Question: What do liquid-metal batteries, water-splitting catalysts, wafers from molten silicon, nanotube-enhanced ultracapacitors, and plant cell wall-degrading enzymes have in common?
Answer: These novel clean energy technologies were recently deemed to be potentially “transformative” by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The technologies are the focus of research awards by DOE’s new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). These awards—which support key links in the energy value chain—highlight the critical role MIT plays as an engine of energy innovation.
The selected projects were for one MIT research lab and four startups with strong links to MIT. The successful proposals were submitted by MIT Professor Donald Sadoway, Sun Catalytix, 1366 Technologies, FastCAP Systems, and Agrivida and will receive combined funding of $24.8 million from the new program’s inaugural round of funding. A sixth company, FloDesign Wind Turbine Corp., was an earlier recipient of an MIT prize for energy entrepreneurs.
Professor Sadoway’s “Liquid Metal Grid-Scale Batteries” project was described by DOE as a technology that “could revolutionize the way electricity is used and produced on the grid, enabling round-the-clock power from America’s wind and solar power resources.” Sadoway’s proposal, funded at $6.9 million, would use low cost, domestically available liquid metals to store energy at grid-scale. When he learned of the award, Sadoway said, “This is fantastic news. These new funds will allow us to accelerate the rate of discovery.” He noted that the funds will “enable us to enlarge our team and to expand our collaboration with other researchers on campus. The addition of new and complementary skills to the project will help us move this novel energy storage concept to a reality.”
Another successful project, submitted by a startup that emerged from MIT, Sun Catalytix Corporation, has, according to DOE, the potential to “greatly enhance the efficiency of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.” The company will receive $4 million to continue its groundbreaking work on the development of a catalyst that mimics a plant’s storage system, with the potential to be a key enabler for liquid fuel-based distributed energy storage systems. Sun Catalytix, started by MIT Professor Dan Nocera in 2008, is focused on commercializing catalyst technology originally developed in Nocera’s laboratory at MIT.
1366 Technologies Inc.—a startup initially launched from the lab of MIT Professor Ely Sachs and the only photovoltaics company to receive a stamp of approval from ARPA-E—was selected to receive $4 million from ARPA-E to pursue the development of high efficiency monocrystalline-equivalent silicon wafers directly from molten silicon; these wafers have the “potential to halve the installed cost of solar photovoltaics.” 1366 will team with Professor Tonio Buonassisi’s Laboratory for PV Research to support the project. 1366 Technologies was formed in 2008, and its board of directors consists entirely of MIT alums.
Research that underpins the proposal of FastCAP Systems—another startup whose genesis was in MIT-generated research—began at the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) in 2003 under the direction of Professor Joel Schindall. These ultracapacitors approach the energy density of conventional batteries but do not similarly degrade. According to Professor Schindall, they have essentially an “indefinite cycle life.” DOE, in its selection of the $5 million project, noted that it could “greatly reduce the cost of hybrid and electric vehicles and of grid-scale storage.” FastCAP was formed in 2009 by MIT alums Riccardo Signorelli and John Cooley. Professor Schindall and the LEES lab will partner on the project. The MIT Energy Initiative supported a seed grant for Professor Schindall’s work on ultracapacitors.
Agrivida—yet another startup with strong ties to MIT—was selected to receive a $4.6 million grant from ARPA-E to develop the ability to grow cell wall-degrading enzymes within plants that are activated after harvest. DOE selected this project because “the technology has the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of cellulosic biofuels and chemicals.” Agrivida was formed in 2003 by MIT alums Michael Raab and Jeremy Johnson; at least five other MIT alums are involved in the company, which routinely hires MIT students as summer interns. Agrivida is an agricultural biotechnology company developing energy crops designed to produce chemicals, fuels, and bioproducts from non-food cellulosic biomass.
Finally, FloDesign Wind Turbine Corporation of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, received an award of over $8 million to develop an advanced wind turbine, the Mixer Ejector Wind Turbine or MEWT. While not an MIT spinoff, FloDesign received the MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize in 2008, supported by N-STAR and DOE.
The five MIT-affiliated awards and FloDesign were selected from a total of 3600 initial concept papers, of which approximately 300 went on to the proposal stage. Ultimately, DOE selected 37 projects for funding from ARPA-E. In a highly competitive field, MIT demonstrated once again that it is the “go to” place for developing energy solutions with an eye toward commercialization and the potential to transform how we produce and consume energy.
MIT President Susan Hockfield noted that “The ARPA-E awards reflect MIT’s track record of inventing inspired solutions to real-world problems, and only reinforce our confidence in the Commonwealth’s growing energy technology innovation cluster.”