The research grant imitative, managed by the department’s Office of Fossil Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), is intended to advance ideas in coal research.

They were selected under the area of interest headings of computational energy sciences, material sciences, and novel materials for sensing/monitoring in extreme environments of fossil energy systems and are valued at just over $2.2 million.

Chosen first under CES was the University of Michigan, which received $US297,219. Working together with the University of Florida, it will conduct a comprehensive study of horizontal gas jets injected into a two-dimensional bubbling fluidised bed of non-spherical particles.

“The time-resolved measurements obtained will form a complete data set that can be used to develop and validate supplemental models to be incorporated into NETL’s multiphase flow with interphase exchanges (MFIX) code,” the agency said.

“These added features will provide a useful, reliable computational tool needed to design and analyse gas jets in industrial fluidised beds [and] both the experimental and analytical tools will be available for testing at NETL.”

Also selected was Ohio State University, which is developing an ASPEN Plus plant model coupled with FLUENT equipment models for chemical-looping reactor systems on chemical-looping combustion and chemical-looping gasification. The university received $299,819.

“To capitalise on the strengths of each program, FLUENT and ASPEN Plus will be used in an integrated manner via CAPE-OPEN standard to implement the versatile modelling under one framework,” the university said.

“This project has the potential to provide insight into overall looping process performance as well as individual equipment operations by unifying information regarding chemical reaction engineering, computational fluid dynamics technology, and process systems engineering.”

Under the material science banner, the University of Texas at Dallas will receive $299,974 for the development of membranes with high permeability-selectivity and appropriate to coal processing.

“In this project, researchers will prepare novel mixed-matrix membranes based on polymer composites with nanoparticles of zeolitic imidazolate frameworks and related hybrid frameworks, and then use these membranes to evaluate separations important to coal gasification,” the university said.

Additionally, $300,000 was given to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for its work to improve thermal efficiency of steam turbines.

“The Ultra-Supercritical Steam Turbines Project … requires an increase of the steam temperature from 866 kelvin to 950 kelvin by the year 2010 and to 1033 kelvin by 2020,” the DOE – sponsor for the project – said on Tuesday.

“This requirement justifies the need for further development of a new high-temperature, creep-resistant class of ferritic superalloy steels.”

The school is working with Northwestern University and the University of Tennessee on the project, which will utilise computational tools and focused experiments to design ferritic superalloys improved with nickel aluminide-type precipitates for advanced fossil energy systems that can handle temperatures up to 1033 kelvin.

Finally, two schools were selected under the classification of novel materials for sensing/monitoring in extreme environments.

The first, the Research Foundation of SUNY at the University at Albany, received $300,000 to develop sensors and controls that can be compatible to gas turbines, solid oxide fuel cells, gas reformers and other related equipment required for use at advanced coal-fired power plants.

“SUNY will use a plasmonics-based, all-optical sensing technique which utilises the optical properties of tailored nanomaterials as the sensing layer; this novel approach to gas sensing under harsh environmental conditions is much simpler than current sensor designs,” the foundation said.

“Researchers will develop a detailed understanding of the sensing mechanism as a function of temperature and humidity and work to enhance sensor selectivity.”

The University of Cincinnati in Ohio also received funding of $299,915 for the investigation of two new doped-ceramic nanofilm-coated optical fibre chemical sensors that have the necessary features for rapid in-situ gas detection in coal-derived syngas streams.

“One is a long-period fibre-grating-coupled self-compensating interferometer sensor, and the second an evanescent tunnelling sensor,” the DOE said.

“For both types of sensors, high selectivity will be achieved by doped-ceramic nanofilms that only interact with specific gas molecules.”

The University of Cincinnati will collaborate with the Missouri University of Science and Technology on the project, which will focus on hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide sensor with detection abilities higher than 500C and with pressures up to 250 pounds per square inch.

Since 1979, when the program began, about 1780 students have worked alongside professors to perform research work in 722 federally-funded research projects valued at more than $130 million.