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NETL Ends 2023 Fiscal Year With Impressive List of Achievements
The celebration of NETL successes continues with the newly released accomplishments report, showcasing NETL accomplishments from the final quarter of FY23.

Director’s Corner

by Sean I. Plasynski, Ph.D — Acting Director

It’s been a busy year at NETL with visionary scientists and engineers hard at work on innovations to meet critical clean energy targets. From carbon management to extraction of rare earth elements and critical minerals, NETL researchers are applying their talent and world-renowned expertise to fight climate change and deliver integrated solutions for a sustainable energy future. 

Our accomplishments report for the last quarter of FY23 highlights a few of our recent achievements, such as:   

  • Several innovations for carbon capture and storage, including a deep learning tool for subsurface monitoring, a new version of a tool for calculating the cost of transporting carbon dioxide by pipeline, a composite coating that can help ensure more secure underground storage and pipeline monitoring, and a new self-healing cold spray coating for internal pipeline corrosion protection.  
  • New uses for coal wastes, including a technology that can transform coal and coal-wastes into high-quality graphene and a technology that uses coal waste as an anode material in lithium-ion batteries, which are used in electric vehicles, energy storage and more. 
  • Vehicle improvements, including a lightweight car door that boosts fuel efficiency while meeting federal safety requirements and two SuperTruck II projects that offer increased operational efficiency and reduced emissions while paving the way for future development into fully electric vehicles. 

We also celebrated several well-earned awards that recognize the excellence of our NETL team: 

  • An innovative sensor technology, developed by NETL and its partners at the University of Pittsburgh and Sensible Photonics Inc., that can prevent electric service downtime won a 2023 R&D Award. 
  • NETL researchers Dan Sorescu, Ranjani Siriwardane, Ray Boswell and Mehrdad Massoudi were recognized by Research.com as being among the best scientists in the world in the fields of chemistry, earth science and engineering. 
  • Hema Siriwardane was inducted as Diplomate of Geotechnical Engineering in the Academy of Geo-Professionals for attaining advanced expertise and experience, advanced education and a specialized body of knowledge in geotechnical engineering. 

These successes are only a few of many accomplishments that showcase the critically important work we’re doing to meet clean energy goals that call for a net-zero carbon emission electricity sector by 2035 and economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050. I invite you to read more about these and other efforts in this report. (PDF version available here.)