Lowering methane emissions is a prime precedence within the battle in opposition to local weather change due to its propensity to entice warmth within the ambiance: Methane’s warming results are 84 occasions stronger than CO2 over a 20-year timescale.
And but, as the primary part of pure gasoline, methane can also be a beneficial gasoline and a precursor to a number of vital chemical compounds. The primary barrier to utilizing methane emissions to create carbon-negative supplies is that human sources of methane gasoline — landfills, farms, and oil and gasoline wells — are comparatively small and unfold out throughout massive areas, whereas conventional chemical processing amenities are large and centralized. That makes it prohibitively costly to seize, transport, and convert methane gasoline into something helpful. Because of this, most corporations burn or “flare” their methane on the web site the place it’s emitted, seeing it as a sunk price and an environmental legal responsibility.
The MIT spinout Emvolon is taking a brand new method to processing methane by repurposing automotive engines to function modular, cost-effective chemical vegetation. The corporate’s methods can take methane gasoline and produce liquid fuels like methanol and ammonia on-site; these fuels can then be used or transported in commonplace truck containers.
“We see this as a brand new means of chemical manufacturing,” Emvolon co-founder and CEO Emmanuel Kasseris SM ’07, PhD ’11 says. “We’re beginning with methane as a result of methane is an plentiful emission that we will use as a useful resource. With methane, we will remedy two issues on the similar time: About 15 p.c of world greenhouse gasoline emissions come from hard-to-abate sectors that want inexperienced gasoline, like transport, aviation, heavy heavy-duty vans, and rail. Then one other 15 p.c of emissions come from distributed methane emissions like landfills and oil wells.”
By utilizing mass-produced engines and eliminating the necessity to spend money on infrastructure like pipelines, the corporate says it’s making methane conversion economically engaging sufficient to be adopted at scale. The system also can take inexperienced hydrogen produced by intermittent renewables and switch it into ammonia, one other gasoline that will also be used to decarbonize fertilizers.
“Sooner or later, we’re going to want inexperienced fuels as a result of you may’t electrify a big ship or airplane — it’s important to use a high-energy-density, low-carbon-footprint, low-cost liquid gasoline,” Kasseris says. “The vitality assets to provide these inexperienced fuels are both distributed, as is the case with methane, or variable, like wind. So, you can not have an enormous plant [producing green fuels] that has its personal zip code. You both must be distributed or variable, and each of these approaches lend themselves to this modular design.”
From a “loopy concept” to an organization
Kasseris first got here to MIT to check mechanical engineering as a graduate scholar in 2004, when he labored within the Sloan Automotive Lab on a report on the way forward for transportation. For his PhD, he developed a novel know-how for enhancing inside combustion engine gasoline effectivity for a consortium of automotive and vitality corporations, which he then went to work for after commencement.
Round 2014, he was approached by Leslie Bromberg ’73, PhD ’77, a serial inventor with greater than 100 patents, who has been a principal analysis engineer in MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Middle for practically 50 years.
“Leslie had this loopy concept of repurposing an inside combustion engine as a reactor,” Kasseris recollects. “I had checked out that whereas working in business, and I favored it, however my firm on the time thought the work wanted extra validation.”
Bromberg had accomplished that validation by a U.S. Division of Power-funded challenge during which he used a diesel engine to “reform” methane — a high-pressure chemical response during which methane is mixed with steam and oxygen to provide hydrogen. The work impressed Kasseris sufficient to convey him again to MIT as a analysis scientist in 2016.
“We labored on that concept along with another tasks, and finally it had reached the purpose the place we determined to license the work from MIT and go full throttle,” Kasseris recollects. “It’s very straightforward to work with MIT’s Know-how Licensing Workplace if you end up an MIT inventor. You may get a low-cost licensing possibility, and you are able to do rather a lot with that, which is vital for a brand new firm. Then, as soon as you’re prepared, you may finalize the license, so MIT was instrumental.”
Emvolon continued working with MIT’s analysis group, sponsoring tasks with Professor Emeritus John Heywood and taking part within the MIT Enterprise Mentoring Service and the MIT Industrial Liaison Program.
An engine-powered chemical plant
On the core of Emvolon’s system is an off-the-shelf automotive engine that runs “gasoline wealthy” — with a better ratio of gasoline to air than what is required for full combustion.
“That’s straightforward to say, nevertheless it takes quite a lot of [intellectual property], and that’s what was developed at MIT,” Kasseris says. “As an alternative of burning the methane within the gasoline to carbon dioxide and water, you partially burn it, or partially oxidize it, to carbon monoxide and hydrogen, that are the constructing blocks to synthesize a wide range of chemical compounds.”
The hydrogen and carbon monoxide are intermediate merchandise used to synthesize totally different chemical compounds by additional reactions. These processing steps happen proper subsequent to the engine, which makes its personal energy. Every of Emvolon’s standalone methods suits inside a 40-foot transport container and may produce about 8 tons of methanol per day from 300,000 commonplace cubic ft of methane gasoline.
The corporate is beginning with inexperienced methanol as a result of it’s an excellent gasoline for hard-to-abate sectors akin to transport and heavy-duty transport, in addition to a superb feedstock for different high-value chemical compounds, akin to sustainable aviation gasoline. Many transport vessels have already transformed to run on inexperienced methanol in an effort to fulfill decarbonization targets.
This summer season, the corporate additionally obtained a grant from the Division of Power to adapt its course of to provide clear liquid fuels from energy sources like photo voltaic and wind.
“We’d prefer to increase to different chemical compounds like ammonia, but in addition different feedstocks, akin to biomass and hydrogen from renewable electrical energy, and we have already got promising ends in that course” Kasseris says. “We expect we’ve got a very good answer for the vitality transition and, within the later phases of the transition, for e-manufacturing.”
A scalable method
Emvolon has already constructed a system able to producing as much as six barrels of inexperienced methanol a day in its 5,000 square-foot headquarters in Woburn, Massachusetts.
“For chemical applied sciences, individuals speak about scale up danger, however with an engine, if it really works in a single cylinder, we all know it should work in a multicylinder engine,” Kasseris says. “It’s simply engineering.”
Final month, Emvolon introduced an settlement with Montauk Renewables to construct a commercial-scale demonstration unit subsequent to a Texas landfill that may initially produce as much as 15,000 gallons of inexperienced methanol a yr and later scale as much as 2.5 million gallons. That challenge may very well be expanded tenfold by scaling throughout Montauk’s different websites.
“Our complete course of was designed to be a really reasonable method to the vitality transition,” Kasseris says. “Our answer is designed to provide inexperienced fuels and chemical compounds at costs that the markets are keen to pay as we speak, with out the necessity for subsidies. Utilizing the engines as chemical vegetation, we will get the capital expenditure per unit output near that of a big plant, however at a modular scale that permits us to be subsequent to low-cost feedstock. Moreover, our modular methods require small investments — of $1 to 10 million — which can be rapidly deployed, one after the other, inside weeks, versus large chemical vegetation that require multiyear capital development tasks and value lots of of thousands and thousands.”
