Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) announced $600,000 in federal funding for two projects that fall under the High Performance Computing for Materials (HPC4Mtls) program.

The projects represent the first joint round of funding for the High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) initiative, the umbrella program for the HPC4Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) and HPC4Materials (HPC4Mtls) programs.  The HPC4Mtls program is funded through DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Fuel Cell Technologies Office and Vehicle Technologies Office, with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as the lead laboratory. This program includes participation from eight DOE partner laboratories, including: Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, National Energy Technology Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratory.

The HPC4Mtls program aims to leverage the national laboratories’ world-class computational resources to advance the President’s energy agenda and increase American competitiveness.  More specifically, the program aims to utilize the high performance computing (HPC) technology of DOE’s National Laboratories to help the industry develop new or improved materials that can withstand extreme conditions.  The projects selected under this program will have access to DOE’s HPC laboratory facilities, in addition to the laboratories’ expertise in modeling, simulation, and data analysis.

The two HPC4Mtls projects funded by the Office of Fossil Energy are as follows:

Advanced Thermal-Hydraulic Model of Heat Recovery Steam Generator – Electric Power Research Institute, Inc. (Charlotte, NC) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory will collaborate to develop detailed modeling of the thermal hydraulics, heat transfer, and steam-side oxide growth in heat recovery steam generators to provide better understanding of temperature distribution and also provide valuable insight for operators, manufacturers, and materials experts.  The purpose is to ensure effective materials selection, development of new materials or repurposing of existing materials, development of appropriate use guidelines, and determination of specific regions requiring replacement and/or new alloy concepts.

FE Contribution: $300,000

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Simulation of Aerobic Gas Fermentation to Enable Commercial Conversion of CO₂ into Aquaculture and Animal Feed – NovoNutrients’ (Sunnyvale, CA) fermentation technology utilizes energy from hydrogen to transform industrial carbon dioxide emissions into premium animal feed ingredients and other valuable products. NovoNutrients will partner with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to improve CFD models in order to identify efficient and productive bioreactor designs and operating conditions for NovoNutrients’ fermentation technology. 

FE Contribution: $300,000

The HPC4EI program releases solicitation calls twice a year.  For more information, visit their website HERE.  To learn more about the programs within the Office of Fossil Energy, visit our website HERE.