Columbus, Ohio – Ohio Governor Ted Strickland today congratulated four Ohio projects that received more than $17.3 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for advanced energy research. These projects were among $151 million in federal funding awarded to 37 major research projects nationwide from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
“We are grateful to Secretary Chu and the U.S. Department of Energy for providing these funds, which will allow us to enhance our state’s advanced energy capacity, and to the Ohio congressional delegation for supporting the Recovery Act and Ohio’s applications,” Strickland said. “Being among awardees such as MIT and Stanford University is a testament to Ohio’s competitive position in the advanced energy field.”
Funding is being awarded through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). ARPA-E supports high risk, high reward energy research that can provide transformative new solutions for energy security and climate change. This is the first round of projects funded under ARPA-E, which is receiving a total of $400 million under the Recovery Act.
Throughout this week, Governor Strickland is touring several advanced and renewable energy businesses and incubators, and announcing new initiatives to promote Ohio’s role as a global leader in developing and supplying next generation energy technologies.
Ohio’s awards include:
Inorganic Specialists, Inc. (Miamisburg, Montgomery County) in partnership with Ultramet Inc., Eagle Picher, Southeast Nonwovens, and the Edison Materials Technology Center received $1.9 million to develop ultra high capacity battery anodes for next generation Li-ion batteries based on a novel, low-cost, silicon-coated carbon nanofiber paper. If successful, this low-cost manufacturable new battery technology could speed up the deployment of cost-effective plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, shifting U.S. transportation energy to the grid and dramatically lowering U.S. oil imports.
Momentive Performance Materials (Strongsville, Cuyahoga County) in partnership with Advanced Photonic Crystals, and Soraa received $4.5 million to develop a high-pressure ammonothermal process to produce affordable, high quality, single crystal GaN substrates at high crystal growth rates. This development can lead to LEDs at costs equal to current low-cost lighting options, such as fluorescent lighting. LED lighting is practical for residential and commercial applications and consumes as little as one-tenth of the energy of comparable options.
The Ohio State University (Columbus, Franklin County) in partnership with PSRI, CONSOL Energy, Shell/CRI, and Babcock and Wilcox received $5 million to scale up a process known as Syngas Chemical Looping (SCL), in which coal and biomass are converted to electricity and CO2 is efficiently captured. The process has been successfully demonstrated on a laboratory scale. In this project, the SCL process will be scaled up to a 250 kilowatt pilot plant for a planned demonstration at the National Carbon Capture Center.
Univenture / Algaeventure Systems (Marysville, Union County) in partnership with Rockwell Automation, Ohio University, and Case Western Reserve University received $5.9 million to develop a harvesting system that dramatically reduces the energy cost necessary to harvest, dewater and dry algae by using an absorbent moving belt harvester. The technology offers the potential to transform the economics of algae-based biofuel production by removing a major barrier to large scale commercialization.
The awardees were selected among more than 3,600 initial concept papers and a rigorous review process. Evaluations were based on the potential for high impact on ARPA-E’s goals and scientific and technical merit. For more information about ARPA-E or the award selections, please visit http://arpa-e.energy.gov/.