Manufacturing Efficiency

Foundation Alloy Technology Explorations will develop a new class of alloys specifically engineered for powder metallurgy-based processing. These new alloys would be engineered at the atomic level for improved properties and for potential applications in critical reactor components. Foundation Alloy’s integration of new material design with part production could enable rapid delivery times, lower costs, and more consistent part quality.

Perseus Materials will develop a new mode of composite manufacturing for wind turbine blades that could rapidly replace vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding as the dominant blade manufacturing process. Perseus’s unique additive manufacturing method—known as variable cross-sectional molding—could significantly reduce labor costs, cycle times, and factory footprints for blade manufacturers at the same output levels.

Calion Technologies will develop an air source heat pump steam generator that could seamlessly replace natural gas boilers for industrial processes and introduce heat pumps to a new swath of customers. Calion Technologies’ unique device would harness ionocaloric heat pumping technology to generate steam at very high temperatures compared with current heat pumps and accelerate the decarbonization of industrial heating, which accounts for 9% U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Travertine will develop an innovative process that combines strong acid-enhanced weathering and critical metal concentration and recovery in ultramafic mine tailings with an electrolytic process for sulfuric acid recycling and base production. The process will maximize the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) reactive minerals and residual critical elements from mine tailings, while minimizing waste. Carbon dioxide will be captured from air and permanently sequestered as inert carbonate minerals. Leached critical elements will be recovered as oxides.

Phoenix Tailings’ CO2 GONE process uses and recycles CO2 to extract energy-relevant minerals, primarily nickel (Ni) and magnesium (Mg), from iron- and aluminum-rich ore through carbonation with CO2. Using CO2 with high pressures, temperatures, and mixing breaks down the rock structure and enables greater extraction of energy-relevant elements like Ni and Mg, which are then converted to metal carbonates (NiCO3, MgCO3).