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Energy
Frontier Research Center (EFRC) Awards |
April 27, 2009.
The White House today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science will invest $777 million
in Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs)
over the next five years. In a major effort to
accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to build a
new 21st-century energy economy,
46 new
multi-million-dollar EFRCs will be established at
universities, national laboratories, nonprofit
organizations, and private firms across the nation (White
House Fact Sheet).
Supported in part by funds made available under President
Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(Recovery Act), the EFRCs
will bring together groups of leading scientists to address
fundamental issues in fields ranging from solar energy and
electricity storage to materials sciences, biofuels,
advanced nuclear systems, and carbon capture and
sequestration (synopses
of the 46 EFRC awards). |
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The
46 EFRCs, which are to be funded at $2–5 million per year each for
a planned initial five-year period, were selected from a
pool of some 260 applications received in response to a
solicitation
issued in 2008 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),
Office of Science.
Over 110 institutions from 36 states plus the
District of Columbia will be participating in the EFRC
research. In all, the EFRCs will
involve nearly 700 senior investigators and employ, on a
full- or part-time basis, over 1,100 postdoctoral
associates, graduate students, undergraduate students, and
technical staff (fact sheet). Roughly a third of these researchers will be supported
by Recovery Act funding. |
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Researchers
at the EFRCs will take advantage of new capabilities in nanotechnology,
high-intensity light sources, neutron scattering sources,
supercomputing, and other advanced instrumentation—much of it
developed and supported by the DOE Office of Science—in an effort to lay the scientific groundwork for
fundamental advances in solar energy, biofuels,
transportation, energy efficiency, electricity storage and
transmission, clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration,
and nuclear energy.
The 46 EFRC awards span the full range of
energy research challenges described in the Basic Research
Needs (BRN) series of workshop reports, while also
addressing one or more of the science grand challenges
described in the report, Directing Matter and Energy: Five
Challenge for Science and the Imagination (more
information provided below). Many of the EFRCs address
multiple energy challenges that are linked by common
scientific themes—such as interfacial chemistry for solar
energy conversion and electrical energy storage or rational
design of materials for multiple potential energy
applications. The distribution of the EFRC awards by broad
topic areas (with the related BRN reports listed in
parentheses) can be described as follows:
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Renewable and
Carbon-Neutral Energy (Solar Energy Utilization,
Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, Biofuels, Geological
Sequestration of CO2);
20 EFRCs
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Energy Efficiency
(Clean and Efficient Combustion, Solid State Lighting,
Superconductivity); 6 EFRCs
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Energy Storage
(Hydrogen Research, Electrical Energy Storage); 6 EFRCs
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Crosscutting Science
(Catalysis, Materials under Extreme Environments, other); 14
EFRCs
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Background
Information |
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The
Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Basic
Energy Sciences announced the initiation of Energy Frontier
Research Centers (EFRCs) to accelerate the rate of
scientific breakthroughs needed to create advanced energy
technologies for the 21st century. The EFRCs
will pursue the fundamental understanding necessary to meet
the global need for abundant, clean, and economical energy. |
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Context.
Imagine a virtually unlimited supply of electrical power
from solar-energy systems, modeled on the photosynthetic
processes utilized by green plants, and power lines that
could transmit this electricity from the deserts of the
southwest to the Eastern Seaboard at nearly 100 percent
efficiency. If the technological advances in information of
the 20th century serve as a guide, disruptive
advances borne out of pushing the science frontiers will be
a key to addressing 21st century energy
challenges.
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Establishing the Energy Research Directions.
In 2001, the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC)
conducted a far reaching study to assess the scope of
fundamental scientific research that must be considered to
address the DOE missions in energy efficiency, renewable
energy resources, improved use of fossil fuels, safe and
publicly acceptable nuclear energy, future energy sources,
and reduced environmental impacts of energy production and
use. |
The
scientific community responded to this BESAC study with
enthusiasm through participation in a week-long workshop,
whose results were published in early 2003 in the report,
Basic Research Needs to Assure a Secure Energy Future.
That report inspired a series of ten follow-on “Basic
Research Needs” workshops over the next five years,
which together attracted more than 1,500 participants from
universities, industry, and DOE laboratories.
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Topics
included the hydrogen economy; solar energy
utilization; superconductivity; solid-state
lighting; advanced nuclear energy systems;
combustion of 21st century
transportation fuels; electrical-energy storage; geosciences
as it relates to the storage of energy wastes (the long-term
storage of both nuclear waste and CO2); materials
under extreme environments; and catalysis for energy-related
processes. Amongst these reports, research needs in theory,
modeling, and simulation have been a central theme, in which
the BESAC report,
Opportunities for Discovery: Theory and
Computation in Basic Energy Sciences, captures major
highlights.
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The New
Era of Science.
Together, these workshop reports highlighted the remarkable
scientific journey that has taken place during the past few
decades. The resulting scientific challenges, which no
longer were discussed in terms of traditional scientific
disciplines, described a new era of science – an era in
which materials functionalities are designed to
specifications and chemical transformations are manipulated
at will. Over and over, the recommendations from the
workshops described similar themes – that in this new era of
science, we would design, discover, and synthesize new
materials and molecular assemblies through atomic scale
control; probe and control photon, phonon, electron, and ion
interactions with matter; perform multi-scale modeling that
bridges the multiple length and time scales; and use the
collective efforts of condensed matter and materials
physicists, chemists, biologists, molecular engineers, and
those skilled in applied mathematics and computer science.
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The
Grand Science Challenges.
To accomplish this—to direct and control matter at the
quantum, atomic, and molecular levels—requires a change in
our fundamental understanding of how nature works. A BESAC
Grand Challenges subcommittee was convened, which examined
the roadblocks to progress, and the opportunities for truly
transformational new understanding. The results of that
examination were presented in the report,
Directing
Matter and Energy: Five Challenges for Science and the
Imagination. This new era of energy science poses five
challenges:
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How do we
control materials processes at the level of electrons?
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How do we
design and perfect atom- and energy-efficient syntheses of
revolutionary new forms of matter with tailored properties?
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How do
remarkable properties of matter emerge from the complex
correlations of atomic or electronic constituents and how
can we control these properties?
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How can we
master energy and information on the nanoscale to create new
technologies with capabilities rivaling those of living
things?
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How do we
characterize and control matter away—especially very far
away—from equilibrium?
Addressing
these grand challenges is key to making the transition from
observation to control of matter.
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Energy Frontier Research Centers
To implement the collective recommendations of these twelve
workshops, the Office of Basic Energy Sciences is using two
complementary approaches: multi-investigator research via
the Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) and a
significant enhancement in
single-investigator and
small-group projects that currently form the bulk of the
BES core research portfolio.
The EFRC awards are expected to be in the $2–5 million range
annually for an initial 5-year period. A Funding Opportunity
Announcement was issued that
requested applications from the scientific community for the
establishment of the initial suite of EFRCs.
Distinguishing Attributes.
Energy Frontier Research Centers
will
bring
together the skills and talents of multiple investigators to
enable research of a scope and complexity that would not be
possible with the standard individual investigator or small
group award. An
EFRC will
have
the following characteristics:
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The
research program is at the forefront of one or more of the
challenges described in the BESAC report Directing Matter
and Energy: Five Challenges for Science and the Imagination
(http://www.sc.doe.gov/bes/reports/files/GC_rpt.pdf
).
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The
research program addresses one or more of the energy
challenges described in the ten BES workshop reports in the
Basic Research Needs series (http://www.sc.doe.gov/bes/reports/list.html).
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The program
is balanced and comprehensive, and, as needed, supports
experimental, theoretical, and computational efforts and
develops new approaches in these areas.
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The program
provides opportunities to inspire, train, and support
leading scientists of the future who have an appreciation
for the global energy challenges of the 21st
century.
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The center
leadership communicates effectively with scientists of all
disciplines and promotes awareness of the importance of
energy science and technology.
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There is a
comprehensive management plan for a world-leading program
that encourages high-risk, high-reward research. The
Center’s management plan demonstrates that the whole is
substantially greater than the sum of the individual parts.
Research
Focus Areas.
EFRC proposals must address all of the attributes listed
above. A few examples of science areas that would respond
to the solicitation are given below. These are intended to
be examples only. The intent of the program is to allow for
maximum flexibility within the broad guidelines given
above. We are particularly interested in tapping the
imagination and creativity of the scientific community to
address the fundamental questions of how nature works and to
harness this new knowledge for some of our most critical
real-world challenges.
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Direct
conversion of solar energy to electricity and chemical fuels.
Learning
to direct and control materials and chemical processes at
the level of electrons, where the laws of quantum mechanics
rule, would pave the way for essentially new quantum control
impacting catalysis, photochemistry, molecular biology, and
device physics that are the foundational pieces in solar
energy conversion. Powerful new methods of nanoscale
fabrication, characterization, and simulation—using
physical, chemical and biological tools that were not
available as few as five years ago—create new opportunities
for understanding and manipulating the molecular and
electronic pathways of solar energy conversion. Specific
areas include coaxing cheap materials for superior
performance; new paradigms for solar cell design;
photo-catalytic processes for inexpensive, efficient
conversion; and bio-inspired methods for self-assembly of
molecular components into functional self-regulating, and
self-repairing systems for solar fuel production.
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Understanding of how biological feedstocks are converted into portable
fuels
Biological systems are the proof-of-concept for what can
physically be achieved by nanotechnology. Consider the ease
with which biological systems transform and store energy or
their ability to self-repair and to adapt to changing
external conditions. The way in which energy, entropy, and
information are manipulated within the nanosytems of life
provides us with lessons on what we must learn in order to
develop similarly sophisticated energy technologies. This
entails research in light harvesting, exciton transfer,
charge separation, transfer of reductant to carbon dioxide
as well as carbon fixation and storage. Specific areas
might include molecular-scale characterization of the
physical structure and chemical properties of plant cell
wall materials with the aim of circumventing the need for
extensive pre-treatment and biological hydrolysis to sugars
(saccharification), which are current bottlenecks in
cellulosic biofuel production. Other areas include
development of new and improved catalytic conversion
processes that are far more robust than enzymatic systems
for the conversion of plant polymers to fuels.
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A new generation of radiation-tolerant materials and chemical separation
processes for fission applications. By designing and perfecting atom- and energy-efficient
synthesis, one can create a paradigm shift in the discovery
and design of new chemical assemblies and materials that are
mechanical strong; light weight; and resistant to corrosion,
decay, or failure in extreme conditions of temperature,
pressure, radiation, or chemical exposures encountered in
fission applications. Key research includes: foundational
research in chemistry and physics of actinides and their
fission products; new generation of actinide separations
processes with improved efficiency, selectivity,
cost-effectiveness, and waste minimization; first-principles
design and understanding of materials with improved
radiation and corrosion resistance at elevated temperatures;
microstructural design and predictive models for mitigating
long-time degradation behavior; characterization, theory,
and computer models for decades-to-centuries performance;
and
solution and interfacial behavior under extreme radiation
flux and elevated temperatures.
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Addressing fundamental knowledge gaps in energy storage.
Without effective electrical energy storage, renewable—yet
intermittent—sources of energy such as wind and solar will
not be able to significantly displace fossil, nuclear, and
other conventional energy sources used for generating
electricity for the power grid. Similarly, current battery
technologies are limited, making plug-in hybrid or
all-electric cars prohibitively costly and insufficient to
meet consumer demands. Long-term, fundamental research in
electrical energy storage will be needed to accelerate the
pace of scientific discoveries and to see transformational
advances that bridge the gaps in cost and performance,
separating the current technologies and those required for
future utility and transportation needs. For example, by
mastering energy balance on the nanoscale through harvesting
the large number of forces that are often operating
simultaneously, such as electrostatic attraction and
repulsion, chemical bonding, surface tension, and random
forces from environmental fluctuations, a wide variety of
structures can be assembled for 3-D architectures with
multi-functionalities in energy storage unsurpassed by any
given existing technologies. Other research areas include
new capabilities to “observe” the dynamic composition and
structure of the constituents in the electrochemical storage
systems; novel electrolytes with high conductivity over a
broad temperature range and long-term stability; and theory,
modeling, and simulation that integrate methods at different
time and length scales.
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Transforming energy utilization and transmission.
At the heart of the nanoscale behavior, one often finds
emergent phenomena, in which a complex outcome emerges from
the correlated interactions of many simple constituents. By
understanding the fundamental rules of correlations and
emergence and then by learning how to control them, we could
produce, for example, an entirely new generation of energy
utilization and transmission processes, such as in phase
change materials for thermal energy conversion, strong
light-matter interaction and collective charge behavior for
light emission nearing theoretical efficiency, and radically
different combustion chemistry of alternative fuels.
Understanding the emergent behavior of materials and
chemical reactivity at the nanoscale offers remarkable
opportunities in broad arena of applications including
solid-state lighting, electrical generators, clean and
efficient combustion of 21st century
transportation fuels, catalytic processes for efficient
production and utilization of chemical fuels, and
superconductivity for resistance-less electricity
transmission.
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Science-based geological carbon sequestration.
All natural and most human-induced phenomena occur in
systems that are away from the equilibrium in which the
system would not change with time. If we can understand
system effects that take place away―especially very far
away―from equilibrium and learn to control them, it could
yield dramatic new carbon capture technologies and enable
new strategies for sequestering carbon to mitigate
environmental damage. Key research areas involve new
membranes and separations of carbon dioxide from process
streams at high temperature and pressure; understanding
geochemical processes relevant to the dimensions of
subsurface sequestration sites with realistic geological
formations chemistry; developing critical geophysical
measurement techniques for remote probing and tracking;
developing fluid-flow measurement approaches and simulation
tools that can link chemical and physical processes at
multiple scales; and advanced measurement and modeling
verification at field sites.
EFRC Awards Process.
Forty-six Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) awards were initiated in FY 2009
based on an open competition among academic institutions,
DOE laboratories, for-profit entities, and nonprofit
organizations. Research activities are sited singly
at a specific institution or in multiple locations through
collaborations between institutions. The EFRC awards are in
the $2–5 million range annually for an initial 5-year
period. A Funding
Opportunity Announcement (Opened: April 4, 2008; Closed:
October 1, 2008) was issued that requested
applications from the scientific community
for the establishment of the initial suite of EFRCs. Out-year funding is
subject to satisfactory progress in the research and the
availability of funding appropriations. |