Active R&D Projects
The current Energy Intensive Processes R&D portfolio consists of projects that may be instrumental in achieving industry and national goals.
Project factsheets for each project are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. Download Adobe Reader.
Waste Heat Minimization and Recovery
- Advanced Diagnostics and Control for Furnaces, Fired Heaters and Boilers
- Improved Heat Recovery in Biomass-Fired Boilers
- Modifications and Optimization of the Organic Rankine Cycle to Improve the Recovery of Waste Heat
- Second Generation Watertube Super Boiler
Industrial Reactions and Separations
- Energy Reduction and Advanced Water Removal via Membrane Solvent Extraction Technology
- Enhanced Separation Efficiency in Olefin/Paraffin Distillation
- High Surface Area Inorganic Membrane for Water Removal
- Inorganic Membranes for Refinery Gas Separations
- Process Intensification with Integrated Water-Gas-Shift Membrane Reactor
- Robust Polymer Composite Membranes for Hydrogen Separation
High Temperature Processing
- High Magnetic Field Processing (HMFP): A Heat Free, Heat-treating Method
- Prototyping Energy Efficient Thermo-magnetic and Induction Hardening for Heat Treat and Net-shape Forming Applications
- Ultra-fast Boriding for Improved Energy Efficiency and Reduced Emissions in Materials Processing Industries
- Ultrahigh-Efficiency Aluminum Production Cells
Sustainable Manufacturing
- Electrohydraulic Forming of Near-net Shape Automotive Panels
- Flexible Hybrid Friction Stir Joining Technology
- Induction Consolidation/Molding of Thermoplastic Composites Using Smart Susceptors
- Near-net shape Manufacturing of New, Low-cost Titanium Powders for Industry
- Ultra-efficient and Power Dense Electric Motors for U.S. Industry
Grand Challenge Portfolio
ITP is providing cost-shared funding to enable early-stage, low-cost, "concept definition studies" of 47 promising projects that pursue innovation in the following four topic areas:
- Next-generation manufacturing concepts
- Energy-intensive processes
- Advanced materials
- Industrial greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
The studies incorporate laboratory-scale experiments, data generation and analysis, and other methods to explore and advance these new and dramatically different manufacturing concepts and practices. For information on the technical goals, target barriers, and strategy of each project, download the Grand Challenge Portfolio: Driving Innovation in Industrial Energy Efficiency brochure, January 2011.