Transportation

This project will develop a unique, fully integrated, Python-based open-source software tool to evaluate strategies for deploying advanced locomotive technologies and associated infrastructure for cost-effective decarbonization. ALTRIOS will simulate energy conversion and storage dynamics, locomotive and train dynamics, meet-pass planning (detailed train timetabling), and freight-demand-driven train scheduling in a Pareto optimization.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with project co-funder National Energy Technology Laboratory, will conduct a Geographical Information System (GIS) spatial analysis to identify locations that (1) are within geological saline basins with potential for CO2 injection, (2) are close to existing NG pipelines or NG users for potential blending of RNG with NG, and (3) meet site-specific suitability criteria (e.g. slope, population density, and exclusion of protected lands, landslide and flood hazard, and EPA non-attainment areas).

The Harvard University team will draw from efficient infrastructures for cheap sugar supply, maturing gas fermentation technology, and sophisticated strategies to engineer fatty acid metabolism. Current bioproduction platforms are limited regarding to carbon efficiency, product versatility or productivity. These platforms have left legacies that will aid Harvard in developing the next generation of carbon-efficient bioproduction, however.

Environmental drivers that cause the production and flux of nitrous oxide (N2O) and spatial and temporal variability of soil carbon stocks create challenges to cost-effectively quantify N2O emissions and soil carbon stock changes at scale. Dagan aims to build, validate, and demonstrate an integrated system to reliably and economically measure field-level soil carbon and N2O emissions.

West Virginia University seeks to commercialize alloys and manufacturing processes to improve the overall safety, energy efficiency, and environmental performance of air travel and electricity generation. The team will develop a new class of ultra-high temperature refractory complex concentrated alloys-based composites (RCCC) for high temperature applications such as combustion turbines used in the aerospace and energy industries. The approach is based on a transformative “high-entropy” strategy.

The Penn State team is developing a fully open-source toolset for exploring and optimizing Energy Storage and Power (ES&P) systems for rail transportation. The core of the toolset will be an Energy-Longitudinal Train Dynamics (E-LTD) model that represents the train as a complex rolling micro-grid of power sources and sinks, determining the optimal power flow policy for each. The E-LTD will model power demands and calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fuel consumption, power, acquisition, operations and support, and infrastructure costs.

The aviation industry requires energy-dense, carbon-based fuels, which are difficult to achieve biologically because of low yields and poor carbon conversion efficiency. The University of California, Berkeley, will engineer an approach to reach near 100% carbon conversion efficiency. A single organism can be limited by CO2 loss from core metabolic reactions.

LanzaTech will create transformative technology to directly convert CO2 to ethanol at 100% carbon efficiency with technical assistance from the University of Michigan and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The team will develop a novel biocatalyst that leverages affordable, renewable hydrogen (H2) to capture and fix CO2 directly into ethanol, a biofuel and feedstock for valuable products. The core inputs are carbon-free renewable energy, water, and CO2.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the University of Oregon, Genomatica, and DeNora will generate low-cost and low-carbon-intensity fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) feedstock to generate renewable diesel and sustainable jet fuel. The team’s biorefining concept uses electrochemically generated formate as a universal energy carrier to facilitate a carbon-optimized sugar assimilation fermentation to synthesize FAME without release of CO2.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has demonstrated a two-stage system where acetate is produced from CO2 and H2 via acetogenic fermentation in the first stage and then fed to the yeast reactor for converting acetate to lipids or alkanes. MIT proposes to reduce or eliminate CO2 generation during lipid production by (1) engineering an oleaginous yeast with the enzymes necessary to generate reducing equivalents from hydrogen, formic acid, or methanol, and (2) installing a carbon-conserving non-oxidative glycolysis.