Co-Executive Chair of Galvanize Climate Solutions. NYT Bestselling Author for Cheaper, Faster, Better.
As a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shreya Dave was fascinated with desalination technology and helping more people have access to clean water. She designed an efficient water filter alongside her classmate Brent Keller but unfortunately, it was too expensive for popular use. After realizing how much energy goes into separating chemicals in manufacturing, they began to see if their technology could be applicable elsewhere. Enter Via Separations, founded by Shreya, Brent, and their MIT professor Jeffrey Grossman, which is decarbonizing the manufacturing sector. Most manufacturing companies rely on a process that can be compared to getting pasta from a pot of boiling water to separate chemicals. They use evaporation, which is like boiling off an entire pot of water to get to the pasta. This process requires heat that often comes from fossil fuels. Massachusetts-based Via developed the equivalent of a pasta strainer for chemical separations, a process that achieves what evaporation does while using 90% less energy. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that switching to filtration-based chemical separations like Via’s can save roughly 3 billion tons of carbon per year. That is the equivalent of taking every single one of the world’s passenger cars off the road. After a few successful pilot demonstrations, Via is now beginning to install its solutions on a larger scale. Shreya and her colleagues are another example of people who took their passions and interests and existing work and found a way to use it to help the climate, serving as an inspiration to us all. https://lnkd.in/e2XESThf