NETL is helping establish four new regional direct air capture (DAC) Hubs around the U.S. to demonstrate how the innovative carbon dioxide (CO2) removal technology can be put to work curbing the world’s climate crisis.

NETL is teaming with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to jointly explore a range of technology innovations for carbon management and strategies for economic development and sustainable energy transitions in the Appalachian region. NETL Director Brian Anderson, Ph.D., and ORNL Deputy Director for Science and Technology Susan S. Hubbard, Ph.D., signed an official memorandum of understanding during a brief ceremony held at NETL’s Morgantown, West Virginia, site Friday, March 17.

NETL will share its expertise and research in materials sciences, spanning from high entropy alloys to gasification of plastics, among many other topics, at The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society’s (TMS) 2023 Annual Meeting and Exhibition scheduled for March 19-23 in San Diego. 

A new study by NETL researchers, in collaboration with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers, demonstrated that existing U.S. underground gas storage (UGS) facilities can viably store hydrogen-methane blends, reducing the need to build new hydrogen infrastructure while meeting a range of the hydrogen demand projected for 2050 and helping to support the transition to a clean hydrogen economy.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the DOE Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) today announced nearly $47 million in funding for 22 research projects to advance the development of new and innovative measurement, monitoring, and mitigation technologies to help detect, quantify, and reduce methane emissions across oil and natural gas producing regions of the United States.

NETL will provide technical support and expertise to award the American-Made Direct Air Capture (DAC) Prizes, a series of interconnected competitions offering up to $115 million to advance carbon dioxide (CO2) removal technologies from hard-to-decarbonize sectors of the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) announced $6 million in funding for six university-led research and development projects that will repurpose domestic coal resources for high-value graphitic products and carbon-metal composites that can be employed in clean energy technologies.

Aluminum is a critical element used in thousands of important products, but it can often interfere with quick and effective extraction of valuable rare earth elements (REEs) from coal waste byproducts. Because aluminum interferes with the recovery of REEs from some sources, NETL researchers developed an effective, renewable, technology that can detect aluminum in liquids for removal, clearing the way for effective recovery of REEs.

March is Women’s History Month, providing NETL with an excellent opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women from across the Lab. As part of the celebration, women throughout our organization were invited to explain why it’s important for NETL to foster gender diversity within its workforce and discuss the steps they take to encourage more women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) or other careers at NETL.

NETL researchers who asked the question — “How can we use coal without burning it and generating greenhouse gas?” — have been awarded a U.S. patent for an invention that transforms coal into a game-changing material to manufacture valuable products and generate jobs in coal communities as the nation transitions to clean energy.