Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that MIT researchers have developed a new type of concrete that can store energy, potentially enabling roads to be transformed into EV chargers and home foundations into sources of energy. “All of a sudden, you have a material which can not only carry load, but it can also store energy,” says Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm.
MIT engineers have uncovered a new way of creating an energy supercapacitor by combining cement, carbon black and water that could one day be used to power homes or electric vehicles, reports Jeremy Hsu for New Scientist. “The materials are available for everyone all over the place, all over the world,” explains Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm. “Which means we don’t have the same restriction as with batteries.”
MIT researchers have discovered that when combined with water, carbon black and cement can produce a low-cost supercapacitor capable of storing electricity for later use, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “With some further fine-tuning and experimentation, the team believes their enriched cement material could one day compose portions of buildings’ foundations, or even create wireless charging,” writes Paul.
Researchers at MIT have found that cement and carbon black can be combined with water to create a battery alternative, reports Robert Service for Science. Professor Franz-Josef Ulm and his colleagues “mixed a small percent of carbon black with cement powder and added water,” explains Service. “The water readily combines with the cement. But because the particles of carbon black repel water, they tend to clump together, forming long interconnected tendrils within the hardening cement that act like a network of wires.”
Randolph Kirchain and Hessam AzariJafari of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub speak with Washington Post reporter Sharon Osaka about the importance of reducing the emissions produced during the cement manufacturing process. Kirchain noted there is a way to cut carbon emissions significantly and ensure safety at the same time. “The things that concrete goes into are things that we need to last,” he said.
Writing for The Hill, Randolph Kirchain and Hessam AzariJafari of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub emphasize the importance of encouraging development of building materials with low lifetime carbon impact. “When we choose a construction material without considering its life cycle impacts,” they write, “we not only miss an opportunity to reduce use phase and end-of-life emissions, but we can unintentionally worsen them.”
Researchers from MIT’s Concrete Sustainability Hub discuss their research showing that increasing the reflectivity of paved surfaces could help lower air temperatures in U.S. cities by an average of 2.5 degrees. “If we reflect more energy back out, it’s the same as emitting less CO2,” says Randolph Kirchain, co-director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub.
Principal Research Scientist Randolph Kirchain, co-director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub, speaks with Jane Margolies of The New York Times about how the Inflation Reduction Act expands eligibility for tax credits for installing emissions-reduction equipment at manufacturing plants. “These credits are really valuable to keep technology coming down in cost,” says Kirchain.
Hessam Azarijafari, incoming deputy director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, Ronnen Levinson of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Andrew Laurent of the Concrete Sustainability Hub write for The Hill about how cities can combat extreme heat by implementing more reflective pavements. “To protect vulnerable communities, federal and local officials must cool cities with high-reflectance pavements before the opportunity to limit the impacts of global warming vanishes,” they write.
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Jinhua Zhao, Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm, Research Scientist Anson Stewart and Principal Research Scientist Randolph Kirchain explore how to maximize the impact and effectiveness of the infrastructure spending bill. “Here’s what we should do," they write. "Modernize planning tools to consider systems holistically, get out of technology ruts, and, most fundamentally, measure performance.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Randolph Kirchain, co-director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, and postdoctoral associate Hessam Azarijafari explore how cool pavements could be used to address urban heat. “If Boston were to properly implement cool pavements, it would reduce its CO2 emissions by 1.5 million tons over 50 years — between 1 and 3 percent of the reductions needed to meet its 2050 carbon neutrality pledge,” they write. “These reductions would come from not just reflectivity, but also from better road quality over time.”
Writing for The Conversation, MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub Co-Director Randolph Kirchain and postdoctoral associate Hessam AzariJafari explore how building lighter-colored, more reflective roads could potentially help lower air temperatures and reduce heat waves. “As cities consider ways to combat the effects of climate change, we believe strategically optimizing pavement is a smart option that can make urban cores more livable,” they write.
In a letter to The Guardian, Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm, Randolph Kirchain and Jeremy Gregory of the Concrete Sustainability Hub argue that “concrete remains a vital means of social and economic transformation for developing nations.” The authors add that “we ought to expand our understanding of it and use its full potential to enable sustainable development.”
Jeremy Gregory, executive director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, writes for USA Today about how the quality and condition of a roadway impacts a vehicle’s fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. “Actions that improve road design and conditions can reduce vehicle fuel consumption and emissions,” argues Gregory.
In an article for The Huffington Post, Erik Rancatore highlights how “researchers at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub have developed a method to incorporate the risk and repair costs of damage from hurricanes and earthquakes into life-cycle analysis of residential buildings.”