Army Turns to NETL to Help Commercialize Cast Steel Armor

	A technician at NETL pours molten steel into a P-900 mold during the process to create cast steel armor plates for military vehicles.

The U.S. Army Tank and Automotive Command (TACOM) has asked for NETL’s help in procuring 10 million pounds of P-900 cast steel armor to be used as an add-on to certain military vehicles to protect them from improvised explosive devices.

NETL is the only source of production-sized patterns for the armor. NETL researchers have supplied technical expertise along with polystyrene P-900 patterns for foundries to use in making test targets.

The Army wants the first 2.5 million pounds of armor to be delivered during the last quarter of this calendar year.

Earlier this year, NETL scientists produced the castings for the slotted steel armor using a new heat-treating parameter to maximize protection against IEDs. 

Ballistic tests performed on the NETL-produced test plates proved so successful that the Army decided to put out a market call for production of armor.

NETL researchers are also reviewing the information supplied from the foundries to TACOM as a result of the market call.  Each foundry has to be qualified both ballistically and for its production/business plan to ensure that it can do what it promised in the market call. 

Many of the foundries plan to use the lost foam casting method for steel pioneered by NETL scientists in the 1990s.

NETL has volunteered its tooling to have additional patterns made to help jumpstart the production process while others await full size patterns. NETL personnel will visit some of the foundries and the Army Research Laboratory to help determine their qualifications.

The Army has a $3 million budget to help a number of foundries get the tooling and allow them to make enough prototype casting to get them qualified.  The plan is then to go into full scale production.

NETL R&D for Mercury Capture Draws Attention of ACS For National Meeting

	Evan Granite, a researcher in the Office of Research and Development at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, is shown in front of the packed bed reactor, which he uses to conduct research into capturing mercury, arsenic and selenium. Some of Granite’s patented capture technologies have been licensed to industry for use in the electric power generation industry.

NETL is a leading science and technology center studying effective ways to remove mercury and other metals from fuel gases and flue gases from coal-fired power plants.

Three technologies invented by NETL researchers have been licensed to industry for commercial development to help meet the national goal of capturing more than 90 percent of mercury emissions from U.S. coal-fired plants by 2010.

The successful R&D at NETL has caught the attention of officials of the American Chemical Society.

The program chair of the ACS Fuel Division has invited NETL chemical engineer Dr. Evan Granite to organize a symposium at the 235th American Chemical Society National Meeting, April 6-10, 2008, in New Orleans.

The symposium will be “Mercury and Other Trace Elements in Fuel: Emissions and Control.” It is sponsored by the ACS Division of Fuel Chemistry and will cover many aspects of mercury and the trace elements.

Granite was invited because of his success in organizing previous meetings on mercury, as well as his research in this area.

The symposium will be co-organized with Dr. Radisav Vidic, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and Dr. Yinzhi Zhang, a researcher with Sorbent Technologies Corporation in Ohio. 

Topics to be covered during the symposium include mercury, arsenic, and selenium in fuel, trace element chemistry in flue gas, mercury chemistry in wet scrubbers, continuous emissions monitors, novel sorbents, oxidation catalysts, and emerging issues.

Responsibilities of the organizers include preparing and distributing the “Call for papers,” and reviewing the submitted abstracts and preprints. 

NETL Researchers Use CT Scan To Study Carbon Dioxide in Coal

	Robert McLendon of NETL’s Office of Research and Development adjusts the CT scanner used in research at NETL. The scanner is used mainly to measure in situ fluid displacement and sorption of fluids within mineral cores.

When most people think of a CT scan, the image that comes to mind is lying on a narrow support, being told not to move, and being moved inside a round opening where mysterious technology produces X-ray images of relevant parts of their bodies.

But NETL researchers in the Office of Research and Development are using the same computerized X-ray tomography (CT) to measure carbon dioxide concentrations throughout coal cores. This type of research is essential as policy makers decide whether or not they will try to deal with excess carbon dioxide by storing it permanently in geologic formations.

NETL researchers have been studying apparent sorption in coal cores under confining pressure. A paper describing NETL experiments on carbon dioxide transport and sorption behavior in confined coal cores for enhanced coalbed methane and carbon dioxide sequestration has been accepted for inclusion in the proceedings of the Society of Professional Engineers (SPE) National Meeting, Anaheim, Nov. 11-14.

Measurements of sorption isotherms and transport properties of CO2 in coal cores are important for designing enhanced coalbed methane/CO2 sequestration field projects. Sorption isotherms measured in the lab can provide the upper limit on the amount of CO2 that might be sorbed in these projects.

The isotherms are commonly measured for samples of powdered coal; use of a powder, while convenient, prohibits the application of a mechanical confining pressure to the sample.  Because sequestration will most likely occur in unmineable coals, those coals will be under considerable pressures; measurements on powdered coal cannot account for the lithostatic pressures present in coal seams.

NETL’s researchers are studying coal cores under confining pressure.  The study of Pittsburgh # 8 coal showed that gas sorption advanced at different rates in different regions of the core and that diffusion and sorption progressed slowly.

NETL Researchers Conduct Fundamental Studies Of Iron-Based Model Catalysts

	Neetha Khan, a research scientist at NETL, prepares an experiment with iron nanoparticles in NETL’s Omicron Analysis and Surface Imaging System. Research Group Leader Brad Bockrath, standing left, and Project Leader Chris Matranga observe the generation and analysis of the nanoparticles.

NETL researchers are using one of their newest and most powerful scientific instruments to learn important information about iron nanoparticles.

The researchers have generated and analyzed the novel nano-scale iron particles in the first experiments using the Omicron Analysis and Surface Imaging System (OASIS), a state-of-the-art ultra-high vacuum surface science instrument.

The successful synthesis of these particles is a first step toward being able to study the adsorption properties of these nanoparticles. Studies on nano-structured materials such as these iron oxide nanoparticles can help researchers to understand the importance of specific adsorption sites such as the particle edges that play a critical role in catalysis. 

A full paper that describes the initial segment of this work will be published in a scientific journal.

Iron is the basis for many catalysts, for example those used in the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis of transportation fuels. In order to gain a better understanding of materials used in Fisher-Tropsch applications, the new work focused on fundamental studies of the fabrication of iron and iron oxide on gold surfaces that serve as model nano-catalysts.

The particles were synthesized in situ and analyzed using surface-sensitive techniques that give information about the particle composition and structure. 

NETL’s OASIS system allows researchers to image individual atoms and determine the elemental composition of the first few atomic layers of surfaces relevant to fossil energy applications.  The system incorporates such analytical and atomic imaging systems as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Auger electron spectroscopy, ion scattering spectroscopy, low energy electron diffraction, electron energy loss spectroscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, and atomic force microscopy into one single ultra-high vacuum system.