The U.S. Department of Energy announced up to $28 million in funding for a new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program, ULtrahigh Temperature Impervious Materials Advancing Turbine Efficiency (ULTIMATE). The ULTIMATE program will develop and demonstrate ultrahigh-temperature materials that can operate in high-temperature and high-stress environments of a gas-turbine blade. Projects will specifically target gas-turbine applications in the power-generation and aviation industries.

A system currently being developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory can quickly store heat and release it for use when needed, surpassing conventional storage options in both flexibility and efficiency. Argonne’s thermal-energy storage system (TESS) was originally developed to capture and store surplus heat from concentrated solar power facilities. It is also suitable for industrial processes, desalination plants, combined heat and power (CHP) systems and heavy-duty trucks.

AK Steel accepted an award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) High Performance Computing for Materials (HPC4Mtls) Program. Researchers from AK Steel plan to work in collaboration with DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop microstructure-based transformation models to predict austenite stability in high-strength steels in a project titled “Thermo-Mechanical Forming Process Development to Produce Tailored Strength Automotive Structural Components.” The collaboration will develop mathematical models that could enable the production of automotive components with properties tailored to meet the demanding performance requirements of the future, according to AK Steel.

Recently, efforts have been undertaken to improve the ironmaking process. This project summary offers a look into one such effort.

Advancements in nonferrous metals processing could not only save energy in their manufacture, but also provide significant energy savings through the use of lightweight metals.