Manufacturing, energy initiative to fund 11 new projects

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the recipients of the fall 2019 awards for the High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) initiative, including four newly funded projects led out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

The 11 projects selected for a total of $3.3 million in funding under the High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) and High Performance Computing for Materials (HPC4Mtls) programs were chosen based on their potential impact to energy efficiency in manufacturing and material development. Managed by LLNL, HPC4EI aims to leverage the national laboratories’ world-class computational resources to advance the national energy agenda and increase American competitiveness. The 10 selected industry partners will be granted access to DOE’s high performance computing facilities and the computing expertise of DOE scientists.

The four projects led out of LLNL are:

• A partnership with OxEon Energy, LLC to reduce the number of reactor tubes in Fischer Tropsch reactors used to convert natural gas to liquid fuel, to lower cost and increase performance of synthetic fuel production.
• A project with Flawless Photonics to simulate the heated glass flow and nucleation and growth of crystal nuclei to find the conditions that suppress the growth of light-scattering crystalline defects in the manufacture of fiber optic glass.
• A collaboration with Guardian Glass, LLC to reduce energy consumption in glassmaking through Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations and machine learning.
• In a project co-led by LLNL and Argonne National Laboratory, researchers will work with ArcelorMittal to develop next-generation, lightweight advanced high-strength steels through high performance computing and artificial intelligence. 

Seven other projects will be headed by researchers at the Sandia, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley and Argonne national laboratories, as well as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and National Energy Technology Laboratory. The projects are aimed at improving manufacturing processes and reducing emissions in industrial sectors including steel manufacturing, thin-film coating, gas turbine production, power plant operations and fossil fuel combustion. 

Combined, the projects will receive $2.55 million from DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office and $750,000 from DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy. Industry partners were required to provide in-kind contributions of 20 percent of the project costs, amounting to at least $75,000 per company.

To date, HPC4EI and its pillar programs have supported 107 projects with funding of more than $30 million. 

For a full list of funded projects, visit https://hpc4energyinnovation.llnl.gov/.