The following is a news release from the Idaho National Laboratory.
ARCO – It’s another year of victory as three Idaho National Laboratory technologies receive 2022 R&D 100 Awards.
The competition – now in its 60th year – celebrates research and development technologies from the public and private sectors. Winning an award is a prestigious distinction for inventors.
Laboratories and companies from 12 countries submitted nominations in 2022, and a panel of more than 50 industry-leading experts ranked the entries on technical significance, uniqueness and application of across industry, government and academia. Typically, the national laboratories of the US Department of Energy have several finalists each year.
Including this year’s winners, INL has won more than 30 R&D 100 Awards since 2005. Five INL technologies were also named as R&D 100 finalists.
WINNING TECHNOLOGIES LEADING TO INL:
Electrochemical Leach (EC-Leach)
Description: EC-Leach provides a cost-effective, highly efficient, safe, carbon-free and remarkably simple process for solving one of our world’s biggest clean energy challenges: lithium-ion battery recycling. This technology unlocks the green energy potential of these batteries at the end of their lives by allowing the extraction and recovery of critical materials. Although EC-Leach provides an answer to many complex challenges, it is unique because of the simplicity of its technology. It does not require expensive or hazardous materials, has low operating costs, and is compatible with any lithium-ion battery chemistry. By facilitating battery recycling in a closed loop, EC-Leach can create a carbon-free transport and manufacturing sector.
Researchers: Tedd Lister (co-principal investigator), Luis Diaz Aldana (co-principal investigator), John Klaehn, Joshua McNally, Meng Shi and Daniel Molina Montes de Oca.
Machine Intelligence for Review and Analysis of Condition Logs and Entries (MIRACLE)
Description: In the nuclear power industry, every issue, no matter how small, is documented in a condition report. For each plant, hundreds of them are reviewed and described every week by many people. MIRACLE uses machine learning and natural language processing to automate this process, saving millions while improving safety. On a broader stage, even if MIRACLE is intended for use in nuclear power plants, the methods used to create it should be valuable in any industry that requires large volumes of documentation reviews. MIRACLE offers savings and efficiencies.
Researchers: Ahmad Al Rashdan (principal investigator), Brian Wilcken, Cameron Krome and Kellen Giraud.
MOSAICS
Description: MOSAICS is a technology sponsored by the Department of Defense to provide the first comprehensive, integrated and automated solution to detect and prevent cyberattacks on industrial control systems. INL focuses its efforts to provide scalable evaluation of commercial, off-the-shelf security solutions and test tools for initiation, deployment and collection of results from cyber-resilience testing in virtual environment. INL is a MOSAICS technology partner with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory along with Sandia National Laboratories and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Researchers: Craig G. Rieger (principal investigator), Michael McCarty, Bev Novak and Roya Gordon (former INL researcher).
FINALIST TECHNOLOGIES LEADED BY INL:
Caldera
Description: Electric vehicle ownership is expanding rapidly as the technology becomes more available and affordable. While the increase will reduce carbon emissions and the effects of climate change, these vehicles and their associated charging infrastructure will have a major impact on electric grids around the world. Caldera provides two key services in the future of electric vehicle charging: 1) modeling large-scale electric vehicle charging for different locations and conditions, and 2) modeling management strategies. of charging to reduce the effects on the grid of large electric vehicle charging. Caldera is the missing link between transportation models, grid models and detailed billing data.
Researchers: Don Scoffield (co-principal investigator), Timothy Pennington (co-principal investigator), John Smart, Zonggen Yi, Manoj Kumar Cebol Sundarrajan and Paden Rumsey.
Restricted Communications Cyber Device (C3D)
Description: Cybercriminals and countries hostile to US interests have developed more sophisticated ways to attack the electricity distribution infrastructure. The patent-pending Constrained Communication Cyber Device (C3D) technology is an added depth of defense against cyberthreats aimed at critical electrical grid hardware called protective relays. C3D sits deep within a utility’s network, monitoring and blocking cyberattacks before they affect relay operations. C3D technology is licensed to Sierra Nevada Corporation in March 2022.
Researchers: Jake Gentle (co-principal investigator) and Steve Bukowski (co-principal investigator).
Modeling and Simulation for Targeted Electricity Stability and Reliability Improvement (MASTERRI)
Description: MASTERRI allows utility leaders to identify and prioritize electrical system repairs and upgrades to avoid cascading failures. The analysis process identifies critical vulnerabilities and the overall potential for system failure. MASTERRI delivers the most accurate information available for decision support in the electricity industry and is essential in preventing failure and building resilience.
Researchers: Bjorn Vaagensmith (principal investigator), Kurt Vedros, Tim McJunkin, Liam Boire, Jesse Reeves, James Case, Jason Wayment, Craig Rieger, Shawn West, Courtney Otani, Pierce Russell and Carol Reid.
RAVEN – Computational platform that performs stochastic analysis
Description: RAVEN offers a fully integrated working environment, providing everything engineers and scientists need to solve challenging problems in an efficient and user-friendly way. RAVEN is a flexible and multipurpose statistical analysis framework that allows users to easily perform a variety of analysis, data mining and model optimization tasks. These operations are performed based on the response of complex physical models through advanced statistical sampling generation to achieve a high level of realism and accuracy that was previously unattainable. RAVEN is a unique and powerful tool for risk analysis, offering capabilities not currently available in other software.
Researchers: Diego Mandelli (co-principal investigator) and Congjian Wang (co-principal investigator).
Strong Anode for Electrochemical in Extreme Environment (Strong Monolithic Anode)
Description: In a world increasingly dependent on technologies with metal-based components, sustainable metal recycling methods are more important than ever. Recycling these metals provides the dual benefit of reducing waste in landfills and reducing the need for further mining. While electrochemical processing is not a new technique, the graphite and platinum-based anodes most commonly used today lack long-term stability in the extremely hot, corrosive and oxidizing conditions prevailing in the vessel. -recycle, which requires constant (and expensive) replacement. The iridium anode in this technology has demonstrated long-lasting, highly efficient performance to support the recycling of consumer products as well as spent nuclear fuel processing.
Researchers: Prabhat Tripathy (co-principal investigator), Steven Herrmann (co-principal investigator), Dale Wahlquist, Steven Frank, James King and Ken Marsden.
