Manufacturing had a big summer. The CHIPS and Science
Act, signed into law in August, represents a massive investment in U.S.
domestic manufacturing. The act aims to drastically expand the U.S.
semiconductor industry, strengthen supply chains, and invest in R&D
for new technological breakthroughs. According to John Hart, professor
of mechanical engineering and director of the Laboratory for
Manufacturing and Productivity at MIT, the CHIPS Act is just the latest
example of significantly increased interest in manufacturing in recent
years.
“You have multiple forces working together: reflections from the
pandemic’s impact on supply chains, the geopolitical situation around
the world, and the urgency and importance of sustainability,” says Hart.
“This has now aligned incentives among government, industry, and the
investment community to accelerate innovation in manufacturing and
industrial technology.”
Hand-in-hand with this increased focus on manufacturing is a need to prioritize sustainability.
Roughly one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions came from industry
and manufacturing in 2020. Factories and plants can also deplete local
water reserves and generate vast amounts of waste, some of which can be
toxic.
To address these issues and drive the transition to a low-carbon
economy, new products and industrial processes must be developed
alongside sustainable manufacturing technologies. Hart sees mechanical
engineers as playing a crucial role in this transition.
“Mechanical engineers can uniquely solve critical problems that
require next-generation hardware technologies, and know how to bring
their solutions to scale,” says Hart.
Several fast-growing companies founded by faculty and alumni from
MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering offer solutions for
manufacturing’s environmental problem, paving the path for a more
sustainable future.
Gradiant: Cleantech water solutions
Manufacturing requires water, and lots of it. A medium-sized
semiconductor fabrication plant uses upward of 10 million gallons of
water a day. In a world increasingly plagued by droughts, this
dependence on water poses a major challenge.
Gradiant offers a solution to this water problem. Co-founded by
Anurag Bajpayee SM ’08, PhD ’12 and Prakash Govindan PhD ’12, the
company is a pioneer in sustainable — or “cleantech” — water projects.
As doctoral students in the Rohsenow Kendall Heat Transfer
Laboratory, Bajpayee and Govindan shared a pragmatism and penchant for
action. They both worked on desalination research — Bajpayee with
Professor Gang Chen and Govindan with Professor John Lienhard.
Inspired by a childhood spent during a severe drought in Chennai,
India, Govindan developed for his PhD a humidification-dehumidification
technology that mimicked natural rainfall cycles. It was with this piece
of technology, which they named Carrier Gas Extraction (CGE), that the
duo founded Gradiant in 2013.
The key to CGE lies in a proprietary algorithm that accounts for
variability in the quality and quantity in wastewater feed. At the heart
of the algorithm is a nondimensional number, which Govindan proposes
one day be called the “Lienhard Number,” after his doctoral advisor.
“When the water quality varies in the system, our technology
automatically sends a signal to motors within the plant to adjust the
flow rates to bring back the nondimensional number to a value of one.
Once it’s brought back to a value of one, you’re running in optimal
condition,” explains Govindan, who serves as chief operating officer of
Gradiant.
This system can treat and clean the wastewater produced by a
manufacturing plant for reuse, ultimately conserving millions of gallons
of water each year.
As the company has grown, the Gradiant team has added new
technologies to their arsenal, including Selective Contaminant
Extraction, a cost-efficient method that removes only specific
contaminants, and a brine-concentration method called Counter-Flow
Reverse Osmosis. They now offer a full technology stack of water and
wastewater treatment solutions to clients in industries including
pharmaceuticals, energy, mining, food and beverage, and the ever-growing
semiconductor industry.
“We are an end-to-end water solutions provider. We have a portfolio
of proprietary technologies and will pick and choose from our ‘quiver’
depending on a customer’s needs,” says Bajpayee, who serves as CEO of
Gradiant. “Customers look at us as their water partner. We can take care
of their water problem end-to-end so they can focus on their core
business.”
Gradiant has seen explosive growth over the past decade. With 450
water and wastewater treatment plants built to date, they treat the
equivalent of 5 million households’ worth of water each day. Recent
acquisitions saw their total employees rise to above 500.
The diversity of Gradiant’s solutions is reflected in their clients,
who include Pfizer, AB InBev, and Coca-Cola. They also count
semiconductor giants like Micron Technology, GlobalFoundries, Intel, and
TSMC among their customers.
“Over the last few years, we have really developed our capabilities
and reputation serving semiconductor wastewater and semiconductor
ultrapure water,” says Bajpayee.
Semiconductor manufacturers require ultrapure water for fabrication.
Unlike drinking water, which has a total dissolved solids range in the
parts per million, water used to manufacture microchips has a range in
the parts per billion or quadrillion.
Currently, the average recycling rate at semiconductor fabrication
plants — or fabs — in Singapore is only 43 percent. Using Gradiant’s
technologies, these fabs can recycle 98-99 percent of the 10 million
gallons of water they require daily. This reused water is pure enough to
be put back into the manufacturing process.
“What we’ve done is eliminated the discharge of this contaminated
water and nearly eliminated the dependence of the semiconductor fab on
the public water supply,” adds Bajpayee.
With new regulations being introduced, pressure is increasing for
fabs to improve their water use, making sustainability even more
important to brand owners and their stakeholders.
As the domestic semiconductor industry expands in light of the CHIPS
and Science Act, Gradiant sees an opportunity to bring their
semiconductor water treatment technologies to more factories in the
United States.
Via Separations: Efficient chemical filtration
Like Bajpayee and Govindan, Shreya Dave ’09, SM ’12, PhD ’16 focused
on desalination for her doctoral thesis. Under the guidance of her
advisor Jeffrey Grossman, professor of materials science and
engineering, Dave built a membrane that could enable more efficient and
cheaper desalination.
A thorough cost and market analysis brought Dave to the conclusion
that the desalination membrane she developed would not make it to
commercialization.
“The current technologies are just really good at what they do.
They’re low-cost, mass produced, and they worked. There was no room in
the market for our technology,” says Dave.
Shortly after defending her thesis, she read a commentary article in the journal Nature
that changed everything. The article outlined a problem. Chemical
separations that are central to many manufacturing processes require a
huge amount of energy. Industry needed more efficient and cheaper
membranes. Dave thought she might have a solution.
After determining there was an economic opportunity, Dave, Grossman,
and Brent Keller PhD ’16 founded Via Separations in 2017. Shortly
thereafter, they were chosen as one of the first companies to receive
funding from MIT’s venture firm, The Engine.
Currently, industrial filtration is done by heating chemicals at very
high temperatures to separate compounds. Dave likens it to making pasta
by boiling all of the water off until it evaporates and all you are
left with is the pasta noodles. In manufacturing, this method of
chemical separation is extremely energy-intensive and inefficient.
Via Separations has created the chemical equivalent of a “pasta
strainer.” Rather than using heat to separate, their membranes “strain”
chemical compounds. This method of chemical filtration uses 90 percent
less energy than standard methods.
While most membranes are made of polymers, Via Separations’ membranes
are made with graphene oxide, which can withstand high temperatures and
harsh conditions. The membrane is calibrated to the customer’s needs by
altering the pore size and tuning the surface chemistry.
Currently, Dave and her team are focusing on the pulp and paper
industry as their beachhead market. They have developed a system that
makes the recovery of a substance known as “black liquor” more energy
efficient.
“When tree becomes paper, only one-third of the biomass is used for
the paper. Currently the most valuable use for the remaining two-thirds
not needed for paper is to take it from a pretty dilute stream to a
pretty concentrated stream using evaporators by boiling off the water,”
says Dave.
This black liquor is then burned. Most of the resulting energy is used to power the filtration process.
“This closed-loop system accounts for an enormous amount of energy
consumption in the U.S. We can make that process 84 percent more
efficient by putting the ‘pasta strainer’ in front of the boiler,” adds
Dave.
VulcanForms: Additive manufacturing at industrial scale
The first semester John Hart taught at MIT was a fruitful one. He
taught a course on 3D printing, broadly known as additive manufacturing
(AM). While it wasn’t his main research focus at the time, he found the
topic fascinating. So did many of the students in the class, including
Martin Feldmann MEng ’14.
After graduating with his MEng in advanced manufacturing, Feldmann
joined Hart’s research group full time. There, they bonded over their
shared interest in AM. They saw an opportunity to innovate with an
established metal AM technology, known as laser powder bed fusion, and
came up with a concept to realize metal AM at an industrial scale.
The pair co-founded VulcanForms in 2015.
“We have developed a machine architecture for metal AM that can build
parts with exceptional quality and productivity,” says Hart. “And, we
have integrated our machines in a fully digital production system,
combining AM, postprocessing, and precision machining.”
Unlike other companies that sell 3D printers for others to produce
parts, VulcanForms makes and sells parts for their customers using their
fleet of industrial machines. VulcanForms has grown to nearly 400
employees. Last year, the team opened their first production factory,
known as “VulcanOne,” in Devens, Massachusetts.
The quality and precision with which VulcanForms produces parts is
critical for products like medical implants, heat exchangers, and
aircraft engines. Their machines can print layers of metal thinner than a
human hair.
“We’re producing components that are difficult, or in some cases
impossible to manufacture otherwise,” adds Hart, who sits on the
company’s board of directors.
The technologies developed at VulcanForms may help lead to a more
sustainable way to manufacture parts and products, both directly through
the additive process and indirectly through more efficient, agile
supply chains.
One way that VulcanForms, and AM in general, promotes sustainability is through material savings.
Many of the materials VulcanForms uses, such as titanium alloys,
require a great deal of energy to produce. When titanium parts are
3D-printed, substantially less of the material is used than in a
traditional machining process. This material efficiency is where Hart
sees AM making a large impact in terms of energy savings.
Hart also points out that AM can accelerate innovation in clean
energy technologies, ranging from more efficient jet engines to future
fusion reactors.
“Companies seeking to de-risk and scale clean energy technologies
require know-how and access to advanced manufacturing capability, and
industrial additive manufacturing is transformative in this regard,”
Hart adds.
LiquiGlide: Reducing waste by removing friction
There is an unlikely culprit when it comes to waste in manufacturing
and consumer products: friction. Kripa Varanasi, professor of mechanical
engineering, and the team at LiquiGlide are on a mission to create a
frictionless future, and substantially reduce waste in the process.
Founded in 2012 by Varanasi and alum David Smith SM ’11, LiquiGlide
designs custom coatings that enable liquids to “glide” on surfaces.
Every last drop of a product can be used, whether it’s being squeezed
out of a tube of toothpaste or drained from a 500-liter tank at a
manufacturing plant. Making containers frictionless substantially
minimizes wasted product, and eliminates the need to clean a container
before recycling or reusing.
Since launching, the company has found great success in consumer
products. Customer Colgate utilized LiquiGlide’s technologies in the
design of the Colgate Elixir toothpaste bottle, which has been honored
with several industry awards for design. In a collaboration with world-
renowned designer Yves Béhar, LiquiGlide is applying their technology to
beauty and personal care product packaging. Meanwhile, the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration has granted them a Device Master Filing, opening
up opportunities for the technology to be used in medical devices, drug
delivery, and biopharmaceuticals.
In 2016, the company developed a system to make manufacturing
containers frictionless. Called CleanTanX, the technology is used to
treat the surfaces of tanks, funnels, and hoppers, preventing materials
from sticking to the side. The system can reduce material waste by up to
99 percent.
“This could really change the game. It saves wasted product, reduces
wastewater generated from cleaning tanks, and can help make the
manufacturing process zero-waste,” says Varanasi, who serves as chair at
LiquiGlide.
LiquiGlide works by creating a coating made of a textured solid and
liquid lubricant on the container surface. When applied to a container,
the lubricant remains infused within the texture. Capillary forces
stabilize and allow the liquid to spread on the surface, creating a
continuously lubricated surface that any viscous material can slide
right down. The company uses a thermodynamic algorithm to determine the
combinations of safe solids and liquids depending on the product,
whether it’s toothpaste or paint.
The company has built a robotic spraying system that can treat large
vats and tanks at manufacturing plants on site. In addition to saving
companies millions of dollars in wasted product, LiquiGlide drastically
reduces the amount of water needed to regularly clean these containers,
which normally have product stuck to the sides.
“Normally when you empty everything out of a tank, you still have
residue that needs to be cleaned with a tremendous amount of water. In
agrochemicals, for example, there are strict regulations about how to
deal with the resulting wastewater, which is toxic. All of that can be
eliminated with LiquiGlide,” says Varanasi.
While the closure of many manufacturing facilities early in the
pandemic slowed down the rollout of CleanTanX pilots at plants, things
have picked up in recent months. As manufacturing ramps up both globally
and domestically, Varanasi sees a growing need for LiquiGlide’s
technologies, especially for liquids like semiconductor slurry.
Companies like Gradiant, Via Separations, VulcanForms, and LiquiGlide
demonstrate that an expansion in manufacturing industries does not need
to come at a steep environmental cost. It is possible for manufacturing
to be scaled up in a sustainable way.
“Manufacturing has always been the backbone of what we do as
mechanical engineers. At MIT in particular, there is always a drive to
make manufacturing sustainable,” says Evelyn Wang, Ford Professor of
Engineering and former head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
“It’s amazing to see how startups that have an origin in our department
are looking at every aspect of the manufacturing process and figuring
out how to improve it for the health of our planet.”
As legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act fuels growth in
manufacturing, there will be an increased need for startups and
companies that develop solutions to mitigate the environmental impact,
bringing us closer to a more sustainable future.
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