Molten metal.
Asegun Henry has a concept for dealing with environment modification: Store up the sun.
“This is the key, the linchpin that will set a lot of things in the right direction,” states the MIT mechanical engineering teacher.
Asegun Henry has a strong concept to conserve the world. He thinks the crucial to minimizing carbon emissions, and alleviating additional environment modification, depends on our capability to box up the sun.
Today, much of the renewable resource that’s caught from the wind and sun is provided in a use-it-or-lose-it capability. To shop such energy, Henry pictures a totally sustainable, zero-carbon grid with the prospective to provide all our electrical requirements, even on overcast and windless days. And he has a plan for how to arrive.
Imagine, together with solar plants and wind turbines, a greatly insulated, warehouse-sized container filled with white-hot liquid metal. Any excess energy caught throughout low-use times would be diverted into this container, where it would be transformed into heat. When energy need increases, the liquid metal might be pumped through a converter to turn heat back into electrical power.
Henry states this “sun-in-a-box” system would function as a rechargeable battery, albeit one that uses up half a football field. He has actually revealed that crucial parts of the system work, and is bringing those parts together to show a lab-scale system. If that shows effective, he will press ahead to variations with increasing storage capability, and eventually, to a commercial-scale, grid-integrated system.
MIT mechanical engineering teacher Asegun Henry thinks the crucial to minimizing carbon emissions depends on our capability to box up the sun. Credit: Adam Glanzman
It’s an enthusiastic roadway, and one that has actually not lacked difficulties, similar to Henry’s own course to MIT. In 2020, he was approved a professors period position in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and is funneling much of his energy into accumulating the sun.
“In my view, the choice to go to MIT was a path toward saving the human race,” Henry states. “I believe in this technology, and that this is the key, the linchpin that will set a lot of things in the right direction.”
Thinking huge
Henry matured in Sarasota, Florida, then in Tallahassee, where he ended up being a drummer. His moms and dads, both teachers at Florida A&M University, strove to impart in him a gratitude of his household’s West African roots. When he was 10, his mom brought him to an African dance class at the university.
“I had been taught to revere African culture, but never had really seen or heard it, and I totally fell in love with the drums that day,” Henry states.
For the next 6 years, he signed up with an expert touring ensemble and dedicated himself to African drumming. He was 16 when he chose to give up a drumming profession, after seeing his instructors’ monetary challenges. Around that time, he participated in a rites-of-passage program for young Black males, where he satisfied coach Makola Abdullah, a teacher of civil engineering at Florida A&M. Abdullah employed Henry as a young assistant in his laboratory, where the group was studying the structure of the Egyptian pyramids.
“That really turned things on for me,” Henry remembers. “I was getting paid to do technical work for the first time, which was exciting at that age.”
As an undergrad at Florida A&M, Henry continued operating in Abdullah’s laboratory, on a research study of earthquake-induced vibrations. He likewise ended up being thinking about vibrations at the atomic scale, and the movement of atoms in the context of heat, which led him to use to graduate school at MIT.
Henry’s experience at MIT was academically extreme, sometimes economically unpredictable, and in general, socially separating, he states, keeping in mind that at one time he was the only Black engineering college student in the department.
“That [isolation] inspired me, and I was on an objective to get my degree,” he states.
Henry pressed on, dealing with his consultant to establish molecular characteristics simulations of heat conduction, and got his master’s and PhD in mechanical engineering in 2009. He then accepted a professors position at Georgia Tech, however prior to choosing school, he used up 3 successive postdocs, at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Northwestern University, and the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E.
Each postdoc assisted to crystallize his own research study objectives. At Oak Ridge, he discovered to do electronic structure computations. At Northwestern, he entered into renewable resource, mimicing appealing solar-thermochemical products. And at ARPA-E, a department that was created to support high-risk, high-reward jobs, he discovered to believe huge.
“I visited Jurassic-sized machine shops where they build the largest turbines in the world, and also toured concentrated solar plants,” Henry states. “That was a transformative experience, and I started getting interested in systems-level design.”
“A step change”
He went back to Georgia Tech with a dangerous concept for a brand-new sort of focused solar energy (CSP). Most CSP styles are based upon the concept of keeping heat as molten salt, and moving the liquid through metal piping and pumps to transform into electrical power. But there is a limitation to how hot the salts can get when keeping heat. Temperatures greater than this limitation might likewise trigger metal pipelines and pumps to wear away too rapidly.
“I was interested in pushing this to the extreme, to see how to get a step change in performance,” Henry states.
He proposed making pipelines and pumps out of more heat-resistant ceramics, and keeping heat not in molten salt, however in radiant, white-hot liquid metal.
“It was a radical idea, and based on the physics, it’s sound,” Henry states.
He and his trainees worked for years to show an essential element of the system, a high-temperature ceramic pump, in the beginning with little development.
“I used to have to give these coach-in-the-locker-room speeches to keep everyone motivated,” Henry keeps in mind.
In 2017, their efforts settled with a pump that might flow liquid at as much as 1,400 degrees Celsius. The presentation made them a publication in Nature, and a Guinness World Record for the “highest operating temperature liquid pump.”
“That escalated things,” states Henry, who at the time had actually gotten an invite to interview for a professors position at MIT. When he was used the task, he wasn’t sure he might take it. While his work was moving on, he remained in the middle of a complex divorce.
“I was at a difficult crossroads,” he states. “Do I stay, and possibly get custody of my kids, or do I double down on my career and go to MIT, where I think I have the best chance of pursuing this idea?”
In completion, Henry accepted the position and returned to MIT in 2018. The divorce pressed him into personal bankruptcy, even as he was launching a brand-new laboratory and handling mentor needs on school. It was a turbulent year, however he ultimately relocated to Boston with his kids, and prior to the pandemic set in, Henry was likewise granted period.
“It’s a dramatic relief for me,” Henry states. “After risking it all to come here, you want that security that things will work out.”
He is advancing to enhance the sun-in-a-box system, and has actually because bested his record with an even higher-temperature pump. He’s likewise continuing to imitate the movement of atoms in various products and is transforming those movements into noise — a job that was partially influenced by his early experience in music.
Of the brand-new balance he has actually discovered in work and life, he states: “It’s very grounding. And I’m thankful.”
