The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced over $30 million in federal funding, matched by over $35 million in private sector funds, for 68 projects that will accelerate the commercialization of promising energy technologies — ranging from clean energy and advanced manufacturing, to building efficiency and next-generation materials.
DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory was awarded $4.15 million in federal funds, cost-shared by industry partners in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Argonne’s eight projects include: processing materials for energy storage, processes to convert carbon dioxide to chemicals, improved simulation of industrial processes for increased safety and efficiency, and materials processing to produce fast-reactor fuel alloys.
The awards are supported by the Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF), which is managed by DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions.
“President Biden is serious about making sure America corners the clean-energy market — and that means we need to work with our nation’s savviest entrepreneurs to fast-track solutions from DOE’s National Labs into commercial-ready technologies,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “These projects will help us deploy game-changing innovations that position us to win the clean-energy race, while creating jobs and opportunity across every pocket of the country.”
Argonne researchers whose projects received 2021 funding are:
- Nathaniel Hoyt: Application of advanced materials processing to enable direct production of fast reactor fuel alloys ($1,000,000 in partnership with Oklo Inc., Sunnyvale, California)
- Di-Jia Liu: Highly efficient electrocatalysts for direct conversion of CO2 to chemicals ($250,000; in partnership with CongiTek, Glenview, Illinois; BiomassOne, White City, Oregon; Beam Suntory, Chicago; and Verde LLC, Stoughton, Massachussetts)
- Daniel O’Grady: Capability enhancements for system-level thermal hydraulic modeling of lead fast reactors ($250,000 in partnership with Westinghouse Electric Company, Pittsburgh)
- Pinaki Pal: A deep-learning-enabled fast and robust chemistry solver for reacting flow simulations ($250,000 in partnership with Convergent Science, Madison, Wisconsin)
- Subramanian K. R. Sankaranarayanan: Multiscale manufacturing design tool based on machine learning workflow ($250,000 in partnership with Sentient Science, Buffalo, New York)
- Nicolas Stauff: Enhancement of PyARC for lead fast reactor design and modeling ($450,000 in partnership with Westinghouse Electric Company, Pittsburgh)
- Adrian Tentner: FIVSIM – an accurate and efficient code for the industrial simulation of flow-induced vibrations ($1,500,000 in partnership with Framatome, Lynchburg, Virginia)
- Yuepeng Zhang: Fast thermal processing of ceramic nanomaterials for energy storage applications ($200,000 in partnership with NCC Nano LLC, Austin, Texas, and NovaCentrix, Austin, Texas
The full list of this year’s TCF selections and the private-sector partners can be found on the Office of Technology Transitions website.
