Decarbonizing the making of consumer products
Most efforts to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions have focused on the transportation and residential sectors. Little attention has been paid to industrial manufacturing, even though it consumes more energy than either of those sectors and emits high levels of CO2 in the process. To help address that situation, Assistant Professor Karthish Manthiram, postdoc Kyoungsuk Jin, graduate students Joseph H. Maalouf and Minju Chung, and their colleagues, all of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, have been devising new methods of synthesizing epoxides, a group of chemicals used in the manufacture of consumer goods ranging from polyester clothing, detergents, and antifreeze to pharmaceuticals and plastics. “We don’t think about the embedded energy and carbon dioxide footprint of a plastic bottle we’re using or the clothing we’re putting on,” says Manthiram. “But epoxides are everywhere!” As solar and wind and storage technologies mature, it’s time to address what Manthiram calls the “hidden energy and carbon...