The fourth annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, the premier event in the US dedicated to transformative energy solutions, has come to an end. With more than 3000 participants and inspiring speakers, the energy at the Summit itself should be enough to spark some changes going forward.
ARPA-E received its first funding in 2009, and is the Energy Industry’s equivalent to DARPA, the US defense research program which spawned the internet and GPS. Now if ARPA-E can come up with anything as transformative as the internet, we are in for an exciting future in energy.
Looking at the different exhibitors at the technology showcase of the Summit, there is no doubt that researchers and scientists are trying hard to find solutions to the growing energy demand in the world. While we are all busy searching for the next transformative technologies, anything that can give us safe, more efficient and cleaner energy should be tried and tested. You never know what the next big thing will spring out of, and this seems to be the thinking of ARPA-E attendees also.
The Summit brought together thought leaders from academia, business, and government to discuss cutting-edge energy issues and to facilitate relationships to help move technologies into the marketplace. DNV is currently funded by ARPA-E for our ground breaking battery project on sensing and battery life extensions. We have other projects in the pipeline for future energy solutions also, which we demonstrated at the technology showcase for the ARPA-E audience.
A couple of years ago, the researchers at DNV Research and Innovation’s lab in Ohio asked themselves how we can convert CO2 into a useful product. All the developments for capture and storage sparked an idea for a process to utilize CO2. The process, now named ECFORM™, is solar powered and capable of converting CO2 into a value added chemical – formic acid.
CO2 utilization is being increasingly recognized not only as a method by which global CO2 emissions can be reduced in an economical manner, but also as an enabler of renewable power by acting as an energy storage method. The results of the energy storage potential have been published in notable journals such as ChemSusChem and Energy Policy. DNV’s demonstration-scale reactor showed the technology to the ARPA-E audience.
DNV is also running a project under the ARPA-e AMPED program in the technology areas of sensing and battery life extension. These topics are relevant as advanced batteries are being deployed in greater volumes across multiple industries, including vehicles, aircraft, ocean vessels, and grid based energy storage.
DNV’s partners in the project include NexTech Materials and Beckett Energy Systems. NexTech is developing a sensor capable of sensing very low concentrations of off gas species that are emitted from batteries when they are damaged or abused. Sourced from the electrolyte solvent, the off gas is traditionally believed to only be emitted during catastrophic failure of the cells. With the NexTech sensor, the proven sensitivity may enable off gas detection much earlier, which can enable new dimensions of cell control and state of health assessment. The project aims to qualify this sensor for detailed analysis of the state of health of the battery, and to incorporate this data into algorithms that predict battery lifetime and provide additional control to battery management systems. The project will deploy the sensor in a community energy storage system with Beckett Energy Systems.
The project is moving forward with testing currently being done at the KEMA Power test facility in Chalfont, PA. Watch this space for updates on how the testing is going!
Coauthor: Principal Researcher Edward Rode for the CO2 utilization project.
