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FLC Awards Archive
— 2002
Awards for Excellence in Technology Transfer
Department
of Energy
Argonne
National Laboratory
Autothermal Fuel Reforming
Catalyst for Fuel Cells
The autothermal fuel reforming
catalyst, produced by a team at Argonne National
Laboratory, is the key component of a fuel processor
that can efficiently convert methanol, ethanol,
natural gas, gasoline, and diesel into hydrogen
that can be fed to a fuel cell to produce electricity.
The fuel processor produces high-quality hydrogen
fuel within two minutes of startup at temperatures
that are several hundreds of degrees centigrade
below those required for processors based on
a noncatalytic action. This will help to make
fuel-cell powered automobiles practical.
ANL’s patented technology
was transferred through a combination of Cooperative
Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs)
and license agreements with Süd-Chemie,
Inc. and H2fuel, LLC. Both companies are in
the process of making the technology available
on the open market.
The autothermal fuel reforming
catalyst will present a number of benefits.
The technology will allow fuel-cell powered
cars to run on conventional fuels rather than
pure hydrogen—making them more attractive
to consumers. Unlike most conventional catalysts,
which are poisoned by sulfur, the ANL catalyst
can tolerate the sulfur present in petroleum-derived
fuels. The new technology could also help make
fuel cells more attractive as power sources
for homes, commercial buildings, and portable
power applications in remote locations.
Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory
EnergyPlus
Imagine architects and engineers
having a robust simulation engine to accurately
model all types of energy use within a building:
heating, cooling, lighting, ventilation, and
equipment. Imagine them testing, optimizing,
and redesigning buildings while still on the
drawing board to maximize energy efficiency—long
before the first cement is ever poured. EnergyPlus,
created by a team at the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, is a next-generation energy software
simulation program for building design that
has the potential to America to save billions
of dollars in energy costs. The program allows
users to calculate the impacts of different
heating, cooling, and ventilating systems, as
well as of various types of lighting and windows.
The “Plus” in EnergyPlus allows
the calculation of indirect environmental effects
associated with a building’s energy use—such
as atmospheric pollutants produced at power
plants supplying electricity to the building.
As part of the technology transfer
effort, copyright licensing partnerships were
established with several entities including
the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign,
the Department of Energy, and the U.S. Army
Construction Engineering Research Laboratory.
To bring EnergyPlus to the marketplace, a creative,
scalable licensing scheme was implemented to
address the needs of diverse groups of users.
This included coming up with alternatives to
licensing, such as no-cost downloads for internal
use, nominal cost code downloads for collaborative
developers, and commercialization licenses for
private distributors.
Available for just over a year,
EnergyPlus is being adopted by architects, designers,
and builders more rapidly than anyone imagined,
with thousands of user licenses issued. The
San Francisco Federal Building—a new landmark—is
currently being designed with EnergyPlus. This
technology benefits both public and private
sectors through reduced energy bills, reduced
use of fossil fuels, and reduced pollution and
greenhouse gases.
Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory
The Berkeley Lamp
Developed by a team at the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, The Berkeley Lamp
is a high performance, energy efficient table
lamp designed to save energy in homes and offices,
while greatly increasing lighting quality and
visibility. The lamp uses two independently
controllable and fully dimmable compact fluorescent
lamps (CFLs). One lamp’s light is directed
downward, illuminating the table or desk. The
other directs light up toward the ceiling, providing
high-quality indirect lighting. An optical “septum”
separates the two lamps, allowing three modes
of lighting: downward, upward, or up and down
together. At full power, the two-lamp fluorescent
system matches the combined luminous output
of a 300-watt halogen lamp and a 150-watt incandescent
table lamp while using only a quarter of the
energy.
The patented technology was transferred
through licensing agreements with three California
utilities—Sacramento Municipal Utility
District (SMUD), Southern California Edison
(SCE), and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)—along
with Light Corporation of Grand Haven, Michigan.
To date 600 prototypes have been manufactured,
and demonstration projects involving the lamp
are underway with a number of companies and
institutions including: Doubletree Hilton Hotel,
Beverly Hills Hotel, U.S Coast Guard, U.S. Forest
Services, Department of Energy Headquarters,
City of Berkeley, California Energy Commission,
and the University of California.
With its superior lighting, competitive
price, and projected energy savings of over
$1 billion, high levels of sales are projected
for the Berkeley Lamp. By reducing dependence
on fossil fuels this technology will benefit
the U.S., and in turn the nation’s security.
NNSA Kansas City Plant managed
by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies
Feature-Based™
Machining Advisor
All manufactured items—from
the $2 billion space shuttle to the simplest
ink pen—start with product drawings. These
drawings are then broken into piece parts that
can be manufactured. For more complex products,
the process of translating design drawings into
manufacturing parts demand precision and high
tolerance specification. In addition, expensive
materials and highly skilled labor are required.
The Feature-Based™ Machining Advisor,
developed by a team at the Kansas City Plant,
is the manufacturing software of the future.
It is composed of three foundational software
libraries, integrated with a Windows®-based
graphical user interface and runs on a PC desktop
system. This package addresses critical problems
by providing solid model-based tools to represent
and to analyze tolerance information, and to
automate both geometrical calculations and the
process plan design for machining.
The team’s technology transfer
partners in this effort were CADKEY Corporation
of Marlborough, Massachusetts and STEP Tools
of Troy, New York. These partnerships were successfully
carried out through patent licensing agreements
and cooperative research and development agreements
(CRADAs).
Because the Feature-Based™
Machining Advisor was developed by engineers
specifically for a manufacturing application,
its reception by the industry has been strong
and highly favorable. The use of this technology
will ultimately result in improved quality,
reduced fabrication, materials and labor costs,
with commensurate increases in precision manufacturability.
National
Renewable Energy Laboratory
DRWiN™ Electronically
Scanning Antenna
The Dynamically Reconfigurable
Wireless Networks (DRWiN™) is the first
commercially available electronically scanning
antenna. With the ability to be reconfigured
from a very broad 120° beam to a narrow
2° beam, this antenna can scan across the
full service area, enabling dramatic increases
in network capacity, reliability and noise discrimination.
This technology, developed by a team at the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL),
fills the need of wireless operators to provide
higher quality and more reliable service to
an increased subscriber base.
The transfer process for this
technology involved NREL, St. Petersburg State
Electrotechnical University (Eltech), and Paratek
Microwave, Inc. The partnership with NREL as
the coordinator utilized the design talents
of Eltech, the materials and process capabilities
at NREL and the materials and commercialization
efforts at Paratek.
The DRWiN™ antenna provides
a “last mile” solution as an alternative
to fiber, cable and DSL. Because this technology
is architecture independent, wireless services
can be provided to rural and undeveloped regions
that lack existing infrastructure.
Oak
Ridge National Laboratory
Direct-to-Digital Holography
As the semiconductor industry
continues to reduce the size of its components
to maintain economic benefits and increased
processing speed, the need to improve production
yield rises. To improve yields by reducing deficits,
inspection during the production process is
essential. This means that inspection technology
must be able to detect smaller defects faster
to maintain high yield. Direct-to Digital Holography
(DDH), invented by a team at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory (ORNL), is an innovative three-dimensional
inspection technology that detects submicron-scale
defects on complex or simple surfaces. This
patented technology is able to detect submicron
defects within surface features having aspect
ratios greater than 10 to 1, a critical need
for the next generation of defect-detection
devices.
The team was able to move the
DDH forward by entering into two cooperative
research and development agreements (CRADAs),
as well as an exclusive licensing agreement
with nLine Corporation, based in Austin, Texas.
Through the partnership, the first DDH prototype
was developed, built and implemented in less
than 11 months.
Ultimately the benefit of the
DDH will be to U.S. manufacturers of semiconductor
products for state-of-the-art computing and
telecommunications devices. Because the semiconductor
industry is worth over $150 billion annually
to the U.S. economy, a technology like the DDH
can save the industry millions of dollars annually
in lost products, energy consumption and waste
mitigation.
Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory
Molecular Beam Epitaxy
for Semiconductor Wafer Development
Semiconductors have had an unprecedented
impact on our lives, largely because the industry
has steadily delivered exponential increases
in performance without an increase in expenditures.
That trend is now at risk. Finding and implementing
a solution in the quest for cost-effective nanoscale
semiconductors has been the mission of a team
from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
(PNNL).
The Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE)
system uses multiple atomic beams to grow well-defined,
controlled layers of materials for studying
film and interface properties. Advanced MBE
technology has the potential to revolutionize
the design and processing of semiconductors,
through the creation of advanced materials with
properties that can be tailored for specific
applications.
The technology transfer partner
of the PNNL team was Motorola Labs. A full range
of mechanisms was used to accomplish the transfer,
including a user facility agreement, procurement
of the system, and a cooperative research and
development agreement (CRADA). As a result of
the partnership, Motorola now has an enhanced
MBE instrument system and the scientific and
technical knowledge to gain maximum benefit
from the technology. This system is giving the
company a competitive edge by enabling its researchers
to solve critical problems in the development
of nanoscale components for advanced electronic
products and services for industry, consumers,
and national defense.
Ultra-Barrier Coatings
for Flat-Panel Displays
A team of researchers from the
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
has developed a polymer multilayer deposition
process and ultra-barrier coatings for flat-panel
electronic displays. The coatings allow improvements
in materials and manufacturing processes that
will help lead to lighter, brighter, more energy
efficient displays. This technology has the
potential to be used in a number of applications
such as cell phones, smart cards, electronic
books, pagers, and laptop computers.
The primary partner in the commercialization
of the PNNL technology is Vitex Systems, Inc.
This company, once a subsidiary of Battelle,
was formed specifically to commercialize advanced
packaging systems using vacuum polymer technology
for the electronics market. While involved with
a technology transfer partnership with PNNL,
Vitex also formed strategic alliances with companies
in the manufacturing industry who were producing
display components. In 2001, Mitsubishi joined
Vitex as an equity partner, acting as a strategic
investor that brought financial, sales, and
marketing expertise to the venture.
Presently, the technology from
PNNL is known commercially as Flexble Glass™
substrates and Barix™ encapsulation technology,
which is being tested by manufacturers around
the world for use in electronic equipment. In
addition, the technology can enable flexible
displays to be used in car and aircraft instrument
panels, large wall displays or billboards, and
even in fabrics.
Radio Frequency Identification
Tags for Tracking and Inventory
Radio frequency identification
(RFID), developed by a team at the Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory (PNNL) are small, inexpensive
tags that can identify, locate, and even determine
the condition of any item to which they are
attached. The tag is programmed with information
that can be read by a hand-held reader, or interrogator,
and sent to a computer. This technology can
be used to locate, secure and deactivate equipment;
locate injured soldiers and send information
to medical units; inventory and track weapons,
tools and clothing; monitor nuclear reactors
and material; and monitor emissions from vehicles.
The tags developed by PNNL work well within
highly metallic environments such as ships and
airplanes.
The technology was brought to
the marketplace via a company spun off by PNNL,
Wave Id, to manufacture, market and distribute
the tags. Because of the extensive marketing
research work done by the team, Wave ID was
able to successfully raise venture capital and
form business relationships. Within a year,
Wave ID merged with Alien Technology, a company
with a patented technology that dramatically
reduces the cost of manufacturing electronic
products.
Current global security concerns
will likely increase the demand for products
such as the RFID system. The ability to track
and deactivate items such as military equipment
and weapons may become extremely important in
the war against terrorism. This technology,
with its ability to be easily attached to anything
that needs to be monitored or located—such
as airplanes or ships—will prove to be
a vital element of providing protection against
terrorist acts.
Sandia
National Laboratories
Mongrow/Thermogrow/ADVISOR
Systems for Thin-Film Processing
A team at Sandia National Laboratories
has developed optical diagnostic tools and data
collection/analysis software that dramatically
improve the fabrication of devices for networking,
telecommunications, solar energy conversion,
sensors, and solid-state light sources. The
methods and instruments used in the technology
started out as tools for fundamental research
designed to examine the basic chemistry and
physics of film disposition. However, these
tools were clearly valuable as routine in situ
monitors of thin film growth during actual device
fabrication. The team took it upon themselves
to accelerate their research to a commercial
product in order to benefit the nation’s
semiconductor industry.
Sandia was able to transfer this
technology through licensing agreements with
Thermo Oriel, an optical tool manufacturer;
and Emcore Corporation, a manufacturer of tools
and processes used to fabricate compound semiconductor
wafers and devices. Emcore is also the holder
of a joint patent of the technology along with
Sandia.
This technology has led to an
easy-to-use commercial instrument for measuring
growth rates, temperature and thickness uniformity
of thin film growth rates. In addition, calibrations
that typically take days to complete may now
be performed in just two hours.
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