Blog Posts
Part of ARPA-E’s mission is to overcome long-term and high-risk technological barriers in the development of energy technologies that reduce imports, improve efficiency, and reduce emissions. The Rebellion Photonics and University of Notre Dame projects focus on the latter piece of the mission, working to turn emissions reduction ideas into reality.
Blog Posts
ARPA-E recently released a funding opportunity, Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management (SMARTFARM), to develop innovative new technologies for measuring emissions from agricultural feedstock production. We sat down with Dr. David Babson, SMARTFARM’s Program Director, to learn about his vision and the technologies of interest for Phase 2 of the program.
Blog Posts
Recently, we had an opportunity to sit down with Dr. Jack Lewnard, program director for ARPA‑E REcyle Underutilized Solids to Energy (REUSE) program to discuss the transformation from plastic and paper trash to energy treasure.
Blog Posts
We’re excited to announce a new partnership with DoD’s Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) to further demonstrate and validate ARPA-E derived technologies at DoD installations across the country. ESTCP targets DoD’s urgent environmental and installation energy needs to improve Defense readiness, resilience and costs. Projects under this partnership will conduct demonstrations to validate the performance and operational costs of promising ARPA-E technologies and provide valuable data needed for end-user acceptance and to accelerate the transition of these technologies to commercial use.
Blog Posts
We recently sat down with Dr. Babson to discuss how he became interested in energy, his journey serving in various roles across the federal government, and the future of bioenergy and agricultural systems.
Blog Posts
We sat down with ARPA-E Program Director, Dr. Rachel Slaybaugh, as she reflected on her experience attending the very first ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit Student Program back in 2010.
Slick Sheet: Project
atdepth MRV is developing an ocean modeling system that utilizes graphical processing units (GPUs) which would dramatically improve modeling speed compared with traditional approaches that use central processing units (CPUs). The team seeks to build a model for marine carbon dioxide removal sites that would not only include global-scale ocean processes but also local processes no larger than a few meters, such as small-scale turbulence.
Slick Sheet: Project
University of Colorado, Boulder (CU-Boulder) is developing a system of optical underwater sensors to sense and measure dissolved carbon compounds. CU-Boulder seeks to build a sensor head that would be towed underwater by a cable containing optical fibers attached to an autonomous wave-energy harvesting surface vehicle. The proposed system takes advantage of dual frequency comb laser stimulated Raman spectroscopy—derived from a technology developed under ARPA-E’s MONITOR program—to bring laboratory-based optical spectroscopy to in-situ, persistent, and fast-moving ocean platforms.
Slick Sheet: Project
The University of Texas at Austin is developing an acoustic sensor network to quantify ecosystem activity and how effectively carbon is stored in shallow seagrass beds, an important sink in the coastal blue carbon cycle. The proposed sensor network detects the acoustic signature of bubbles that are released from seagrass leaves as photosynthesis produces excess oxygen. The network also analyzes the refraction of sound through the seafloor to estimate the quantity of carbon locked in seagrass roots and sediment.