NETL Innovations Profit the Nation Through Technology Transfer

    NETL's AUREX-95P refractory lasts 50% longer than older refractories.

When you have a headache and reach for the Tylenol, you’re not usually interested in who invented the pill. You are, however, very glad that it is available at nearly every grocery, drug, or discount store. You’re glad it was invented by someone*, but invention itself did not put the analgesic into your hands or relieve your headache. In fact, this product’s “rubber” didn’t meet the road until Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil Consumer Health Care marketed Tylenol to the public. Until then, it could do your headache no good at all.

Technology transfer—the transferring of a new technology from the inventor’s workbench or laboratory to a company that will market the product—is the crucial and essential step that gives an invention the means to be of service to the greatest number of people.

That’s why technology transfer is a core tenet of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Every day, top scientists and engineers at NETL tackle the tough energy challenges faced by our nation. But until the answers discovered at NETL can be placed in the hands of those who will make them available in the marketplace, they aren’t in a position to improve our quality of life.

  NETL researchers Terry Jordan, left, and Stephen Zitney with the Virtual Engineering - Process Simulator Interface (VE-PSI). This software, developed by NETL, Ames Laboratory, and Reaction Engineering International, gives engineers a tool to design and optimize power plants in a virtual way. Technology transfer makes it available to the private sector and other government laboratories.  

Once NETL discoveries and ideas are developed through research, they are ready for the “road.” NETL has number of ways of releasing technologies to those who can market them to the public. One of these mechanisms is a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), a written agreement between a private company and NETL to work together on a project. CRADAs allow NETL and its research partners to optimize their resources, share technical expertise in a protected environment, share intellectual property emerging from the effort, and speed the commercialization of federally developed technology.

Patents and licensing are also key components of NETL’s technology transfer program. As a federal agency, NETL can grant licenses to private companies interested in marketing, manufacturing, or using an NETL-patented technology. The licenses permit the licensees to make, have made, use, offer for sale, or sell a particular product or process.

    NETL's Basic Immobilized Amine Sorbents (BIAS) increase the capture rate of carbon dioxide.

In addition, NETL makes available, via the internet, energy software tools developed onsite and the lab posts publications by NETL experts. NETL researchers also share discoveries and knowledge gained by presenting at technical conferences and meetings, and by holding workshops on diverse energy topics.

The success of NETL’s technology transfer can be found in the very air we breathe. Because of NETL innovations, today 75 percent of coal plants in the United States are using pollution controls that were developed either by NETL or with NETL assistance. Building on this success, NETL scientists and engineers are now devising economic ways to capture the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from power-plant emissions and to make it useful in enhanced oil recovery applications or store it permanently in formations deep beneath the earth’s surface where it cannot contribute to global climate change.

  This coating extends the working lifetime of superalloys in next-generation power plants.

In the realm of natural gas, two resources developed with help from NETL research—coalbed methane and shale gas—are star performers today. Coalbed methane was once considered a waste gas to be vented in order to free coal miners from the danger of methane explosions underground. Today, this gas makes up nearly 10 percent of U.S. natural gas production, thanks to technologies developed with help from NETL. Shale gas, which NETL was the first to scientifically investigate in the Appalachian Basin in the late 1970s, is being developed using horizontal drilling and hydraulic rock fracturing. Both of these technologies were advanced by NETL and its predecessors, and are now making possible the recovery of gas from the great reserves in the extensive Marcellus shale beds in the Eastern U.S.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) has honored many of NETL’s contributions with technology transfer awards. FLC bestows regional and national awards each year for outstanding service in transferring valuable discoveries and developments to companies that will use them to benefit our Nation. Some of NETL’s latest FLC winners are—

• Cerium Oxide Coating—Now licensed to Johnson Matthey for commercial development, NETL’s Cerium Oxide Coating is a surface-treatment application that increases the life of stainless steels and nickel superalloys used in the extreme temperature and pressure of next-generation power plants.
• Basic Immobilized Amine Sorbent (BIAS)—This sorbent increases the capture rate of carbon dioxide in large-scale processes and is expected to greatly reduce the cost of capturing CO₂ from coal-fired power plants. Several companies are excited about commercialization of this sorbent.
• AUREX 95P—Developed at NETL, this award-winning refractory brick has been called the most significant improvement for gasifier refractories (bricks that line the combustion area in a power plant) in more than 25 years, lasting a third longer than traditional refractories.

After 100 years of service to the Nation, NETL researchers continue their groundbreaking scientific and engineering work, pioneering new ways and means to preserve and protect our economy, and our world, on many energy fronts, ensuring through technology transfer that inventions are launched “where the rubber meets the road”—roads that lead to greater energy economy, security, and availability today and tomorrow.

*David W. Young invented acetaminophen in 1955. He eventually sold his patent to Johnson & Johnson, who first marketed Tylenol as a children’s product.