An NETL-supported project to develop a transformational carbon capture technology will culminate in an engineering-scale test campaign at Norway’s Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM), potentially paving the way for future coal-fired power plants to support cost and performance goals for fewer carbon emissions set by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The Non-Aqueous Solvent (NAS) technology, which is being developed by RTI International researchers with support from DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and NETL, could substantially reduce energy consumption in carbon capture operations at coal-fired power plants compared to other solvent-based technologies, such as the monoethanolamine (MEA) process.

NETL and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) have announced five finalists for the Advanced Welding Workforce Initiative (AWWI), a partnership to invest approximately $1 million in education and training for advanced technical workers in Appalachia. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy High Performance Materials Program provided $750,000 to AWWI to prepare a new generation of welders to manufacture and service high-temperature alloy components in advanced coal- and natural gas-fueled electric generating stations. Such plants operate at significantly higher temperatures and pressures, which increases efficiency and lowers emissions of carbon dioxide and requires the use of superalloys that can withstand the harsh conditions. Skills to be acquired through AWWI training will also be broadly applicable for positions in Appalachia’s emerging aerospace, aviation, automotive and petrochemical industries, which will require welders and other technicians with expertise in working with high-performance materials.

Several NETL researchers recently were named recipients of the Secretary’s Honor Awards, the highest internal, non-monetary recognition that U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) employees and contractors can receive for their service and contributions to the department’s mission and to the nation. A total of 32 Honor Awards were announced. NETL’s Christopher Matranga received the Secretary of Energy’s Excellence Award. Matranga’s work has brought national and international recognition to NETL by advancing technologies to find new and improved applications for domestic coal that will strengthen the U.S. economy, improve the environment and promote energy independence for America. Two teams that included NETL researchers received the Secretary of Energy Achievement Award. Those researchers were Randy Gentry, a member of the Science and Technology Risk Matrix Team, and Greg Hackett and Daniel Maloney, members of the Integrated Energy Systems Team.

NETL has named Kelly Rose, Ph.D., to serve as interim technical director for the Lab’s Science-Based Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Institute (SAMI), a joint institute led by NETL for advancing cutting-edge AI and ML computational technologies to drive innovative solutions for effective, environmentally sustainable fossil energy resource recovery and utilization. Established in 2020, SAMI builds off NETL’s unique strengths in science-based modeling and research data curation and management capabilities. It also capitalizes on NETL’s world-class capabilities in high-performance and other scientific computing capabilities to address fossil energy research in areas such as improving the performance, reliability and efficiency of the existing coal-fired fleet; beneficiating carbon ore and fossil energy byproducts; driving break throughs in advanced materials design and discovery; optimizing the recovery of oil and gas resources; and reducing the cost and risk of carbon capture utilization and storage.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) has announced $28.35 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development projects under the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002404, Advanced Processing of Rare Earth Elements and Critical Minerals for Industrial and Manufacturing Applications. The U.S. imports more than half of its annual consumption of 31 of the 35 critical minerals (CM). The U.S. has no domestic production for 14 CMs and is completely dependent on imports to supply its demand. CM are used in the manufacture of high-tech devices, national defense applications, and green growth-related industries. One of these CM, rare earth elements (REE) are the 15 elements in the lanthanide series shown in the periodic table. Scandium and yttrium are included in the manufacture of cell phones, LED screens, solar panels, energy infrastructure, defense technologies, and other essential high-tech applications. The U.S. currently imports 80% of its REEs directly from China, with remaining portions indirectly sourced from China through other countries.

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) announced plans to make $8 million in Federal funding available for cost-shared research, development, and testing of technologies that can utilize carbon dioxide (CO2) from power systems or other industrial sources for bio-mediated uptake by algal systems to create valuable products and services. Funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002403, Engineering-Scale Testing and Validation of Algae-Based Technologies and Bioproducts, will support the goals of DOE’s Carbon Utilization Program. The primary objective of carbon utilization technology development is to lower the near-term cost of carbon capture through the creation of value-added products from the conversion of carbon dioxide.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) has announced up to $15 million in federally funded financial assistance for cost-shared research and development projects under the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002402, Carbon Capture R&D: Bench-Scale Testing of Direct Air Capture Components (TRL 3) and Initial Engineering Design for Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Systems from Air (TRL 6).

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) announced plans to make $160 million in federal funding available to help recalibrate the Nation’s vast fossil-fuel and power infrastructure for decarbonized energy and commodity production. The funding, for cost-shared cooperative agreements, is aimed to develop technologies for the production, transport, storage, and utilization of fossil-based hydrogen, with progress towards net-zero carbon emissions.

The eXtremeMAT team will provide a webinar presentation Thursday, Jan. 21 to American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) committee members, providing information and feedback including how eXtremeMAT’s work may impact ASME standards in the future.  The presentation, “Accelerating the Development of Extreme Environment Materials,” will summarize the team’s recent advances to develop physics-based models to predict long-term alloy performance in harsh service conditions and to detail a strategy proposed by eXtremeMAT for using these models to accelerate the qualification of alloys. Initiated in 2018, the eXtremeMAT consortium, led by NETL with support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its Office of Fossil Energy, leverages the unparalleled materials science and engineering expertise and capabilities available within the DOE national laboratory complex to accelerate development of affordable and durable materials for extreme environment service. eXtremeMAT aims to develop, validate and integrate advanced models to predict how microstructure and composition of certain steels affect alloys designed for harsh service environments.

An NETL-supported project at the University of North Dakota (UND) to economically extract strategically important rare earth elements (REE) has shown that lignite is a potential domestic source of these vital minerals using a process that also produces valuable by-products and takes advantage of existing mining infrastructure. REE have been designated as critical minerals by the U.S. Department of the Interior due to their unique properties, which are essential and often non-substitutable in a variety of consumer goods, energy systems and defense applications. With China largely controlling the global production and value chain, the U.S has begun moving to generate domestic supplies of these critical resource, a task NETL has supported with its partners in academia such as UND. During UND’s work, researchers simplified an acid-leaching REE extraction process to a single step for economic benefit.