The place can you discover lasers, electrical guitars, and racks filled with novel batteries, all in the identical large room? This week, the reply was the 2025 ARPA-E Vitality Innovation Summit simply exterior Washington, DC.
Vitality innovation can take many varieties, and the range in vitality analysis was on show on the summit. ARPA-E, a part of the US Division of Vitality, offers funding for high-risk, high-reward analysis tasks. The summit gathers tasks the company has funded, together with buyers, policymakers, and journalists.
A whole bunch of tasks had been exhibited in a large corridor through the convention, that includes demonstrations and analysis outcomes. Listed below are 4 of probably the most attention-grabbing improvements MIT Know-how Overview noticed on web site.
Metal made with lasers
Startup Limelight Metal has developed a course of to make iron, the principle element in metal, by utilizing lasers to warmth iron ore to super-high temperatures.
Metal manufacturing makes up roughly 8% of worldwide greenhouse fuel emissions right this moment, partly as a result of most metal remains to be made with blast furnaces, which depend on coal to hit the excessive temperatures that kick off the required chemical reactions.
Limelight as a substitute shines lasers on iron ore, heating it to temperatures over 1,600 °C. Molten iron can then be separated from impurities, and the iron will be put by means of present processes to make metal.
The corporate has constructed a small demonstration system with a laser energy of about 1.5 kilowatts, which may course of between 10 and 20 grams of ore. The entire system is made up of 16 laser arrays, every only a bit bigger than a postage stamp.
The parts within the demonstration system are commercially obtainable; this explicit sort of laser is utilized in projectors. The startup has benefited from years of progress within the telecommunications business that has helped convey down the price of lasers, says Andy Zhao, the corporate’s cofounder and CTO.
The following step is to construct a larger-scale system that may use 150 kilowatts of laser energy and will make as much as 100 tons of metal over the course of a yr.
Rocks that may make gas
The hunks of rock at a sales space hosted by MIT may not appear all that high-tech, however sometime they might assist produce fuels and chemical substances.
A serious subject of dialog on the ARPA-E summit was geologic hydrogen—there’s a ton of pleasure about efforts to seek out underground deposits of the fuel, which can be utilized as a gas throughout a variety of industries, together with transportation and heavy business.
Final yr, ARPA-E funded a handful of tasks on the subject, together with one in Iwnetim Abate’s lab at MIT. Abate is among the many researchers who’re aiming not simply to hunt for hydrogen, however to really use underground situations to assist produce it. Earlier this yr, his crew printed analysis displaying that by utilizing catalysts and situations frequent within the subsurface, scientists can produce hydrogen in addition to different chemical substances, like ammonia. Abate cofounded a spinout firm, Addis Vitality, to commercialize the analysis, which has since additionally obtained ARPA-E funding.
All of the rocks on the desk, from the chunk of darkish, exhausting basalt to the softer talc, could possibly be used to provide these chemical substances.
An electrical guitar powered by iron nitride magnets
The sound of music drifted from the Niron Magnetics sales space throughout close by walkways. Individuals wandering by stopped to take turns testing out the corporate’s magnets, within the type of an electrical guitar.
Most high-powered magnets right this moment comprise neodymium—demand for them is about to skyrocket within the coming years, particularly because the world builds extra electrical automobiles and wind generators. Provides may stretch skinny, and the geopolitics are sophisticated as a result of many of the provide comes from China.
Niron is making new magnets that don’t comprise uncommon earth metals. As an alternative, Niron’s know-how relies on extra ample supplies: nitrogen and iron.
The guitar is an illustration product—right this moment, magnets in electrical guitars sometimes comprise aluminum, nickel, and cobalt-based magnets that assist translate the vibrations from metal strings into an electrical sign that’s broadcast by means of an amplifier. Niron made an instrument utilizing its iron nitride magnets as a substitute. (See images of the guitar from an occasion final yr right here.)
Niron opened a pilot business facility in late 2024 that has the capability to provide 10 tons of magnets yearly. Since we final coated Niron, in early 2024, the corporate has introduced plans for a full-scale plant, which could have an annual capability of about 1,500 tons of magnets as soon as it’s absolutely ramped up.
The corporate is making sodium-ion batteries to assist meet energy demand from knowledge facilities.
Information facilities’ vitality calls for will be extremely variable—and as their whole energy wants get greater, these swings can begin to have an effect on the grid. Natron’s sodium-ion batteries will be put in at these amenities to assist degree off the largest peaks, permitting computing tools to run full out with out overly taxing the grid, says Natron cofounder and CTO Colin Wessells.
Sodium-ion batteries are a less expensive different to lithium-based chemistries. They’re additionally made with out lithium, cobalt, and nickel, supplies which are constrained in manufacturing or processing. We’re seeing some forms of sodium-ion batteries popping up in electrical automobiles in China.
Natron opened a manufacturing line in Michigan final yr, and the corporate plans to open a $1.4 billion manufacturing facility in North Carolina.
