An MIT team is working to harness combustion to yield valuable materials, including some that are critical in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries.
For more than a century, much of the world has run on the combustion of fossil fuels. Now, to avert the threat of climate change, the energy system is changing. Notably, solar and wind systems are replacing fossil fuel combustion for generating electricity and heat, and batteries are replacing the internal combustion engine for powering vehicles. As the energy transition progresses, researchers worldwide are tackling the many challenges that arise.
Sili Deng has spent her career thinking about combustion. Now an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Class of 1954 Career Development Professor, Deng leads a group that, among other things, develops theoretical models to help understand and control combustion systems to make them more efficient and to control the formation of emissions, including particles of soot.
“So we thought, given our background in combustion, what’s the best way we can contribute to the energy transition?” says Deng. In considering the possibilities, she notes that combustion refers only to the process — not to what’s burning. “While we generally think of fossil fuels when we think of combustion, the term ‘combustion’ encompasses many high-temperature chemical reactions that involve oxygen and typically emit light and large amounts of heat,” she says.
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image: Caption:Left to right: Graduate student Chuwei Zhang, Assistant Professor Sili Deng, graduate student Maanasa Bhat, and postdoc Jianan Zhang stand behind the lab-scale apparatus they use to investigate a low-cost method of synthesizing materials critical for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries. (Credits:Photo: Gretchen Ertl)