NETL Takes Top Honors for Innovation

From the start of a project, NETL researchers aim to create something that changes lives for the better, improving our health, our environment, and our way of living. Inspired by the world around them, they thrive on pushing technology past the threshold of what is possible, ever-pioneering the future of energy.

NETL is always thrilled when our exceptional researchers and the products and technologies they develop are acknowledged. On October 13, R&D Magazine held its annual R&D 100 Awards ceremony during which it recognized collaborative efforts by NETL that brought three new technologies to the marketplace in the past year.

Each year, R&D Magazine honors 100 of the year's most technologically significant inventions with its R&D 100 Awards. These “Oscars of Innovation” commend the hard work of our nation's scientists for their newly commercialized products and confer a mark of excellence for their efforts. Many of the products recognized by R&D Magazine in the past are common today. The automated teller machine (ATM) was showcased by R&D Magazine in 1973. The halogen lamp, which made the top 100 list in 1974, is now a replacement for the less-efficient incandescent bulb. And today, movies are watched across the nation on HDTV, a novel concept recognized by R&D Magazine in 1998. With technologies like these on its list of favorites, R&D Magazine is certainly a prophet on the topic of revolutionary innovations.

The 49th Annual R&D 100 Awards honored innovations that represent industries ranging from medicine to energy and products ranging from new materials to novel computer simulations. This year, NETL was privileged to have three of its technologies included in R&D Magazine's prestigious list of award winners.

Pt/Cr Alloy for Stents

From left to right, Dennis Boismier (BSCI), Paul Turner (NETL), Charles Craig (BSCI), Jon Stinson (BSCI), Paul Jablonski (NETL) and Louis Toth (BSCI) accept the award for their stent alloy.

More than 10 years ago, scientists at Boston Scientific Corporation (BSCI) recognized NETL's metallurgy capabilities and asked if the laboratory could help with research to improve coronary stents. Over the next decade, NETL's Paul Jablonski, Paul Turner, and Ed Argetsinger, along with scientists from BSCI, worked together to develop a novel platinum/chromium (PtCr) alloy and design a process to produce the alloy for use as a stent material. The final product features a bold new grade of highly modified stainless steel with more flexibility, corrosion resistance, and strength uniquely suited for next-generation coronary stent products.

Balloon expandable coronary stents are small tubular metal cages that have been used to repair damaged arteries for the last several decades. BSCI's PtCr alloy is the first stainless steel formulation with a significant concentration of platinum—a highly radiopaque element that increases the x-ray visibility of the stent inside a patient—to be produced for the stent industry. Better visibility means greater ease and precision of placement of the stent inside the patient's artery, and less chance of damage to the artery.

Conformability is a key attribute of coronary stent performance. Image courtesy of Boston Scientific.

The stent has become a boon to coronary specialists and their patients, promising longer, safer performance that could lead to increased lifetimes in coronary patients with arterial blockages. Since the introduction of the new PtCr coronary stents, BSCI has captured 45 percent of the world's market share, sales of which totaled over $1 billion in the first year of introduction. BSCI plans to utilize the PtCr alloy as a basis for their entire future stent line.

This R&D 100 Award was the third that Paul Jablonski has received during his career and Paul Turner's second. You can read more about the Pt/Cr alloy stent in NETL's most recent issue of Netlog.

APECS v.2.0

Steve Zitney receives the award for NETL and ANSYS.

"Companies in the process and energy industries," says Steve Zitney, a member of the team that developed APECS v.2.0, "are relying increasingly on the use of sophisticated, computer-aided process design, simulation, and optimization tools to provide solutions to energy and the environmental challenges." One such tool is NETL's Advanced Process Engineering Co-Simulator (APECS) v.2.0 with ANSYS® DesignXplorer™ and ROM Builder. APECS can design and optimize existing and next-generation plants for aggressive performance that meets strict economic and environmental objectives. Version 2.0, created in collaboration with ANSYS, Inc., reduces the time and cost needed to foster plant innovations by combining process simulation with fast reduced-order models based on high-fidelity equipment-scale models.

APECS v.2.0 continues APECS's R&D 100 Award-winning tradition. The first version, APECS v.1.0 with ANSYS Engineering Knowledge Manager™, won an award in 2008. Version 2.0 improves on the previous version by offering many new features that make it easier, faster, and cheaper for engineers to optimize existing and future designs. The Energy Department's multi-laboratory Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative is using APECS v.2.0 to accelerate the movement of carbon capture technologies from initial design to deployment in hundreds of power plants.

Zitney, a four-time R&D 100 Award winner, received the award for APECS v2.0 with ANSYS® DesignXplorerTM and ROM Builder. For more information about APECS, see Zitney's recent journal article or NETL's APECS factsheet.

Mn-Co Coating for SOFC Interconnects

Schematic of stacked SOFCs, indicating fuel flow, oxidizer, interconnect, and electrolyte.

NETL's manganese-cobalt (Mn-Co) coating for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) interconnects, which garnered the laboratory's third 2011 R&D 100 Award, prevents the evaporation of chromium from the interconnects in an SOFC stack without affecting the stack's ability to conduct electricity.

SOFC cells must be stacked together to generate enough power to meet demand. The cells are joined by “interconnects” to keep the individual SOFCs separate while connecting them electrically. Preventing chromium from evaporating out of the interconnects increases the stack's lifetime, ultimately making power generated less expensive for the consumer.

Pictured from left to right, Chris Johnson (NETL), Timothy Hall (Faraday), Xingbo Liu (WVU) , Heather McCrabb (Faraday), Junwei Wu (Harbin Inst. Tech –China), and Randy Gemmen (NETL) accept the award for their novel SOFC interconnect coating.

After careful consideration, NETL's Chris Johnson and Randy Gemmen, along with WVU researcher Xingbo Liu, decided to pursue (Mn,Co)3O4 spinel as the best possible interconnect coating. The Mn-Co coating offers significant advantages in cost, ease of coating large samples, capability of scaling up for mass production, and environmental friendliness.

For more information on the coating and its benefits, check out the Netlog news article or the NETL factsheet.

NETL congratulates all of the scientists who won R&D 100 Awards this year. Their accolades are well deserved.