DOE announces $16 million in funding to move energy technologies from labs to marketplace

 

The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced nearly $16 million in funding to help businesses move promising energy technologies from DOE’s national laboratories to the marketplace. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is among the labs receiving funding, and ORNL received funding for nine projects.

It’s the first department-wide round of funding through the Technology Commercialization Fund, or TCF, a press release said. It will support 54 projects at 12 national labs involving 52 private-sector partners.

The TCF is administered by DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions, or OTT, which works to expand the commercial impact of DOE’s portfolio of research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities, the press release said. In February 2016, OTT announced the first solicitation to the DOE national laboratories for TCF funding proposals. It received 104 applications from across the laboratory system, for projects in two topic areas:

• Topic Area 1: Projects for which the technology must become more mature to attract a private partner; and
• Topic Area 2: Cooperative development projects between a lab and industry partner(s), designed to support the commercial application of a lab-developed technology.

All projects selected for the Technology Commercialization Fund will receive an equal amount of non-federal funds to match the federal investment, the press release said.

“Deploying new clean energy technologies is an essential part of our nation’s effort to lead in the 21st century economy and in the fight against climate change,” said Lynn Orr, DOE’s under secretary for science and energy. “The funds announced today will help to accelerate the commercialization of cutting-edge energy technologies developed in our national labs, making them more widely available to American consumers and businesses.”

“The great work at the national labs and across DOE’s program make the department one of the largest supporters of technology transfer within the federal government” said Jetta Wong, director of the Office of Technology Transitions. “These TCF selections will further strengthen DOE’s important mission to transition technologies to the market.”

The press release said DOE’s national labs have supported the critical research and development that led to many technologies in the marketplace today, including the batteries powering electric vehicles, the foundation of Internet servers, and the optical digital recording technology behind DVDs. These first department-wide TCF selections will expand the department’s efforts to catalyze the commercial impact of today’s portfolio of research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities to increase return-on-investment from federally funded research, and to give more Americans access to cutting-edge energy technologies, the release said.

A list of Technology Commercialization Fund selections, as well as the Topic Area 2 projects and their private sector partners is below.

Ames National Laboratory

• Manufacturing Of Advanced Alnico Magnets for Energy Efficient Traction Drive Motors, $325,000: Carpenter Powder Products, Wyomissing, Pennsylvania

Argonne National Laboratory

• Application of Resin-Wafer Electrode Ionization Technology in Biorefineries, $600,000
• Ultrathin Nanoparticle Membranes to Remove Emerging Hydrophobic Trace Organic Compounds In Water with Low Applied Pressure and Energy Consumption, $150,000
• Advanced Manufacturing of Ultra-High Density Interposers, $250,000: ICAMR (International Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research), Osceola County, Florida
• Graphene Coating for Dry Gas Seal Applications, $579,852: John Crane Inc., Morton Grove, Illinois
• UNCD-Based Electron Field Emission Source for Accelerator Applications, $150,000: Euclid TechLabs, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Brookhaven National Laboratory

• Direct Fabrication of Fuel Cell Electrodes by Electrodeposition of High-performance Core-shell Catalysts, $100,000
• Nitride-Stabilized Pt Core-Shell Electrocatalysts for Fuel Cell Cathodes, $100,000

Idaho National Laboratory

• Advanced Outage Control Center Dashboard with Predictive Tools, $60,500
• Commercialization Research and Development of Change Detection Systems for Nuclear Applications, $62,500
• Computer-Based Procedure System for Field Workers, $130,000
• Enhancing Lithium-Ion Battery Safety for Vehicle Technologies and Energy Storage, $119,005
• Vibro-Acoustic Testing for Microstructure Characterization and Metrology, $150,000
• Additive Manufacturing as an Alternative Fabrication Technique for the Fabrication of Uranium Silicide Fuel, $150,000: Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Development of In-Core Three-Omega Thermal Conductivity Probe, $74,911: Radiation Detection Technologies Inc. (RDT), Manhattan, Kansas
• Enhanced and Miniaturized Wireless Valve Position Indicator Prototype, $149,600: Analysis and Measurement Services Corporation (AMS), Rolls Royce, Reston, Virginia; Westinghouse Electrical Corporation (WEC), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Palo Alto, California
• Vehicle Controller Area Network (CAN) Bus Network Safety and Security System, $150,000: Mercedes-Benz Research and Development North America Inc., Sunnyvale, California

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

• Large Area Polymer Protected Lithium Metal Electrodes with Engineered Dentrite-Blocking Ability, $73,831
• Flame-Powered SOFC Generators, $150,000

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

• Fire and Water Resistant Pre-filter, $150,000
• Cryo-Compressed Hydrogen Tank Technology in an Internal Combustion Engine Application, $431,995: GoTek Energy Inc., Oak View, California

Los Alamos National Laboratory

• Efficient Groundwater Restoration at Uranium In-Situ Recovery Sites to Enable Domestic Uranium Production for Nuclear Energy, $700,000: Cameco Resources Inc., Casper, Wyoming
• FracMan/dfnWorks: From Geological Fracture Characterization to Multiphase Subsurface Flow and Transport Simulation, $150,000: Golder Associates Inc., Redmond, Washington

National Energy Technology Laboratory

• Cooperative Development of NETL Electrode Engineering Process for SOFC Commercialization, $250,256: Acumentrics, Westwood, Massachusetts
• Development of Spouting Bed Reactor for Reduction of Hematite to Magnetite, $749,781: Siox LLC, Louisville, Kentucky
• Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) Subsurface Sensor Maturation, $246,423: Applied Spectra Inc., Fremont, California
• Raman Gas Analyzer Cooperative Development, $106,640: Oxergy Inc., Juneau, Alaska

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

• Improved Wind Plant Energy Production by Application of Wind-Plant Integrated Systems Engineering Model (WISDEMâ„¢) to Wind Plant Controls, $225,000: NextEra Energy Resources, Juno Beach, Florida; Ystrategies, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• New DC Power System Topology for Telecommunications Facilities, $140,000: Verizon Wireless, New York, New York
• Scaled Production Of High Octane Biofuel From Biomass-Derived Dimethyl Ether, $740,000: Enerkem, Montreal, Canada
• Thermal Management for Planar Package Power Electronics, $250,000: John Deere Electronic Solutions (JDES), Fargo, North Dakota

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

• Molten Salt Reactor Neutronics Tools, $150,000
• Novel High Permeability Membranes for CO2 Capture, $150,000
• On-Vehicle Emission Sensor,  $150,000
• Additive Manufacturing of Thermoset Cellular Structures, $500,000: Magnum Venus Products, Knoxville, Tennessee
• Carbon Fiber Plasma Surface Treatment, $500,000: RMX Technologies LLC., Knoxville, Tennessee; C.A. Litzler Company LLC, Cleveland, Ohio
• Liquid Salt Environment Creep Testing System Development and Commercialization, $700,000: Applied Testing Systems Inc., Butler, Pennsylvania
• New High-Strength Ni-based Alloys for High Temperature Service in Liquid Fluoride Salt Environments, $135,000: Haynes International, Kokomo, Indiana
• Residential Gas Heat Pump (RGHP), $750,000: Blue Mountain Energy, Las Vegas, Nevada; Intellichoice Energy, Las Vegas, Nevada; Alagasco, Birmingham, Alabama; Mestex, Dallas, Texas
• The ENABLE (Environmentally Neutral Automated Building Electric Energy) Platform, $625,000: Flex Power Control, Woodland Hills, California

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

• Assembly Of Dissimilar Aluminum Alloys For Automotive Application, $500,000
• Controlled-Release Solid Nitride Fertilizer From Coal Fly Ash: Demonstrating Fluidized-Bed Synthesis And Environmental Performance, $125,000
• Solid State Processing for Improved Performance of Current and Next-Generation Hydropower Components, $200,000
• Commercialization of Uncertainty Prediction Tools for Wind and Solar Energy for Probabilistic Electric Power Grid Operations, $290,000: California Independent System Operator (CAISO), Folsom, California; AWS Truepower (AWST), Albany, New York
• Demonstration of a kW class Redox Flow Battery using an Advanced Bi-additive Vanadium Sulfate Electrolyte, $600,000: ITN Energy Systems Inc., Littleton, Colorado
• Development of Electrolytes for Lithium Ion Batteries in Wide Temperature Range Applications, $375,000: Farasis Energy Inc., Hayward, California; Navitas Systems, Woodridge, Illinois
• Development of Protective Coatings for 1 kW Hot Zone, $124,332: Protonex Technology Corporation, Southborough, Massachusetts
• Direct Extruded High Conductivity Copper for Electric Machines Manufactured Using the ShAPE Process, $600,000: General Motors R&D, Detroit, Michigan
• Dish-STARSTM Commercialization, $684,000: STARS LLC, Richland, Washington; Southern California Gas Company, Los Angeles, California; Infinia Technology Corporation, Richland, Washington; Barr Engineering, Minneapolis, Minnesota; DiverSolar LLC, Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Glass Seals with Low or Zero Boria Content for High Temperature SOFC Applications, $175,000: LG Fuel Cell Systems Inc., North Canton, Ohio
• Reliability and Durability Testing of Glass Ceramic Seals for Praxair’s Oxygen Transport Membranes, $600,000: Praxair, Danbury, Connecticut
• A Self-Powered Acoustic Transmitter, $150,000: Advanced Telemetry Systems Inc., Isanti, Minnesota; Idaho Power Company, Boise, Idaho; Grant County Public Utilities District, Ephrata, Washington

Sandia National Laboratories

• Commercialization of the Sandia Cooler, $168,000: Wakefield-Vette Thermal Solutions, Pelham, New Hampshire
• High Temperature BA-BZT-BT Capacitors, $50,000: TPL Inc., Albuquerque, New Mexico

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