Transportation Fuels

Johnson Matthey, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Consol Energy will adapt the Catalytic Oxidation METhane (COMET™) methane abatement system to convert vent air methane at a Consol Energy coal mining site. The COMET methane system has shown potential for controlling dilute methane emissions. The team will use cost-effective technology to achieve over 99.5% methane conversion efficiency at temperatures below 1112 ºF for methane concentration in the range of 0.1-1.6%, representing nearly all ventilation air methane sources in the U.S.

MAHLE Powertrain proposes an aftertreatment package to minimize methane emissions from natural gas-fired lean and ultra-lean burn engines. The package features a methane oxidation catalyst with a novel hydrothermally stable catalyst formulation that significantly increases methane conversion efficiencies under low temperature exhaust conditions. The methane source addressed is methane that “slips” through the engine, unconverted to other species during combustion.

RTI International and its partners will develop a Technology Integration Platform (TIP) to demonstrate next-generation ammonia production from intermittent renewable energy in a skid-mounted, modular testbed that is responsive to locational marginal pricing of electricity. The project leverages the University of Minnesota West Central Research and Outreach Center’s operational hybrid wind and solar-to-ammonia field site to integrate the most promising breakthrough technologies developed in ARPA-E’s REFUEL program.

The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) will investigate the efficacy and impact of removing up to 0.1 Gt CO2/yr from the atmosphere and surface oceans through cultivating and sinking fast-growing macroalgae. The UCSB team has previously determined using sophisticated oceanographic models that sunken biomass will sequester the fixed carbon for more than 100 years on the ocean floor if certain conditions are met.

Columbia University proposes a low-temperature water electrolyzer for hydrogen production based on ultrathin oxide membranes that can increase electrolysis efficiency by 20% compared with conventional polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzers. The enhanced performance of Columbia’s proton-conducting oxide membrane (POM) electrolyzers is enabled by the lower ionic resistance of dense oxide-based membranes that are 2 orders of magnitude thinner than conventional catalyst-coated membranes.

Northeastern University will develop a miniaturized laser-based gas spectrometer to address the three critical technical challenges (size, weight, and power) associated with the state-of-the-art drone-based N2O monitoring without compromising sensing performance. The team will leverage commercial and industrial drones to demonstrate high temporal and spatial resolution remote N2O monitoring suitable for large agricultural lands.

Dimensional Energy will apply additive manufacturing (AM) of large-scale ceramics to 3D print a reactor that will efficiently convert greater than 70% of CO2 and green H2 into synthetic gas (syngas), which may be used to produce synthetic aviation fuel. The high carbon utilization and energy efficiencies of the reactor will be coupled with inexpensive renewable electricity and green electrolysis-produced H2 to enable syngas production. Further processing will yield sustainable aviation fuel and other sustainable fuels and chemicals.

The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) will develop a SmartStake technology consisting of low-cost consumable wireless sensor arrays to measure N2O concentrations and emissions drivers (ammonium, nitrate, oxygen, moisture, temperature, pH, and denitrification enzymes). (SmartStake is a staking service providing real-time performance assessment analytics tools.) UC Berkeley’s results will provide a new paradigm for quantifying, monitoring, and managing for lower N2O emissions from biofuel agriculture.

North Carolina State University (NC State) will develop transformative, autothermal Redox-Dehydrogenation (RDH) technology to flexibly produce a variety of alkenyl benzenes in modular packed beds with integrated air separation and greatly simplified product separation. Styrene alone represents a market of over $50 billion/year and its production emits more than 27 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Perlumi Chemicals will develop a novel biological carbon fixation pathway with a more efficient carboxylase to better utilize CO2. Rubisco, the carbon-fixing enzyme central to the carbon fixation cycle in plants, is rather inefficient, limiting how much CO2 a plant can convert into sugars per unit time. The Perlumi team will improve pathway enzymes using metabolic modeling and directed evolution, and implement the novel pathway in living systems.