Innovative and reliable energy conversion systems are at the heart of America’s evolving energy infrastructure. They allow for the production of power, fuels and chemicals from both fossil fuels and renewable sources to provide the electricity that powers nearly every aspect of our daily lives. NETL’s role in advancing these systems ranges from designing novel experimental modeling tools to testing more efficient solutions to generating power and materials in ways that reduce environmental impact.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have announced $3.3 million in Federal funding for cost-shared research and development projects under the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002399, Water Management for Thermal Power Generation.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and NETL has selected 14 projects to receive $8.7 million in Federal funding for cost-shared research and development under Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002185, Coal-Derived Materials for Building, Infrastructure, and Other Applications, with the goal of fostering new uses for domestic coal resources.

Future novel hybrid energy systems could lead to paradigm shifts in clean energy production, according to a paper published last week in Joule. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) three applied energy laboratories — Idaho National Laboratory (INL), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) — co‑authored the paper describing such integrated energy systems.

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to algorithms that can — for a given set of human-defined objectives — learn, predict and make decisions, significantly increasing the speed and efficacy of decision-making. Most AI applications use machine learning (ML) to find patterns in massive amounts of data. The patterns are then used for making predictions.

Michele Ostraat, Ph.D. has been named chief operating officer of NETL.

NETL is home to some of the most talented scientists in the world, which was recently highlighted in an analysis published by the journal PLOS Biology naming several NETL researchers as among the top 2% of scientists in the world based on their career-long citation impact up until the end of 2019.

In a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy’s (FE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),  more than 1,200 hours of field testing was completed at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center (ITC), successfully demonstrating a process to create concrete masonry units (CMUs, or concrete blocks) using carbon dioxide (CO2) from power plant flue gas without the need for a carbon capture step.

As a new graduate of the Appalachian Leadership Institute, NETL’s Anthony Armaly has acquired valuable tools and perspectives and created an expanded network of contacts to promote and implement Lab initiatives across Appalachia.

NETL Technology Manager Briggs White, Ph.D., will participate in a panel discussion during the 2020 Virtual Advanced Clean Energy Summit (ACES), a global forum for industry professionals presented by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, to be held Thursday, Dec. 3, and Friday, Dec. 4. White and fellow panelists will discuss the current portfolio of fossil fuel assets and how they can be integrated with renewable sources and other technologies during a session set for 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Friday.