NETL’s Reaction Analysis and Chemical Transformation Facility (ReACT) will be front and center when a premier group of industry leaders working on more efficient industrial processes visit the Morgantown, West Virginia, site Tuesday, Aug. 9. NETL Director Brian Anderson, Ph.D., will deliver welcoming remarks to the visitors.

The RAPID DEPLOY Workshop will convene in Morgantown and visit NETL in the afternoon to learn more about the Lab’s electrified reactors, microwave reactors, non-thermal plasma reactors, and ultrasound reactors that make up its Reaction Analysis and Chemical Transformation Laboratory (ReACT) facility.

RAPID is a Manufacturing USA Institute that works to transform process industries by advancing modular chemical process intensification technology. The goal of process intensification is to improve processes without sacrificing product quality by increasing efficiency, reducing energy consumption, costs, volume, and waste as well as improving safety.

NETL’s ReACT facility capabilities are advancing innovative research, leading to efficiencies that increase power production, reduce overall power generation costs, and reduce targeted emissions. NETL researchers are advancing the science needed to optimize energy conversion and transforming how we think about and approach chemical reactions.

ReACT supports NETL’s energy conversion engineering competency, which works to increase the efficiency of energy conversion and decrease associated emissions.

Ignasi Palou-Rivera, RAPID executive director and chief technology officer said his delegation looks forward to the NETL visit, “seeing first-hand the innovation and groundbreaking research taking place. The RAPID member community gains tremendous value from facilities such as the ReACT facility and the opportunity to collaborate with committed partners such as NETL.”

Anderson explained that “NETL’s ReACT Lab is exploring potential breakthrough technologies, like microwaves and other non-traditional energetics, to advance reaction science. The facility contains multiple, one-of-a-kind microwave reactor systems that enable researchers to explore never-before-studied impacts of microwave conditions.”

Dushyant Shekhawat, Ph.D., team supervisor of NETL’s Reaction Engineering team, explained that “the breakthroughs and successes resulting from the ReACT Lab’s equipment and capabilities will enable more efficient energy production from our domestic resources, ultimately enabling cost savings to consumers with responsible stewardship of the environment.”

NETL is also developing microwave characterization and diagnostic capabilities to perform experiments to gain new insights into the fundamental mechanisms of microwave-material interactions

Anderson, who will officially welcome the DEPLOY workshop participants to the Morgantown site, leads NETL’s 1,300-plus employees and guides more than 1,000 R&D projects and project performers in 50 states with a total award value of $5 billion.

RAPID, a public-private partnership between the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO), is one of 16 Manufacturing USA institutes, which was created in 2014 to secure U.S. global leadership in advanced manufacturing by connecting people, ideas, and technology.

Manufacturing USA a national network of public-private partnerships united to secure U.S. global leadership in advanced manufacturing through large scale collaboration on technology, supply chain, and workforce development. The network includes the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Defense, and Energy, their 16 sponsored manufacturing institutes, and six other federal partner agencies – the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Health and Human Services, and the Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Labor.

NETL is a DOE national laboratory that drives innovation and delivers technological solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. Using its world-class talent and research facilities, NETL is ensuring affordable, abundant and reliable energy that drives a robust economy and national security, while developing technologies to manage carbon across the full life cycle, enabling environmental sustainability for all Americans.