DOE announced on July 12 that it awarded $92 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for 43 cutting-edge research projects that aim to dramatically improve how the U.S. uses and produces energy. DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is coordinating the work in 18 states. The research projects are designed to accelerate innovation in green technology while increasing U.S. competitiveness in grid-scale energy storage for renewables, power electronics, and building efficiency. The latest round of ARPA-E grants focus on three research areas: Grid-Scale Rampable Intermittent Dispatchable Storage (GRIDS), Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (ADEPT), and Building Energy Efficiency Through Innovative Thermodevices (BEET-IT).

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BEET-IT will focus on cutting building energy consumption. Structures now consume 40% of U.S. primary energy, that is, energy embodied in resources prior to undergoing any human-made conversions, and account for 40% of U.S. CO2 emissions. New, more efficient methods of cooling represent a great opportunity to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. Battelle Memorial Institute will research the absorption-osmosis cooling cycle and will develop a new air conditioning system that uses water as a refrigerant and salt as the heat absorber. The system uses reverse osmosis to efficiently separate water from the salt solution. This project will receive $400,000 in funding. These awards complete ARPA-E’s grants under its Recovery Act funding, which in three rounds since last year has selected 117 projects for $349 million in funding. See the DOE press release, the project selections (PDF 459 KB), the technical descriptions (PDF 545 KB), and the ARPA-E Web site.

Tags: DOE, Thermodevices

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