Table of Contents
To prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to halve emissions by 2035, even though we’re likely to hit another record for burning fossil fuels this year. Yet the brilliant engineering demonstrated in this year’s winning projects offers hope that we can rise to the challenge. A new kind of thermal battery will allow us to decarbonize the heat that powers the industrial processes behind everything from cement to chemicals. New cheap lasers help convert ore into pure iron for steelmaking using renewable electricity. Food challenges have led to several types of innovation: Instead of dragging agricultural waste to be digested in the landfill, why not create a harvester-style robot that can process it into carbon-capturing, soil-enriching biochar? To combat pests, bioengineers can use a technique called mRNA interference to create a precision poison for a particularly troublesome beetle. Perhaps the most miraculous food achievement this year is an AI-formulated vegan cheese that’s actually delicious.
(Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from Popular Science’s 37th annual Best of What’s New awards. Be sure to read the full list of the 50 Biggest Innovations of 2024.)
Grand Prize Winner
Joule Hive ‘firebrick’ thermal battery from Electrified Thermal Solutions (ETS): a cleaner firebrick from the 21st century
More information
While wind and solar costs are falling, the cost of batteries remains a lingering roadblock to decarbonizing the economy. After all, the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. This issue is especially problematic for heavy industries such as cement, steel, glass and chemical production, which require very high temperatures and typically run kilns 24/7. The burning of fossil fuels to produce heat for heavy industry is responsible for this approximately 17% of the world’s CO2 emissions.
An impressive solution to this problem is the Joule Hive, a 21st-century application of a technology dating back to the Bronze Age: refractory bricks, which store heat in insulated structures. The Joule Hive uses clean electricity to maintain temperatures of up to 3,270 degrees Fahrenheit in a shipping container-sized box full of hot ceramic bricks. Ducts in the box release heat to factory processes via a cold air stream, which heats the Joule Hive to near flame temperatures. Nearly a decade of research at MIT resulted in modifying metal oxides to perform like the Joule Hive flints. These bricks consist of certain compounds that are electrically conductive, alternating with others that provide insulation to retain heat.
Unlike your old toaster, which combines electricity with oxidation from the air to ultimately burn out the heating element, Joule Hive firebricks are already oxidized. This high-tech variant on age-old technology ensures that the Joule Hive can reach higher temperatures and requires less maintenance than the competition. A recent Stanford study found that refractory bricks heated by renewable electricity, if deployed around the world, could Eliminate 90% of the fossil fuels that heavy industry burns for heat. For its first commercial-scale installation, ETS will deploy a Joule Hive at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio in 2025.
Mobile biochar farm robot from Applied Carbon: collect agricultural waste and turn it into biochar in the field
More information
Nine of the ten companies that removed the most carbon from the environment use modern versions of an ancient method known as biochar. Heating wood residues or particularly dense agricultural waste such as nutshells in low-oxygen environments – a process called pyrolysis – turns the biomass into black carbon, also called biochar, which bacteria and fungi cannot further decompose. But there is a scaling problem: there is simply not enough compact wood waste to store billions of tons of carbon.
Applied Carbon’s breakthrough was the development of a new pyrolysis chamber that can handle the enormous waste left after harvesting corn, wheat and sugar, even though the piles of stems, husks and leaves are not very dense. The Applied Carbon robot pyrolizes the waste in the field, producing synthesis gas as a useful byproduct that the robot scrubs and then burns to keep the temperature in the chamber above 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. Making the biochar in the same field where it will be landfilled saves additional emissions and costs of getting the material to a central facility and back. Over the summer, the company deployed four robots in corn fields in the Texas Panhandle to process waste into biochar and sell carbon credits.
In the long term, the company plans to sell or lease larger versions of the robots, estimating that waste from the world’s row factories could store around 2 billion tonnes of CO2 as biochar every year. Co-founder Jason Aramburu half-jokingly compares his future vehicles to the Jawa crawlers from Star Wars – vehicles that search for stalks and corn cobs instead of dead robots.
Calantha from GreenLight Biosciences: Precision biopesticide using messenger RNA interference
More information
The Colorado potato beetle is one of the most predatory and pesticide-resistant insects, feasting on tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and, of course, spuds. The bug has developed resistance to dozens of chemicals and causes about $500 million in annual crop damage worldwide. Rather than escalating the arms race of stronger and higher-dose chemicals to kill the beetle, Calantha, created by GreenLight Biosciences, is a precision poison that disrupts the reproduction of crucial proteins in the beetle’s body. The precisely targeted pesticide is very effective. In fact, GreenLight Biosciences researchers scoured bioinformatics databases to find just the right gene that needed to be disrupted to prevent collateral damage to honeybees and other harmless species.
Calantha, an application of work that won the 2006 Nobel Prize, consists of double-stranded RNA that farmers can “insert” into conventional sprayers, like a typical pesticide. The beetle takes up the RNA and causes interference by binding to messenger RNA instructions for a gene called PSMB5, which is critical for the elimination of damaged proteins. These mRNAs are then broken down in the beetle’s intestinal cells, causing damaged proteins to build up in the insect to fatal levels.
Despite its success, Calantha is not immune to the threat of beetles developing an immunity. That is why GreenLight advises farmers to alternate Calantha with conventional pesticides. Still, the company is betting that any technology that reduces chemical use will be a key driver of consumer adoption. Calantha has sold out the first two batches and has now taken over 10% of the potato beetle pesticide market.
Climax Foods Vegan Cheese: Plant-based blue, brie and feta cheeses formulated by AI
More information
Cheese has one a worse greenhouse gas footprint than pork or chickenbut so far, vegan makers haven’t been able to crack the code on taste, texture, and overall deliciousness. To address this, California-based Climax Foods has developed a training set that includes metrics for cheese characteristics such as odor and extensibility. They then used AI and cheesemaker guesswork to develop plant-based formulations that met the same standards as dairy cheese.
Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn said the resulting blue cheese, with top ingredients of pumpkin seeds, hemp protein powder, lima beans and coconut oil, “unimaginable for a vegan cheese.” Climax became the first ever vegan cheesemaker to win a prestigious award Good Food Award– although complaints about the dairy sector led to the price being withdrawn at the last minute, with shadows of protectionist, legal chicanery facing non-dairy dairy products.
For now, Climax is trying to scale up to take advantage of the good press, even though it has had to deal with it leave while they look for additional investments on the ‘job’.” The company has a licensing agreement with ‘Laughing Cow’ maker Bel Group and a second, as yet unnamed producer. Meanwhile, the blue cheese is available online and at select restaurants in California, New York City and Las Vegas.
Laser furnace from Limelight Steel: Laser processing of iron ore for steel with 95% fewer emissions
More information
In 1985, a 1-watt laser cost about $1 million. Today, a laser of the same size costs just $1. Oakland-based Limelight Steel is taking advantage of this “Moore’s Law of Lasers” to reinvent iron ore processing for steel to reduce emissions. After all, 75% of the world’s steel industry still uses coal-fired blast furnaces. and the industry as a whole is responsible for about 8% of global emissions. The Limelight Steel process focuses laser light through mirrors and lenses onto the ore surface, raising it to temperatures above 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The proprietary set of conditions created by the lasers breaks the bonds between iron and oxygen in the ore without the need for carbon or expensive green hydrogen to act as a bouncer that carries away the unwanted oxygen. Limelight then follows standard steelmaking techniques to create a slug of impurities at the top of the brew, allowing dense pure iron to flow out through a channel below. Finally, steelmakers alloy the pure iron with small amounts of carbon and other elements to make different types of steel.
CTO and co-founder Andy Zhao says the lasers approach 70-80% efficiency at converting electricity into light energy. When the process is powered by renewable electricity, it produces 95% fewer emissions than traditional steel production. After using a $2.9 million grant from ARPA-E To demonstrate proof of concept, Limelight is now planning a pilot-scale factory in 2025 that can produce 100 tonnes annually.
Win the holidays with PopSci’s gift guides