Megan Geuss
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — Last week’s ARPA-E summit was packed with big ideas about the future of energy, and nowhere was that more evident than on the summit’s show floor. In the basement of the sprawling Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center, dozens of academic institutions and companies set up booths to showcase what they’d been working on with their scholarship money.
From cars to recycling to turbines for generating electricity to biofuels, the warehouse temporarily turned into a montage of early ideas. Most importantly, it also showcased the scope of ARPA-E’s work: While the Department of Energy’s early-stage grant program was sometimes used solely as a renewable energy accelerator, ARPA-E projects include a variety of fuels and even include some non-energy projects whose application could save industry a significant amount of energy.
Browse the gallery below to see what we mean.
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This is a prototype 4 kW turbine generator from Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC). The company has made very large turbines for preliminary projects in Alaska and Maine. ORPC is looking for active pitch control on this turbine, which, when combined with a motor, could increase the efficiency of the turbine or even help the turbine drive itself to a remote location in a river or on a seabed .
Megan Geuss
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The advantage of tidal energy is that it is very reliable, unlike wind and solar energy. You can predict tides over 20 years, generally equipment life.
Megan Geuss
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A generator would generally be attached to the turbine, but it is not included here.
Megan Geuss
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One of the ARPA-E funded technology was the opposed-piston compression ignition gasoline engine. This Ford F-150 was fooled with such an engine, which according to manufacturer Achates is 50 percent more efficient than a traditional gas combustion engine.
Megan Geuss
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Achates has already demonstrated that it could build an opposed-piston diesel compression engine, but the ARPA-E grant allowed the company to build such an engine for gasoline.
Megan Geuss
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An ARPA-E grant recipient was a multi-institutional group called SUMR for Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor. The group designs a turbine for extreme scales (eg 50 MW turbines). SUMR’s design allows rotor blades to “go with the flow” of high winds.
Megan Geuss
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SUMR’s segmented blade prototypes could also build massive turbines in a more cost-effective manner.
Megan Geuss
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UVH Technologies brought a scrap sorter to the show floor. This sorter uses X-rays to identify specific alloy compositions, which can result in cheaper recyclable material and reduce the need for energy-intensive primary material fabrication.
Megan Geuss
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Throw all your scrap on the assembly line and this machine will take care of it for you.
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“The Redox Cube” consists of solid oxide fuel cells, which convert natural gas or propane into electrical energy (PDF).
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Another group called WEST (Water Efficient Sorghum Technologies) showed their progress in genetically engineering crops for biofuel that would grow with minimal water input.
Megan Geuss
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A company called EarthSense demonstrated its autonomous crop monitoring vehicle in a small corner of the conference room. By using this little guy to monitor thousands of acres of biofuel crops (or other crops), farmers can make more focused decisions about irrigation management or defense of invasive species.
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Metis Design has partnered with Lawrence Berkeley National Labs to develop a 1 kW residential microturbine. A small cogeneration system in a residential home could reduce inefficiencies associated with the loss of electricity we see today on large centralized grids.
Megan Geuss
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A larger turbine, also from Metis Design.