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Laser light table. Credit: NREL, DOE.

Late last year we told you about the reality-TV-inspired event ARPA-E is conducting — “America’s Next Top Energy Innovator” — to accelerate tech transfer out of national labs and into start-up companies to promote “innovative and promising solution[s] to the nation’s energy challenge.”

Readers — it is time to vote!

Fourteen of the 36 companies that signed option agreements are competing in the ANTEI challenge. The ARPA-E challenge website has nice summaries of each company that tells about the technology being presented, the national lab it came out of and a brief video profile. The website is also keeps a running tally of the votes.

Voting is easy: just click the “Like” button. The winner will be determined by combining the results of the voting with the evaluations of an expert panel from DOE.  The agency also says the top startup companies will be invited to be featured at the premier annual gathering of clean energy investors and innovators around the country, the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit at the end of February.

The polls are open until Monday, Feb. 6 at 8:59 am.

While the first ANTEI is coming to a conclusion, DOE Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the agency is adding a second “season” to the program, and is launching the 2012-13 version of ANTEI Feb. 1.

To learn more about working with DOE labs and their technologies, check out the Energy Innovation Portal on the EERE website.

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Samples of near-term small modular nuclear reactor designs. Credit: DOE SMR report.

The concept of using small modular nuclear reactors is something we’ve written on several times in the past, and it seems like a viable technology, if not for use in developing nations, at least for use in underdeveloped nations with nearly nonexistent power infrastructures (e.g., nations in the sub-Saharan region of Africa) and for remote outposts (e.g., drilling outposts in northern Canada).

For better or worse, one event that has expanded interest in SMRs is the Fukishima Dai-ichi debacle, which has put the brakes on a lot of large-scale nuclear reactor developments.

And, even though deployment of SMRs in the US may not make much sense for power generation, there seems to be a great deal of support in the engineering, business and political communities for getting the US to be the global leader in manufacturing SMRs for export purposes. Thus, it makes perfect sense that the DOE announced today that it is launching a new effort to accelerate the research, development, demonstration and deployment of SMRs by US-based companies, with the goal of having the first units in approximately 10 years.

In a news release, the DOE announced a draft Funding Opportunity Announcement that will “establish cost-shared agreements with private industry to support the design and licensing of SMRs.”

To be clear, the DOE is not actually seeking applications or proposals at this time. The “draft” reference is there because the agency first intends to get a response from industry and other stakeholders before issuing a full FOA. However, DOE anticipates that the full DOA “will fund up to two SMR designs with the goal of deploying these reactors by 2022.”

For more on SMRs, see the DOE’s 2010 Powerpoint presentation (pdf).

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Credit: DOE

As Eileen notes in her post, the DOE has updated its assessment of factors affecting the availability of critical materials for energy applications, particularly in regard to rare earth elements. To give readers a quick sense of what has changed in a year, I put together comparisons of the criticality charts in the 2010 and 2011 reports.

The above chart, as indicated, demonstrates how the short-term risk evaluations are evolving. In brief, the short term concerns have increased in regard to europium and terbium, and they now join dysprosium as being in the most important/highest risk sector, while the importance of yttrium has been elevated.

Likewise, the graphic below shows the medium-term risks are shifting, but little has changed in what elements are considered to be critical (in red).

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The Department of Energy recently released its second “Critical Materials Strategy” report. Credit: DOE.

In late December 2011, the Department of Energy released its 2011 update (pdf) to its report, “Critical Materials Strategy.” This is an update to the inaugural issue report released in 2010.

The 189-page report evaluates the issues relevant to critical materials for wind turbines, photovoltaic thin films, electric vehicles and energy efficient lighting in terms of criticality, market dynamics and technology. The report looks at the rare earth elements that are most used in energy technology and also other elements, such as lithium (see graphic).

Here are the highlights adapted from the executive summary.

Criticality Assessment
Sixteen elements were assessed for criticality in wind turbines, EVs, PV cells and fluorescent lighting. The methodology used was adapted from one developed by the National Academy of Sciences. The criticality assessment was framed in two dimensions: importance to clean energy and supply risk. Five rare earth elements — dysprosium, terbium, europium, neodymium and yttrium — were found to be critical in the short term (present-2015). These five REEs are used in magnets for wind turbines and electric vehicles or phosphors in energy-efficient lighting. Other elements-cerium, indium, lanthanum and tellurium — were found to be near-critical. Between the short term and the medium term (2015-2025), the importance to clean energy and supply risk shift for some materials.

Market Dynamics
In the past year, the prices of many of the elements assessed in this report have been highly volatile, in some cases increasing tenfold. This Strategy includes a chapter exploring market dynamics related to rare earth metals and other materials [including growing demand and slow response from global suppliers, university activities, business reactions to price volatility and material scarcity and roles for government.

Technology Analyses
Building on the 2010 Critical Materials Strategy, this report features three in-depth technology analyses.

Rare earth elements play an important role in petroleum refining, but the sector’s vulnerability to rare earth supply disruptions is limited. Lanthanum is used in fluid catalytic cracking, an important part of petroleum refining. However, lanthanum supplies are less critical than some other rare earths and refineries have some ability to adjust input amounts. Recent lanthanum price increases have likely added less than a penny to the price of gasoline.

Manufacturers of wind power and electric vehicle technologies are pursuing strategies to respond to possible rare-earth shortages. Permanent magnets containing neodymium and dysprosium are used in wind turbine generators and electric vehicle motors. Manufacturers of both technologies are currently making decisions on future system design, trading off the performance benefits of neodymium and dysprosium against vulnerability to potential supply shortages. For example, wind turbine manufacturers are deciding among gear-driven, hybrid and direct-drive systems, with varying levels of rare earth content. Some EV manufacturers are pursuing rare-earth-free induction motors or switched reluctance motors as alternatives to PM motors.

As lighting energy efficiency standards are implemented globally, heavy rare earths used in lighting phosphors may be in short supply. In the US, two sets of lighting energy efficiency standards that come into effect in 2012 will likely increase demand for fluorescent lamps containing phosphors made with europium, terbium and yttrium. The first set of standards applies to general service bulbs. The second set of standards applies to linear fluorescent lamps. The projected increase in US demand for CFLs and efficient LFLs corresponds to a projected increase in global CFL demand, suggesting upward price pressures for rare earth phosphors in the 2012-2014 timeframe, when europium, terbium and yttrium will be in short supply. In the future, light-emitting diodes (which are highly efficient and have much lower rare earth content) are expected to play a growing role in the market, reducing the pressure on rare earth supplies.

The executive summary also outlines DOE’s strategy, which is three-fold: diversify global supply chains (systemic risk management), develop substitute materials and improve recycling/reuse. The strategy was developed through a series of DOE workshops held between Nov. 2010 and Oct. 2011.

The six appendices provide much of the specifics, such as detailed evaluations for each element, market share data for each energy technology, congressional legislation, joint governmental international conference information, DOE funding activities and REE use in refineries.

The report appears to be well organized and comprehensive. The addition of subheadings to the table of contents would have been helpful for navigating quickly through the document.

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Low-temperature SOFCs: (A) Functionally graded bismuth oxide (Electrolyte 1) / ceria (Electrolyte 2) can allow use of hydrocarbon fuels at the anode at reduced temperatures. (B) Estimation of power output with LT-SOFCs from a single cell to a module (upper) and schematic diagram of power requirements according to various applications (lower). Credit: E.D. Wachsman, K.T. Lee; Science.

We’ve all heard stories of college kids who drop out even though they are falling short of graduation by one or two classes. That’s what two of my best friends did despite good grades. With those two, boredom, vision (or lack thereof) and money were factors. One became a truck driver, and the other … well, he went on to invent Tofurky(!). However, aside from sheer audacity, it didn’t make any sense to me then that they would walk away from such an investment (even at 1970s tuition costs).

That’s the same point Eric Wachsman et al. made about the United State’s policy and apparently diminishing support for solid oxide fuel cell R&D in his recent paper in Energy & Environmental Science. Their EES piece mainly is a policy plea emphasizing the foolishness (my word, not theirs) iof Congress and the Administration if they withdraw support for SOFCs by yanking the funding plug for the Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance in the FY 2012 and 2013 budgets.

Their argument boils down to this:

• The US has an international strategic advantage of hydrocarbon-based fuels (coal, natural gas, etc.), which will continue to be used in the foreseeable future, plus an infrastructure for distributing those fuels.
• Fuel cells are the most efficient means to directly convert these fuels to usable electrical energy.
• US fuel cell research has made considerable progress in the past, and is on the cusp of a new generation of breakthroughs that make portable power, transportation and stationary (utility and combined heat and power) applications much closer.

The last point above has been made, however, for many years if not decades, and begs for elaboration if it is to be taken seriously.

And, take it seriously they do! In the latest issue of Science, he and Kang Taek Lee, both affiliated with the University of Maryland’s Clark School of Engineering, report on significant advancements in SOFC technology, particularly in regard to high power densities— approximately 2 watts per square centimeter—with low temperature SOFCs (≤650°C). This, according to University of Maryland news release, is the highest mark set to date in that temperature range. Wachsman and Lee even report on significant advancements for SOFCs operating ≤350°C.

Other groups have demonstrated energy densities of ~2 W/cm², but at higher temperatures (800°C) and only in button-sized units of yttria-stabilized zirconia, and these approaches have been plagued with interconnect and other problems as upscaling attempts have been made.

Wachsman and Lee have taken a different materials path, initally using a functionally graded ceria/bismuth oxide bilayered electrolyte “where the [gadolinium cerium oxide] layer on the anode (fuel) side protects the [erbia-stablized bismuth oxide] layer from decomposing while the ESB layer on the cathode (oxidant) side blocks the leakage current through the GDC layer because of its high transference number (ratio of ionic to total conductivity).”

They then worked to optimize the thickness and composition of the bilayered GDC/ESB arrangement. The 650°C power density breakthrough happened when they fabricated “an anode-supported cell composed of a thin, dense GDC(~10 μm)/ESB(~4 μm) bilayered electrolyte with a newly developed high-performance bismuth ruthenate-bismuth oxide (BRO7-ESB) composite cathode.”

Is 2 W/cm² significant? They note that the renowned Bloom Energy stationary SOFC units operate with only one-tenth this density. Moreover, Bloom’s units operate at approximately 900°C, a characteristic that brings a raft of other problems.

But, in a more practical sense, 2 W/cm^{2 b} brings a wide range of real-world applications much closer than previously expected. 2 W/cm² puts LT-SOFC’s power density, pound for pound, ahead of internal combustion engines; if specific energy is used as a yardstick, the LT-SOFC and IC are equivalent.

^“Thus,” the authors say, “because our LT-SOFC has essentially the same power and energy density as an IC engine, it could potentially transform the automotive sector as, for example, a range extender for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles operating on conventional fuels. The corresponding 10-kW stack would only be a small cube of 10 cm per edge.” As the illustration above indicates, the cells packaged in various stack and module combinations deliver a hefty power output range of 200 W to 100 kW.

These achievements alone argue for continued federal SOFC support, but Wachsman and Lee are frustrated because, they say, there is a huge amount of layer and electrode microstructure optimization ahead (including work that is currently underway and planned) that is starting to demonstrate feasible performance levels at the 350°C level, including the use of materials that have high tolerance for carbon coking and other problems that enter the picture at lower temperatures.

And, if operating temperatures drop to 350°C… then the ball really starts rolling with faster start-ups (think cars and trucks), and better-performing and less expensive interconnects and sealants that can be mass produced.

Going back to the issue of federal policy related to SOFC development, Wachsman suggests in the news release that a major problem is that fuel cells and hydrogen have been linked too closely. “There is a problem in the perception of the public and policy makers, and in the funding of our fuel cell programs, that hydrogen and fuel cells are linked. Hydrogen-based fuel cells are the technology that has gotten all of the press and as a result we’re still waiting for a future hydrogen infrastructure. Yes, fuel cells can run off hydrogen, but they don’t have to.”

But that misperception, he continues, “has turned fuel cells into a ‘future technology’ and has resulted in a drastic reduction in the funding of fuel cell research by the DOE in favor of developing electric cars, when in fact fuel cells can be used right now in many stationary and mobile applications, including centralized power distribution and power generation for homes, businesses, and industry.”

He and Lee concede in Science that SOFC technology “has not fully matured.” But, given recent progress and plans for advancing the R&D work, and given the US strategic resources, LT-SOFCs have bright future for highly efficient applications that range from portable power sources to industrial-scale units. They conclude by saying, “LT-SOFC should be a technology of choice for these applications as long as we are in a hydrocarbon-based energy infrastructure.

Wachsman’s and Lee’s paper in Science is “Lowering the Temperature of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells” (doi:10.1126/science.1204090).

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