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Thursday, March 22nd, 2018
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| 5:59a |
In field tests, device harvests water from desert air It seems like getting something for nothing, but you really can get drinkable water right out of the driest of desert air.
Even in the most arid places on Earth, there is some moisture in the air, and a practical way to extract that moisture could be a key to survival in such bone-dry locations. Now, researchers at MIT have proved that such an extraction system can work.
The new device, based on a concept the team first proposed last year, has now been field-tested in the very dry air of Tempe, Arizona, confirming the potential of the new method, though much work remains to scale up the process, the researchers say.
The new work is reported today in the journal Nature Communications and includes some significant improvements over the initial concept that was described last year in a paper in Science, says Evelyn Wang, the Gail E. Kendall Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, who was the senior author of both papers. MIT postdoc Sameer Rao and former graduate student Hyunho Kim SM ’14, PhD ’18 were the lead authors of the latest paper, along with four others at MIT and the University of California at Berkeley.
Last year’s paper drew a great deal of attention, Wang says. “It got a lot of hype, and some criticism,” she says. Now, “all of the questions that were raised from last time were explicitly demonstrated in this paper. We’ve validated those points.”
The system, based on relatively new high-surface-area materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), can extract potable water from even the driest of desert air, the researchers say, with relative humidities as low as 10 percent. Current methods for extracting water from air require much higher levels – 100 percent humidity for fog-harvesting methods, and above 50 percent for dew-harvesting refrigeration-based systems, which also require large amounts of energy for cooling. So the new system could potentially fill an unmet need for water even in the world’s driest regions.
By running a test device on a rooftop at Arizona State University in Tempe, Wang says, the team “was field-testing in a place that’s representative of these arid areas, and showed that we can actually harvest the water, even in subzero dewpoints.”
The test device was powered solely by sunlight, and although it was a small proof-of-concept device, if scaled up its output would be equivalent to more than a quarter-liter of water per day per kilogram of MOF, the researchers say. With an optimal material choice, output can be as high as three times that of the current version, says Kim. Unlike any of the existing methods for extracting water from air at very low humidities, “with this approach, you actually can do it, even under these extreme conditions,” Wang says.
Not only does this system work at lower humidities than dew harvesting does, says Rao, but those systems require pumps and compressors that can wear out, whereas “this has no moving parts. It can be operated in a completely passive manner, in places with low humidity but large amounts of sunlight.”
Whereas the team had previously described the possibility of running the system passively, Rao says, “now we have demonstrated that this is indeed possible.” The current version can only operate over a single night-and-day cycle with sunlight, Kim says, but “continous operation is also possible by utilizing abundant low-grade heat sources such as biomass and waste heat.”
The next step, Wang says, is to work on scaling up the system and boosting its efficiency. “We hope to have a system that’s able to produce liters of water.” These small, initial test systems were only designed to produce a few milliliters, to prove the concept worked in real-world conditions, but she says “we want to see water pouring out!” The idea would be to produce units sufficient to supply water for individual households.
The team tested the water produced by the system and found no traces of impurities. Mass-spectrometer testing showed “there’s nothing from the MOF that leaches into the water,” Wang says. “It shows the material is indeed very stable, and we can get high-quality water.”
"This technology is fantastic, because of the practical demonstration of an air-cooled water harvesting system based on MOFs operating in a real desert climate,” says Yang Yang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles, who was not involved in this work.
“This provides a new approach to solving the problem of water scarcity in arid climates,” Yang says. “This technology, if one can further increase its production capacity, can have a real impact in areas where water is scarce, such as southern California.”
The team also included graduate student Eugene Kapustin at the University of California at Berkeley; graduate student Lin Zhao and postdoc Sungwoo Yang at MIT; and professor of chemistry Omar Yaghi at Berkeley and at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, in Saudi Arabia. | | 11:56a |
Study suggests method for boosting growth of blood vessels and muscle As we get older, our endurance declines, in part because our blood vessels lose some of their capacity to deliver oxygen and nutrients to muscle tissue. An MIT-led research team has now found that it can reverse this age-related endurance loss in mice by treating them with a compound that promotes new blood vessel growth.
The study found that the compound, which re-activates longevity-linked proteins called sirtuins, promotes the growth of blood vessels and muscle, boosting the endurance of elderly mice by up to 80 percent.
If the findings translate to humans, this restoration of muscle mass could help to combat some of the effects of age-related frailty, which often lead to osteoporosis and other debilitating conditions.
“We’ll have to see if this plays out in people, but you may actually be able to rescue muscle mass in an aging population by this kind of intervention,” says Leonard Guarente, the Novartis Professor of Biology at MIT and one of the senior authors of the study. “There’s a lot of crosstalk between muscle and bone, so losing muscle mass ultimately can lead to loss of bone, osteoporosis, and frailty, which is a major problem in aging.”
The first author of the paper, which appears in Cell on March 22, is Abhirup Das, a former postdoc in Guarente’s lab who is now at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Other senior authors of the paper are David Sinclair, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the University of New South Wales, and Zolt Arany, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Race against time
In the early 1990s, Guarente discovered that sirtuins, a class of proteins found in nearly all animals, protect against the effects of aging in yeast. Since then, similar effects have been seen in many other organisms.
In their latest study, Guarente and his colleagues decided to explore the role of sirtuins in endothelial cells, which line the inside of blood vessels. To do that, they deleted the gene for SIRT1, which encodes the major mammalian sirtuin, in endothelial cells of mice. They found that at 6 months of age, these mice had reduced capillary density and could run only half as far as normal 6-month-old mice.
The researchers then decided to see what would happen if they boosted sirtuin levels in normal mice as they aged. They treated the mice with a compound called NMN, which is a precursor to NAD, a coenzyme that activates SIRT1. NAD levels normally drop as animals age, which is believed to be caused by a combination of reduced NAD production and faster NAD degradation.
After 18-month-old mice were treated with NMN for two months, their capillary density was restored to levels typically seen in young mice, and they experienced a 56 to 80 percent improvement in endurance. Beneficial effects were also seen in mice up to 32 months of age (comparable to humans in their 80s).
“In normal aging, the number of blood vessels goes down, so you lose the capacity to deliver nutrients and oxygen to tissues like muscle, and that contributes to decline,” Guarente says. “The effect of the precursors that boost NAD is to counteract the decline that occurs with normal aging, to reactivate SIRT1, and to restore function in endothelial cells to give rise to more blood vessels.”
These effects were enhanced when the researchers treated the mice with both NMN and hydrogen sulfide, another sirtuin activator.
Vittorio Sartorelli, chief of the Laboratory of Muscle Stem Cells and Gene Regulation at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, who was not involved in the research, described the experiments as “elegant and compelling.” He added that “it will be of interest and of clinical relevance to evaluate the effect of NMN and hydrogen sulfide on the vascularization of other organs such as the heart and brain, which are often damaged by acutely or chronically reduced blood flow.”
Benefits of exercise
The researchers also found that SIRT1 activity in endothelial cells is critical for the beneficial effects of exercise in young mice. In mice, exercise generally stimulates growth of new blood vessels and boosts muscle mass. However, when the researchers knocked out SIRT1 in endothelial cells of 10-month-old mice, then put them on a four-week treadmill running program, they found that the exercise did not produce the same gains seen in normal 10-month-old mice on the same training plan.
If validated in humans, the findings would suggest that boosting sirtuin levels may help older people retain their muscle mass with exercise, Guarente says. Studies in humans have shown that age-related muscle loss can be partially staved off with exercise, especially weight training.
“What this paper would suggest is that you may actually be able to rescue muscle mass in an aging population by this kind of intervention with an NAD precursor,” Guarente says.
In 2014, Guarente started a company called Elysium Health, which sells a dietary supplement containing a different precursor of NAD, known as NR, as well as a compound called pterostilbene, which is an activator of SIRT1.
The research was funded by the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the Sinclair Gift Fund, a gift from Edward Schulak, and the National Institutes of Health. | | 11:59p |
Yuriy Roman: A chemical engineer pursuing renewable energy A couple of years into graduate school, Yuriy Roman had what he calls a “tipping point” in his career. He realized that all of the classes he had taken were leading him toward a deep understanding of the concepts he needed to design his own solutions to chemical problems.
“All the classes I had taken suddenly came together, and that’s when I started understanding why I needed to know something about thermodynamics, kinetics, and transport. All of these concepts that I had seen as more theoretical things in my classes, I could now see being applied together to solve a problem. That really was what changed everything for me,” he says.
As a newly tenured faculty member in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, Roman now tries to guide his students toward their own tipping points.
“It’s amazing to see it happen with my students,” says Roman, noting that working with students is one of his favorite things about being an MIT professor. His students also make major contributions to his lab’s mission: coming up with new catalysts to produce fuels, plastics, and other useful substances in a more efficient, sustainable manner.
“To me, the most rewarding aspect of my profession is to work with these extremely talented and bright students,” Roman says. “They really are great at coming up with outside-of-the-box concepts, and I love that. I think MIT’s biggest asset is precisely that, the students. To me it’s a pleasure to work with them and learn from them as well, and hopefully have the opportunity to teach them some of the things that I know.”
Chemical synthesis
Roman, who grew up in Mexico City, loved chemistry from a young age. “I just liked to play with things like soap and bleach, which maybe wasn’t the safest thing,” he recalls. Another favorite activity was juicing cabbages to produce a pH indicator. (Red cabbage contains a chemical called anthocyanin that changes color when exposed to acidic or basic environments.)
Roman’s mother was originally from Belarus, and with his multicultural background he developed a strong interest in learning about other cultures and visiting other countries. He won a full scholarship to Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, in Mexico, for high school and college, but during his first year of college, he became interested in going abroad to finish his degree.
A friend who was then an undergraduate at MIT encouraged Roman to apply to schools in the United States, and he ended up transferring to the University of Pennsylvania.
“My parents were very surprised. In Mexico, it is common to live with your parents long after finishing college. The concept of leaving for college is almost nonexistent,” Roman says.
Roman decided to study chemical engineering, allowing him to combine his love for chemical reactions and his desire to follow in the footsteps of a brother who was an engineer. After graduating, he planned to look for a job in the chemical industry, but his then-girlfriend, now his wife, was planning to begin medical school. She suggested that he go to graduate school with her, so they both ended up attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
There, Roman studied with James Dumesic, a chemistry professor who works on biofuels. For his PhD thesis, Roman devised a process to generate a chemical called hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from sugars derived from biomass. HMF is a “platform chemical” that can be converted into many different end products, including fuels.
After finishing graduate school, Roman thought he would go to work for a chemical company, but at Dumesic’s suggestion he decided to go into academia instead.
“When I started interviewing at different universities, I realized that as a professor, you can have a lot of freedom to explore ideas and tackle problems long-term, and you can still have a lot of contact with industry,” he says. “You have more control over your time and where you spend it, in terms of investing effort toward basic science.”
Out of graduate school, he got a job offer at MIT but first spent two years doing a postdoc at Caltech, while his wife did her residency at the University of California at Los Angeles. Working with Mark Davis, a professor of chemical engineering, Roman began studying materials called zeolites, which have pores the same size as many common molecules. Confining molecules in these pores allows for certain chemical reactions to occur much faster than they otherwise would, Roman says.
Davis also instilled in Roman the importance of designing his own catalysts rather than relying on those developed by others, which allows for more control over chemical reactions and the resulting materials. While many research groups focus either on designing catalysts or on using existing catalysts to come up with novel ways to synthesize materials, Roman believes it is critical to work on both.
“When you are in control of synthesizing your own catalysts, you can do much more systematic studies. You have the ability to manipulate things at will,” he says. “It’s working at this juncture of synthesis and catalysis that is the key to discovering new chemistry.”
Green chemistry
After arriving at MIT in 2010, Roman launched his lab with a focus on designing catalysts that can generate new and interesting materials. One key area of research is the conversion of biomass components, such as lignin, into fuels and chemicals. One of the biggest challenges in this type of synthesis is to selectively remove oxygen atoms from these molecules, which usually have many more oxygen atoms than fuels do.
During a brainstorming session, Roman and his students came up with the idea of using a metal oxide catalyst in which some oxygen atoms were removed from the surface, creating small pockets known as “vacancies.” Oxygenated molecules can be precisely anchored in those vacancies, allowing their carbon-oxygen bonds to be easily broken so the oxygen can be replaced with hydrogen.
In another project, Roman’s lab developed a more sustainable alternative to catalysts made from precious metals such as platinum and palladium. These metals are used in many renewable-energy technologies, including fuel cells and lithium-air batteries, but they are among the Earth’s scarcest metals.
“If we were to go from our current fleet of vehicles with internal combustion engines to a fuel cell fleet, there’s not enough platinum in the world to sustain that amount,” Roman says. “You need to use Earth-abundant materials because there simply aren’t enough of these other precious materials to do it.”
In 2014, Roman and his students showed that they could create powerful catalysts from compounds called metal carbides, made from plentiful metals such as tungsten, coated with just a thin layer of a rare metal such as platinum.
Developing and promoting this kind of sustainable technology is one of Roman’s biggest research priorities.
“It’s a tremendous battle because the energy sector is just so large. The scale is so big and the infrastructure that’s already in place for petroleum-based fuel is so extensive. But it’s important for us to develop technologies for renewable resources and really curb our emissions of greenhouse gases,” he says. “Big, hard problems. That’s what we’re going after.” |
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