As one of NETL’s most prolific researchers, Ranjani Siriwardane is listed as co-inventor of 25 U.S. patents and has earned numerous scientific awards for discoveries that have had a profound impact on the production of clean and affordable electricity. None of those accomplishments, however, would have been possible without the support of family members, teachers and others who recognized Siriwardane’s early interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and encouraged her to pursue her dreams and overcome obstacles she faced growing up in Sri Lanka, an island nation in South Asia.

NETL’s water-energy research and development (R&D) activities are now the focus of a new quarterly newsletter set for release later this month. Additionally, the recent launch of the Lab’s Water-Energy Research homepage further highlights NETL’s capabilities and competencies across a broad spectrum of water-energy topics directed at enhancing the nation’s fossil energy infrastructure while protecting the environment. The newsletter will feature water-energy project highlights, spotlights of the Lab’s researchers, upcoming water-energy conferences and more. It will cover the width and breadth of the Lab’s in-house and extramural water-related activities across NETL’s crosscutting, carbon capture and storage, oil and gas, critical minerals and rare earth element recovery, modeling and analysis, coal byproduct and other programs. The inaugural January 2021 edition highlights funding opportunities and recently awarded research projects, journal publications and work being carried out in support of the National Alliance for Water Innovation.

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.

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 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.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) selected 29 projects to receive nearly $7.6 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development. The projects will advance energy storage technologies under the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002332, Energy Storage for Fossil Power Generation. Energy storage combined with fossil energy assets offers a suite of benefits to asset owners, the electric grid, and society. These benefits include more reliable and affordable energy, a cleaner environment, and stronger power infrastructure. These projects will accelerate the development of technology options to manage the energy transition underway to decarbonize and increase the flexibility of fossil power generation and support the grid of the future with increasing variable renewable generation.

NETL experts in systems engineering and analysis (SEA) are developing multi-scale approaches to modeling and analysis of technology, processes and markets. In 2020, through models and digital tools, reports and collaborations, the Lab’s SEA researchers made significant progress toward advancing technology solutions for our nation’s energy challenges.

NETL experts in systems engineering and analysis (SEA) are developing multi-scale approaches to modeling and analysis of technology, processes and markets. In 2020, through models and digital tools, reports and collaborations, the Lab’s SEA researchers made significant progress toward advancing technology solutions for our nation’s energy challenges.

Throughout 2020, NETL’s materials engineering and manufacturing research has demonstrated how historic energy resources can be used in remarkable new ways and how elements commonly thought of as a liability may present exciting new economic opportunities. Harnessing the Potential of Carbon Dioxide For example, carbon dioxide (CO2) may one day transition from a waste gas that contributes to climate change to a high-value feedstock used in the production of fuels, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fertilizers and a range of consumer goods. During the summer, NETL researchers made important strides in dry reforming, a process that reacts CO2 with methane, rather than steam or oxygen, to yield the mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide known as synthesis gas or syngas, a chemical building block for many products.

NETL recently released version 20.3 of its world-renowned Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges (MFiX) software suite, which included an improved modeling capability that allows for more accurate descriptions of real particle-size distributions, offering an important new tool for designing next-generation energy systems to power the nation. The new feature was sponsored by NETL’s Crosscutting Research Simulation-Based Engineering program. “Our discrete element method (DEM) in MFiX received a significant enhancement with this update,” NETL’s Jeff Dietiker, Ph.D., said. “Fundamental testing in our Multiphase Flow Laboratory also demonstrates that fluidization and flow behavior, even in cold flow systems, can be greatly impacted by the feed-size distribution, so this new version will add great value to our modeling work, especially for modeling larger-scale, complex reactor systems of mixed feedstocks like coal, biomass and plastics, where high fidelity is critical.”