on this regard,” Hart provides.
LiquiGlide: Decreasing waste by eradicating friction
There may be an unlikely offender relating to waste in manufacturing and shopper merchandise: friction. Kripa Varanasi, professor of mechanical engineering, and the workforce at LiquiGlide are on a mission to create a frictionless future, and considerably scale back waste within the course of.
Based in 2012 by Varanasi and alum David Smith SM ’11, LiquiGlide designs customized coatings that allow liquids to “glide” on surfaces. Each final drop of a product can be utilized, whether or not it’s being squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste or drained from a 500-liter tank at a producing plant. Making containers frictionless considerably minimizes wasted product, and eliminates the necessity to clear a container earlier than recycling or reusing.
Since launching, the corporate has discovered nice success in shopper merchandise. Buyer Colgate utilized LiquiGlide’s applied sciences within the design of the Colgate Elixir toothpaste bottle, which has been honored with a number of trade awards for design. In a collaboration with world- famend designer Yves Béhar, LiquiGlide is making use of their expertise to magnificence and private care product packaging. In the meantime, the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration has granted them a Machine Grasp Submitting, opening up alternatives for the expertise for use in medical units, drug supply, and biopharmaceuticals.
In 2016, the corporate developed a system to make manufacturing containers frictionless. Known as CleanTanX, the expertise is used to deal with the surfaces of tanks, funnels, and hoppers, stopping supplies from sticking to the facet. The system can scale back materials waste by as much as 99 p.c.
“This might actually change the sport. It saves wasted product, reduces wastewater generated from cleansing tanks, and will help make the manufacturing course of zero-waste,” says Varanasi, who serves as chair at LiquiGlide.
LiquiGlide works by making a coating fabricated from a textured strong and liquid lubricant on the container floor. When utilized to a container, the lubricant stays infused throughout the texture. Capillary forces stabilize and permit the liquid to unfold on the floor, making a constantly lubricated floor that any viscous materials can slide proper down. The corporate makes use of a thermodynamic algorithm to find out the combos of protected solids and liquids relying on the product, whether or not it’s toothpaste or paint.
The corporate has constructed a robotic spraying system that may deal with giant vats and tanks at manufacturing vegetation on web site. Along with saving corporations hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in wasted product, LiquiGlide drastically reduces the quantity of water wanted to often clear these containers, which usually have product caught to the perimeters.
“Usually while you empty every little thing out of a tank, you continue to have residue that must be cleaned with an incredible quantity of water. In agrochemicals, for instance, there are strict rules about find out how to cope with the ensuing wastewater, which is poisonous. All of that may be eradicated with LiquiGlide,” says Varanasi.
Whereas the closure of many manufacturing amenities early within the pandemic slowed down the rollout of CleanTanX pilots at vegetation, issues have picked up in current months. As manufacturing ramps up each globally and domestically, Varanasi sees a rising want for LiquiGlide’s applied sciences, particularly for liquids like semiconductor slurry.
Firms like Gradiant, Through Separations, VulcanForms, and LiquiGlide reveal that an growth in manufacturing industries doesn’t want to come back at a steep environmental price. It’s attainable for manufacturing to be scaled up in a sustainable method.
“Manufacturing has all the time been the spine of what we do as mechanical engineers. At MIT particularly, there may be all the time a drive to make manufacturing sustainable,” says Evelyn Wang, Ford Professor of Engineering and former head of the Division of Mechanical Engineering. “It’s wonderful to see how startups which have an origin in our division are taking a look at each side of the manufacturing course of and determining find out how to enhance it for the well being of our planet.”
As laws just like the CHIPS and Science Act fuels progress in manufacturing, there will probably be an elevated want for startups and firms that develop options to mitigate the environmental influence, bringing us nearer to a extra sustainable future.
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