7. ADVANCED
COAL RESEARCH
For the foreseeable future, the energy needed to sustain economic growth will continue to come largely from hydrocarbon fuels. However, in supplying this energy need, the Nation must address growing global and regional environmental concerns, supply issues, and energy prices. Maintaining low-cost energy in the face of growing demand, diminishing supply, and increasing environmental pressure requires new technologies and diversified energy supplies. These technologies must allow the Nation to use all of its indigenous resources more wisely, cleanly, and efficiently. These resources include the Nation’s most abundant and lowest cost resource, coal. Grant applications are sought only in the following subtopics.
a. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Utilization—Utilization of carbon dioxide (CO2) has become an important global issue due to the significant and continuous rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, accelerated growth in the worldwide consumption of carbon-based energy, depletion of carbon-based energy resources, and the low efficiency in current energy systems. Barriers to increased CO2 utilization include: (1) the costs of CO2 capture, separation, purification, and transportation to the user site; (2) the energy requirement for CO2 chemical conversion; (3) market size limitations, causing little incentive for investment and a lack of industrial commitment for enhancing CO2-based chemicals; and (4) the lack of socio-economical driving forces. Therefore, grant applications are sought to develop novel and advanced concepts for capture, reuse, and storage of CO2 from energy production and utilization systems, based on advanced catalysts for CO2 or CO conversion. Approaches of interest include the use of CO2:
· for environmentally-benign physical and chemical processing that adds value to the process.
· to produce industrially useful chemicals and materials that add value to the products.
· for recycling involving renewable sources of energy.
In addition to proposing novel and innovative approaches, grant applications must show clear economic advantages over the existing state of the art.
Questions - contact Doug Archer (douglas.archer@hq.doe.gov)
b. Development of NDE Techniques and Monitoring
Methods for Continuous Plant Assessment of Critical Components at Temperature
and Pressure—Assessing the
condition and remaining life of power plant components operating at high
temperatures, high pressure, and high stress is necessary to optimize inspection
and maintenance schedules, and avoid unplanned outages. Some examples of failure mechanisms include:
·
Corrosion
and abrasion: for example, fluids within
high-temperature high-pressure pipelines, an integral part of fossil energy
power facilities, can be corrosive and abrasive. Corrosive media, cavitations, and erosion can
lead to pipe leakage and possible failure.
Even a small leak in a pipeline could require utilities to shut down a
facility to investigate the cause of the leakage. Unscheduled shutdowns cost utilities millions
of dollars.
·
Creep: power plant components that operate at high
temperatures such as boilers headers, steam pipes, valves, and turbine casings
are subject to creep failure. Creep
damage occurs in different stages, and the first sign is the formation of
microscopic cavities at grain boundaries.
·
Cracking: in thermal power plants, turbine blades
suffer from metal fatigue as a result of vibration. This problem is aggravated by other
mechanisms such as creep in the case of high pressure turbines, or corrosion
and embrittlement in the case of low pressure
turbines.
·
Hydrogen
damage: failures of waterwall
tubes are generic for some condensers; an evaluation of microfissuring
would aid in identifying the presence of hydrogen damage.
As power plants
reach their designed life, utility owners are forced to make decisions on the
status of the equipment. It is essential
to identify critical areas where failures may occur and to monitor those areas
using suitable nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques. Therefore, innovative, low-cost NDE
techniques are needed for the continuous on-line or secure wireless monitoring
of critical components. NDE techniques
of interest must be able to monitor and detect one or more of the following modes
of failure: (1) creep and rupture
failures, (2) high temperature tensile failures, (3) low cycle fatigue at
elevated temperatures, (4) hot corrosion, (5) erosion corrosion, (6) hydrogen embrittlement, (7) microscopic cavities, and (8) microfissuring.
Approaches of
interest must include: (1) continuous
on-line or secure wireless NDE techniques; (2) a means for interpreting the NDE
data collected, and for predicting fitness for service and remaining lifetime
of components; (3) low cost monitors, along with an assessment of their reliability
of failure detection and their ability to consistently monitor without
interfering with plant operations, and (4) an assessment of risk, safety, and
economics. In addition, grant
applications must recommend at least one candidate site for the viability of
commercial-scale testing of NDE methods by industry.
Questions – contact
Regis Conrad (regis.conrad@hq.doe.gov
)
c. Oxygen Reduction Catalyst Development—Many high-temperature chemical and electrochemical processes
(e.g., oxygen separation membranes, solid oxide fuel cells, and combustion
emission-abatement systems) require catalysts for the efficient conversion
(“reduction”) of oxygen gas into oxygen ions.
These catalysts typically are supported by a material that has transport
properties tailored to the application, although its role is often of secondary
nature. Oftentimes, an additional
“promoter” catalyst is employed to enhance the overall reaction rate by tuning
the electronic structure of the primary catalyst. In order to guide the development of
efficient oxygen reduction catalysts, research is needed to develop correlations
between the electronic structure of the catalysts and the facility of the
various reactions steps. Therefore,
grant applications are sought for the identification of semi-empirical
correlations between the electronic structure of oxygen reduction catalysts and
their performance, leading to the development of
active and stable oxygen reduction catalysts. Approaches of interest should develop (1) a fundamental understanding of how oxygen gas adsorbs,
dissociates, and ultimately incorporates into one of the solid phases (either
the catalyst or the support); and (2) a strategy for the development of
suitable catalysts. Catalysts should be
non-noble and appropriate for air environments in the 650°-850°C range.
Phase I should consist of a
literature review aided by theoretical and/or computational studies, and should
conclude with a comprehensive discussion regarding the promise of various
candidate catalysts. Phase II should
focus on the development and optimization of promising catalysts from Phase I,
with theoretical, computational, and/or experimental methodologies as needed.
Questions – contact Briggs White (briggs.white@netl.doe.gov)
References:
Subtopic a: Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Utilization
3. “Advances in CO2 Capture Technology – The U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Carbon Sequestration Program,” Jose D. Figueroa, Timothy Fout, Sean Plasynski, Howard McIlvried, Rameshwar D. Srivastava, International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 2, 9-20, Elsevier, 2008, available at http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/carbon_seq/refshelf/CO2%20Capture%20Paper.pdf
4. “Global Challenges and Strategies for Control, Conversion, and Utilization of CO2 for Sustainable Development Involving Energy, Catalysis, Adsorption and Chemical Processing,” Chunshan Song, Catalysis Today, 115, 2-32, Elsevier, 2006.
5. “Aspects of Carbon Dioxide Utilization,” Iwao Omae, Catalysis Today, 115, 33-52, Elsevier, 2006. http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=17879878
6. Proceedings of the
7th Annual Conference on Carbon Capture & Sequestration,
Pittsburgh, PA, May 5-8, 2008 available at http://www.carbonsq.com/
7. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Utilization, Oslo, Norway, 20-23 June 2005 available at http://www.kjemi.uio.no/iccduviii/Final_Schedule.pdf
Subtopic
b: Development of NDE Techniques
and Monitoring Methods for Continuous Plant Assessment of Critical Components
at Temperature and Pressure
1. “Evaluation of
non-destructive testing techniques for monitoring of materials degradation”,
European Commission, Contract FIKS-CT-2000-00086, 2000, http://www.ndt.net/article/v07n08/grete/grete.htm
2. “Recent Advances
in Fitness-For-Service Assessment”, Ted Lynn Anderson, Quest Reliability, http://www.ndt.net/article/mendt2007/papers/anderson.pdf
3. NDT in
Non-Nuclear Power Generation: Pressure Vessels, Piping, Turbines by Anmol S. Birring, http://www.nde.com/paper55.htm
4. Nondestructive Testing Handbook, Vol 9,
Special Nondestructive Testing Methods, R K Stanley, P O Moore and P Mcintire, American Society for Nondestructive Testing,
1995. http://www.normas.com/ASNT/pages/134.html
Subtopic c: Oxygen Reduction Catalyst Development
1. General Information - SECA Annual Workshop Proceedings and Core Technology Workshop Proceedings: http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/fuelcells/seca/workshop.html