【会议通知】MIT “A+B” 国际应用能源会议7月5一8日举行 | Engineering

IPCC报告指出的 “全球变暖1.5°C”概念已向全世界发出了预警。除非到2030年全球二氧化碳排放量减半，否则海洋和陆地环境极有可能发生毁灭性的改变，这种变化将比预期的要快而且不可逆转。因此，留给人类向新能源体系过渡的时间不多了。研究表明，全球必须采取两步走（A+B）的方法应对这一挑战：步骤A是指从现在到2050年，以前所未有的规模和速度部署现有的、已经过工业应用的技术，包括太阳能、风能和核能等等；步骤B是指开发新技术和理念，以便在2050年后取代步骤A中仍存在的非清洁能源部分，这部分可高达百万兆瓦级的。

MIT “A+B” 国际应用能源会议由麻省理工学院，哈佛大学与Applied Energy联合举办。MITAB致力于加速全球环境应对措施中步骤A的部署，以及步骤B新概念和新兴技术的研发。步骤A的关键在于保持高效生产力的同时降低资本和运营成本、管理社会动态、尽量减少环境影响；同时借助自动化、人工智能技术，以及社会动员、政府行动和国际协调等措施为步骤A提供推动力。步骤B的关键在于探索新理念和新兴技术（如聚变动力工程、超导传输等），这些新概念和新技术有机会在30年后发展到百万瓦级别。

• 可再生能源： 太阳能（A或B）、风能（A）、生物能（A或B）和其他可再生能源。

• 清洁能源转换技术： 燃料电池和电解槽（A或B），石油/天然气/煤炭转换为高价值材料和化学品（A），混合能源系统，如间歇可再生能源和核蓄热的组合，用于负载跟踪，化学品/材料/燃料生产（A或B），多能源载体能源系统（A或B）。

• 储能： 电网规模电池（A）、电池管理系统（A）、燃料电池/电解槽管理系统（A）、泵送液压/压缩空气（A）、热能存储（A或B）、分布式储能（A）。

• 核能： 创新的混凝土解决方案和民用建筑（A）、机器人和AI的应用（A）、造船厂建造的浮动反应堆（A）、小型模块化反应堆和微型反应堆（A或B）、快中子反应堆（B）、聚变反应堆（B）。

• 减缓技术： 碳捕获和封存（B），核废物（A），太阳能废物（A），电池废物（A），水泥、散装金属和化学品的CO ₂ 减排生产（A或B）。

• 智能能源系统： 智能电网（A）、超高效/超导电力传输（B）、无线电力传输（B）；运输和工业生产的电气化，如电动汽车/卡车（A或B）、电气化空运（A或B）、微波/等离子体/电化学处理（A或B）。

• 能源系统的可持续性： 环境监测（A）、社会动员（A）、建立共识（A）、政府决策（A）、国际协调（A）。

• 可持续地能： 地热（A或B）、天然气水合物（A）、非常规天然气（A）、液化天然气、减少石油和天然气部门的甲烷和二氧化碳排放（A）、可持续地能开发和管理（A）。

• 食品、水和空气： 水和空气处理（A）、食品的CO ₂ 减排（A）、水-食品-能源关系（A）。

CO ₂ capture, especially from dilute sources such as air, will be a key aspect of addressing difficult-to-abate sources of emission. Utilization/upgrade of CO ₂ , especially approaches that enable its incorporation into carbon-negative (cradle-to-gate) long-lived materials, will be a key element of this strategy, since these will provide economic pull-through of the needed solutions. I will discuss advances in each of these key areas and look at them from an integrated perspective. 

Addressing climate change will require decarbonizing the industries which manufacture the material world around us. Of the staggering 33% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions that arise from the manufacturing of products essential to modern life, nearly half come from just four industries:  Cement, steel, ammonia, and ethylene.  About 8% (~3 gigatons CO ₂ per year) originates from Portland cement production, in which firing of ground limestone (CaCO3) with aluminosilicates at high temperature results in the stoichiometric emission of CO ₂ as well as thermal emissions from burning fossil fuels, primarily coal.  Consequently, each kilogram of cement produced emits 0.93 kilograms of CO ₂ .  The rising abundance of very low-cost (but intermittently generated) renewable electricity suggests that new electrical processes could be one pathway to decarbonizing cement production. This talk will discuss an initiative at MIT in which ambient-temperature electrolysis is used to produce acids and bases for the decarbonation of limestone and production of cementitious calcium silicates. Potential applications of the electrolytic approach to materials recycling and mining will also be discussed.

Today advanced reactor developers are taking multiple paths and pursuing multiple technology options for advanced nuclear reactors.  A subset of these technologies use molten salts, the heat transfer fluid originally selected for the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program in the 1950’s.  While the ANP program was short-lived and attention focused correctly toward reactors for submarines, the attributes required for aircraft propulsion—a very high ratio of reactor thermal power to weight and ability to deliver heat at high temperature—remain attractive attributes for future commercial reactors.  This presentation will review the history and recent progress toward development of high-temperature reactors cooled by molten salt, and frame this progress inside to broader set of goals to accelerate the development and deployment of zero-carbon technologies to enable a viable path to net-zero CO ₂ emissions.

The ability to store large amounts of electrical energy is of increasing importance with the growing fraction of electricity generation from intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar. Wide-scale utilization of flow batteries is limited by the cost of redox-active metals such as vanadium or precious metal electrocatalysts. We have developed high performance flow batteries based on the aqueous redox behavior of small organic and organometallic molecules, e.g. These redox active materials can be inexpensive and exhibit rapid redox kinetics and high solubilities, potentially enabling massive electrical energy storage at greatly reduced cost. We have developed protocols for measuring capacity fade rates, which are particularly important for establishing very low capacity fade rates, and have discovered that the capacity fade rate is determined by the molecular calendar life, which can depend on state of charge, but is independent of the number of charge-discharge cycles imposed. We will report the performance of some of the very few chemistries with long enough calendar life for practical application in stationary storage, and on progress in reversing capacity fade by recomposing decomposed molecules.

CCS is a well-known technology for reducing carbon emissions. Equinor has been the pioneer in the area and established the world’s first offshore CCS installation in the Sleipner field in the 1990s. However, the scale-up of CCS is still in the early phase, with many small-scale demonstration projects worldwide. In this presentation, Equinor will discuss the energy trilemma, especially with the impact of the energy crisis after the break of the war in Ukraine. To tackle the energy crisis and climate goal, CCS is a necessary process to scale up significantly than today. Furthermore, we like to share the experiences of establishing large-scale CCS projects targeting to store 30 million tons of CO ₂ in Norway, the UK, and the USA. In the end, we want to share the learning as an early mover in CCS and our vision of CCS commercialization towards 2050.

Energy Systems

21:00-23:00 , Tuesday, July 5

Decarbonization

20:10-22:10, Wednesday, July 6

Innovation Now

20:10-22:10, Thursday, July 7

Materials

21:00-23:00, Friday, July 8