Director’s Corner

by Brian Anderson, Ph.D.

Innovation continues at NETL, and our research teams are hard at work developing technologies to enhance the nation’s energy foundation and protect the environment for future generations. The research our team pursues is solving real-world challenges and positively impacting lives, from finding economical ways to enable a domestic supply of the materials we reply on for cell phones, computers, defense technologies and more, to advancing innovations that can provide affordable, reliable, near-zero-emission electricity.  

I’m proud to share a selection of accomplishments from the second quarter of fiscal year 2020. For example:  

• We’re applying artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques toward enhancing oil and gas production and evaluating and repairing power plant boilers for safer, more affordable energy production. 
• Together with our research partners, we made great strides in technologies to enable a domestic supply of rare earth elements. Researchers are using plasma and other novel techniques to extract REEs from acid mine drainage.  
• Our researchers were honored with awards for their work to create durable sensors capable of measuring environmental parameters in power generation systems and for inventing novel sorbents that can remove carbon dioxide from power plants and heavy metals from water.  

These are just a few of the advances and breakthroughs our NETL team is accomplishing. I encourage you to read more in our most recent Accomplishments Report (Download PDF).