Status: ALUMNI
State: WV
Project Term: 05/14/2021 - 11/13/2023
Program: ULTIMATE
Award: $1,100,000

West Virginia University

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 RCCC will consist of Refractory Complex Concentrated Alloys (RCCA) mixed with nanosized…

Status: ALUMNI
State: WV
Project Term: 06/12/2017 - 09/12/2022
Program: GENSETS
Award: $1,449,996

West Virginia University Research Corporation (WVURC)

West Virginia University Research Corporation (WVURC) and their partner, Infinia Technology Corporation, propose to demonstrate an advanced Stirling power generation system for residential CHP applications. A Stirling engine uses a working gas housed in a sealed environment, in this case the working gas is helium. When heated by the natural gas-fueled burner, the helium expands causing a piston to move and interact with a linear alternator to produce electricity. As the gas cools and contracts, the process resets before repeating again. Advanced Stirling engines endeavor to carefully manage…

Status: ALUMNI
State: WV
Project Term: 11/03/2015 - 10/02/2020
Program: GENSETS
Award: $2,380,000

West Virginia University Research Corporation (WVURC)

West Virginia University Research Corporation (WVURC), along with its partners at ANSYS, Inc., Sustainable Engineering, Wilson Works, and Stryke Industries, will develop a CHP generator for residential use based on a two-stroke, spark-ignited free-piston internal combustion engine (ICE). Traditional internal combustion engines use the force generated by the combustion of a fuel (natural gas in this case) to move a piston, transferring chemical energy to mechanical energy, which when used in conjunction with a generator produces electricity. This free-piston design differs from traditional…

Status: ALUMNI
State: WV
Project Term: 04/01/2017 - 03/31/2023
Program: REFUEL
Award: $2,900,000

West Virginia University Research Corporation (WVURC)

West Virginia University Research Corporation (WVURC) will develop a process to convert renewable electricity, water, and air into ammonia using plasma excitation at low temperatures and pressures. This process is different from both electrochemical conversion processes and catalytic processes like the HB process. In this form of physical activation, the microwave-plasma process can activate nitrogen and hydrogen, generating ions and free radicals that react over the catalyst surface to form ammonia. Under the correct conditions, microwave heating can selectively heat the catalyst to the…

Status: ACTIVE
State: TX
Project Term: 12/03/2021 - 12/02/2024
Program: SHARKS
Award: $1,600,000

Westergaard Solutions

HydroMINE is a disruptive and elegantly simple modular system with a relatively small internal propeller driven by pressure from a stationary hydrofoil structure to a separate, internal flow stream. The internal propeller drives an ordinary electric direct drive generator. The size of the stationary HydroMINE hydrofoil structure is comparable to an equivalent ordinary rotor of the same swept area producing a similar amount of energy. The external floating structure is passive, only yawing slowly with the ocean tide or river flow direction. The internal propeller is isolated from debris and…

Status: ALUMNI
State: WY
Project Term: 01/15/2021 - 09/30/2023
Program: Exploratory Topics
Award: $1,378,465

Western Research Institute

Western Research Institute will explore technologies based on pyrolysis (thermal conversion) and hydrocracking (a chemical process that upgrades low-quality, heavy gas oils) to convert waste, low-value plastic, and paper polymers into high-energy liquid products suitable as fuel, refinery feedstock, or feed for chemicals manufacturing. The pyrolysis technologies involve heating the polymers in oil media to a temperature high enough to break the chemical bonds to produce a liquid product. The pyrolysis may also be applied to low-level conversion of the polymers to yield a slurry feed for a…

Status: ACTIVE
State: PA
Project Term: 08/24/2018 - 01/14/2024
Program: MEITNER
Award: $5,622,448

Westinghouse Electric Company

Westinghouse Electric Company will develop a self-regulating "solid core block" (SCB) that employs solid material (instead of bulk liquid flow or moving parts) to passively regulate the reaction rate in a micro-scale nuclear reactor. The project aims for the reactor to achieve safe shutdown without the need for additional controls, external power sources, or operator intervention, enabling highly autonomous operation. The SCB is key to the reactor design, which is comprised of a core (containing fuel, moderator, and axial reflectors) and primary and decay heat exchangers, all…

Status: ACTIVE
State: MD
Project Term: 09/19/2023 - 09/18/2025
Program: Exploratory Topics
Award: $500,000

WH-Power

WH-Power (WHP) will develop a high-entropy electrolyte and pulp-based zinc battery that could operate in temperature ranges from -80°C to 80°C and can be used for both residential and grid-scale energy storage applications. WHP’s battery would be inherently safer and lower cost than existing batteries and could be produced from abundant materials that are readily available domestically.

Status: ACTIVE
State: MA
Project Term: 12/15/2020 - 06/14/2024
Program: REPAIR
Award: $2,274,030

White River Technologies

The team led by White River Technologies will deliver an improved capability to reliably detect, locate, and position natural gas distribution mains and associated utilities in pipe corridors. The proposed solution connects elements of positioning and information management and (1) advances core electromagnetic (EM) and data management technologies, (2) establishes a physics-based process for large standoff EM for pipe detection and robot location, and (3) employs mixed-reality visualization. Additionally, the project includes a comprehensive, inclusive, and robust REPAIR data management and…

Status: ALUMNI
State: KS
Project Term: 06/19/2017 - 12/18/2019
Program: REFUEL
Award: $855,000

Wichita State University

Wichita State University will develop a renewable energy-powered electrochemical device for ammonia production at ambient temperature. This allows the unit to consume less energy but maintain high productivity. The goal is an alternative path for ammonia electrochemical synthesis from water and air without the need for the high temperature and pressure required by the Haber-Bosch process. The key innovation is the use of a hydroxide-exchange membrane (HEM) polymer electrolyte. The more commonly used proton exchange membranes (PEM) present major challenges leading to low efficiency for PEM-…

Status: ALUMNI
State: WI
Project Term: 12/17/2015 - 10/16/2021
Program: GENSETS
Award: $2,780,786

Wisconsin Engine Research Consultants (WERC)

Wisconsin Engine Research Consultants (WERC) and its partners Adiabatics, Briggs and Stratton, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will develop a generator using an internal combustion engine (ICE) that incorporates an advanced spark-assisted homogeneous charge compression ignition (SA-HCCI) system. Traditional internal combustion engines use the force generated by the combustion of a fuel (e.g. natural gas) to move a piston, transferring chemical energy to mechanical energy. This can then be used in conjunction with a generator to create electricity. SA-HCCI systems achieve combustion by…

Status: ACTIVE
State: MA
Project Term: 06/15/2018 - 06/14/2024
Program: MARINER
Award: $4,890,153

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution leads a MARINER Category 5 project, to develop a selective breeding program for sugar kelp, Saccharina latissima, one of the most commercially important kelp varieties. The goal of the project is to improve productivity and cost effectiveness of seaweed farming. The breeding program will build a germplasm library associated with plants that produce a 20% to 30% yield improvement over plants currently in the field. By using a combination of novel rapid phenotyping, genome-wide association studies, and genome prediction methods, the team…

Status: ALUMNI
State: MA
Project Term: 02/08/2018 - 02/07/2022
Program: MARINER
Award: $2,056,621

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will lead a MARINER Category 4 project to develop an autonomous unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) system for monitoring large-scale seaweed farms for extended periods. Compared to more costly human labor and boat operations, UUV systems present an attractive option for consistent, daily monitoring of large-scale, offshore seaweed farms. The system will routinely survey and quantify key parameters such as infrastructure health, macroalgae growth rate, and nutrient content of the water. An upward/downward split-beam acoustic echosounder will use sonar…

Status: Selected
State: TBD
Project Term: TBD
Program: SEA-CO2
Award: TBD

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is developing a natural thorium decay sensor that would attach to gliders, autonomous vehicles, and profiling floats to quantify the flux rates of particulate organic carbon to the deep ocean for marine carbon dioxide removal. WHOI’s proposed sensor takes advantage of the naturally occurring radioactive isotope thorium-234, which provides a “clock”, much like carbon dating, that indicates the rate of carbon-containing planktonic detritus sinking from the surface to the deep ocean. Unlike current methods that require multi-step laboratory analysis,…

Status: Selected
State: TBD
Project Term: TBD
Program: SEA-CO2
Award: TBD

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is developing a system-on-a-chip for ocean carbon flux monitoring that would integrate the capabilities of several existing commercial sensors into a single miniature sensor chip, lightening the power requirements on ocean gliders and floats and reducing costs by an order of magnitude. The proposed system-on-a-chip would measure pH, oxygen, particulate organic carbon, and other variables. Unlike state-of-the-art sensors that are built in small batches by hand, WHOI’s system-on-a-chip would fabricate and calibrate at scale using semiconductor…

Status: ACTIVE
State: CA
Project Term: 03/17/2021 - 09/16/2024
Program: ASCEND
Award: $1,961,474

Wright Electric

Wright Electric will design a high-efficiency and torque-dense electric powertrain that combines innovations in integrated cooling, power electronics, and rotor design. Co-developing these critical elements will enable Wright to achieve the target efficiency and weight metric and lead to a scalable solution. The design will create a high-performance motor without sacrificing safety or the use of existing manufacturing techniques. The team plans to use an aggressive in-slot cooling strategy coupled with a high-frequency inverter whose efficiency may exceed 99.5%. The unique innovations across…

Status: ACTIVE
State: TX
Project Term: 05/19/2020 - 03/31/2024
Program: ATLANTIS
Award: $2,361,752

WS Atkins

WS Atkins will focus on generating experimental data that can be used to validate computer programs and new technologies developed for FOWT applications. The team will conduct experiments of 15-MW (megawatt) wind turbine scale models in world-class test facilities to assess the behavior of conventional and unconventional FOWT structures with advanced solutions. The WS Atkins team will make their data accessible to ATLANTIS project members and the public to facilitate benchmarking of new designs, accurate calibration of computer tools, and a FOWT database for future research.

Status: ALUMNI
State: MD
Project Term: 01/05/2021 - 10/07/2023
Program: GEMINA
Award: $5,978,289

X-Energy

X-energy’s digital twin project aims to reduce the fixed O&M cost of its advanced nuclear reactor design to $2/MWh. The project will use human factors engineering, probabilistic risk assessment, hazard analysis, and security and maintenance evaluations to identify areas for optimization. X-energy will develop innovative ways to leverage advanced technologies—including automation, robotics, remote and centralized maintenance, and monitoring—to optimize staffing plans while ensuring optimal plant operation. The team will develop two virtual modeling frameworks to evaluate and validate these…

Status: ACTIVE
State: WA
Project Term: 07/01/2021 - 06/30/2024
Program: Exploratory Topics
Award: $500,000

XFlow Energy

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. XFlow Energy Company (XFlow) will perform simulations to examine the impacts of close turbine spacing on rotor…

Status: ALUMNI
State: MA
Project Term: 10/01/2012 - 09/30/2015
Program: BEEST
Award: $2,971,774

Xilectric

Xilectric is developing a totally new class of low-cost rechargeable batteries with a chemistry analogous to the original nickel-iron Edison battery. At the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Edison experimented with low-cost, durable nickel-iron aqueous batteries for use in EVs. Given their inability to operate in cold weather and higher cost than lead-acid batteries, Edison’s batteries were eventually dismissed for automotive applications. Xilectric is reviving and re-engineering the basic chemistry of the Edison battery, using domestically abundant, environmentally friendly, and low-cost…

Status: ALUMNI
State: CT
Project Term: 07/15/2014 - 12/31/2017
Program: FOCUS
Award: $2,540,000

Yale University

Yale University is developing a dual-junction solar cell that can operate efficiently at temperatures above 400 °C, unlike today’s solar cells, which lose efficiency rapidly above 100°C and are likely to fail at high temperatures over time. Yale’s specialized dual-junction design will allow the cell to extract significantly more energy from the sun at high temperature than today’s cells, enabling the next generation of hybrid solar converters to deliver much higher quantities of electricity and highly useful dispatchable heat. Heat rejected from the cells at high temperature can be stored and…

Status: ALUMNI
State: CT
Project Term: 04/24/2013 - 12/31/2015
Program: OPEN 2012
Award: $2,002,618

Yale University

Yale University is developing a system to generate electricity using low-temperature waste heat from power plants, industrial facilities, and geothermal wells. Low-temperature waste heat is a vast, mostly untapped potential energy source. Yale’s closed loop system begins with waste heat as an input. This waste heat will separate an input salt water stream into two output streams, one with high salt concentration and one with low salt concentration. In the next stage, the high and low concentration salt streams will be recombined. Mixing these streams releases energy which can then be captured…

Status: ALUMNI
State: CT
Project Term: 09/19/2017 - 06/18/2022
Program: PNDIODES
Award: $3,349,898

Yale University

Yale University will conduct a comprehensive investigation to overcome the barriers in selective area doping of gallium nitride (GaN) through an epitaxial regrowth process for high-performance, reliable GaN vertical transistors. Transistors based on GaN have emerged as promising candidates for future high efficiency, high power applications, but they have been plagued by poor electrical performance attributed to the existing selective doping processes. The team will demonstrate vertical GaN diodes through a selective area regrowth processes with performance similar to those made using current…

Status: CANCELLED
State: TN
Project Term: 08/01/2018 - 02/28/2021
Program: MEITNER
Award: $2,599,154

Yellowstone Energy

Yellowstone Energy will develop a new passive control technology to enhance safety and reduce nuclear power plant costs. The team's Reactivity Control Device (RCD) will integrate with the Yellowstone Energy Molten Nitrate Salt Reactor and other advanced reactor designs. The RCD will use fluid embedded in the reactor’s control rods to control reaction rates at elevated temperatures, even in the absence of external controls. As the heating from fission increases or decreases, the fluid density will automatically and passively respond to control the system. The RCD’s passive control is…

Status: ALUMNI
State: MI
Project Term: 06/09/2016 - 05/31/2022
Program: OPEN 2015
Award: $4,919,998

Zakuro

This endeavor continues an OPEN 2015 project, focusing on scaling the technology initially developed by the University of Michigan from lab to pilot scale. Zakuro LLC (Zakuro) will develop a solid state battery using lithium lanthanum zirconate (LLZO), which is a ceramic electrolyte that contains no flammable liquid. LLZO is manufactured with a lithium-free anode, which substantially simplifies assembly. Zakuro aims to scale up production of the ceramic electrolyte pellets from a lab-scale batch process to an industry-standard, roll-to-roll process to enable efficient application of the…

Status: ALUMNI
State: WA
Project Term: 07/01/2020 - 06/30/2023
Program: BETHE
Award: $1,000,000

Zap Energy

A Z-pinch fusion device has an electrical current driven through the fusion fuel, creating self-generated magnetic fields that compress and heat the fuel toward fusion conditions. While a Z-pinch with no equilibrium flows has rapidly growing instabilities that disrupt the plasma within nanoseconds, the Z-pinch can be stabilized if an axial plasma flow varying strongly enough with radius is introduced. This sheared-flow stabilized (SFS) Z-pinch may be the simplest and most compact of all known controlled-fusion approaches, as it does not require magnetic coils nor any external heating systems…

Status: ALUMNI
State: WA
Project Term: 07/30/2019 - 07/29/2022
Program: OPEN 2018
Award: $6,767,334

Zap Energy

Zap Energy will advance the fusion performance of the sheared-flow stabilized (SFS) Z-pinch fusion concept. While the simplicity of the Z-pinch is attractive, it has been plagued by plasma instabilities. Like traditional Z-pinch approaches, the SFS Z-pinch drives electrical current through a plasma to create magnetic fields that compress and heat the plasma toward fusion conditions. The innovation of the SFS Z-pinch is the velocity gradient across the radius of the Z-pinch—in other words, the outer edge of the plasma column is moving at a different velocity than the center—which stabilizes…

Status: ACTIVE
State: MA
Project Term: 09/08/2022 - 06/07/2024
Program: Exploratory Topics
Award: $499,611

Zephyr Innovations

Zephyr Innovations is developing an alternative to the standard, vapor-compression (VC) driven air conditioner that uses no synthetic refrigerants. Zephyr’s solution employs evaporative cooling preceded by efficient liquid desiccant dehumidification. The key challenge in any desiccant-based dehumidification system is the removal of moisture from the desiccant so it can be reused. This is typically done by heating the desiccant to boil off water. Zephyr’s differentiator is its desiccant regeneration system which avoids direct desiccant heating and doubles dehumidification and cooling…

Status: ACTIVE
State: TX
Project Term: 05/09/2023 - 05/08/2026
Program: EVs4ALL
Award: $3,100,000

Zeta Energy

Zeta Energy will address the main limitations of conventional lithium-sulfur batteries with an innovative battery design, overcoming the challenges of dendrite formation and polysulfide shuttle. Zeta Energy’s battery design features a three-dimensional lithium (Li) metal anode architecture and class of sulfurized carbon (SC) cathodes to produce stable and safe devices. Zeta Energy will build on these innovations to create a new anode with a high Li content that is also highly accessible and rechargeable and avoids dangerous Li dendrite formation. The complementary physical and chemical…

Status: ALUMNI
State: CA
Project Term: 08/17/2021 - 08/16/2023
Program: ECOSynBio
Award: $1,053,000

ZymoChem

ZymoChem has created fermentation processes that convert sugars into polymer precursors using microorganisms with novel enzyme-based pathways that avoid the loss of the sugar’s carbon as CO2. ZymoChem will develop two transformational innovations that combine (1) inexpensive metal catalysts from abundant metals for converting electricity and CO2 into formate and (2) electricity-compatible fermentation systems that enable microbes to co-utilize formate and sugars for the production of a high-volume platform fuel and chemical intermediate. The project team is engaged in a strong technology…

Status: CANCELLED
State: CA
Project Term: 08/20/2021 - 02/19/2024
Program: ECOSynBio
Award: $3,177,642

ZymoChem

ZymoChem will develop carbon- and energy-efficient biocatalysts capable of co-conversion of one-carbon molecules and biomass-derived substrates to a high-volume platform fuel and chemical intermediate. The team will demonstrate a carbon-conserving process decoupling growth and production. Most bioprocesses using microbes and renewable feedstocks to make fuels and chemicals are unprofitable, precluding their adoption on the industrial scale. When most microbes convert renewable feedstocks to fuels and industrial chemicals, they waste more than 33% of the input carbon in the form of CO2 during…