The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and NETL  have announced up to $20 million in federal funding for cooperative agreements that will help accelerate the deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). The selected projects will support the Office of Fossil Energy’s (FE) Carbon Storage Program.

Briggs White, Ph.D., Technology Manager of NETL’s Crosscutting Research Program, was a keynote speaker at the Southwest Emerging Technology Symposium and Regional Small Business Summit, March 26-27 in El Paso, Texas. The symposium was hosted by the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), an institution with a long history of NETL research collaboration under the Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Other Minority Institutions (HBCU/OMI) initiative.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and NETL have selected two additional projects to receive $5 million in total federal funding: one each under DE-FOA-0001829 Developing Technologies for Advancement of Associated Geologic Storage for Basinal Geo-Laboratories, and DE-FOA-0001830 Transformational Pre-Combustion Carbon Capture Technologies.  A key priority for FE is to reduce the cost and risk of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies to accelerate widespread deployment. 

Broad national estimates of methane emissions obscure the ability to identify significant sources of methane at the regional level and the ability to target methane reduction opportunities effectively. An NETL-led study of natural gas liquids unloading provides a clear example of the importance of methane quantification research to improve the performance of the U.S. natural gas industry. The study highlights the need to consider variability in episodic emission sources and regional differences in developing robust methane emissions estimates.

NETL Director Brian Anderson, Ph.D., met recently with Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) Federal Co-Chair Tim Thomas in Morgantown, West Virginia, to discuss how the two organizations can collaborate on opportunities that bolster economic and workforce development in the Appalachian region.

Cutting-edge computational tools developed by the NETL-led Institute for the Design of Advanced Energy Systems (IDAES) are available for the first time as open-source software. The revolutionary IDAES Process Systems Engineering (PSE) framework expands process modeling and optimization capabilities to boost the efficiency, reliability and flexibility of today’s fossil fuel-based power plants and accelerate next-generation energy technologies.

Peter Balash, Ph.D., a senior economist at NETL in Pittsburgh will be part of a day-long national event dedicated to power grid improvement topics that will also feature appearances by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. Rep. David McKinley (WV 1st), and representatives of private industry and academia Friday, March 29 in the nation’s Capital.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have issued a Request for Information (RFI) for strategies for improving or creating emission-reduction or utilization technologies for hazardous substances resulting from coal combustion.

Medical X-ray machines use electromagnetic radiation — radiant energy with wavelengths shorter those produced by visible light — to gain information about what is happening inside the human body. Likewise, airport security checkpoints employ X-rays to examine the internal contents of travelers’ baggage.

In a cost-saving computer modeling effort, the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) assisted in solving a critical technical issue at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU), preventing a long-term delay of start-up operations.