Blog Posts
Part of ARPA-E’s mission is to overcome long-term and high-risk technological barriers in the development of energy technologies that reduce imports, improve efficiency, and reduce emissions. The Rebellion Photonics and University of Notre Dame projects focus on the latter piece of the mission, working to turn emissions reduction ideas into reality.
Blog Posts
ARPA-E recently released a funding opportunity, Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management (SMARTFARM), to develop innovative new technologies for measuring emissions from agricultural feedstock production. We sat down with Dr. David Babson, SMARTFARM’s Program Director, to learn about his vision and the technologies of interest for Phase 2 of the program.
Blog Posts
Recently, we had an opportunity to sit down with Dr. Jack Lewnard, program director for ARPA‑E REcyle Underutilized Solids to Energy (REUSE) program to discuss the transformation from plastic and paper trash to energy treasure.
Blog Posts
We’re excited to announce a new partnership with DoD’s Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) to further demonstrate and validate ARPA-E derived technologies at DoD installations across the country. ESTCP targets DoD’s urgent environmental and installation energy needs to improve Defense readiness, resilience and costs. Projects under this partnership will conduct demonstrations to validate the performance and operational costs of promising ARPA-E technologies and provide valuable data needed for end-user acceptance and to accelerate the transition of these technologies to commercial use.
Blog Posts
We recently sat down with Dr. Babson to discuss how he became interested in energy, his journey serving in various roles across the federal government, and the future of bioenergy and agricultural systems.
Blog Posts
We sat down with ARPA-E Program Director, Dr. Rachel Slaybaugh, as she reflected on her experience attending the very first ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit Student Program back in 2010.
Slick Sheet: Project
Travertine will develop an innovative process that combines strong acid-enhanced weathering and critical metal concentration and recovery in ultramafic mine tailings with an electrolytic process for sulfuric acid recycling and base production. The process will maximize the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) reactive minerals and residual critical elements from mine tailings, while minimizing waste. Carbon dioxide will be captured from air and permanently sequestered as inert carbonate minerals. Leached critical elements will be recovered as oxides.
Slick Sheet: Project
Phoenix Tailings’ CO2 GONE process uses and recycles CO2 to extract energy-relevant minerals, primarily nickel (Ni) and magnesium (Mg), from iron- and aluminum-rich ore through carbonation with CO2. Using CO2 with high pressures, temperatures, and mixing breaks down the rock structure and enables greater extraction of energy-relevant elements like Ni and Mg, which are then converted to metal carbonates (NiCO3, MgCO3).
Slick Sheet: Project
The University of Kentucky’s proposed technology will use CO₂ emitted at or near operating mines and processing operations to reduce the energy consumed during grinding by more than 50% while improving the recovery of critical energy relevant minerals by 20% or greater. In this approach, CO2 will be mixed with ore containing the valuable minerals, especially copper (Cu) and rare earth elements, to improve grinding and separation efficiency. Biological fixation of CO2 will also be studied and employed in producing acid to recover Cu from low grade feedstocks.
RECLAIM: Electrochemical Lithium and Nickel Extraction with Concurrent Carbon Dioxide Mineralization
Slick Sheet: Project
The University of Texas at Arlington will develop two technologies to produce lithium (Li) and nickel (Ni) from CO2-reactive minerals and rocks that contain calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg), while sequestering CO2 in the form of carbonate solids (calcium carbonate, or CaCO3; magnesium carbonate, or MgCO3; and variants thereof). The technologies, acoustic stimulation and electrolytic proton production, use electricity to liberate valuable metal ions from the surrounding mineral matrix at sub-boiling temperatures (~20-80°C).