NETL projects to realize a transformed American energy sector using artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies were shared during the first AI Expo for National Competitiveness organized by the Arlington, VA-based foundation Special Competitive Studies Project, held in Washington, D.C. May 7-8.

Held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, the AI Expo served as a forum for industry, government, and academic research entities to exhibit some of the latest technological breakthroughs — in AI, biotech, energy, networks, compute, microelectronics, manufacturing, augmented reality, and beyond — and discuss their implications for U.S. and allied nations’ competitiveness.

NETL’s partnership with Cerebras is an example of the lab’s work that was featured at the expo. The two are working together on a new kind of computing platform called the Wafer Scale Engine (WSE).

“WSE technology represents a breakthrough in computing technology,” NETL Researcher Dirk Van Essendelft, Ph.D., said. “It stands in a class by itself and is 10 years ahead of what’s available to standard industry. In addition, the architecture overcomes the memory wall by shrinking the processor, memory, and router on a traditional computer down to a about a size of 200-microns and patterning nearly a million of these processing elements across an entire silicon wafer.”

NETL has been developing an Application Programming interface (API) called the WSE Field Equation API which enables practitioners to easily program and use the WSE for AI applications.

“The lab is using the transformative tools of AI to accelerate innovation across the industrial and energy systems landscape from fuel production and combustion to thermal management,” NETL Researcher Justin Weber, Ph.D., who presented at the AI Expo, said. “Leveraging techniques like genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, Bayesian methods, computer vision and deep learning, AI is driving breakthroughs that bridge theoretical designs and real-world hardware implementation.”

This work showcases AI applications accelerating hydrogen production via computational modeling of gasification and pyrolysis reactors to accelerate chemistry computations and other techniques. Additionally, AI-driven data analytics has widespread application for rotating detonation engines and AI topology optimization of film cooling holes and heat transfer fins for enhanced thermal management in gas turbines.

“This work demonstrates how AI is catalyzing engineering optimization and propelling next-generation energy systems from vision to reality, increasing efficiency and reducing carbon emissions,” Weber said.

During the expo, Kelly Rose, Ph.D., an NETL senior fellow for Computational Science & Engineering, unveiled the newly released “AI for Energy.” Co-authored by more than 100 experts, including Rose, this report provides a bold framework for how the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) can use AI to accelerate the nation’s clean energy transformation.

The event was also an opportunity for the Lab to share its Science-based Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Institute (SAMI) capabilities with the expo attendees. SAMI combines the expertise of NETL’s energy computational scientists, data scientists, and subject matter experts with strategic partners to enable AI-drivensolutions and support to energy science, environmental and social justice, and other strategic objectives within DOE’s and NETL's missions.

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that drives innovation and delivers solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. By leveraging 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.