NewsRoom
Features - July 2007
NETL Researchers Honored with R&D 100 Awards
Innovative Technologies Address Energy Security, Clean Energy, Global Warming
You may not spend a significant part of your day thinking about energy, but maybe you should. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) certainly do. That’s partly because it’s their job, but the fact is this Nation’s reliance on energy can’t be overstated. Our national infrastructure depends on our having an ample supply of affordable energy.
Researchers at NETL do basic research but they also focus on applying their basic knowledge of science and engineering to the development of technologies that help guarantee we will have energy when we want it. Their research regularly yields significant breakthroughs in fossil energy.
The value of the NETL research was affirmed this year when the laboratory garnered three R&D 100 Awards for technologies that address energy security, clean energy, and global warming. The innovations include a lower cost way to manufacture titanium; software that is opening doors for advanced coal technologies; and technology that is helping to quickly evaluate potential carbon storage sites.
R&D Magazine’s R&D 100 Awards recognize this achievement. Since 1963, R&D Magazine has annually awarded R&D 100 Awards to the 100 most technologically significant new products to hit the market during the year. According to R&D Magazine, the goal of the award is to spotlight major breakthroughs—products and processes with the capacity to improve the standard of living for many people.
“Once again, we are at the cutting edge of innovation with new technology developments that enhance America’s economic and national security,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman. “My heartiest congratulations to the NETL researchers and scientists who have won R&D Magazine’s prestigious awards this year.”
A Better Way to Produce Titanium—Armstrong Process CP Ti and Ti Alloy Powder and Products
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NETL scientist Paul Jablonski forge titanium plate. Although traditionally limited to special niche markets because of its high manufacturing cost, titanium is made affordable with the Armstrong Process. |
NETL researchers Steve Gerdemann, Paul Jablonski, and Paul Turner have been working with International Titanium Powder, LLC (ITP) of Rockport, Ill., for the past nine years to refine ITP’s method to reduce the cost of producing titanium and titanium alloys. The groundbreaking method, called the Armstrong Process, deviates from the “traditional” methods for titanium production in that it’s a continuous process, rather than a batch at a time, eliminating the down-time associated with a step-wise batch process. Continuous production allows for lower temperatures and lower pressure, which in turn allows for lower cost. Recent efforts from the team have developed methods to economically turn Armstrong Process powders into usable, economical products for the automotive, defense, and aerospace industries. What’s so great about titanium? It’s strong, it’s lightweight, and it resists corrosion. In fact, titanium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal. It’s as strong as steel, but only about half as dense. Although the metal was discovered in 1791, it was confined to laboratory use until the invention of the Kroll process in 1946 because extracting titanium from its ores is a long and expensive process. Even so, the high-temperature Kroll process (a batch process commercialized at NETL in the late 1940s) currently used for manufacturing this super metal is costly enough that titanium can only be practically used in specific, high-priced markets. The new cost-efficient Armstrong Process opens up the miracle metal to a variety of applications. One noteworthy example is NETL’s work with the U.S. Army Tank and Automotive Command and Army Research Laboratory in developing armorplate. Not only does titanium armorplate possess the light-weight, high corrosion-resistance properties of titanium, it also has superior ballistic properties. ITP has already broken ground on its first commercial plant, which should be operational in early 2009, and a significant portion of that plant’s production is already committed under multi-year, extended contracts. Department of Defense contractors are planning to use this product in their defense-related products. The Armstrong Process and applications for its products were developed by a team consisting of ITP, NETL, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tenn.), BAE Systems (Rockville, Md.), AMETEK (Paoli, Pa.), and Red Devil Brakes (Mount Pleasant, Pa.).
Enhancing Advanced Coal Technologies—MFIX (Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges)
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The Multiphase Flow Research Group in the Office of Research and Development at NETL develops capabilities to accurately model fossil power generation technology employing dense, reacting multiphase flow. From left to right, Sofiane Benyahia, engineer; Madhava Syamlal, engineer; and Phillip Nicoletti, computer scientist, look at details of a visualization of a fluidized bed gasifier. |
Developed at NETL with support from Aeolus Research, Inc., Parsons, Inc., and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, MFIX is a software solution for reducing the cost of developing and commercializing the technologies that will allow the clean and efficient use of coal. The developers are Sofiane Benyahia (NETL/DOE), Aytekin Gel (NETL/Aeolus Research, Inc.), Chris Guenther (NETL/DOE), Philip Nicoletti (NETL/Parsons Inc.), Thomas J. O'Brien (NETL/DOE), Sreekanth Pannala (ORNL), Mike Prinkey (NETL/Aeolus Research, Inc.), William Rogers (NETL/DOE), and Madhava Syamlal (NETL/DOE). The much-needed software solves physics-based equations to simulate various processes that occur in critical equipment, such as coal gasifiers. The cheaper simulations encourage engineers to dream-up the pioneering designs needed for generating clean, coal-based energy. Coal is America’s most abundant energy resource and generates more than half of our electric power. The drawback is that coal is also a high producer of carbon emissions. Developing the technologies that will enable us to use coal cleanly, efficiently, and with less carbon emissions is essential, and it’s a complex process of building and testing. Researchers develop designs that use solid fuels and repeatedly build and test these designs at several different scales. But the high cost of these demonstrations limits the opportunities engineers have to test innovative designs of coal processing reactions, and the radical ideas needed to develop the novel designs for near-zero emissions future power plants cannot be explored. MFIX brings these ideas back to the table by replacing build-and-test steps with accurate and less-costly simulations. MFIX Version 2006-4 was released in December of 2006 and is available for download from www.mfix.org.
Burying Global Warming—SEQURE™ Well Finding Technology
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A helicopter affixed with SEQURE Technology hovers in the sky above Salt Creek Oilfield in Wyoming. By attaching to highly mobile airborne vehicles, SEQURE can cover large areas to quickly locate abandoned and leaking wells using magnetic and methane sensors. |
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SEQURE technology developed by NETL Researchers Richard Hammack and Garret Veloski is a major breakthrough in carbon sequestration efforts, providing the quickest way to evaluate potential sites for permanently storing CO2 emissions. Geologic sequestration offers the most promising solution to global warming by storing the greenhouse gas CO2 in geologic formations, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs. Those formations must be evaluated to make sure they’re properly sealed and suitable for the task. If you’ve ever re-used jars to can your own vegetables, this approach will sound familiar. Oil and gas are trapped underground and under pressure for millions of years until engineers extract these hydrocarbons to feed our energy needs. What’s left is a re-usable container capable of indefinitely storing the byproduct of our fossil fuel use, CO2. Sounds easy enough, but, since 1859, the caprock (think lid) of these vast hydrocarbon cans has been punctured to withdraw the fuels and is now perforated with millions of wells. If the holes can be patched and the wells made into air-tight vessels once again, depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs would be the perfect place for CO2 storage. But in many cases, the abandoned wells leak. Cement that was used to plug the wells degrades over time or was never made completely air tight to begin with. Improperly plugged wells would release the CO2 stored in the reservoirs, and such wells are considered the greatest threat carbon storage. The solution? Find and check every abandoned well to ensure that all potential leak points are sealed. And it’s no small task. Over time, many wells have become buried. In some cases, parking lots have even been built over them. SEQURE Well Finding Technology provides a speedy way to locate the wells, which are spread over miles, so that ground teams can more efficiently evaluate them. SEQURE deploys helicopters loaded with magnetic and methane (to detect the small-percentage of wells without steel casing) sensors to locate lost wells—a search which stretches over hundreds of square kilometers. It saves time, and it’s cost-effective. It’s also the only commercially available well-finding technology for large areas, making it uniquely qualified for the task. Geologic sequestration is a major step in stopping global warming, and the first step towards making geologic sequestration a reality is finding a reliable place to keep the CO2. SEQURE technology locates wells quickly and efficiently, allowing researchers to pinpoint the most reliable reservoirs to help bring global warming to halt.
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