Secretary of Energy Rick Perry Announces Nearly $20 Million To Help Commercialize Promising Energy Technologies

California Energy (DOE)Federal Agency/Executive Branch grants Illinois R & D Focus

September 15, 2017

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(U.S. Department of Energy) U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry announced $19.7 million in funding to help businesses move promising energy technologies from DOE’s National Laboratories to the marketplace. This second Department-wide round of funding through the Office of Technology Transition’s Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) will support 54 projects across 12 National Laboratories involving more than 30 private-sector partners.

The TCF works to expand the commercial impact of DOE’s portfolio of research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities. National laboratory proposals for this round of the TCF covered two topic areas:

Topic Area 1: Projects for which additional technology maturation is needed to attract a private partner.
Topic Area 2: Cooperative development projects between a lab and industry partner(s), designed to bolster the commercial application of a lab developed technology.

Projects selected for the TCF will receive at least an equal amount of non-federal funds to match the federal investment.

“Accelerating the transition of energy technologies from the laboratory bench to the marketplace is an important component of increasing America’s economic prosperity and energy security,” said Secretary Perry. “This second round of TCF projects highlight the incredible value of DOE’s National Laboratories and the importance of bringing the Department’s technology transfer mission to the American people.”

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 selections will further expand DOE’s efforts to catalyze the commercial impact of research, development, and demonstration activities to increase return-on-investment from federally-funded work, and to give more Americans access to cutting-edge energy technologies.

See below for a full list of the TCF selections—as well as the private sector partners for Topic 2 projects—

Ames Laboratory

Gas Atomization Nozzle Design for Controlled Particle Production, $392,000
- AMPAL Inc., Flemington, N.J.

Argonne National Laboratory

NRC Qualification of Advanced Reactor Safety Analysis Software, $75,000
Passive, High Efficiency Ventilation for the DRACS and other Natural Circulation Systems, $100,000
Joint Development of SAS4A Code in Application to Oxide-fueled LFR Severe Accident Analysis, $400,000
- Westinghouse Nuclear, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Advanced Physics-Based Fluid System Performance Monitoring to Support Nuclear Power Plant Operations,$500,000
- LPI Inc. Amesbury, Mass.
Graphene based solid lubricants for automotive applications, $640,000
- Magna International Inc., Troy, Mich.
The Application of Catalytically Active Nano-composite Coatings to increase the Service Interval of Automotive Powertrain Applications, $712,450
- Magna Services of America, Troy, Mich.
Two-Tier Tube-Trailer Consolidation Technology for Fast Fueling of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles
- FirstElement Fuel, Newport Beach, Calif.
- Gas Technology Institute, Des Plaines, Ill.
- PDC Machines, Inc., Warminster, Pa.
Development of a Scalable Process for Recovery of Polymers and Residual Metals from Mixed Polymer Content Scrap, $750,000
- Global Electric Electronic Processing International, Redford, Mich.
Lithium Anodes for Electric Vehicles, $750,000
- alpha-En Corporation, Tarrytown, N.Y.

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Commercial Scale-Up and Demonstration of SulfCrete, a clean, energy efficient alternative to Conventional Portland Cement Concrete, $750,000

Idaho National Laboratory

Event Model Risk Assessment using Linked Diagrams (EMRALD), $61,906
Produced Water Treatment using the Switchable Polarity Solvent Forward Osmosis (SPS FO) Process, $150,000
RAVEN Code Commercial Deployment for Industrial Related Applications, $250,000
- FPoliSolutions, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Integration of PHISICS into the AREVA reactor design suite for commercial application to High Temperature Reactors, $300,000
- AREVA NP Inc., Lynchburg, Va.
Pathway to Commercialization of Weather Based Dynamic Line Rating with CFD using INL’s General Line Ampacity State Solver (GLASS) software $300,000
- Schneider Electric, Burnsville, Minn.
- WindSim Americas Inc., Westlake Village, Calif.
Seismic Isolation of Major Advanced Reactor Systems for Economic Improvement and Safety Assurance,$710,000
- Southern Company Services Inc., Birmingham, Ala.
- TerraPower, Bellevue, Wash.
- X-energy, Greenbelt, Md.
Highly Scalable Computer-Based Procedure System for Field Workers, $750,000
- NextAxiom Technology, San Francisco, Calif.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Advancing the Commercial Building Energy Saver to Provide Actionable Insights into Building Retrofits and to Enable Broad-Based Commercialization, $150,000
Cooperative Development of a High Efficiency Anaerobic Electroporation Apparatus for Biofuel Generation from Waste Gases, $499,000
- Lanzatech, Skokie, Ill.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Additive Manufacturing of Thermoelectric Generators, $149,493
Microencapsulated Sorbents for Biogas Upgrading, $150,000
Rare Earth Metal Extraction for Clean Technologies, $150,000
Earth Battery: Storing Energy with Compressed Air and Heated Brine in Porous Rock, $150,000
Assessment of water ingress impact on efficiency degradation in photovoltaic modules, $150,000
Implementing Coupled Transmission and Distribution Simulation, $750,000
- Eaton Corporation, Minneapolis, Minn.

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Development of a Micro-Reactor for Generator of Nuclear Power, $750,000
- Westinghouse Electric Company, Cranberry Township, Pa.

National Energy Technology Laboratory

Slag Management of Carbon Feedstock Used in Gasification, $125,000
Commercialization of the CuO-Fe2O3 oxygen carrier for hydrogen and carbon/syngas production from natural gas, $150,000
Simultaneous extraction of nickel and vanadium from petcoke waste byproducts, $347,684
- Sumitomo Chemical, Tokyo, Japan
Safer drilling – Reducing risks and costs with real time, downhole kick detection, $700,000
- Saudi Aramco, Houston, Texas
Commercialization of Immobilized Amino-Siliane/Amine or Biochar Sorbents for the Capture of Carbon Dioxide from Various Methane Gas Streams, $750,000
- BioEnergy Development LLC, Paso Robles, Calif.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Development of an Integrated Model for a Greenfield Hybrid Geothermal and CSP System, $100,000
Spatial atomic layer deposition (ALD) to scale the manufacturing of tailored and robust catalysts for biofuel and biochemical production, $150,000
Biomaterials from non-woody biomass, $500,000
- Sustainable Fiber Technologies, Renton, Wash.
Optimal, Reliable Building-Integrated Energy Storage, $525,000
- Eaton Corporation, Southfield, Mich.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Cost lowering and scale up of a very low thermal conductivity material, $150,000
Carbon Capture via Crystallization with a Guanidine Ligand, $150,000
Development of cost-effective quantum key distribution systems for the U.S. power grid, $150,000
Thermoelectric Heat Pump Heat Recovery System for Domestic Dishwashers, $500,000
- Samsung Electronics America, Pine Brook, N.J.
Polymer-Based Adsorbents for the Recovery of Uranium from Desalination Facilities, $622,000
- 525 Solutions Inc., Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Technology Validation of Innovative Dissimilar Materials Joining Processes in Automotive Production Environment, $633,827
- Cosma Eagle Bend Manufacturing Plant, Clinton, Tenn.
Wireless Power Transfer Technology for Autonomous Vehicle Platform, $650,000
- Local Motors, Knoxville, Tenn.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Cold Spray Magnetostrictive Sensor, $75,000
Air Braze Optimization for Markets Targeted by Aegis Technology, Inc., $125,000
- Aegis Technology Inc., Santa Ana, Calif.Low-cost Battery Health Monitoring and Diagnosis system, $150,000
Low-cost Battery Health Monitoring and Diagnosis system, $150,000
Commercialization of Sensor Fish Technology to support hydropower development, $150,000
Video Analysis Software Development, $150,000
Improving Cloud-Based Performance of Distribution Planning Tools, $300,000
- GridUnity (formerlyQado Energy Inc.), Summit, N.J.

Sandia National Laboratories

Evaluation of WattJoule’s Vanadium redox flow battery employing Sandia National Laboratories' membranes,$50,000
Optimal Headers for Diffusion Bonded Heat Exchangers, $100,000
Downhole Rotation for Small-Diameter Drilling Applications, $148,955
Memzyme Technology for Cost-Effective CO2 Separations in Enhanced Oil Recovery, $300,000
- Angstrom Thin Film Technologies LLC, Albuquerque, N.M.
  - Occidental Petroleum Company, Houston, Texas
Consolidation of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel into a Universal Canister for Storage, Transportation, and Disposal, $750,000
- NAC International, Norcross, Ga. READ MORE