Los Alamos National Laboratory, partners secure US $ 4.7 million DOE funding, Los Alamos reporter
The Terrestrial Energy-Efficient Long-Range Network (TERN) for remote monitoring of power transmission lines in real time was one of five projects by the Los Alamos National Laboratory to raise funds from the Department of Energy. Photo courtesy of LANL
LANL NEWS
Los Alamos National Laboratory and private sector partners have secured a total of $ 4.7 million in technology commercialization funds from the Department of Energy (DOE) to accelerate the time-to-market of cutting-edge energy technologies and solutions.
“These partnerships are an example of what Los Alamos does best, promoting science and technology innovation to meet the toughest energy challenges in the country,” said John Sarrao, assistant director of the Science, Technology and Engineering Laboratory. “We are driving promising innovations in fuel cell technology; Remote monitoring of power lines in real time; the use of machine learning on massive geothermal datasets; and more.”
The DOE awarded more than $ 65 million in public and private funding to 68 promising energy technology projects from Los Alamos and other national laboratories in late June to meet President Biden’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“We need to work with the most accomplished entrepreneurs in our country to develop solutions from the DOE’s National Labs into market-ready technologies,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm in a statement. “These projects will help us deploy breakthrough innovations that will enable us to win the clean energy race while creating jobs and opportunities in all parts of the country.”
The Los Alamos projects and funding amounts are as follows:
- Measurement of the properties of actinide molten fluoride salt and detection in low concentrations with Kairo’s Power of Alameda, California, $ 1.5 million
- Additive manufacturing of carbon-carbon composites with tailor-made heat transport properties with Northrup Grumman Corp. of Elkton, Md., $ 1.4 million
- DME as a renewable hydrogen carrier: an innovative approach to generating renewable hydrogen with Oberon Fuels of San Diego, California, for $ 1.5 million
- Terrestrial energy-efficient long-range network (TERN) for remote monitoring with a partner, $ 125,000
- Unsupervised, physics-based machine learning of complex natural and engineering geoscientific processes with Julia Computing Inc. of Newton, Massachusetts, $ 250,000
Measurement of the properties of actinide molten fluoride salt and detection in low concentrations
Los Alamos, in partnership with Kairos Power (KP), will investigate molten salt as a coolant for safer next-generation nuclear power – in support of KP’s Fluoride-Salt-Cooled High-Temperature Reactor (FHP). A low-fuel, low-waste bath of molten salt could give nuclear power a place in the renewable world. The Los Alamos smelting salt team has expertise in actinide chemistry, materials science and engineering. The team has demonstrated success in several research and development efforts related to molten salt reactors. In this project, the laboratory and Kairos Power will work together to develop new technologies to study chemical reactions in and thermophysical properties of uranium and plutonium-containing molten fluoride salt.
Additive manufacturing of carbon-carbon composites with tailor-made heat transport properties
Los Alamos and Northrup Grumman Corp. will use additive manufacturing processes for carbon-carbon manufacturing to address the problem of thermal management of complex systems Almost all technical systems require heat in order to do work; However, the loss of heat to neighboring components, which can be thermally sensitive, creates complexities in designing efficient systems. This project offers a unique approach to thermal management by diverting heat away from reactor sites that are sensitive to high temperatures while keeping the heat in places that are most desirable for generating electricity, which is most efficient at high temperatures.
DME as a renewable hydrogen carrier: an innovative approach to the production of renewable hydrogen
The partnership between Oberon Fuels and Los Alamos will accelerate Oberon Fuels’ innovative approach to advancing fuel cell technology through the development of renewable hydrogen (H2) from hydrogen-rich dimethyl ether (DME) molecules from waste and / or renewable resources. As a renewable hydrogen carrier, DME offers the most economical and technically feasible way of storing and transporting hydrogen, which is required for fuel cell vehicles. These efforts are in direct line with the DOE Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technologies Office funded initiatives by H2 @ Scale, Hydrogen Storage, and the Million Mile Fuel Cell Truck Consortium.
Terrestrial energy-efficient long-range network (TERN) for remote monitoring
Los Alamos and a partner will seek to provide real-time monitoring of power transmission lines, which is of paramount importance during extreme weather events such as recent mega-fires, hurricanes and tornadoes. Field operations to identify failed lines over the power grid are required to generate actionable information for utility companies as well as state and local government agencies. The lab will use its award-winning Long-Range Wireless Sensor Network technology, an adaptive network of sensor nodes, to provide datasets related to GPS location and local weather conditions such as wind speed and air temperature in order to determine the actionable timeframes for the collection of Information from hours to seconds. The laboratory plans to partner with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology / Center for Conservation Bioacoustics.
Unsupervised, physically based machine learning of complex natural and engineering processes
Los Alamos and Julia Computing will use the lab’s novel, machine-learning software suite, SmartTensors, to identify patterns in massive geothermal and oil / gas datasets and discover hidden features by finding intrinsic similarities between the data elements. The team will develop a commercial framework for SmartTensors tailored for natural and engineering geoscientific applications that will facilitate the extraction of hidden signatures in geothermal and oil / gas datasets. These hidden signatures will improve understanding of geothermal and hydrocarbon extraction processes from field data at regional locations obtained from geophysical, satellite and geothermal sources. The commercial SmartTensors framework will also be applicable to perform machine learning analysis in relation to other areas such as climate, forest fires and water catchment hydrology.
As an open source platform, SmartTensors will be available to the community and industry to also analyze data sets at JuliaHub, a collaborative cloud computing service developed by Julia Computing.
over Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research facility engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is directed by Triad, a civil service-focused national security science organization that is equally owned by its three founding members: the Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the A&M University System (TAMUS) and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the Department of Energy.
Los Alamos enhances national security by maintaining the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear facility, developing technology to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, the environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.
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