Researchers at the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) will share their discoveries and innovations at DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit in San Diego, California, April 7-9. ARPA-E funds high-risk, high-impact energy technologies that can be quickly and meaningfully advanced to catalyze bleeding-edge energy research.
The summit will convene nearly 3,000 global energy innovators, investors, engineers and industry leaders. They will access more than 400 displays of groundbreaking ARPA-E-funded energy technologies, define new areas of scientific research and drive the development of reliable, secure American-made energy for all.
Summit speakers will include U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who aims to unleash a golden era of American energy dominance, U.S. Undersecretary for Science Dario Gil, who also directs DOE's Genesis Mission to accelerate science through artificial intelligence, and AMD Chair and Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su, whose company is delivering next-generation computing and AI solutions.
Researchers at ORNL, the United States' largest lab for interdisciplinary science and energy research, play an important role - often with collaborators - in turning disruptive concepts into impactful products through strengthening the following:
Energy storage:
- Guang Yang is developing a next-generation sodium-carbon dioxide redox flow battery built from low-cost, earth-abundant materials, with the potential to dramatically reduce system cost while delivering high power for grid-scale storage.
- Andrew Westover is developing bulk ionic glasses that enable batteries that have twice the energy density of commercial lithium-ion batteries and can charge in 10 minutes.
Nuclear fission and fusion:
- Vittorio Badalassi, with Ohio State University, is advancing and validating a revolutionary blanket concept that addresses shortcomings of current fusion blankets, which must breed enough fuel, convert intense neutron energy into heat for electricity generation and shield a fusion reactor's systems from damaging radiation.
- Pradeep Ramuhalli, with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Purdue University, is advancing AI-driven efforts to enhance the reliability and up-time of particle accelerators for use in nuclear energy waste transmutation to reduce amounts of long-lived isotopes in spent nuclear fuel.
Grid and materials supply chains:
- Rishi Pillai, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Virginia Tech, the University of Pittsburgh, ATI Materials and GE Vernova, is creating a materials design and discovery framework to enable high-throughput, performance-specific and cost-effective generative materials tailored for flexible fuel power generation technologies.
- Govindarajan Muralidharan "Murali," with the universities of North Texas and Pittsburgh, Cleveland-Cliffs, Advanced Optical and Hitachi Energy, is developing a new type of steel that can improve performance of power transformers, reducing energy losses by more than 20 percent over those of existing transformers.
- Sheng Dai, with Solidion Technology Inc., is refining a more efficient, domestically deployable method for making high-purity graphite, a critical material for energy and national security applications.
Alloys in extreme environments:
- Erik Herbert, with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the University of Wisconsin and industry partner ATI, is developing next-generation nickel-based alloys for use in advanced liquid fluoride- and chloride-based molten salt reactors.
- Sebastien Dryepondt is advancing a unique high-temperature facility for developing next-generation superalloys for gas turbine applications in the power generation and aviation industries, working with a team from the universities of California (Santa Barbara), Connecticut, Maryland, and Minnesota; Virginia Tech; and Harvard University.
Partner-driven projects:
- Haiying Chen, in a collaboration with Johnson Matthey Inc. and Core Natural Resources, is advancing catalytic oxidation of ventilation air methane from coal mines to improve air quality during mining and improve global competitiveness of the U.S. coal industry.
- Michael Kirka, in a collaboration with Penn State and DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory, is improving the design and manufacture of ultrahigh-temperature refractory alloys for turbine applications. In a separate collaboration with Texas A&M, Kirka is refining the design space for refractory alloys used in power generation and aerospace to improve their ductility and enhance their suitability for additive manufacturing, particularly of high-performance turbine blades.
- Femi Omitaomu, in a collaboration with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is developing a comprehensive and validated logistical decision support system for national intermodal freight transportation, which is especially important for evaluating routing to enhance operational efficiency and ensure energy security.
Additionally, in a panel called "Powering the AI Revolution," Prashant Jain, head of ORNL's Advanced Reactor Engineering Section, will talk about the explosive growth of AI and cloud computing and their effects on today's power grid. He and other panelists will discuss financial stakes, capital costs, timelines and, ultimately, what is needed to unlock the gigawatts that future AI deployments will require.
Other summit activities will further highlight the importance of ARPA-E funding in driving critical energy innovation and ensuring U.S. technological leadership. Tech demos from companies and universities will showcase the world's first practical superconducting electric machine, low-cost utility undergrounding, and plasma electrodes for fusion energy and other extreme environments. Investor sessions will explore funding for furthering fusion and powering AI. Students will have opportunities to present ideas for partnerships and commercialization.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science . - Dawn Levy
