U.S. Government Awards $151 Million for Energy Research
October 27, 2009
The $151 million in funding has been awarded through the DOE’s recently-formed Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (”ARPA-E”). ARPA-E’s mission is to develop innovative and efficient technologies in energy storage, biofuels, carbon capture, renewable power, building efficiency, vehicles, and other energy technology areas. This is the first round of projects funded under ARPA-E. The 37 selected projects are part of the first solicitation from ARPA-E’s $400 million in total Recovery Act funding.
This first ARPA-E solicitation was highly competitive and oversubscribed, with over 3,600 initial concept papers received. Of those, approximately 300 full applications were requested and ultimately 37 final awardees through a rigorous review process with input from multiple review panels composed of leading U.S. energy science and technology experts and ARPA-E’s program managers. Evaluations were based on the potential for high impact on ARPA-E’s goals and scientific and technical merit. The Department of Energy (DOE) announced major funding for 37 ambitious research projects in 17 states. The grans are distributed as following: about 43% are small businesses, 35% are educational institutions, and 19% are large corporations.
“After World War II, America was the unrivaled leader in basic and applied sciences. It was this leadership that led to enormous technological advances. ARPA-E is a crucial part of the new effort by the U.S. to spur the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, creating thousands of new jobs and helping cut carbon pollution,” said Steven Chu, United States Secretary of Energy. As a scientist, Chu is known for his research in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.
Some of the innovative projects selected for awards include:
- Low Cost Crystals for LED Lighting: Developed by Momentive Performance Materials, this proposal for novel crystal growth technology could dramatically lower the cost of developing light emitting diodes (LEDs), which are 30 times more efficient than incandescent bulbs and four times more efficient than compact fluorescents. This higher quality, low-cost material would offer significant breakthroughs in lowering costs of finished LED lighting, accelerating mass market use, and dramatically decreasing U.S. lighting energy usage. Lighting accounts for 14 percent of U.S. electricity use.
- Bacteria for Producing Direct Solar Hydrocarbon Biofuels: Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a bioreactor that has the potential to produce a flow of gasoline directly from sunlight and CO2 using a symbiotic system of two organisms. First, a photosynthetic organism directly captures solar radiation and uses it to convert carbon dioxide to sugars. In the same area, another organism converts the sugars to gasoline and diesel transportation fuels. This development has the potential to greatly increase domestic production of clean fuel for our vehicles and end our reliance on foreign oil.
- Liquid Metal Grid-Scale Batteries: Created by Professor Don Sadoway, a leading MIT battery scientist, the all-liquid metal battery is based on low cost, domestically available liquid metals with potential to break through the cost barrier required for mass adoption of large scale energy storage as part of the nation’s energy grid. If successful, this battery technology could revolutionize the way electricity is used and produced on the grid, enabling round-the-clock power from America’s wind and solar power resources, increasing the stability of the grid, and making blackouts a thing of the past. And if deployed at homes, it could allow individual consumers the ability to be part of a future “smart energy Internet,” where they would have much greater control over their energy usage and delivery.
- CO2 Capture using Artificial Enzymes: Today’s funding will support an effort by the United Technologies Research Center to develop new synthetic enzymes that could make it easier and more affordable to capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and factories. If successful, the effort would mean a much lower energy requirement for industrial carbon capture and significantly lower capital costs to get carbon capture systems up and running. Success of this project could substantially lower the cost of carbon capture relative to current, state-of-the-art amine and ammonia based processes. This would represent a major breakthrough that could make it affordable to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from coal and natural gas power plants around the world.
The table below presents funding winners:
|
Lead Research Organization
(Partner Organizations) |
DOE Grant Amount
|
Lead Organization Location
|
Project Description
|
| 1366 Technologies Inc. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Lab for PV Research) |
$4,000,000 |
Lexington, MA | Renewable Power (solar) “Direct Wafer” technology to form high efficiency “monocrystalline-equivalent” silicon wafers directly from molten silicon, with potential to halve the installed cost of solar photovoltaics. |
| Agrivida, Inc. |
$4,565,800 |
Medford, MA | Biomass Energy
Cell wall-degrading enzymes grown within the plant itself that |
| Arizona State University (Fluidic Energy, Inc.) |
$5,133,150 |
Tempe, AZ | Energy Storage A new class of metal-air batteries using ionic liquids, with many times the energy density of today’s lithium-ion batteries. Could enable long range, low cost plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles. |
| Arizona State University (Diversified Energy, North Carolina State University) |
$5,205,706 |
Tempe, AZ | Direct Solar Fuels Cyanobacteria that produce and secrete fatty acids for biofuel feedstock using just sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide as inputs. |
| Ceres, Inc. |
$4,989,144 |
Thousand Oaks, CA | Biomass Energy Genes that enable energy crops to produce more biomass using less land (and lower quality land), less water, and less fertilizer than standard energy crops. This approach would provide sustainable biofeedstocks to displace oil and coal for fuels and power production. |
| Delphi Automotive Systems LLC (International Rectifier, Oak Ridge National Laboratory) |
$6,733,386 |
Kokomo, IN | Vehicle Technologies New power electronics technology based on a Gallium Nitride on Silicon process with innovative thermal management that can enable up to 50% more efficient power delivery from batteries to electric motors. |
| E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (Bio Architecture Lab) |
$9,000,000 |
Wilmington, DE | Biomass Energy Production of bio-butanol, an advanced biofuel, from macroalgae (seaweed). Seaweed is a potentially sustainable and scalable new source of biomass that doesn’t require arable land or potable water. |
| EaglePicher Technologies LLC
(Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) |
$7,200,000 |
Joplin, MO | Energy Storage High energy, low cost planar liquid sodium beta batteries for grid scale electrical power storage. Could enable continuous power from renewable resources, like wind and solar, and could support a highly stable and reliable grid. |
| Envia Systems (Argonne National Laboratory) |
$4,000,000 |
Hayward, CA | Energy Storage
High energy density Lithium-ion batteries with 3x better |
| Exelus, Inc. (Zeolyst International, Linde Process Plants) |
$1,000,000 |
Livingston, NJ | Conventional Energy A novel catalyst to convert the olefins in refinery off-gas, which is currently flared and lost, into high-octane alkylate fuel. Could enable recovery up to 45 million barrels per year of gasoline. |
| FastCAP Systems Corporation (MIT) |
$5,349,932 |
Cambridge, MA | Energy Storage A nanotube enhanced ultracapacitor with energy density approaching that of standard batteries, but with many times greater power density and thousands of times the cycle life. Could greatly reduce the cost of hybrid and electric vehicles and of grid-scale storage. |
| FloDesign Wind Turbine Corp. |
$8,325,400 |
Wibraham, MA | Renewable Power (wind) A new high efficiency shrouded wind turbine able to deliver significantly more energy per unit of swept area. Could also reduce noise and safety concerns, enabling distributed wind applications. |
| Foro Energy, Inc. |
$9,151,300 |
Littleton, CO | Renewable Power (geothermal) A new hybrid thermal/mechanical drilling technology for much faster drilling with less wear and tear on the drill bit. Could open up cost effective access to the geothermal energy in deep, hard basement rock, a potentially huge new source of domestically available, carbon-free baseload power. |
| General Motors Company (University of Michigan, HRL Laboratories, LLC, Dynalloy, Inc.) |
$2,655,174 |
Warren, MI | Vehicle Technologies A shape memory alloy (SMA) energy recovery device to convert waste heat from car engines into electricity. Could significantly increase fuel efficiency in cars (most energy is lost as heat) and could be used in many other heat recovery applications. |
| Inorganic Specialists, Inc.
(Ultramet, Inc., EaglePicher, Southeast Nonwovens, EMTEC) |
$1,999,447 |
Miamisburg, OH | Energy Storage A silicon-coated carbon nanofiber paper for the anode of next generation Lithium-ion batteries. These low cost, manufacturable batteries could accelerate the deployment of plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, shifting U.S. transportation energy from imported oil to the grid. |
| Iowa State University (Purdue University) |
$4,373,488 |
Ames, IA | Direct Solar Fuels
Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology approaches to |
| ITN Energy Systems, Inc. (MAG Industrial Automation Systems, EPRI, Colorado School of Mines) |
$4,986,249 |
Littleton, CO | Building Efficiency Solid-state electrochromic film on plastic substrates with roll-to-roll production process to substantially reduce the cost of electrically controlled smart windows for net-zero energy buildings. These windows reduce heating and cooling loads and minimize overhead lighting use. |
| Lehigh University |
$566,641 |
Bethlehem, PA | Carbon Capture Electric field swing adsorption for carbon capture using high surface area conductive solid carbon sorbents. Uses electric fields to change the interaction of molecules on a surface, capturing and then releasing the CO2 using far less energy than current approaches. |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
$6,949,624 |
Cambridge, MA | Energy Storage An all liquid metal grid-scale battery for low cost, large scale storage of electrical energy. This new class of batteries could enable continuous power supply from renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar and a more stable, reliable grid. |
| Michigan State University |
$2,540,631 |
East Lansing, MI | Vehicle Technologies The wave disc engine, a gas-fueled electric generator that is five times more efficient than traditional engines for electricity production, as well as lighter and cheaper to manufacture. Could replace current generators for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. |
| Momentive Performance Materials (Soraa, Advanced Photonic Crystals) |
$4,519,259 |
Strongsville, OH | Building Efficiency A high-pressure ammonothermal process for the inexpensive production of high quality, single crystal GaN substrates at high crystal growth rates. Could allow production of light emitting diodes (LEDs) at costs equal to current low-cost fluorescent lighting. LED lighting consumes as little as one tenth of the energy of current lighting options. |
| Nalco Company (Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL USA) |
$2,250,487 |
Naperville, IL | Carbon Capture An electrochemical process for CO2 capture using Resin-Wafer Electrodeionization. Uses pH changes to adsorb and desorb CO2 from flue gas without energy intensive, costly processes such as heating or a vacuum. |
| NanOasis Technologies, Inc. |
$2,031,252 |
Richmond, CA | Water Carbon nanotubes for reverse osmosis membranes that require less energy and have many times higher flux. Could dramatically reduce the cost and energy required for desalination to supply fresh water for our crops and communities. |
| Ohio State University
(PSRI, CONSOL Energy, Inc., Shell/CRI, The Babcock and Wilcox Company) |
$5,000,000 |
Columbus, OH | Carbon Capture Syngas Chemical Looping (SCL) to convert coal or biomass into electricity while efficiently capturing the CO2. Has successfully been demonstrated at laboratory scale; this project will scale it up to a pilot plant at the National Carbon Capture Center. |
| PAX Streamline, Inc. (Georgia Tech Research Institute) |
$3,000,000 |
San Rafael, CA | Renewable Power
(wind) “Blown Wing” technology for wind turbines. Creates |
| Pennsylvania State University (Sentech Corporation) |
$1,900,067 |
University Park, PA | Direct Solar Fuels Catalyst-coated titanium dioxide nanotube membranes to convert sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into methane and other hydrocarbon fuels. |
| Phononic Devices, Inc (University of Oklahoma, California Institute of Technology, University of California at Santa Cruz) |
$3,000,000 |
Norman, OK | Waste Heat Capture A new class of high efficiency thermoelectric devices and materials that use thermally insulating semiconductors with high thermal-to-electric conversion efficiencies. An astounding [60%] of U.S. energy is lost in the form of waste heat - from power plants, industrial processes, and vehicles. High efficiency thermoelectrics hold great promise to tap into this vast hidden energy resource while reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. |
| Porifera Inc. (University of California Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) |
$1,077,992 |
Hayward, CA | Carbon Capture Carbon nanotubes integrated into polymer membranes to increase the flux of CO2 capture membranes by two orders of magnitude. Could enable much less expensive carbon capture from coal plants. |
| RTI International
(Archer Daniels Midland Company, ConocoPhillips, Albemarle Corporation) |
$3,111,693 |
Research Triangle Park, NC | Biomass Energy A single-step catalytic biomass pyrolysis process with high carbon conversion efficiency to produce a stable bio-crude “oil” with low oxygen content. The approach combines pyrolysis oil production, stabilization, and upgrading into one process. |
| Stanford University |
$4,992,651 |
Stanford, CA | Building Efficiency Sensors, software, and controls to track and improve energy use patterns. Could lead to substantial reductions in building energy use by changing human behavior through timely information and usable controls. |
| Sun Catalytix Corporation |
$4,085,350 |
Cambridge, MA | Direct Solar Fuels / Energy Storage A novel catalyst to greatly enhance the efficiency of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. An important platform technology for the production of solar fuels and for distributed energy storage systems. |
| United Technologies Research Center (Hamilton Sundstrand, CM-Tech, Inc., Worley-Parsons, Columbia University) |
$2,251,183 |
East Hartford, CT | Carbon Capture
Synthetic enzymes for capturing CO2 from coal plant flue |
| Univenture, Inc. (Rockwell Automation, Ohio University, Case Western Reserve University) |
$5,992,697 |
Marysville, OH | Biomass Energy / Direct Solar Fuels A novel algae harvesting system that could dramatically reduce the energy cost necessary to harvest, dewater, and dry algae by using a novel absorbent moving belt harvester. This technology offers the potential to transform the economics of algae-based biofuel production by removing a major barrier to large scale commercialization. |
| University of California, Riverside |
$760,705 |
Riverside, CA | Vehicle Technologies Alkaline polymer electrolyte fuel cell membranes that eliminate the use of expensive catalyst materials. Potential to drastically reduce fuel cell costs and enable their widespread application in building and automotive applications. |
| University of Delaware (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Northeastern University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Ames Laboratory, Electron Energy Corporation) |
$4,462,162 |
Newark, DE | Vehicle Technologies Novel high energy density, low rare-earth content magnetic materials with double the energy density of current materials. Would decrease the weight and increase the efficiency of motors for hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicles and generators for advanced wind turbines. Also could greatly reduce U.S. imports of key rare-earth elements that are not domestically available. |
| University of Illinois (MC10, Inc.) |
$1,715,752 |
Urbana, IL | Waste Heat Capture A novel thermoelectric waste heat harvesting device based on large area arrays of 1-D concentric silicon nanotubes. Can be inexpensively printed as stacked thermoelectric junctions. This low cost thermoelectric technology holds great promise to allow the U.S. to begin to harvest the more than 60% of its energy that it loses in the form of waste heat. |
| University of Minnesota
(BioCee, Inc.) |
$2,200,000 |
St. Paul, MN | Direct Solar Fuels Production of liquid hydrocarbon transportation fuels directly from sunlight, water and CO2 using an artificial symbiotic colony of photosynthetic cyanobacteria and Shewanella, a hydrocarbon producing bacteria. |
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