Electricity Generation and Delivery

One of the biggest challenges facing the practical deployment of fusion energy-based power is the effective management of tritium resources. Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen with a short half-life, is a fusion fuel and must be continuously generated, recovered, and recycled in any tritium-fueled fusion power plant. Currently, scalable tritium extraction and pumping technologies do not exist. Colorado School of Mines will develop and demonstrate engineered composite membranes for efficient tritium extraction from breeder media and the vessel exhaust.

No technology available today can provide the neutron flux, energy spectrum, and other characteristics required to test and qualify materials’ performance under prototypical fusion operating conditions. The fusion community acknowledges the need for a materials test facility soon or risk a crippling impact on the ability to effectively design and test a fusion pilot plant.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) aims to cost-effectively fabricate, at scale, high-performance, oxide-dispersion-strengthened (ODS) steel with advanced-manufacturing methods for fusion breeding-blanket applications. PNNL will enable cost-effective production of oxide-dispersion strengthened steel by consolidating and extruding powders made with gas atomization reaction synthesis (GARS) in just one step by using first-of-a-kind shear-assisted processing and extrusion (ShAPE).

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) will simulate 2 different 100 kW-scale natural gas-fueled hybrid system configurations. These hybrid systems couple a solid oxide fuel cell stack with either a gas turbine or an internal combustion engine. In these simulations, NETL will use its cyber-physical system, in which the “cyber” fuel cell model is coupled with a physical turbine or engine to determine optimal system architectures, including equipment sizing and reforming method and extent.

Electrified Thermal Solutions is developing Firebrick Resistance-heated Energy Storage (FIRES), a new energy storage technology that converts surplus renewable electricity into heat. Once stored, the renewable heat can be used to (1) replace fossil fueled heat sources in industrial processes such as steel and cement production or (2) run a heat engine to produce carbon-free, on-demand renewable electricity at a fraction of the cost of Li-ion batteries. FIRES is based on a novel joule-heated system built from electrically conductive ceramics designed at MIT.

The proposed technology will boost the power production and increase the density of utility wind farms, resulting in at least a 23% reduction in levelized cost of energy (LCOE) from the wind. The flow dynamics of vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) enable constructive interactions between rotors in a wind farm, increasing power up to 30% over non-interacting turbines, and increasing VAWT density per unit land-area an order of magnitude compared with state-of-the-art wind farms.

Flares are widely used address methane emissions, eliminating a safety issue, and reducing greenhouse gas impacts up to 90%. There are many technical and economic challenges for designing small flares that operate reliably with high destruction efficiency, however. Frost Methane Labs proposes to develop a “micro-flare,” capable of handling emissions from sources from 10-200 tonnes of methane per year per site.

Blue Sky Measurements will develop a near-infrared passive scanner using sunlight to detect and measure methane emissions at an oil or gas production well pad or drilling site. The proposed system will provide continuous daily measurements for less than the annualized cost of currently mandated twice-a-year surveys. This fixed-position sensor system will enable operators to continuously monitor their operations for fugitive emissions and enable owners to take corrective action when a leak occurs, minimizing the time between when a leak develops and when it is fixed.

Green hydrogen, which is produced with renewable energy and electrolysis, can reduce emissions for the ammonia fertilizer, refineries, chemicals, and steel industries that use hydrogen as a feedstock. Existing water electrolysis technologies are expensive due to high materials cost or complex balance-of-plant systems required when using conventional alkaline electrolysis. The ARPA-E IONICS program developed highly conductive, chemically stable anion exchange membranes that are now commercially produced.

The team led by the University of Delaware Center for Composite Materials will develop a novel composite material feedstock and robotic placement process to fabricate stand-alone structural pipe within existing pipelines with no disruption in gas service. Repair strategies will be developed for straight and slightly curved pipe sections that will be internally wrapped and repaired using a new robotic-based design facilitating continuous placement of the tailorable feedstock material and creating a stand-alone structural liner within the legacy pipeline.