| April 2008 |
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NETL Participates in Department of Defense Commercialization Effort for Cast Steel Armor
NETL scientist Paul Turner explained P-900 armor and described various methods to manufacture the material at a meeting in March to identify potential manufacturers of cast steel armor for the Department of Defense.
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NETL scientists, working under a contract from DoD, developed the process to make P-900, which is a cast, slotted steel armor used to protect military vehicles. |
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The purpose of the meeting was to expand the current number of foundries manufacturing the armor to meet the military’s large demand for the material in a short timeframe. During the meeting, Army representatives requested NETL’s help to develop a new, lighter weight ferrous alloy for use in this application. |
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The U.S. Army Tank and Automotive Command is in the process of procuring over 20 million pounds of P-900 cast steel armor to be used on certain U.S. military vehicles to protect them from improvised explosive devices, which have been very effective against coalition vehicles. |
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NETL Researcher Has Key Role In Chevron’s Gas Hydrates Project
Ray Boswell of NETL will serve as science co-chief on Chevron’s joint industry project on gas hydrates, which is expected to commence by mid-June.
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The Chevron project began to make preparations for the leasing of a drilling rig for an 18-day period in late spring for an exploratory drilling expedition for gas hydrates located within sandstone reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico. |
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Project participants met in Houston in March to select six candidate drilling locations at both the Green Canyon 955 and Walker Ridge 313 sites. The sites have varying degrees of geologic risk and will provide tests of alternative exploration rationale for gas hydrates. |
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Chevron is reviewing the sites for potential drilling hazards. |
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Boswell and NETL researcher Kelly Rose provided geologic expertise to the site selection process. |
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| March 2008 |
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NETL Researchers Identify Major Failure Mechanism of Chromia Refractories in Slagging Gasifiers
NETL researchers have studied the effect of gasifier operating conditions and carbon feedstock slag/ash chemistry on the refractory service life of chromia refractories in slagging gasifiers.
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They identified structural spalling as one of major failure mechanisms for chromia refractories. In a paper published in the International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology, the researchers also presented the development of a refractory designed by NETL to withstand spalling and enhance refractory performance. |
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NETL Conducts Systematic Study of Carbon Dioxide Adsorbents
In the continuing search for better adsorbents for carbon dioxide, the relationship between performance and molecular structure becomes a key guiding principle. |
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NETL researchers have conducted a thorough study of the relationship between performance and molecular structure of a series of carbon dioxide adsorbents composed of layers and pillars. |
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The adsorbents consist of sheet-like ionic metal complexes held apart by pillars of organic compounds. The pillars are specifically chosen to be of different lengths and to be more or less flexible. Carbon dioxide storage capacity was related to the relative size of the pores and greater capacity was associated with pillars of greater length. The adsorption strength was strongly affected by whether the pillars were rigid or flexible. The adsorbent made with the most flexible pillar had a collapsed pore structure that was ineffective in adsorbing carbon dioxide while those made with rigid pillars had open pores that readily took in carbon dioxide. |
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The pillared layered architecture has been found to be an excellent scaffold on which to study the effect of molecular structure on adsorbent behavior. This technique is now being extended by investigating the effect of attaching organic functional groups with stronger affinity for carbon dioxide to the pillars. |
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| February 2008 |
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FLC Picks Two NETL Technology Transfers for Awards
The chair of the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for Technology Transfer has notified NETL that two of its technology transfer successes have been named winners of the FLC 2008 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer. |
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The awards will be presented at the FLC national conference in Portland, Oregon, on May 8. The FLC is the nationwide network of federal laboratories that provides the forum to develop strategies and opportunities for linking laboratory mission technologies and expertise with the marketplace. |
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NETL’s innovative transfers selected to receive the FLC awards are: |
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- The licensing effort to Johnson Matthey for commercial development and application of NETL-invented palladium-based sorbents for high temperature capture of mercury, arsenic, and selenium from fuel gas); and
- The transfer of NETL’s Coal Chemistry Module to Fluent as well as to KBR and Southern through its applications. The Coal Chemistry Module software was developed at NETL to incorporate detailed reaction mechanisms for devolitization, tar cracking, moisture release, gasification, and combustion for different bituminous, sub-bituminous and lignite coals into CFD models.
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Laser Spark Plug Operates Smoothly in Tests at NETL
Researchers at NETL have hurdled one of the barriers to developing a laser spark plug. |
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They recently completed testing an end-pumped laser spark plug on a single cylinder research engine. A barrier to laser distribution with optical fibers has been the high laser power required to initiate a laser spark. The spark plug developed by NETL utilizes a high power laser located at the engine cylinder which is pumped by a lower power laser from one end through the optical fiber. |
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In three days of testing on the spark plug developed at NETL, the engine operated smoothly through a range of operating conditions with multiple start-ups and shut-downs. |
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The laser ignition approach can permit engine operation at higher efficiency, and with reduced emissions. Use of fiber optics is desirable because it enables laser spark distribution to multiple cylinders at reasonable cost. |
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NETL is working with a CRADA partner to improve packaging and performance of the high power laser and is seeking another CRADA partner to help develop its patented pump energy distribution system. |
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| January 2008 |
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NETL Leads International Collaboration on CO2 Brinefield Storage
Researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory are leading an international team of collaborators on important research related to geological storage of carbon dioxide and increased oil production. |
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NETL, West Virginia University of Morgantown, W.V., and Clarkson University of Potsdam, N.Y., have been working together on a combined program of laboratory experiments, computations, and theory to develop more accurate and reliable equations for describing multiphase flow through porous media. The University of Utrecht in the Netherlands recently joined this effort and is working with scientists and engineers at the other three institutions. |
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Important applications include injection of water into oilfields to increase the production of petroleum, and injection of carbon dioxide into brine-saturated geologic strata to reduce atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and global warming. |
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In the first stage of this new collaboration, experiments performed at NETL will provide values of parameters to use in a thermodynamic model of two-phase flow through porous media. The equations for the thermodynamic model previously had been developed in separate work at Utrecht and by the NETL-Clarkson-WVU group. |
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Researchers Perform “Validation” Studies
Results from NETL studies suggest that the injection of a low-viscosity fluid into large-scale, underground fracture networks may be much more significantly affected by fractal fingering than previously understood. |
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Researchers at NETL have been using two very different physical models and computer codes to study injection of a low-viscosity fluid into a simple fracture network, such as might occur in geologic storage of carbon dioxide or enhanced oil recovery. |
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Each code explicitly treats the individual fractures, with distributions of different effective fracture apertures. Results have been obtained for the fluid composition profiles from each code. Although the two codes solve different equations for different flow models, they gave similar results.
One code (NETfLow™) is a standard “pore level” model, originally intended to treat laboratory-scale experiments. The other code (NFFLOW™) was written to treat reservoir-scale engineering problems. Together, the results indicate that each model and code is accurate and thus “valid.” |
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NETL Files for Patent on Multi-Functional Sorbent
Researchers at NETL invented the first multi-functional regenerable sorbent to remove hydrogen chloride and hydrogen sulfide simultaneously from coal gasification gas streams at warm gas temperatures of 200 to 500 degrees C. |
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NETL has filed for a patent on the sorbent, which can be regenerated with oxygen. |
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Development of multi-functional sorbents to remove multiple pollutants in one step is important to minimize the number of steps involved in the clean-up process. This will contribute to decreasing the cost of the process. |
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Hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen chloride are major pollutants that have to be removed from the coal gasification gas streams in order to utilize the coal gas for various applications. |
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Chlorine and sulfur dioxide that are formed during the regeneration process can be utilized to produce a valuable liquid sulfuryl chloride. Sulfuryl chloride is used in various applications including production of pesticides and is used as a source of chlorine. |
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About NETL
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