The U.S. Department of Energy announced $16 million in funding for 17 projects as part of Phase 1 of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy’s (ARPA-E) Ultrahigh Temperature Impervious Materials Advancing Turbine Efficiency (ULTIMATE) program. ULTIMATE teams will develop ultrahigh temperature materials for gas turbine use in the aviation and power generation industries. Several ASM members served as the technical lead/principal investigator for winning projects. They are listed below along with the awarded organizations, project descriptions, and funding amounts.
Dr. Akane Suzuki: General Electric Company, GE Research; ULTIMATE Refractory Alloy Innovations for Superior Efficiency (RAISE) – $1,600,000
Prof. Ji-Cheng Zhao, FASM: University of Maryland, College Park; New Environmental-Thermal Barrier Coatings for Ultrahigh Temperature Alloys –$600,000
Dr. Ravi Chandran, FASM: University of Utah; Designing Novel Multicomponent Niobium Alloys for High Temperature: Integrated Design, Rapid Processing & Validation Approach – $800,000
Dr. Raymundo Arroyave, FASM: Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station; Batch-wise Improvement in Reduced Design Space using a Holistic Optimization Technique (BIRDSHOT) – $1,200,000
Dr. Xingbo Liu, FASM: West Virginia University Research Corp.; High-Throughput Computational Guided Development of Refractory Complex Concentrated Alloys-based Composite – $700,000
Dr. Ali Yousefiani: The Boeing Company; Ultra-High Performance Metallic Turbine Blades for Extreme Environments – $800,000
Dr David Alman, FASM: National Energy Technology Laboratory
Prof. John Perepezko: University of Wisconsin-Madison; Additive Manufacturing of Ultrahigh Temperature Refractory Metal Alloys – $650,000
Dr. Govindarajan Muralidharan: Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Development of Niobium-Based Alloys for Turbine Applications – $700,000
Prof. Zi-Kui Liu, FASM: Pennsylvania State University; Design and Manufacturing of Ultrahigh Temperature Refractory Alloys – $1,200,000
Dr. Greg Olson, FASM: QuesTek Innovations LLC; Concurrent Design of a Multimaterial Niobium Alloy System for Next-generation Turbine Applications – $1,200,000
“Natural gas turbines generate more than a third of the country’s electricity, supplying power to consumers across America,” said ARPA-E Director Lane Genatowski. “ULTIMATE teams will improve the efficiency of the generation sector by developing materials that increase producers’ efficiency and create positive economic benefits for industrial and public consumers nationwide.”
ULTIMATE projects address two target temperature levels and seek to develop ultrahigh temperature materials for continuous operation at 1300ºC (2372ºF) in a stand-alone material test environment or at 1800ºC (3272ºF) with coatings and cooling. Teams will also develop new manufacturing processes that ensure turbine blades can not only operate at these ultra-high temperatures, but also withstand the extreme operating environments commonly found in natural gas turbines in both the aviation and power generation industries.
Phase 1 ULTIMATE teams will demonstrate proof of concept for alloy compositions, coatings, and manufacturing processes through modeling and laboratory scale tensile coupon testing of basic properties. At the conclusion of Phase 1, teams will be down-selected based on technical review to receive additional funding for development of selected alloy compositions and coatings, as well as the production of generic small-scale turbine blades to demonstrate manufacturability of designs. In ULTIMATE Phase 2, up to $14 million in additional funds will be available to teams. See full list of Phase 1 projects.
************
For more information:
