Energy Seminar Series – Fall 2024
September 11, 2024
Xin He, Aramco Americas: Sustainable Pathways for Transport Decarbonization
Hosted by Margaret Wooldridge
Biography
Dr. Xin He is a Research Science Specialist at Aramco Detroit Research Center. He
obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 2005, and B.S and M.S
degrees from Tsinghua University. Previously, he worked at General Motors, the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Tsinghua University on combustion
chemistry, clean fuels, and clean engine technologies. At Aramco, Dr. He leads the
Strategic Transport Analysis Team on the analysis of fuel and transportation technical
trends and decarbonization pathways. Dr. He has co-authored more than 80 peer
reviewed journal papers.
Abstract
The transportation sector is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for about 20% of global GHG emissions. Transport decarbonization is a critical component in the global effort to combat climate change. Decarbonizing transport involves reducing these emissions through various strategies. The presentation will delve into three pathways of transport decarbonization: 1) Fuel Decarbonization, 2) Vehicle Electrification, and 3) Hydrogen for Transport
The presentation will underscore that achieving transport decarbonization requires a multi-faceted approach considering the entire life-cycle of transport technologies, from production to end-of-life. This ensures that the environmental impacts are minimized at every stage. Additionally, it is essential to develop and implement transport policies that
are based on life-cycle emissions and technology-agnostic, allowing for the most effective and sustainable solutions to emerge.
September 18, 2024
Duncan Callaway, UC Berkeley: Assessing needs for Transmission and Distribution Infrastructure for Decarbonization
Hosted by Vladimir Dvorkin
Biography
Duncan Callaway is a Professor of Energy and Resources at UC Berkeley with an affiliate appointment in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Callaway’s teaching covers energy systems with a focus on the electrical grid and data science tools. His research group focuses on emerging energy technologies by quantifying their impacts on power system operations and developing control, optimization and data analysis tools to facilitate their integration into power systems.
Abstract
This talk explores the needs and opportunities for building new grid capacity to achieve decarbonization goals. In the first part of the talk, I’ll discuss distribution grids — the last mile of the electricity system — with a case study of a California utility. Using a mix of detailed geospatial data and load growth scenarios, I’ll evaluate how much new infrastructure will be needed to accommodate growth in demand expected from electrifying residential buildings and light duty transportation. Our central finding is that distribution grid workforce and supply chain needs are significantly greater than recent history, and that network capacity constraints may slow rates of electrification if left unaddressed. In the second part of the talk, I’ll discuss how to work around the known challenges to building out the US transmission grid by upgrading existing rights of way. I’ll discuss the results of our nationwide modeling efforts, and how they inform paths forward for transmission planning.
October 9, 2024
José L. Avalos, Princeton University: New technologies using light and sub-cellular engineering to improve biofuel and chemical
production through fermentation
Hosted by Nina Lin
Biography
José Avalos earned a B.E. in chemical engineering from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and an MSc in biochemical research from Imperial College in London. He then received a Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. He conducted postdoctoral research at The Rockefeller University on molecular neuroscience, and then at MIT/Whitehead Institute, in the Department of Chemical Engineering on metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. He has been a faculty member at Princeton University since 2015, where he leads a research group focused on the use of biotechnology to address challenges in renewable energy, sustainable manufacturing, the environment, and human health. He has received several awards, including the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellowship, the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship Award, the Pew scholarship, the NSF CAREER Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher- Scholar Award, the HHMI Gilliam award, and the ACS BIOT Young Investigator Award.
Abstract
Biofuels and other bioproducts derived from sustainable biomass and waste streams play an essential role in achieving the goals set at the Paris Climate Agreement and preventing the worst effects of climate change. Microorganisms with rewired metabolisms, often referred as “microbial cell factories”, are commonly employed in these biomanufacturing processes. However, achieving the necessary titers, yields, and productivities for commercial viability remains a significant challenge. Temporal and spatial controls of engineered metabolic pathways are promising strategies to significantly improve the efficiency of these microbial cell factories.
Towards this goal, we have pioneered the use of optogenetics, a technique that uses light- responsive proteins to regulate biological processes, to achieve unprecedented dynamic controls of metabolism. Light offers several unique advantages: it operates independently of endogenous cellular processes (orthogonality), can be finely tuned, and is reversible. Moreover, light can be seamlessly interfaced with computers to be applied or removed automatically in any prescribed or adapted schedule for continuous metabolic regulation during fermentation. I will highlight several optogenetic circuits we have developed to control microbial growth and production through light, demonstrating their tangible impact on improving chemical production. I will present strategies to overcome the issue of limited light penetration in dense cell cultures, which has enabled the successful application of optogenetic controls in bioreactors.
Beyond optogenetics, we have worked extensively in the compartmentalization of biosynthetic pathways using both natural and synthetic organelles to enhance and direct metabolic flux. I will present recent advances in organelle engineering, including novel strategies to functionalize liquid protein condensates to build synthetic metabolic membraneless organelles for metabolic pathway compartmentalization. Finally, I will discuss how these technologies converge to establish a new paradigm in metabolic engineering—one where dynamic and spatial control over cellular metabolism hold enormous potential to transform microbial cell factories.
October 23, 2024
Brittany Lutz, Nuclear Innovation Alliance: Microreactor Deployment in the United States
Hosted by Todd Allen and Denia Djokic
Biography
Brittany Lutz is a Program Manager at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, where she leads research projects, stakeholder engagement, and advocacy focused on regulatory modernization at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Brittany has extensive experience in nuclear weapons effects modeling. At the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Brittany developed and led initiatives to enhance nuclear wargaming software and provided analyses during high-profile military exercises. She holds an M.S. in Materials & Nuclear Engineering from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Abstract
My presentation will explore the current status, challenges, and opportunities for microreactor deployment in the United States, focusing on their potential to provide resilient, clean energy in remote and off-grid locations.
November 6, 2024
Fikile R. Brushett, MIT: Towards electrochemical carbon dioxide capture using soluble, redox-active carriers
Hosted by Andrej Lenert
Biography
Fikile Brushett is the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the Institute, he received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and performed postdoctoral work in the electrochemical energy storage group at Argonne National Laboratory. His research group seeks to advance the science and engineering of electrochemical technologies that enable a sustainable energy economy, tackling important challenges in energy storage, resource recovery, environmental stewardship, and chemical manufacturing. He has received several honors for his research and teaching including the AIChE Allan P. Colburn Award (2022), the ECS Charles W. Tobias Young Investigator Award (2022), the NOBCChE Lloyd N. Ferguson Young Investigator Award (2020), the C&EN Talented 12 (2017), and the MIT ChemE C. Michael Mohr Outstanding Faculty Award (2014, 2017).
Abstract
Deep, society-wide decarbonization is a grand challenge of the 21 st century, requiring the development, manufacture, and deployment of transformative carbon-neutral and carbon-negative technologies on a global scale. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) capture coupled with storage or utilization is projected to play a key role in mitigating and even reversing carbon emissions. Present-day carbon capture processes rely on thermochemical cycles where solvents/sorbents absorb and desorb CO 2 at lower and higher temperatures, respectively. While functional and available at the commercial scale, these embodiments are energetically intensive and typically rely on fossil fuel derived heat for CO 2 desorption, ultimately limiting efficacy. Electrochemical approaches may enable lower energy CO 2 separations, as electrode potential can be modulated to selectively activate sorbents rather than temperature that impact the entire capture media. In addition, such systems may enable direct integration of renewable energy sources, modular deployment, and operation at ambient conditions.
While there are several promising electrochemical approaches for CO 2 separation, I will focus on systems that exploit soluble, redox-active carriers with CO 2 binding strengths that vary with changes in oxidation state. Within this nascent field, most efforts seek to discover stable carrier molecules and electrolyte formulations that enable high separation capacities and energetically-efficient operation. However, at this early stage of development, modeling frameworks hold value in describing key relationships between molecular properties, cell performance, and system design. Such knowledge may, in turn, inform ongoing molecular and device engineering campaigns, giving researchers a means of estimating carrier molecule effectiveness and reactor performance. In this talk, I will describe our efforts to develop thermodynamic, electrochemical, and techno-economic models to articulate the performance-determining relationships between constituent components, configurations, and operating envelopes of electrochemical CO 2 separation systems. I will also provide examples of how these insights gained can focus experimental efforts.
November 20, 2024
Lane Carasik, Virginia Commonwealth University: Computational and Experimental Investigations of Heat Transfer Components for Molten Salt
Reactors and Fusion Energy Systems
Hosted by Stephen Raiman
Biography
Dr. Lane Carasik (He/Him/His) is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University. At VCU, Dr. Carasik is the Director of the Fluids in Advanced Systems and Technology (FAST) research group that focuses on thermal hydraulics research in advanced energy systems including nuclear fusion/fission and concentrated solar power. In July 2023, Lane was awarded a DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program grant to support the Fusion Energy Sciences program to research and develop molten salt based fusion energy systems. Prior to joining VCU, Dr. Carasik was a Nuclear Thermal Fluids Engineer at Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation and before that, Kairos Power as a CFD & Thermal Fluids Engineer. Dr. Carasik is an Associate Editor of the American Nuclear Society Fusion Science and Technology Journal and a member of the Diversity and Inclusion in ANS Committee, External Affairs Committee, and Fusion Energy Division Executive Committee. Previously, he was on the Thermal Hydraulics Division Executive Committee and the chair of the Diversity and Inclusion in ANS committee. Dr. Carasik has a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University and a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Lastly, he was a co-recipient of the 2020 ASME FED Moody and 2018 ASME CFD Best Paper Awards for work completed while employed at Kairos Power on a DOE GAIN Voucher.
Abstract
Advanced energy systems require heat transfer equipment (e.g. heat exchangers and pumps) to transfer heat from heat generation components to power conversion components. Improved economics (capital, operating & maintenance costs) of these systems can be achieved through reduced equipment size, coolant mass, etc. In this talk, the current efforts by Dr. Carasik’s FAST Research Group to investigate heat transfer enhancements for heat exchangers using computational fluid dynamics and advanced flow visualization will be discussed. The discussed efforts include computational activities will be discussed that involves the CFD code, Nek5000/NekRS, to investigate the thermal hydraulic performance of twisted tape-inserts, twisted elliptical tubes, and helically grooved tubing as heat transfer enhancements for in-core and secondary salt heat exchangers. Complementary experiments leveraging surrogate fluids for molten salts are used to observe relevant thermal hydraulics behavior and using novel medical imaging technology (PEPT) to acquire needed flow field measurements for primary heat exchangers and 1st wall heat removal.