NETL continues to adapt to current events by taking the Mickey Leland Energy Fellowship (MLEF) summer internship program virtual for the participating students for the first time. Participants include science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors who will get one-on-one mentorship experiences working with NETL’s world-class scientists and engineers. Sean Sanguinito, a research scientist at the Lab’s Pittsburgh location who has mentored in the program for years, said that although the Lab’s facilities remain closed, the ability to take the program online has plenty of valuable experiences to offer such as modeling studies, data analysis/interpretation, literature review work, and other computational efforts. “While participants won’t be on-site, they will still learn about all the different components that are involved in being a research scientist,” he said. “Research does not simply include conducting laboratory experiments. The students will perform literature reviews, analyze existing data, interpret and plot existing data, write up their results, and present their conclusions in a professional manner.”

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and NETL have selected 12 projects to receive approximately $6 million in federal funding to support high-risk fundamental research that advances the science of coal technology at U.S. colleges and universities. These projects are supported through the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002193, University Training and Research for Fossil Energy Applications. This FOA encompasses two separate university programs: the University Coal Research (UCR) Program and the Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Other Minority Institutions (HBCU/OMI) Program. Each program has its own requirements and restricted eligibility. Projects under this FOA support early-stage, fundamental research that advances the science of coal technologies, while also helping train the next generation of energy researchers, scientists, and engineers at U.S. colleges and universities. The HBCU/OMI program aims to increase the participation of underrepresented students in that research.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and NETL have selected two projects to receive approximately $10 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development projects under funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002192, Extreme Environment Materials for Power Generation. The objective of this FOA was to competitively seek cost-shared applications for materials research, development, testing, and validation to enhance the reliability of the Nation’s existing fossil fleet and materials supply chain. Thermal fatigue and corrosion are two predominate damage mechanisms to steam cycle components that are operated under cyclic load conditions, which is why material joint reliability and surface technologies are the focus of this FOA.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and NETL have announced up to $6 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development projects under the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002332, Energy Storage for Fossil Power Generation. The FOA seeks applications to (1) advance near-term, system-integrated, energy storage solutions toward commercial deployment with fossil assets; (2) mature promising mid-technology-readiness-level (TRL), component-level energy storage solutions toward eventual system integration with fossil assets; (3) develop innovative, low-TRL concepts and technologies that offer game-changing benefits for fossil assets. Energy storage combined with fossil energy assets offers a suite of benefits to asset owners, the electricity grid, and consumers. These benefits include a more reliable and affordable energy supply, cleaner environmental performance, and stronger energy infrastructure. The FOA seeks a variety of technology approaches to integrate fossil assets with thermal, chemical, and potential energy storage applications.

NETL efforts to develop next-generation energy storage technologies and ensure abundant, cleaner energy using the nation’s fossil fuel assets drew interest from more than 300 engineers, researchers, federal policymakers and others who took part in a webinar on the topic, held April 22. Briggs White, Ph.D., technology manager, served as featured speaker for the U.S. Energy Association (USEA) webinar to update key stakeholders on the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy’s new Advanced Energy Storage Program. On behalf of the Office of Fossil Energy (FE), NETL implemented the new program to accelerate the development and integration of energy storage technologies. Using these systems, a fossil fuel-based power plant (both coal and natural gas) can continue to operate at high efficiency and store excess power until it’s needed by the grid, reducing the need to operate at fluctuating operational loads while ensuring reliable power supplies. In addition, when operating at high efficiency, fossil fuel plants generate lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and NETL has issued a Notice of Intent for a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) to advance energy storage technologies capable of improving the overall performance, reliability, and flexibility of fossil-fueled assets. The assets include fossil-fueled power generating facilities, fossil-fueled poly-generation facilities, and suitable fossil-fueled industrial applications.

As a world leader in high-performance and advanced materials research, NETL’s Crosscutting High Performance Materials Program presents the Regional Work Force Initiative (RWFI) Energy 101 Series, which shares how the Lab’s work and expertise translates to savings and benefits for industry and the local economy. The Lab’s Crosscutting High Performance Materials Program enhances the nation’s industrial high-temperature materials supply chain by accelerating the development of improved steels, superalloys, and new advanced manufacturing methods. NETL also assists in completing full-scale manufacturing trials of power plant components, along with creating solutions to address challenges for both the existing fleet and future power systems. The program spans several areas of research such as Computational Materials Design, Advanced Structural Materials, Functional Materials for Process Performance and Advanced Manufacturing, and seeks to solve various costs and challenges faced by multiple industries.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) recently implemented a significant update to the Energy Data eXchange (EDX), a virtual platform for public curation and functionality to promote data-driven collaboration on research from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE). The update offers improved and streamlined functionality so data from a wide variety of sources can be accessed with ease through a secure platform to further FE’s development of critical energy technologies. NETL and other DOE entities rely on previous research across many sources and platforms to deliver the next generation of energy advancements. Many resources critical to FE were previously stored as paper-based assets or saved on outdated forms of media. This made the discoverability, accessibility and reuse of valuable data from those studies challenging, if not impossible, to support FE research needs.

As computational resources continue to evolve, NETL researchers look to new and more powerful tools to bolster their ability to model complex fossil energy power systems. The Lab has decades of experience developing this kind of software — known as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code — including the award-winning Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges (MFiX). In recent years, machine learning (ML) techniques have been integrated into powerful computational platforms like Google’s Tensor Flow, which is revolutionizing the way NETL researchers write CFD code to accelerate the design of more energy-efficient systems.

NETL-supported research to secure a domestic supply of rare earth elements (REEs) shows economic potential regarding efficiency and cost savings and progresses along the pathway to commercial viability. The Lab has funded and supported multiple projects across the nation to extract REEs from coal and coal-related byproducts. A notable example is coal acid mine drainage (AMD) and sludge originating from abandoned or still operating mines. However, NETL and its partners are making progress refining a method to clean up AMD in order to extract the vital REEs needed for the U.S. economy to stay competitive on the global market while providing environmental remediation. This sludge is enriched in REEs and contains an average total REE content several times higher than raw, untreated AMD. However, separating the valuable REEs can be very expensive.