Transportation

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and partners will use bio-derived supplementary cementitious materials and concrete additives generated from low-value byproducts created during sustainable aviation fuel production to develop a carbon-negative, thermally insulating concrete. The team proposes that activated carbon, aerogels, and ash produced from biomass processing, as well as supplemental CO2 adsorption to these materials, can replace a large portion of ordinary portland cement in common concrete ready mix.

The University of Delaware (UD) will develop the Composite Architected Materials Processing (CAMP) technology to enable fast, energy-efficient composite manufacturing with a complex 3D geometry formation capability to construct efficient, reliable, and cost-competitive structural materials for air and ground transportation vehicles. With their high strength-to-weight ratios, carbon fiber-reinforced composites have strong potential for lightweighting in structural applications to replace steel and aluminum.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) aims to develop technologies that can collectively replace N fertilizer derived from the HB process. Their approach uses biological N fixation performed by the plant or associated bacteria with current and future sources of synthetic N. Each of the approaches provides N to the crops at different times and impacts energy, yield, and emissions. If successful, these advances will eliminate the need for the energy intense HB-derived N from agriculture.

Hinetics will develop and demonstrate a high-power density electric machine to enable electrified aircraft propulsion systems up to 10 MW and beyond. Hinetics’ technology uses a superconducting machine design that eliminates the need for cryogenic auxiliary systems yet maintains low total mass. The innovative concept features a sub-20 K Stirling-cycle cooler integrated with a low-loss rotor to maintain the SC coils below 30 K.

Circe Bioscience is building a carbon-efficient precision fermentation platform to produce energy-rich long-chain carbon chemicals with applications in several industrial sectors including fuels, materials, and food. The Circe system has a high degree of feedstock flexibility allowing it to take advantage of the legacy bioeconomy for cheap sugar supply and of a growing green energy infrastructure for external reducing equivalents to achieve high carbon efficiency.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) aims to eliminate ice/snow/frost accretion on stationary and mobile electrified systems by developing a multi-functional coating that synergistically combines two different ice/snow/frost removal mechanisms. The team will incorporate pulsed interfacial heating with controlled surface wettability to demonstrate a two orders of magnitude reduction in ice/snow/frost removal time with 50% lower energy consumption without bulk melting compared with state-of-the-art steady heating methods.

Invizyne will develop efficient cell-free enzyme cascade reactions as an alternative, more commercially competitive approach to microbe-produced biofuels. Cell-free technology is still relatively new. However, Invizyne has already been successful in improving enzyme stability and process optimization to push down the cost curve of biofuels. The team seeks to address a barrier to market penetration for cell-free technologies by simplifying and reducing the cost of enzyme production.

The University of Colorado Boulder will manufacture and commercialize a net-CO2-storing portland limestone cement using biogenic limestone (CaCO3) produced via photosynthesis that will store more than 275 kgCO2 and cost less than $100 per ton of cement. Most cement-related CO2 emissions are caused by heating CaCO3 to produce calcium oxide (quicklime), which releases CO2 in the process. The proposed technology will produce biogenic CaCO3 using calcifying microalgae that sequester and store CO2 in mineral form through biological direct air capture via photosynthesis and calcification.

Advanced Ionics (AI) aims to advance its high-efficiency low-cost hydrogen electrolyzer technology to gigawatt-scale production within the next decade. If successful, AI’s system will enable and catalyze decarbonization in refining, ammonia production, chemicals production, steel, glass, methanol, and other highconsumption industries that currently rely on steam methane reforming (SMR) for hydrogen production. Today, electrolyzers suffer from low efficiencies and high capital cost, causing the price of hydrogen from electrolysis to be many times that of conventional SMR.

Molten Industries is using a new reactor technology to enable the direct conversion of biogas into sustainable aviation fuels and renewable diesel. Molten Industries' thermal reforming reactor powered by renewable electricity enables high energy efficiency at significant gas throughputs. If successful, this project will open a new route to upgrade biogas to fuels to increase U.S. sustainable fuel production.