ARPA-E Funding Opportunities

REMEDY (Reducing Emissions of Methane Every day of the Year) is a 3-year, $35MM research program to reduce methane emissions from three sources in the oil, gas, and coal value chain. The goal is to reverse the rate of accumulation of methane in the atmosphere, decrease atmospheric methane concentration, and thus ameliorate climate change. The target sources are:

• Exhaust from natural gas-fired lean-burn engines, used to drive compressors, generate electricity, and increasingly, repower ships; 
• Flares required for safe operation of oil and gas facilities; and
• Coal mine ventilation air methane (VAM) exhausted from operating underground mines.

These sources are responsible for at least 10% of US anthropogenic methane emissions.

The REMEDY program seeks highly replicable system-level technical solutions that achieve an overall methane conversion of 99.5%, reduce net greenhouse gas emissions > 87% on a life-cycle basis, have a levelized cost of carbon less than $40/ton CO₂^e, and address techno-economic issues related to commercialization. Systems must incorporate technologies that can operate at lean- and ultra-lean methane concentrations integrated with sensors and/or control algorithms to quantify emission reduction and ensure consistent operation. Stage 1 of the program will be used to screen concepts, and projects selected to continue in Stage 2 will confirm metrics in a limited field test or larger, extended-lab-scale test.

The REMEDY program addresses methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and complements programs focused on CO₂ reduction. REMEDY metrics will facilitate comparison of methane reduction processes with CO₂ reduction processes.^{[1, 2]}

REMEDY augments and extends but will not duplicate existing initiatives focused on methane reduction, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Natural Gas Star program and Coalbed Methane Outreach Program (CMOP), the DOE Fossil Energy Flare Reduction program, and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative. Recovery or conversion to high-value products is allowed, provided techno-economic and environmental metrics are met.

[1] See, e.g., https://netl.doe.gov/projects/files/CostandPerformanceofBituminousCoalandNGPlantswithCCSRev4_091020.pdf.

[2] Gillingham, K. and Stock, J.H., “The Cost of Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, J Economic Perspectives, Vol. 32 (4), p. 73-72, Fall 2018.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA–E) intends to issue a new Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) that would seek to develop new technical pathways for the design of economically competitive Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs). The program envisions leveraging the Control Co-Design (CCD) methodology, which brings together engineering disciplines to work concurrently, as opposed to sequentially, and considers dynamic control aspects from the beginning of the design. By analyzing the numerous dynamic sub-system interactions of the FOWTs, the CCD methodology can identify control solutions for optimal designs that are not achievable otherwise. Projects in this program are envisioned in three fundamental areas: (1) radically new FOWT designs with significantly lower mass/kW, (2) a new generation of computer tools to control co-design the FOWTs, and (3) real-data from full and lab-scale experiments to validate the FOWT designs and computer tools.

State of the art FOWT technology has achieved an average LCOE of approximately $0.15-0.18/kWh, which it is still too high in comparison to the current $0.03-0.05/kWh for land-based wind turbine technologies.[1] High capital expenditures (CAPEX) are the key driver of the LCOE of a FOWT. A significant portion of these CAPEX is the cost of the steel that existing floating platforms incorporate. Floating platforms are designed to be large and heavy in an effort to (a) imitate the onshore wind turbine dynamics, (b) keep the system as stable as possible and (c) maximize system survivability during events such as large sea storms. Internal ARPA-E analysis shows that the cost of steel accounts for between 50% and 70% of the overall CAPEX for existing FOWT designs. Consequently, this envisioned program seeks to support the design of radically new FOWTs that maximize the insufficient specific power per unit of mass (W/kg), while maintaining, or ideally increasing, the turbine generation efficiency.

The technologies that will be developed under this FOA could lead to substantial technical advancements in fields of significance to U.S. national interests. If successful, this program will create a pathway towards FOWTs that are economically competitive. This would open up access to an untapped and bountiful source of U.S. energy[2], and a vast associated supply chain market.

More details on the envisioned program can be found in a recently released RFI, which contains a draft of the technical section of the FOA and provides instructions for readers to provide feedback to ARPA-E. Additionally, in support of this RFI and draft technical section, ARPA-E plans to organize a one day “Industry Day” on January 15^th, 2019. The primary purpose of the industry day will be to evaluate and strengthen the draft technical section prior to release of the FOA. Participants will lend their technical expertise to suggest any necessary refinements to the draft technical section.

In order to realize the envisioned program goals, ARPA‐E aims to bring together diverse engineering and scientific communities. These communities include, but are not limited to control and systems engineering, co-design, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, electrical and mechanical systems, power electronics, electrical generators, structural engineering, naval engineering, modeling, optimization, economics, multi-scale and multi-physics computer algorithms, parallel computing, distributed sensors, intelligent signal processing and actuator networks; as well as developers of offshore wind energy systems and electrical utilities.

As a general matter, ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting December 03, 2018. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically, until the close of the Full Application period, to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Notice, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify themselves for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered.

This Notice does not constitute a FOA. No FOA exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the final FOA, expected to be issued in February 2019, for instructions on submitting an application and for the terms and conditions of funding.

[1] Stehly, T., Beiter, P., Heimiller, D., Scott, G. (2018). 2017 Cost of Wind Energy Review. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Technical Report NREL/TP-6A20-72167.

[2] Estimate that the gross offshore wind resource in the U.S is over 151 quads/yr (“gross potential”). This number is still as large as ~25 quads/yr even once losses and conservative assumptions about what would be feasible to recover given technical, legal, regulatory and social inhibiting factors are incorporated. Fifty-eight percent of this “technical potential” lies in waters deeper than 60 m, accounting for ~14 quads/yr, which exceeds the entire U.S. annual electricity consumption in 2017 (13 quads/yr).

REMEDY (Reducing Emissions of Methane Every day of the Year) is a 3-year, $35MM research program to reduce methane emissions from three sources in the oil, gas, and coal value chain. The goal is to reverse the rate of accumulation of methane in the atmosphere, decrease atmospheric methane concentration, and thus ameliorate climate change. The target sources are:

• Exhaust from natural gas-fired lean-burn engines, used to drive compressors, generate electricity, and increasingly, repower ships; 
• Flares required for safe operation of oil and gas facilities; and
• Coal mine ventilation air methane (VAM) exhausted from operating underground mines.

These sources are responsible for at least 10% of US anthropogenic methane emissions.

The REMEDY program seeks highly replicable system-level technical solutions that achieve an overall methane conversion of 99.5%, reduce net greenhouse gas emissions > 87% on a life-cycle basis, have a levelized cost of carbon less than $40/ton CO₂^e, and address techno-economic issues related to commercialization. Systems must incorporate technologies that can operate at lean- and ultra-lean methane concentrations integrated with sensors and/or control algorithms to quantify emission reduction and ensure consistent operation. Stage 1 of the program will be used to screen concepts, and projects selected to continue in Stage 2 will confirm metrics in a limited field test or larger, extended-lab-scale test.

The REMEDY program addresses methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and complements programs focused on CO₂ reduction. REMEDY metrics will facilitate comparison of methane reduction processes with CO₂ reduction processes.^{[1, 2]}

REMEDY augments and extends but will not duplicate existing initiatives focused on methane reduction, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Natural Gas Star program and Coalbed Methane Outreach Program (CMOP), the DOE Fossil Energy Flare Reduction program, and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative. Recovery or conversion to high-value products is allowed, provided techno-economic and environmental metrics are met.

[1] See, e.g., https://netl.doe.gov/projects/files/CostandPerformanceofBituminousCoalandNGPlantswithCCSRev4_091020.pdf.

[2] Gillingham, K. and Stock, J.H., “The Cost of Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, J Economic Perspectives, Vol. 32 (4), p. 73-72, Fall 2018.

This funding opportunity seeks submissions to establish new technologies to significantly improve the carbon efficiency of bioconversion platforms through the accommodation of external reducing equivalents. Proposed systems of interest include, but are not limited to: (1) carbon optimized fermentation strains that avoid CO₂ evolution, (2) engineered mixotrophic consortia or systems that avoid CO₂ evolution, (3) biomass or gas fermentation with internal CO₂ utilization, (4) cell-free carbon optimized biocatalytic biomass conversion and/or CO₂ utilization, and (5) cross-cutting or other proposed carbon optimized bioconversion schemes. All systems will need to demonstrate the capacity to accommodate external reducing equivalents to optimize the carbon efficiency of the system as compared to traditional fermentation systems (i.e. the sum of the recoverable energy contents of the products is greater than the energy content of the biomass or primary carbon feedstock).

This funding opportunity seeks submissions to establish new technologies to significantly improve the carbon efficiency of bioconversion platforms through the accommodation of external reducing equivalents. Proposed systems of interest include, but are not limited to: (1) carbon optimized fermentation strains that avoid CO₂ evolution, (2) engineered mixotrophic consortia or systems that avoid CO₂ evolution, (3) biomass or gas fermentation with internal CO₂ utilization, (4) cell-free carbon optimized biocatalytic biomass conversion and/or CO₂ utilization, and (5) cross-cutting or other proposed carbon optimized bioconversion schemes. All systems will need to demonstrate the capacity to accommodate external reducing equivalents to optimize the carbon efficiency of the system as compared to traditional fermentation systems (i.e. the sum of the recoverable energy contents of the products is greater than the energy content of the biomass or primary carbon feedstock).

The Mining Innovations for Negative Emissions Resource Recovery (MINER) program’s aim is to support the development of commercial-ready technologies that give the United States a net-zero or net negative emissions pathway toward increased domestic supplies of copper, nickel, lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, and other critical elements required for the transition to clean energy. The lack of a secure domestic supply of these minerals poses a significant supply chain risk for the United States, especially with regard to batteries, renewable energy generation, and transmission. Meanwhile, the domestic mining industry faces the rapid depletion of high-profit deposits, increased cost of mining and processing, expensive management, and accumulation of tailings, resulting in an overall reduced return of investment by conventional mining methods. Consequently, the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA–E) is issuing this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) with objectives to support the development of technology and approaches to: (1) decrease comminution energy by 50% compared to state-of-the-art; (2) increase yield of energy-relevant minerals by reducing unrecovered energy-relevant minerals in the tailings by 50% compared to state-of-the-art; and (3) enabling the negative emissions production of key minerals by sequestering >10 wt.% CO2e per metric ton of ore processed; and (4) develop methods to model carbonation potential, delineate petrophysical changes from carbonation, and quantify carbonate and energy-relevant mineralization in CO₂-reactive geologic formations.”

The Nuclear Energy Waste Transmutation Optimized Now (NEWTON) program will support the research and development of technologies that enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel (UNF) to alleviate the impact of storage in permanent disposal facilities. This program seeks to fund the development of novel technologies that increase the overall capacity factor, power output, and efficiency of particle generation systems (including but not limited to proton, neutron, and/or photon), by reducing beam trip magnitude and duration (referred to as loss of beam). Additional technologies will focus on increasing the throughput of transmutation by developing target materials that maximize transmutation rates and are easily processible to remove the transmuted material.

The program will have three categories:

Category A: Technologies related to the generation and acceleration of particle beams that can initiate transmutation reactions. Development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict and recover from beam trip events is also within scope.

Category B: Modelling, designing, and fabricating target materials for the enhancement of transmutation of UNF component elements or isotopes, technologies on incorporation methods for transmutable materials into a target, and technologies for processing the transmuted material for waste packaging or isolation of valuable products

Category C: Integration of the technologies developed in Categories A and B into a techno-economic analysis (TEA) of a transmutation facility, improving the performance of the entire system. Category C teams will also maintain a materials and components database for transmutation facilities, which will include nuclear data sets.

Concept Paper Encourage / Discourage decisions are published and available in eXCHANGE as of 4/22/2024.

The overarching goal of the CIRCULAR program is to successfully translate the definition of a circular economy to the domestic EV battery supply chain by supporting the development of innovative solutions that can overcome both the technological and economic barriers to broad commercial adoption. CIRCULAR recognizes that conventional recycling is not the only, nor primary, pathway to closing the supply chain loop. The program will support the development and deployment of foundational technologies capable of maintaining materials and products in circulation at their highest level of performance and safety for as long as possible. CIRCULAR acknowledges that simultaneous advancements in multiple technological domains may be required to accomplish this ambitious objective.

The program will have four categories:

Category A seeks innovations in battery cell materials, designs, regeneration methods, and corresponding manufacturing techniques to prolong battery service life.

Category B seeks innovations in battery pack designs, materials, and reversible manufacturing methods as well as fast and safe disassembly techniques to recover manufacturing value of cells and pack components.

Category C seeks innovations in cell-level sensing, data analytics, and battery intelligence systems for circularity and safety.

Category D focuses on analytical tools to assess the economic benefits of the technologies developed in Categories A, B, and C, including their impact on GHG emissions and overall material consumption per unit of energy delivered over the lifetimes of battery cells and packs.

The Nuclear Energy Waste Transmutation Optimized Now SBIR/STTR (NEWTON SBIR/STTR) program will support the research and development of technologies that enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel (UNF) to alleviate the impact of storage in permanent disposal facilities. This program seeks to fund the development of novel technologies that increase the overall capacity factor, power output, and efficiency of particle generation systems (including but not limited to proton, neutron, and/or photon), by reducing beam trip magnitude and duration (referred to as loss of beam). Additional technologies will focus on increasing the throughput of transmutation by developing target materials that maximize transmutation rates and are easily processible to remove the transmuted material.

The program will have three categories:

Category A: Technologies related to the generation and acceleration of particle beams that can initiate transmutation reactions. Development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict and recover from beam trip events is also within scope.

Category B: Modelling, designing, and fabricating target materials for the enhancement of transmutation of UNF component elements or isotopes, technologies on incorporation methods for transmutable materials into a target, and technologies for processing the transmuted material for waste packaging or isolation of valuable products

Category C: Integration of the technologies developed in Categories A and B into a techno-economic analysis (TEA) of a transmutation facility, improving the performance of the entire system. Category C teams will also maintain a materials and components database for transmutation facilities, which will include nuclear data sets.

Concept Paper Encourage / Discourage decisions are published and available in eXCHANGE as of 4/22/2024.

The overarching goal of the CIRCULAR program is to successfully translate the definition of a circular economy to the domestic EV battery supply chain by supporting the development of innovative solutions that can overcome both the technological and economic barriers to broad commercial adoption. CIRCULAR recognizes that conventional recycling is not the only, nor primary, pathway to closing the supply chain loop. The program will support the development and deployment of foundational technologies capable of maintaining materials and products in circulation at their highest level of performance and safety for as long as possible. CIRCULAR acknowledges that simultaneous advancements in multiple technological domains may be required to accomplish this ambitious objective.

The program will have three categories:

Category A seeks innovations in battery cell materials, designs, regeneration methods, and corresponding manufacturing techniques to prolong battery service life.

Category B seeks innovations in battery pack designs, materials, and reversible manufacturing methods as well as fast and safe disassembly techniques to recover manufacturing value of cells and pack components.

Category C seeks innovations in cell-level sensing, data analytics, and battery intelligence systems for circularity and safety.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA–E) intends to issue a new Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to use advanced synthetic biology tools to engineer novel bioconversion platforms and systems capable of using and incorporating external energy inputs to substantially increase carbon utilization, flux, and efficiency while driving towards and achieving industrially relevant productivities. Successful platforms would offer fundamentally new capacities for the bioeconomy by allowing for fully carbon optimized renewable fuel and chemical synthesis with maximal carbon and resource efficiency. Proposed systems of interest include, but are not limited to (1) carbon-optimized fermentation strains that avoid CO₂ evolution, (2) engineered mixotrophic consortia or systems that avoid CO₂ evolution, (3) biomass derived sugar or carbon oxide gas fermentation with internal CO₂ utilization, (4) cell-free carbon optimized biocatalytic biomass conversion and/or CO₂ utilization, (5) cross-cutting or other proposed carbon optimized bioconversion schemes. All systems will need to demonstrate the capacity to accommodate external reducing equivalents to optimize the carbon flux and efficiency of the system as compared to a traditional fermentation system or bioconversion pathway (i.e. the sum of the recoverable energy contents of the products is greater than the energy content of the biomass or primary carbon feedstock). Allowable external reducing equivalents are limited to those that can be produced electrocatalytically using H₂O, CO₂, or both.

ARPA-E programs are pursuing transformational technologies up-and-down the bioeconomy supply chain to increase the sustainability of renewable fuel and chemical synthesis and to enable industrial scale carbon management and CO₂ emissions mitigation. The program outlined in this FOA will build on these innovations by funding the development of (i) hydrogen accommodating non-oxidative glycolytic strains of industrial relevance for immediate enhancement of first generation biofuel production – corn starch ethanol , (ii) external energy accommodating carbon optimized platforms of industrial relevance for advanced and cellulosic fuel and fuel relevant intermediate biosynthesis, (iii) new tools and engineered approaches to optimize fermentation and biosynthesis for carbon efficiency, and (iv) advanced tools to decouple key biochemical pathways from the limitations of cell growth and maintenance by promoting the design and engineering of robust and industrially relevant cell-free bioconversion and biocatalytic platforms.

ARPA-E will provide financial support to teams proposing to develop novel carbon-optimized bioconversion systems that meet the metrics specified in the FOA. If successful, the technologies funded by this carbon optimized bioconversion program are expected to catalyze new conversion platforms for biofuels and other high-volume bioproducts that are capable of avoiding 100% of carbon loss to CO₂, enabling greater than 40% increases in recoverable bioproduct from the same feedstocks. Additionally, this program will fund cutting-edge technologies to de-risk gas-fed fermentation feedstocks and cell-free bioconversion systems. ARPA–E held a workshop on these topics in September 2019. Information on this workshop can be found at the event webpage (https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=events/carbon-optimized-bioconversion).

As a general matter, ARPA–E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Multidisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore, ARPA-E strongly encourages involving industry partners to advise and collaborate with teams, with the ultimate goal of achieving successful industry adoption and integration of a new risk-driven operational and planning paradigm.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. ARPA-E intends to make the Teaming Partner List available on ARPA–E eXCHANGE (https://ARPA–E-foa.energy.gov), ARPA–E’s online application portal, in July 2020. Once posted, the Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically, until the close of the Full Application period, to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on the Teaming Partner list should complete all required fields in the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/ApplicantProfile.aspx. Required information includes: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Announcement, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA–E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify themselves for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA–E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered.

This Announcement does not constitute a FOA. No FOA exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the final FOA, expected to be issued by the end of August 2020, for instructions on submitting an application, the desired technical metrics, and for the terms and conditions of funding.

Encourage/Discourage notification letters were released on July 10, 2025. The Full Application NOFO was posted July 29, 2025.

The RECOVER program seeks to develop technologies to concentrate and recover high value energy materials from aqueous waste streams. Priority high value energy materials for the program are ammonia and metals considered critical to energy and diversifying the U.S. supply chain. Ammonia is produced using the Haber-Bosch process with a high energy and greenhouse gas penalty, and much of this ammonia ends up in municipal and animal waste streams where it is destroyed without recovery. Critical metals are obtained from ore mining and processing and are almost entirely sourced from overseas; their use in infrastructure and military technologies makes their supply a matter of national concern. Produced water and mining waste streams have sufficient amounts of key critical metals to displace all or most of U.S. imports.

The RECOVER program will enable: i) the replacement of 50% of conventional ammonia supplies, and all or partial critical metals imports, ii) the valorization of multiple high value energy materials from an aqueous waste stream, iii) the reduction of energy demands and CO₂-equivalent (CO₂eq) emissions for ammonia and critical metals procurement, and iv) the recovery of market-valuable products at competitive prices. Recovery of market-valuable products will create new revenue sources for aqueous waste stream processors, thereby reducing net costs and contributing to improved water treatment outcomes.

Relevant waste stream targets are municipal or animal feedlot waste streams, produced water waste streams, and mining waste streams. New technology development efforts under the RECOVER program include three technical categories: 1) new materials, 2) process development and derisking, and 3) process integration. Capable technologies will be energy efficient, highly selective, and durable over extended use. Processes will involve limited sequential steps, be scalable, and be adaptable to existing or new wastewater facilities.

Encourage/Discourage notification letters were released on July 10, 2025. The Full Application NOFO was posted July 29, 2025.

The Realize Energy-rich Compound Opportunities Valorizing Extraction from Refuse waters (RECOVER) program seeks to develop technologies to concentrate and recover high value energy materials from aqueous waste streams. Priority high value energy materials for the program are ammonia and metals considered critical to energy and diversifying the U.S. supply chain. Ammonia is produced using the Haber-Bosch process with a high energy and greenhouse gas penalty, and much of this ammonia ends up in municipal and animal waste streams where it is destroyed without recovery. Critical metals are obtained from ore mining and processing and are almost entirely sourced from overseas; their use in infrastructure and military technologies makes their supply a matter of national concern. Produced water and mining waste streams have sufficient amounts of key critical metals to displace all or most of U.S. imports.

The RECOVER program will enable: i) the replacement of 50% of conventional ammonia supplies, and all or partial critical metals imports, ii) the valorization of multiple high value energy materials from an aqueous waste stream, iii) the reduction of energy demands and CO₂-equivalent (CO₂eq) emissions for ammonia and critical metals procurement, and iv) the recovery of market-valuable products at competitive prices. Recovery of market-valuable products will create new revenue sources for aqueous waste stream processors, thereby reducing net costs and contributing to improved water treatment outcomes.

Relevant waste stream targets are municipal or animal feedlot waste streams, produced water waste streams, and mining waste streams. New technology development efforts under the RECOVER program include three technical categories: 1) new materials, 2) process development and derisking, and 3) process integration. Capable technologies will be energy efficient, highly selective, and durable over extended use. Processes will involve limited sequential steps, be scalable, and be adaptable to existing or new wastewater facilities.'

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to support the development of foundational technologies aimed towards establishing a domestic, circular supply chain for electric vehicle (EV) batteries. As described in more detail below, the purpose of this announcement is to facilitate the formation of new project teams to respond to the potential FOA. The FOA will provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. The FOA terms are controlling.

For purposes of this Teaming Partner List, one of the program’s primary objectives would be to maintain in service EV battery materials, cells, and pack components at the highest levels of performance and safety for as long as possible. Technological solutions capable of maximizing the useful service life of battery cells and recovering the manufacturing value of spent battery packs would reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, minimize energy and material consumption, lower demand for virgin materials, alleviate reliance on key battery material and component imports, and ultimately motivate the creation of a circular and sustainable domestic EV battery supply chain.

The existing supply chain for EV batteries is largely linear and relies on recycling to close the supply loop for critical minerals. The disposal of “spent” batteries is challenging due to fire hazards and/or potential release of toxic chemicals into the environment. A significant increase in the number of EVs is imminent and will be accompanied by large volumes of battery waste, albeit with a ten-to-twenty-year lag, depending on both the type of battery and application. Conventional battery recycling methods such as pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy are energy-intensive, produce significant quantities of GHGs, and lead to large volumes of waste deposited in landfills. With few exceptions, these approaches intentionally recover only the most valuable materials (e.g., nickel, cobalt, and copper). Looking to the future, these recycling strategies are expected to endure increasingly challenging economics as battery chemistries that rely on more abundant and/or less expensive materials capture significant market share. Therefore, prolonging the life of EV batteries and recovering manufacturing value to the greatest extent possible through regeneration, repair, and remanufacturing will reduce the domestic energy burden and carbon footprint of the EV battery supply chain. In addition, various strategies used to achieve circularity could be leveraged to facilitate recycling.

Current EV manufacturing practices are well-established in support of the linear economic model of “take, make, use, and dispose” with negligible appreciation for the end of life. This is arguably unsustainable in future scenarios consistent with projected EV market growth. It is critical that innovations are developed to “expand” the chemistry, design, and manufacturing space. The resulting new materials, components, and regeneration methods will efficiently and cost-effectively prolong today’s service life of battery cells and packs, without compromising performance or safety.

Such a vision also encompasses reversible manufacturing strategies, sensors, and algorithms for improved monitoring, as well as any other methods that responsibly manage the end of life for manufactured goods, particularly batteries, for transportation.

Strategies that may have merit, either individually or as part of a total solution, include the following:

• Battery materials and cell designs that are amenable to in situ regeneration methods;
• Regeneration techniques and protocols that can efficiently and cost-effectively restore battery cells to beginning of life performance and safety;
• Reversible manufacturing materials and methods to facilitate battery module/pack disassembly;
• “Reversibly” bondable adhesives including stimuli-responsive systems;
• Techniques and designs for reversible “joining” of battery cells and modules that do not compromise performance, structural/mechanical integrity, or safety;
• Battery pack designs that are amenable to autonomous robotic disassembly;
• Robotic systems capable of disassembling battery packs, in parts or in full, with the ability to learn autonomously and/or with humans in the loop;
• Sensor platforms and methodologies capable of rapid determination of state of health (SoH) for individual battery cells during use and/or at the end of battery pack life to determine whether the cells should be regenerated, reused, or recycled;
• Seamless and cost-effective integration of sensors in manufacturing of battery cells and packs that can support circularity objectives;
• Battery intelligence systems and data analytics to extend the service life of cells, modules, and packs; and
• Analytical tools capable of quantifying the impact of the program’s advancements on pack cost, material use, energy use, and GHG emissions per kilowatt-hour delivered throughout the life of an EV to justify the adoption of these technologies and inform new business models and opportunities.

ARPA-E hosted a “Circular Economic Materials, Design, and Manufacturing of Rechargeable Batteries Workshop” on June 12 and 13, 2023. Information from this workshop can be found at the ARPA-E events webpage (https://arpa-e.energy.gov/events/battery-circularity-workshop). In addition, ARPA-E issued a request for information (RFI) on “Achieving Circularity of the Domestic Battery Supply Chain” (DE-FOA-0003027, https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Default.aspx?foaId=cd9cd241-0872-4832-8e10-8fc5e57b1a1e). A video of the “Batteries & Storage” Fast Pitch Panel from the 2023 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit can be viewed on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye_yZNcAj30).

Expertise in the following areas may be useful in responding to the potential FOA:

• State-of-the-art battery chemistry and materials research, development, and engineering
• Battery cell and battery pack design and prototyping
• Battery component, battery cell, and battery pack manufacturing
• Chemical, mechanical, and electrical engineering
• Computational modeling and simulation
• Battery management systems hardware and software development and integration
• Cell-level and pack-level battery sensor development, integration, and data analytics
• Manufacturing
• Robotics
• Sustainable design
• Techno-economic analysis (TEA)
• Life cycle analysis (LCA)
• Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)

As a general matter, ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible. ARPA-E strongly encourages involving industry partners to advise and collaborate with these project teams, with the goal of achieving successful industry adoption and integration of the innovative technologies these project teams develop.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in October 2023. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes the following: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Notice, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered. This list is completely voluntarily to participate in and utilize. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the teaming list and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential FOA.

This Notice does not constitute a FOA. No FOA exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the FOA, expected to be issued by November 2023, for instructions on submitting an application and for the terms and conditions of funding.

The FOA associated with this Teaming Partner List can be found at: DE-FOA-0003303: CATALYZING INNOVATIVE RESEARCH FOR CIRCULAR USE OF LONG-LIVED ADVANCED RECHARGEABLES (CIRCULAR)

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to support investigating the feasibility of systems that use plants to extract nickel from soils and deliver a nickel-enriched bio-ore for purification. As described in more detail below, the purpose of this announcement is to facilitate the formation of new project teams to respond to the potential FOA. The FOA will provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. The FOA terms are controlling.

For purposes of this Teaming Partner List, the overarching goal of PHYTOMINES would be to develop phytomining as a cost-competitive and low-carbon intensity alternative mining approach by extracting metal resources from soils that are too low in concentration for traditional mining. Additionally, phytomining can provide a clean energy mineral source that is procured and processed domestically. This program supports ARPA-E mission areas impacting energy security through reduction of imports, reduction of emissions involved in the mining of the energy-relevant minerals, and attainment of U.S. leadership in global competitions for locating clean sources of minerals.

ARPA-E has identified two major categories. Technical Category 1 is related to systemic approaches to improve the phytomining of nickel on U.S. marginal lands. Technical Category 2 deals with enhancement of the enabling knowledge base of U.S. phytomining. ARPA-E has identified several modeling, characterization, and risk management approaches that need to be associated with the technology development in Categories 1 & 2.

Category 1: Systemic approaches to improve the phytomining of nickel on U.S. marginal lands.

The focus of this category is the development of phytomining technologies that optimize nickel recovery by hyperaccumulator (HA) plants. Technologies could target any or multiple aspects of a phytomining system, for example:

• Soil biota, such as rhizobial, endophyte, or viral communities
• Plant traits to increase plant hyperaccumulation activity
• Technologies at the microbiome, organismal, or metagenomic scale

While research using model organisms/systems could be a complementary work stream, approaches that focus on non-model organisms or have potential to translate to non-model organisms with strong commercialization pathways are encouraged.

Category 2: Enhancing the enabling knowledge base of U.S. phytomining.

A priority outcome from this category is the creation of a unified, publicly available database to identify U.S. phytomining sites for:

• Nickel
• Rare earth elements
• Platinum group metals
• Other critical metals

As nickel is likely to be the near-term target, it will be acceptable to prioritize granularity on soil content of nickel over diversity of data expanding to rare earth/platinum group metals/other critical metals concentrations. The database would, at a minimum, unite currently separated geospatial data and a range of metadata including descriptions of:

• Geologic information
• Environmental information
• Ecological information
• Ownership status of the land

A potential FOA may also seek to support mapping and identifying new HA species of interest for scaling phytomining opportunities as well as facilitate technoeconomic analysis (TEA) and lifecycle analysis (LCA) of phytomining projects.

ARPA-E held a workshop on this topic in June 2023. Information on this workshop can be found at https://arpa-e.energy.gov/events/phytomining-workshop.

Expertise in the following non-exhaustive list of technical areas may be useful in responding to the potential FOA:

• Plant biology (physiology, genetics, systems and synthetic biology of hyperaccumulation);
• Microbial biology (expertise in the fungi, bacteria, and other biota that regulate the bioavailability of critical materials to HAs);
• Geology and soil sciences (distribution, mapping, availability and bioavailability of critical materials);
• Data science (acquisition and presentation of geologic, ecological, and economic information necessary for phytomining); and
• TEA/LCA.

As a general matter, ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams and will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes the following: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Notice, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered. This list is completely voluntarily to participate in and utilize. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the teaming list and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential FOA.

This Notice does not constitute a FOA. No FOA exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the FOA, if one is issued, for instructions on submitting an application and for the terms and conditions of funding.

The FOA associated with this Teaming Partner List can be found at: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Default.aspx#FoaId521a7aa4-b255-4c3b-a211-b128d2a4a0e4

The purpose of this RFI is to solicit input for a potential future ARPA-E research program focused on novel, potentially transformative technical opportunities and approaches to liberate minerals relevant to our energy infrastructure while concurrently mineralizing carbon dioxide.

ARPA-E requests responses focusing on how CO₂ from power plants, industrial sources, or the atmosphere can be leveraged to improve mining practices in order to successfully meet the growing domestic demand, economic feasibility, and environmental sustainability of critical materials (CMs). ARPA-E is predominantly (not exclusively) interested in approaches targeting the recovery of nickel, cobalt, and chromium deposits in mafic or ultramafic rock formations.

This is a request for information only. This notice does not constitute a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). No FOA exists at this time.

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on February 18, 2021.

Introduction:

The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to solicit input for a potential ARPA-E program focused on identifying transformative technologies across the helium-4 (“helium”) supply chain to decrease the delivered cost of helium from processes not dependent on natural gas production. ARPA-E is seeking information regarding alternative methods to safeguard future helium production in the United States and ensure helium availability for next-generation energy technologies. Specifically, ARPA-E is interested in identifying potentially disruptive concepts to: 1) develop innovative mapping technologies to locate new helium sources; and 2) produce helium using advanced separation technologies designed for novel sources and/or the enhancement of helium recovery and recycling.

ARPA-E is seeking input from analytical chemists, chemical engineers, geochemists, geophysicists, geologists, materials scientists, petroleum engineers, process engineers, subsurface engineers, and others with potentially relevant expertise. ARPA-E is also seeking input from prospective end-users of helium, including semiconductor manufacturers, welding technologists, and scientists and engineers working with superconducting materials (e.g., physicists, electrical engineers, biomedical engineers, aerospace engineers). This RFI is focused on soliciting input on methods that decouple helium production from natural gas production. The questions toward the end of this document are intended to assist relevant stakeholders in providing input on:

1. Advanced identification, mapping, and quantification of new sources of helium, including co-locating potential geologic sources of hydrogen, subsurface seeps, geothermal reservoirs, and engineering methods to increase helium recovery from geologic sources;
2. Potential separation methods for helium sources (e.g., membranes, electrochemical separations, and non-cryogenic methods); and
3. Approaches for recovery and recycling of helium that resolve technical or economic constraints.

Areas Not of Interest for Responses to this RFI:

Work focused on basic research aimed purely at discovery and fundamental knowledge generation is not of interest.

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME.

Respondents shall not include any information in the response to this RFI that could be considered proprietary or confidential.

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on Friday, March 15.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a new Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to develop net-zero mineral beneficiation technologies that decrease comminution energy and increase yield of energy-relevant metals from CO2-reactive ore. The objectives of this program are: (1) transform the CO2-reactive gangue minerals into softer and insoluble carbonate to decrease comminution energy; (2) increase yield of metals, such as nickel, cobalt, chromium, lithium, copper, and rare earth elements from conventional critical minerals and surrounding CO2-reactive gangue minerals; (3) eliminate possible negative impact on metal yield from conventional critical minerals during the development of new mineral beneficiation technologies to carbonate gangue mineralogy ; and (4) maintain the stable carbonate from cradle-to-grave. The timing of this program coincides with the need for market-ready breakthrough negative emission technologies that can exploit unconventional energy-relevant minerals to secure domestic supply and decrease comminution energy.

As described in more detail below, the purpose of this announcement is to facilitate collaborations among performing teams. ARPA-E is open to team(s) interested in both subsurface in-situ and ex-situ carbonation and energy-relevant metal recovery approaches.

Five focus areas have been identified as necessary to achieve the program objectives:

(1) Mineral Comminution and Yield: A category focused on developing breakthrough technologies to decrease comminution energy and energy-relevant metal yields lost during mineral beneficiation of CO2-reactive ore. The technology must accomplish this objective by changing the mineral properties of the CO2-reactive ore to utilize preexisting mineral beneficiation processes. Preferably, the team should have expertise in current mineral beneficiation processes, carbonate chemistry, and carbonate mineralogy.

(2) Gangue Mineral Yield: A category focused on fundamental research into developing breakthrough technologies to exploit energy-relevant metals from CO2-reactive gangue minerals. The technology must accomplish this by not impacting conventional critical mineral yield or decarbonating the ore. Preferably, the team should have expertise in metallurgy, mafic-ultramafic petrology, carbonate chemistry, carbonate mineralogy, and catalysis.

(3) Carbon Negative Reactions: A category focused on fundamental research into carbon-negative reactions. The team's expertise should include laboratory experiments, numerical modeling, and characterization of physico-chemical changes during rock carbonation. Preferably, the team should have expertise in CO2 sequestration, mafic-ultramafic petrology, carbonate chemistry, and catalysis.

(4) Sensing and Analyzing Carbonation Potential and Mineralization: The research category focuses on developing breakthrough technology to conduct geophysical and (or) geochemical surveys to produce models that develop exploratory vectors of CO2-reactive rock formations, quantify rock carbonation, and quantify energy-relevant metals leached and remineralized during carbonation of the CO2-reactive gangue minerals. Preferably, the team should have experience in geophysical, geochemical, and geostatistical modeling of ore bodies.

(5) Applied Research: A category focused on the proper scale-up of this technology from bench-scale demonstrations. The team should have expertise in field characterization and planning (e.g, geophysics, geology, mining engineering, drilling). The team should understand geochemical, mineralogical, structural, and petrological heterogeneity within CO2-reactive ore bodies. An understanding of the changes in petrophysical properties and alteration mineralogy during rock carbonation. The ability to provide proper reservoir characterization to optimize rock carbonation and metal capture from gangue minerals. Understanding reservoir fluid dynamics to mitigate injection fluid loss and maximize recovery of possible production fluids. Adequate experience operating and maintaining a drilling and injection site to perform successful rock carbonation and recovery of carbonated samples.

ARPA–E held a workshop on these topics on July 13 and 15, 2021. Information from this workshop can be found at the event webpage (https://arpa-e.energy.gov/events/sequestering-carbon-hybrid-employment-mineral-assets-workshop).

As a general matter, ARPA–E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Multidisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore, ARPA-E strongly encourages involving industry partners to advise and collaborate with these project teams, with the goal of achieving successful industry adoption and integration of the innovative technologies these project teams develop.

A Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. ARPA-E intends to make the Teaming Partner List available on ARPA–E eXCHANGE (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA–E’s online application portal, in December 2021. Once posted, the Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically, until the close of the Full Application period, to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on the Teaming Partner List should complete all required fields in the following link:

https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/ApplicantProfile.aspx. Required information includes: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Announcement, respondents consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA–E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA–E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted via email or by other means will not be considered.

This Announcement does not constitute a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). No FOA exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the final FOA, expected to be issued January 2022, for instructions on submitting an application, the desired technical metrics, and the terms and conditions of funding.

The purpose of this RFI is to solicit input for a potential future ARPA-E research program focused on the development of technologies that would enable the effective management of the Nation’s commercial used nuclear fuel (UNF). The goals of this RFI are to (1) solicit information about reactor fuel needs for both the current commercial light-water reactor (LWR) fleet and future advanced reactors, and (2) seek insights into technology gaps and/or cost drivers that may be hindering economical recycling of existing LWR UNF.¹ This information is needed to help ARPA-E identify ways in which the Nation’s roughly 86,000 MTU² inventory of UNF, which has been increasing by approximately 2,000 MTU per year, can best be recycled to support current and advanced reactor fuel needs. Such activities are consistent with ARPA-E’s statutory goals, which include supporting the development of transformative solutions for addressing UNF.³

ARPA-E is interested in information about technologies with the potential to make recycling UNF at least as economical, safe, and secure as the current once-through fuel cycle.⁴ Such technologies would enable a UNF treatment facility to be economically constructed, managed, and operated; yield an actinide product that is cost-competitive with natural uranium (U) obtained from traditional mining and milling; and generate significantly lower waste volumes than those generated from existing commercial UNF treatment facilities. Implementation of advanced nuclear material accounting technologies and incorporation of a safeguards-by-design philosophy would support this objective by enabling precise, remote, near-real-time monitoring and accounting of special nuclear material⁵; decreasing hands-on-inspection requirements; and minimizing operational downtime to verify accuracy of material accounting. In aggregate, these innovations could substantially reduce the volume, heat load, and radiotoxicity of high-level waste requiring permanent disposal while providing a valuable and sustainable fuel feedstock for advanced fast reactors and the existing LWR fleet.

The questions in this RFI are intended to allow relevant stakeholders a mechanism to provide input on (i) the nature of a potential UNF recycling facility, (ii) UNF recycling technology gaps, (iii) existing LWR and future advanced reactor feedstock and fuel needs, and (iv) cost drivers for UNF recycling facility capital and management and operations (M&O) costs. Responses to these questions will enable ARPA-E to refine its success metrics for a potential program aimed at supporting the development of economical, safe, secure, and safeguarded recycling technologies. The questions posed in this section are classified into several different groups as appropriate. ARPA-E does not expect any one respondent to answer all, or even many, of these prompts. Simply indicate the group and question number in your response. Appropriate citations are encouraged. Respondents are also welcome to address other relevant avenues/technologies that are not outlined below.

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI @hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern time on June 14, 2021.

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME.

Respondents shall not include any information in the response to this RFI that could be considered proprietary or confidential.

[1] For the purposes of this RFI, recycling of UNF entails (1) fuel treatment to recover valuable actinides (and potentially fission products) from UNF and (2) subsequent reuse of the recovered materials for nuclear and other applications.

[2] MTU=metric tons of uranium. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, approximately 79,825 MTU were discharged between 1968 and 2017. Approximately 2,000 MTU UNF are discharged per year, meaning that approximately 86,000 MTU have been discharged as of 2020. https://www.eia.gov/nuclear/spent_fuel/

[3] ARPA-E was chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358), as further amended by the Energy Act of 2020 (P.L. 116-260) (codified at 42 U.S.C. § 16538). ARPA-E’s statutory goals are found in 42 U.S.C. § 16538(c). The Energy Act of 2020 amended such goals to include “provid[ing] transformative solutions to improve the management, clean-up, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel”.

[4] International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 2011. “The nuclear fuel cycle”. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/nfc0811.pdf

[5] U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Special nuclear material”. March 09, 2021. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/special-nuclear-material.html

REPAIR seeks to develop the suite of technologies required to rehabilitate cast iron, wrought iron, and bare steel natural gas distribution pipes by developing technologies that will enable the automated construction of a new pipe inside the old pipe. In order for the program to be successful, the new pipe must meet utilities’ and regulatory agencies’ requirements, have a minimum life of 50 years, and have sufficient material properties to operate throughout its service life without reliance on the exterior pipe. Today, older gas distribution pipes are typically excavated and replaced at costs up to $10 million per mile.

REPAIR will advance the state of gas distribution pipelines by incorporating smart functionality into structural coating materials and developing new integrity/inspection tools. It will also create 3D maps that integrate natural gas pipe and adjacent underground infrastructure geospatial information with integrity, leak, and coating deposition data. The cost target is $500k to $1 million per mile, including gas service disruption costs.

Gas distribution pipes are regulated by the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), as well as state regulatory agencies. Consequently the suite of technologies developed under REPAIR will ultimately need regulatory approval consistent with 49 Code of Federal Regulations Part 192. In parallel with this FOA, ARPA-E will establish a Testing and Technical Specifications Panel (TTSP) to advise ARPA-E and facilitate regulatory approval for the technologies and cost recovery for the rehabilitation process. The TTSP will include PHMSA; state regulators and their association, the National Association of Pipeline State Regulators (NAPSR); representatives of ASTM International F17 committee; gas utilities; and ARPA-E.

The REPAIR program will require coordination among multiple stakeholders, and collaboration within research programs, to achieve commercial success. Figure 1 summarizes the REPAIR ecosystem, the FOA categories, and the path to market. It is intended to show the inter-relationships among the critical program contributors: The TTSP will provide inputs to ARPA-E regarding test methods and performance specifications that regulators and utilities will require REPAIR technologies to demonstrate. In Category 1 these requirements are reduced to specific tests and performance metrics for the “pipe in pipe”. Categories 2-4 address the individual system components: coating materials, coating deposition tools, and integrity/inspection tools. Category 5 is an integrated test of all of the components. Category 6 addresses mapping tools and software. The FOA breaks out requirements for each system component. However, it is essential that these components be integrated to create comprehensive service offerings. As shown in Figure 1, utilities typically execute turn-key contracts with service companies when rehabilitating pipelines. Consequently, Applicants for Categories 2-4 will need to describe their plans for integrating their products into comprehensive service offerings, through partnering or other commercialization plans.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for a new program entitled Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy (CURIE). This new program will fund innovative technologies and approaches that will significantly improve the economics of commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities, improve reprocessing material accountancy while decreasing materials attractiveness, and drastically reduce the volume of high-level waste (HLW) requiring permanent disposal. An ARPA-E workshop was held in July 2021 to help identify and refine metrics for this new program; presentations from that workshop can be found here. The following paragraphs summarize the motivation for CURIE and the current planning for the CURIE FOA.

The U.S. currently uses a once-through fuel cycle in which approximately 4% of the uranium in nuclear fuel is consumed in a nuclear reactor before it is disposed of as HLW. After decades of using a once-through fuel cycle, the U.S. has accumulated nearly 86,000 metric tons (MT) of used nuclear fuel (UNF), an amount that increases by approximately 2,000 MT per year.[1] However, the use of nuclear fuel reprocessing, which is the recovery of valuable actinides from UNF, could close the fuel cycle by enabling the recycle of valuable actinides as new fuel for advanced reactors. Recycling UNF in this manner could greatly improve resource utilization, particularly when used in fast-spectrum advanced reactors, while dramatically reducing the volume of HLW requiring disposal. Reprocessing facility construction costs are currently estimated to range from $250 million to $20 billion,[2] but advances in separations chemistry and material accountancy technologies, front-end UNF treatment, advanced manufacturing, modularization, machine learning, and other relevant technological advances could be leveraged to drastically reduce the costs of constructing and operating a modern reprocessing facility in a safe and secure manner. The CURIE program aims to achieve this timely goal. It is part of a nearly $90M ARPA-E strategy to manage and reduce the Nation’s HLW waste inventory and complements ARPA-E’s recently announced ONWARDS program, which focuses on minimizing the waste impact of advanced reactors.

The FOA will provide specific CURIE program goals, technical metrics and selection criteria; the terms of the FOA will be controlling but currently, ARPA-E anticipates that the CURIE FOA will target research and development in the following categories:

Category 1 – Reprocessing Technologies: This technical category includes front-end- and separations process improvements and innovative equipment designs that minimize waste volumes and streams, condense unit operations, improve intrinsic proliferation resistance of actinide separations, increase resource utilization efficiency, simplify off-gas management, and/or, enable repurposing and recovery of valuable products (e.g., noble metals, medical radioisotopes). Example technology improvements include, but are not limited to, process intensification, single-cycle solvent extraction, advanced voloxidation, and fluoride volatility.

Category 2 – Integrated Monitoring & Materials Accountancy: This technical category includes technologies that support online monitoring of UNF reprocessing operations and enable materials accountancy of fissile materials at accuracy and precision levels of <1% error. This could include improved sensor fusion, instrumentation to support automated collection of real-time monitoring training sets, or novel sensors.

Category 3 – Facility Design & Systems Analysis: This category is intended for proposals that focus on lowering construction and operations and maintenance costs for reprocessing facilities via approaches such as (but not limited to) modularization of unit operations, automation, development of digital twins, and the use of advanced manufacturing techniques. It also includes systems analysis proposals that optimize the footprint, throughput, and siting of reprocessing facilities; assess the impact of reprocessing on future repository disposal costs; evaluate risks associated with a reprocessing facility; and otherwise explore ways of dramatically improving the economics, licensing, and siting of reprocessing facilities.

Category 4 - Other: This category is provided for submissions which do not cleanly fall into the above three categories but can potentially meet overall programmatic objectives.

To meet the program metrics for these areas of research, expertise in the following Technical Areas may be useful in responding to the FOA:

• Separations Chemistry (e.g., solvent extraction, pyroprocessing, halide volatility, etc.)
• Head-End Processing (e.g.,voloxidation, Kr/Xe capture, etc.)
• Process Intensification
• Material Accountancy/Online Monitoring
• Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing and Safeguards Regulations
• Digital Engineering
• Techno-Economic Analyses
• Systems Analysis and Risk Assessment
• Advanced Manufacturing and Construction, Including Modular Fabrication
• Sensors, Instrumentation, Controls, Autonomous Operation, and Robotics
• Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Digital Twins
• Project Engineering

As a general matter, ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible. Such collaboration is especially important for CURIE, as several of the technical and engineering advances (e.g., waste-minimizing separations processes, digital twins, and process intensification) that are crucial to the success of CURIE have been developed and optimized outside of the nuclear industry. To ensure a comprehensive, integrated approach to reaching CURIE’s program goals, ARPA-E is encouraging teams from the sectors such as

• National Laboratories
• Universities
• Nuclear Fuel Cycle Industry
• Oil and Gas Industry
• Chemical and Biochemical Industry
• Industrial Waste Management Companies
• Mineral Processing Industry
• AI/Robotics R&D/Industry
• Project Engineering and Construction Firms

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, in January 2022. Once posted, the Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically, until the close of the Full Application period, to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields at the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered.

This Notice does not constitute a FOA. No FOA exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the final FOA, expected to be issued February 2022 for instructions on submitting an application and for the terms and conditions of funding.

[1] Government Accountability Office, Report No. GAO-21-603, “Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel: Congressional Action Needed to Break Impasse and Develop a Permanent Disposal Solution,” published September 2021, available online at https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-603. Accessed November 12, 2021.

[2] Idaho National Laboratory, Report No. NTRD-FCO-2017-000265, “Advanced Fuel Cycle Cost Basis – 2017 Edition,” Module F1: Spent Nuclear Fuel Aqueous Reprocessing Facility, published September 29, 2017.

The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to solicit input for a potential ARPA-E program focused on the development of technologies to recover high energy-value materials from wastewater to reduce energy demands and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with conventional sourcing and waste stream treatment. Wastewater in this RFI is broadly defined, and includes municipal, livestock, industrial, and mining sources. High energy-value materials under consideration are nutrients (i.e., ammonia and phosphorus) and critical minerals, where the latter are a group of 50 elements in the periodic table including lithium and rare earth elements (REEs).

Ammonia losses from wastewater represent more than 50% of ammonia demand in the United States, requiring approximately 0.4 quads of energy per year to supply (quads/yr) and resulting in annual emissions of more than 60 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂ eq).

Metal losses in select industrial and mining wastewaters can be large as well. For example, produced water contains sufficient lithium to provide all U.S. needs (e.g., approximately 3,000 metric tons in 2022), while select mining wastewater can contain milligram per liter (mg/L) quantities of select REEs (e.g., cerium and neodymium).

The goals for this programmatic concept include the evaluation of technologies capable of efficiently recovering:

• Ammonia (or ammonia with phosphorus) as a high-quality feedstock for direct input to fertilizer supply chains or hydrogen carrier markets
• Critical minerals that can displace metal ore production or overseas procurement for domestic use

Capable technologies will be energy efficient, highly selective, and durable over extended use. Processes will involve few sequential steps and will be easily automated, easily adaptable to existing or new wastewater facilities, and scalable (e.g., modular).

ARPA-E seeks input from environmental, chemical, mechanical, electrical, biological, and systems engineers, organic and inorganic chemists, microbiologists, and others with relevant expertise. Additionally, ARPA-E seeks input from prospective end users or beneficiaries of such technologies. These include, but are not limited to, water and wastewater utilities, metals mining and processing companies, oil and gas developers, semiconductor facilities, intensive animal farmers, fertilizer producers and distributors, and raw metal suppliers.

This RFI is focused on soliciting input regarding novel approaches to recover industrial-grade high energy-value materials from wastewater that can directly enter existing supply chains. Such approaches may include but are not limited to:

• Highly selective separations that use adsorbents or membranes;
• Electrochemical, pressure, or thermal-driven separations;
• Catalytic, electrocatalytic, or biologically-facilitated reactions that promote recovery;
• Novel process designs that minimize energy use and maximize recovery; and
• Approaches to evaluate technical, economic, environmental, and technology-to-market feasibility of these strategies.

Areas Not of Interest for Responses to this RFI:

• Work focused on basic research aimed purely at discovery and fundamental knowledge generation;
• Efforts to recover only phosphorus with incomplete recovery of ammonia;
• Work focused on valorization of organics in wastewater; and
• Photocatalytic-driven redox reactions.

RFI Guidelines:

Note that the information you provide will be used by ARPA-E solely for program planning, without attribution. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME.

The purpose of this RFI is solely to solicit input for ARPA-E consideration to inform the possible formulation of future research programs. ARPA-E will not provide funding or compensation for any information submitted in response to this RFI, and ARPA-E may use information submitted to this RFI without any attribution to the source. This RFI provides the broad research community with an opportunity to contribute views and opinions.

No material submitted for review will be returned and there will be no formal or informal debriefing concerning the review of any submitted material. ARPA-E may contact respondents to request clarification or seek additional information relevant to this RFI. All responses provided will be considered, but ARPA-E will not respond to individual submissions or publish a compendium of responses. Respondents shall not include any information in the response to this RFI that could be considered proprietary or confidential.

The purpose of this RFI is to solicit input for a potential Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program focused on evaluating novel approaches to: 1) explore for naturally occurring subsurface hydrogen resources or geologic targets for hydrogen stimulation, and 2) develop methodologies to determine the recoverable reserves of hydrogen from natural accumulation or available through stimulation. These approaches will accelerate the discovery and economic evaluation of these resources and inform management steps needed to harness them.

ARPA-E is soliciting information for how the agency can foster innovation in technologies and methodologies that can accomplish the following goals:

1. Produce a suite of exploration technologies specific to detecting either naturally occurring subsurface hydrogen concentrations or viable formations for hydrogen stimulation on land and offshore;
2. Increase the accuracy and precision of detection for either naturally occurring subsurface hydrogen concentrations or viable formations for hydrogen stimulation;
3. Reduce the cost of exploration efforts for either naturally occurring subsurface hydrogen concentrations or viable formations for hydrogen stimulation;
4. Accelerate the discovery process of either naturally occurring subsurface hydrogen concentrations or viable formations for hydrogen stimulation;
5. Define the geologic processes surrounding production of naturally occurring subsurface hydrogen through either serpentinization or radiolysis of water;
6. Quantify the recharge of hydrogen reservoirs from hydrogen generative processes of naturally occurring subsurface hydrogen through either serpentinization or radiolysis of water; and
7. Inform resource prediction, site management, economic returns, subsurface engineering efforts, environmental impact and mitigation actions through better characterization and monitoring.

Areas Not of Interest for Responses to this RFI:

• Discovery or quantification of deposits of fossil fuel resources (e.g., coal, natural gas, oil) that may be converted to hydrogen;
• Identification of subsurface resources that may be only relevant for industrial production of hydrogen through electrolysis, methane pyrolysis, or any other process; and
• Funding for conventional drilling projects (e.g., “wildcat drilling” in locations that are not established oil fields).

RFI Guidelines:

Note that the information you provide will be used by ARPA-E solely for program planning, without attribution. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS RFI DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY. NO FUNDING OPPORTUNITY EXISTS AT THIS TIME.

The purpose of this RFI is solely to solicit input for ARPA-E consideration to inform the possible formulation of future research programs. ARPA-E will not provide funding or compensation for any information submitted in response to this RFI, and ARPA-E may use information submitted to this RFI without any attribution to the source. This RFI provides the broad research community with an opportunity to contribute views and opinions.

No material submitted for review will be returned and there will be no formal or informal debriefing concerning the review of any submitted material. ARPA-E may contact respondents to request clarification or seek additional information relevant to this RFI. All responses provided will be considered, but ARPA-E will not respond to individual submissions or publish a compendium of responses. Respondents shall not include any information in the response to this RFI that could be considered proprietary or confidential.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to develop transformational cooling systems for data centers. Data centers are estimated to consume around 3% of all generated electricity with up to 40% of that power used for cooling. Currently the cooling power and use of water for evaporation cooling used by data centers varies greatly depending on local climate.

ARPA-E seeks to dramatically increase the efficiency of cooling for current and future compute systems in data centers and edge computing systems by greatly lowering the thermal resistance between the chip and the coolant. This will allow heat rejection at a temperature much closer to the chip operating temperature, enabling cooling solutions with transformational lower energy usage that can operate efficiently at any location in the United States at any time of the year. This will have many benefits: increased cooling capacity to meet future high-powered computing demands, increased potential for waste heat recovery and reuse, reduced or eliminated water consumption for cooling of data centers, potential for increased chip efficiency, location independence, improved performance in hot humid climates, potential for a compact modular cooling system, and enabling current and future edge computing needs.

Integrating advanced cooling solutions in power dense electrical environment like data centers has traditionally been a challenge due to reliability concerns of the cooling system and components. Reliability of complex systems has been achieved in other technical areas such as aerospace, automotive and renewable energy platforms through dedicated system engineering approaches and reliability and controls network modeling. ARPA-E would be interested to explore advanced integrations of electronics and cooling systems that can reach high levels of reliability and performance.

To achieve these goals ARPA-E is considering a potential program to develop disruptive cooling technologies that would consume less than 5% of data center power in any geographic location at any time of the year for a very high power density compute system. In addition, these technologies would be required to demonstrate the potential to be highly reliable as a system to allow data centers to maintain industry standard uptime levels. These technologies will also need to be cost competitive, environmentally friendly, and are encouraged to minimize or eliminate the need for water consumption for cooling. ARPA–E held a virtual workshop on this topic entitled “Cooling Compute Systems Efficiently, Anytime, Anywhere” on December 13 and 14, 2021. Information from this workshop can be found here: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/events/cooling-compute-systems-efficiently-anytime-anywhere-workshop.

In pursuit of this objective, the potential program envisions four different research tracks, each with specific scope of research and development, and metrics. One of the tracks will focus specifically on the component development for secondary cooling loop that transfers heat from the chips and electronics in the data hall to the facility. A second track will focus on technology and system development that encompasses both the secondary loop and the primary loop that transfers heat from the facility water to the environment, with an emphasis on novel modular data centers.

Two other tracks will be support tracks, with one focusing on development of a modelling capability that can assess impact at the datacenter center level, and allow future operators and data center designers to analyze and design for cooling system reliability, energy consumption, carbon footprint and total cost of ownership, while the other support track is intended to focus on facilities for testing the new technologies developed under the first two tracks.

Historically, the industry has been operating in a siloed approach. ARPA-e seeks new and transformative solutions that can only be achieved by interdisciplinary teaming. Expertise in the following technical areas may be useful in responding to the potential FOA: heat transfer, fluid mechanics, material science, electronics cooling, reliability engineering, control theory, chemical engineering, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, environmental engineering, cost analysis, industrial engineering, architecture, bio-heat transfer, expertise in data center operation, design and ownership.

As a general matter, ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in May 2022. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically, until the close of the Full Application period, to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Notice, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered.

This Notice does not constitute a FOA. No FOA exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the final FOA, expected to be issued by August 2022, for instructions on submitting an application and for the terms and conditions of funding.

Update as of 09/22/2022: The FOAs associated with this Teaming Partner List can be found at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Default.aspx#FoaId14cbba61-e007-42b7-8cef-3724d1e66387 and https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Default.aspx#FoaIdfab12a1e-cf62-4097-81fa-fbedf0447e6a.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency –Energy (ARPA‐E) in the U.S. Department of Energy is seeking comments on the draft technical section of a potential future Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the CURIE program. This new program would focus on innovative technologies and approaches that will significantly improve the economics of commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities, improve reprocessing material accountancy while decreasing materials attractiveness, and drastically reduce the volume of high-level waste (HLW) requiring permanent disposal. An ARPA-E workshop was held in July 2021 to help identify and refine metrics for this contemplated program; presentations can be found here. Such technological advancements would enable a 1¢/kWh fuel cost for a secure 200 MTHM/yr facility that does not generate pure plutonium streams while significantly reducing the volume of high-level waste requiring disposal. ARPA‐E seeks input from experts in the fields of separations chemistry (e.g., solvent extraction, pyroprocessing, halide volatility, etc.); head-end processing (e.g., voloxidation, Kr/Xe capture, etc.); process intensification; material accountancy/online monitoring; project engineering; techno-economic analysis; digital engineering; systems analysis and risk assessment; advanced manufacturing and construction (including modular fabrication); artificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital twins; and sensors, instrumentation, autonomous operation, and robotics.

Please carefully review the REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES below and note in particular: the information you provide will be used by ARPA-E solely for program planning, without attribution. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME. Respondents shall not include any information in their response to this RFI that might be considered proprietary or confidential.

Purpose and Need for Information:

The purpose of this RFI is solely to solicit input about the scope of the draft technical section of the CURIE FOA for ARPA-E consideration. ARPA-E will not provide funding or compensation for any information submitted in response to this RFI, and ARPA-E may use information submitted to this RFI without any attribution to the source. This RFI provides the broader research community with an opportunity to contribute views and opinions regarding the technology and economics of reprocessing facilities.

This RFI previews only the draft technical section for a possible future program solicitation. If respondents are interested in other sections, including general format and requirements of an ARPA-E FOA, please visit https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/. DE-FOA-0002212: Breakthroughs Enabling Thermonuclear-fusion Energy (BETHE) is a sample FOA to reference. A few common sections include but are not limited to:

• III.A: Eligible Applicants (e.g., domestic entities)
• III.B: Cost-Sharing IV.C: Content and Form of full applications
• VI.C: Reporting (e.g., cost)
• VIII.B: Government Rights in Subject Inventions
• VIII.C: Rights in Technical Data

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES:

A summary of RFI responses will be presented by Program Director Jenifer Shafer on February 23-24, 2022, at ARPA-E’s CURIE Industry Day. Individuals interested in attending the CURIE Industry Day event should indicate this in the RFI response.

ARPA-E may contact respondents to request clarification or seek additional information relevant to this RFI. All responses provided will be considered, but ARPA-E will not respond to individual submissions. Respondents shall not include any information in the response to this RFI that might be considered proprietary or confidential.

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM eastern time on February 21,2022. Emails should conform to the following guidelines:

Please insert “Responses for CURIE” in the subject line of your email, and include your name, title, organization, type of organization (e.g., university, non-governmental organization, small business, large business, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), government-owned/government-operated (GOGO), etc.), email address, telephone number, and area of expertise in the body of your email. Responses to this RFI are limited to no more than 5 pages in length (12-point font size). Respondents are strongly encouraged to include preliminary results, data, and figures that describe their potential methodologies.

Questions: ARPA-E encourages responses that address any subset of the following questions and encourages the inclusion of references to important supplementary information.

1. For elements/radioisotopes present in used nuclear fuel that could be valuable for recovery, what are the estimated potential demand and prices for these elements/radioisotopes?

2. Are there specific technical research topics being considered that may fall under the “other” category of the draft technical section?

3. What is an envisioned timeline for gaining the requisite approvals and materials access necessary to use actual used nuclear fuel (UNF) for research experiments?

4. What other considerations (e.g., site use or transportation restrictions) should ARPA-E be aware of regarding the use of actual UNF in CURIE project proposals?

5. Any other issues, questions, or feedback regarding the draft FOA.

Introduction

The purpose of this RFI is to solicit input for a potential future ARPA-E research program focused on technologies related to harvesting high value metals essential for the clean energy transition from terrestrial environments using metal hyperaccumulators (HAs). The goal is to establish economic, sustainable, and low carbon-footprint domestic supply chains of high value metals to promote an accelerated clean energy transition without supply chain constraints. ARPA-E is seeking information at this time regarding transformative and implementable technologies that could:

(a) Identify or develop hyperaccumulators suitable for economically viable phytomining in the United States. Examples include agronomic techniques to domesticate hyperaccumulating species, yield higher biomass, and to control the seed dispersal; systems biology approaches to gain desired phenotypes such as high rates of growth, fast metal uptake, and accumulation of optimal metal compounds in parts of the plant that are optimal for extraction with low carbon-footprint approaches. ARPA-E's interest includes perennial species with high biomass and high metal uptake, including tree species, and any hyperaccumulators that could be grown on high-metal, nonarable lands in the US such as ultramafic serpentine soil and mine tailings.

(b) Increase total metal uptake in hyperaccumulators that can be grown at large commercial scales in the United States. Examples include microbiome engineering to dissolve metals and engineering hyperaccumulators to grow deeper roots to expand the pool of metals available without strip mining. System-level approaches are encouraged to address the questions in this RFI. For example, employing integrated rhizosphere engineering, metal transport, and accumulation to desired locations in the plants such as saps, accumulation of metals in desired chemical forms, and monitoring/analysis tools.

(c) Extract metal from hyperaccumulators using processes that produce the lowest possible carbon emissions, ideally even carbon-negative. Examples include pre-treatment of biomass before or after drying to increase the yield, new metallurgical routes to extract metals with high yields and low impurities, and novel approaches to extract metals in desired chemical forms. ARPA-E is seeking information regarding extraction strategies without emitting carbon accumulated in the biomass back into the atmosphere. System-level approaches are encouraged to address the questions in this RFI. For example, employing integrated treatment of biomass to utilize accumulated carbon while extracting metals, co-processing of more than one type of biomass, integration with existing biomass processing routes, and recycling and recovery towards circular processes and economy.

(d) Produce high-value, high-purity chemical forms of metals directly from phytomining, which can enter the value chain of battery manufacturing and other clean-energy technologies without further processing. ARPA-E is seeking information for shortening the routes to clean energy-relevant mineral forms that can be used with minimal additional cost (CAPEX, energy, processing).

Note that some approaches may fit several of the technology categories described above. For instance, systems biology optimization of hyperaccumulators could be used to develop hyperaccumulators that are suitable for the climate and soil in the United States, while also increasing biomass, increasing metal uptake, and yielding the desired physical or chemical form of the metals of interest. Using nickel as an example target metal, ARPA-E is seeking information for new approaches that could reach at least 500 kg Ni/ha per year and >90% net greenhouse gas reduction compared to the state-of-the-art HPAL (high pressure acid leaching) process based on a lifecycle analysis.

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES

No material submitted for review will be returned and there will be no formal or informal debriefing concerning the review of any submitted material. ARPA-E may contact respondents to request clarification or seek additional information relevant to this RFI. All responses provided will be considered, but ARPA-E will not respond to individual submissions or publish publicly a compendium of responses. Respondents shall not include any information in the response to this RFI that could be considered proprietary or confidential..

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on May 26, 2022. Emails should conform to the following guidelines:

• Please insert “Response to <insert RFI name> - <your organization name>” in the subject line of your email.
• In the body of your email, include your name, title, organization, type of organization (e.g. university, non-governmental organization, small business, large business, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), government-owned/government-operated (GOGO), etc.), email address, telephone number, and area of expertise.
• Responses to this RFI are limited to no more than 12 pages in length (12-point font size).
• Responders are strongly encouraged to include preliminary results, data, and figures that describe their potential processes.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA–E) is considering issuing a new Exploratory Topic under Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) DE‐ FOA‐0002784 and DE‐FOA‐0002785 to evaluate the feasibility of extracting rare-earth and other high-value trace critical minerals from macroalgae cultivated in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone.

Rare Earth Elements (REEs) and Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) are critical to the manufacture of modern energy and national security technologies, such as electric vehicles, high-efficiency lighting, and wind turbines. While demand for these elements and metals continues to increase, economically and environmentally viable deposits are difficult to realize, and especially within the US. Research suggests that macroalgae may be an effective bioaccumulator of critical minerals.[1][2][3][4] However, the environmental and biological variables influencing the capacity of macroalgae as a bioaccumulator are poorly understood. In addition, while extraction methods exist, the ability to extract minerals efficiently and selectively from macroalgae in an environmentally sustainable manner (e.g., reduced carbon generation and/or water use) alongside the valorization of other macroalgal components is limited.

To quantify the efficacy of macroalgae as a critical mineral source, exploration and innovation are needed to evaluate the influencing factors and ultimate capabilities of macroalgal varieties to accumulate these minerals and the ability to efficiently extract these minerals in an economically viable form. If issued, this Exploratory Topic will likely consist of two complementary tasks.

(1) Macroalgal Composition: Focused on identifying mechanisms and maximizing the bioaccumulation of REE/PGM elements in brown or red marine macroalgal species with examination of the influence of environmental inputs, seasonal effect and macroalgal species type, and with expectation to provide 10kg of optimized macroalgal biomass containing the targeted hyperaccumulated REE/PGM for efforts under Task 2.

(2) Element Extraction: Focused on the development of new processes for the efficient extraction and processing of REE/PGM elements into usable forms for energy applications from macroalgal biomass alongside valorization of other macroalgal components (i.e., carbon content, nitrates, etc.), demonstrated with macroalgal biomass samples developed under Task 1.

As a general matter, ARPA–E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to form new project teams. Multidisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore, ARPA-E strongly encourages involving industry partners to advise and collaborate with these project teams, with the goal of achieving successful industry adoption and integration of the innovative technologies these projects teams develop.

A Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. ARPA-E intends to make the Teaming Partner List available on ARPA–E Exchange (https://ARPA–E-foa.energy.gov), ARPA–E’s online application portal, in December 2022. Once posted, the Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically, until the close of the Full Application period, to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on the Teaming Partner List should complete all required fields in the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/ApplicantProfile.aspx. Required information includes: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Announcement, respondents consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating and publishing this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E is not endorsing, sponsoring, or otherwise evaluating the qualifications of the individuals and organizations that are self-identifying themselves for placement on this Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E reserves the right to remove any inappropriate responses to this Announcement (including lack of sufficient relevance to, or experience with, the technical topic of the Announcement). ARPA–E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted by any means other than via the link provided above will not be considered.

This Announcement does not constitute a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). No FOA exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the final Exploratory Topic, expected to be issued in January 2023 under the FOAs noted at the beginning of this Teaming Partner List, for instructions on submitting an application, the desired technical metrics, and for the terms and conditions of funding.

Update as of 4/28/2023: The FOA associated with this ET Teaming List can be found at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Default.aspx#FoaId521a7aa4-b255-4c3b-a211-b128d2a4a0e4.

[1] Nora Shenouda Gad, Biosorption of rare earth elements using biomass of Sargassum on El-Atshan Trachytic sill, Central Eastern Desert, Egypt, Egyptian Journal of Petroleum, Volume 25, Issue 4, 2016, Pages 445-451, ISSN 1110-0621, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpe.2015.10.013.

[2] Jéssica Jacinto, Bruno Henriques, A.C. Duarte, Carlos Vale, E. Pereira, Removal and recovery of Critical Rare Elements from contaminated waters by living Gracilaria gracilis, Journal of Hazardous Materials, Volume 344, 2018, Pages 531-538, ISSN 0304-3894, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2017.10.054.

[3] João Pinto, Bruno Henriques, José Soares, Marcelo Costa, Mariana Dias, Elaine Fabre, Cláudia B. Lopes, Carlos Vale, José Pinheiro-Torres, Eduarda Pereira, A green method based on living macroalgae for the removal of rare earth elements from contaminated waters, Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 263, 2020, 110376, ISSN 0301-4797, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.110376.

[4] Thainara Viana, Bruno Henriques, Nicole Ferreira, Cláudia Lopes, Daniela Tavares, Elaine Fabre, Lina Carvalho, José Pinheiro-Torres, Eduarda Pereira, Sustainable recovery of neodymium and dysprosium from waters through seaweeds: Influence of operational parameters, Chemosphere, Volume 280, 2021, 130600, ISSN 0045-6535, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.130600.

ARPA-E is interested in surveying bio-based ideas across the entire supply chain of critical materials and other metals (Ni, Cu), including exploration, mining, extraction, processing, refining and recycling/recovery of such materials. ARPA-E requests responses focusing on the feedstock supply for successfully meeting the domestic demand, economic feasibility and environmental sustainability of critical materials.

Please carefully review the REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES below. Please note, in particular, that the information you provide will be used by ARPA-E solely for program planning, without attribution. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME.

Purpose and Need for Information

The purpose of this RFI is solely to solicit input for ARPA-E consideration to inform the possible formulation of future research programs. ARPA-E will not provide funding or compensation for any information submitted in response to this RFI, and ARPA-E may use information submitted to this RFI without any attribution to the source. This RFI provides the broad research community with an opportunity to contribute views and opinions.

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES

No material submitted for review will be returned and there will be no formal or informal debriefing concerning the review of any submitted material. ARPA-E may contact respondents to request clarification or seek additional information relevant to this RFI. All responses provided will be considered, but ARPA-E will not respond to individual submissions or publish publicly a compendium of responses. Respondents should clearly mark any information in the response to this RFI that might be considered proprietary or confidential. Information labeled proprietary or confidential will not be released by DOE, but may be used to inform ARPA-E’s planning.

Depending on the responses to this RFI, ARPA‐E may consider the rapid initiation of one or more funded collaborative projects to accelerate along the path towards commercial deployment of the energy technologies described generally above.

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on December 17, 2019. Emails should conform to the following guidelines:

• Please insert “Responses for Critical Minerals RFI” in the subject line of your email, and include your name, title, organization, type of organization (e.g. university, non-governmental organization, small business, large business, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), government-owned/government-operated (GOGO), etc.), email address, telephone number, and area of expertise in the body of your email.
• Responses to this RFI are limited to no more than 10 pages in length (12 point font size).
• Responders are strongly encouraged to include preliminary results, data, and figures that describe their potential methodologies.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is considering issuing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to support the development of new technologies to recover high energy-value materials from wastewater to reduce reliance on foreign imports, domestic energy demands, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional sourcing and waste stream treatment. The purpose of this announcement is to facilitate the formation of new project teams to respond to a potential future NOFO. Any NOFO issued in the future would provide specific program goals, technical metrics, and selection criteria. If there are any inconsistencies between this announcement and the potential NOFO, the NOFO language would be controlling.

The anticipated goal of the program is to develop technology to recover multiple critical minerals and/or ammonia-based products from domestic wastewater sources. Critical minerals of highest interest are those designated by the Department of Energy as the 12 most energy and supply-chain relevant metals, including lithium, cobalt, and rare-earth elements. Ammonia-based products include fertilizers, other high-value nitrogen products, and hydrogen from ammonia oxidation. Wastewater is broadly defined and may include (but is not limited to) municipal, livestock, industrial, and mining waste streams. Capable technologies for recovery of high energy-value ammonia and critical minerals will be energy efficient, highly selective, and durable over extended use. Preferable processes will be continuous, involve few sequential steps, easily adaptable to existing or new wastewater facilities, and scalable (e.g., modular).

Several technical categories are foreseen to achieve this objective, including:

1. New functional-materials development to address the difficulty of separating and concentrating target ions of similar size, charge, redox potential, and solubility within the complex and harsh conditions of a target wastewater matrix;
2. Process derisking to enable continuous or repeated cycles of efficient recovery of a market-valuable product in minimal steps (again within the complex and harsh conditions of a target wastewater matrix); and
3. Process integration to ensure technologies are capable of energy-efficient and continuous recovery of market-valuable product in a real wastewater matrix, and that the process is scalable to anticipated wastewater flow rates.

For all categories, the final recovered products will need to include at least two targeted high energy-value materials, have greater than 90% recovery efficiency, and be commercially viable in the U.S. market.

Expertise in the following areas may be useful in responding to the potential NOFO:

• Organic synthesis, chelation, and/or redox chemistries
• Water/wastewater chemistry
• Synthetic/molecular biology
• Biologically-inspired separations
• Electrochemical separations
• Ion exchange separations
• Membrane separations
• Process engineering
• Wastewater treatment, operation, and/or management
• Techno-economic assessment

ARPA-E held a workshop on this topic in August 2024. Information on this workshop can be found at https://arpa-e.energy.gov/events/ammonia-critical-minerals-recovery-workshop.

ARPA-E strongly encourages outstanding scientists and engineers from different organizations, scientific disciplines, and technology sectors to submit their information to form new project teams. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration spanning organizational boundaries enables and accelerates the achievement of scientific and technological outcomes that were previously viewed as extremely difficult, if not impossible.

The Teaming Partner List is being compiled to facilitate the formation of new project teams. The Teaming Partner List will be available on ARPA-E eXCHANGE (http://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov), ARPA-E’s online application portal, starting in October 2024. The Teaming Partner List will be updated periodically until the close of the Full Application period to reflect new Teaming Partners who have provided their information.

Any organization that would like to be included on this list should complete all required fields in the form at the following link: https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Applicantprofile.aspx. Required information includes the following: Organization Name, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Email, Contact Phone, Organization Type, Area of Technical Expertise, and Brief Description of Capabilities.

By submitting a response to this Notice, you consent to the publication of the above-referenced information. By facilitating this Teaming Partner List, ARPA-E does not endorse or otherwise evaluate the qualifications of the entities that self-identify for placement on the Teaming Partner List. ARPA-E will not pay for the provision of any information, nor will it compensate any respondents for the development of such information. Responses submitted to other email addresses or by other means will not be considered. This list is completely voluntarily to participate in and utilize. ARPA-E will not identify or facilitate connections through the Teaming Partner List and participation in the list has no bearing whatsoever on the evaluation of applications submitted to the potential NOFO.

This Notice does not constitute a NOFO. No NOFO exists at this time. Applicants must refer to the NOFO, expected to be issued by November 2024, for instructions on submitting an application and for details on how projects will be funded.

The purpose of this RFI is to solicit input for a potential future ARPA-E research program focused on achieving a circular and domestic battery supply chain for various types of electric vehicles including scooters, cars, buses, trucks, trains, ships, and aircrafts.

The potential program is not concerned with supplies of critical minerals or with existing battery recycling processes. Instead, it focuses on alternative strategies that can be implemented to achieve circularity including servicing, upgrading, refurbishing, and remanufacturing of batteries. The primary goals are (1) to identify materials (e.g., electrode materials, electrolytes, adhesives) amenable to in-cell regeneration to prolong the life of batteries, (2) to develop sustainable design and manufacturing of battery cells, modules, and packs that facilitate serviceability, disassembly, refurbishing, and recovery of materials and/or components at the end of life, and (3) to minimize waste, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions during the battery lifecycle. Such transformation should be achieved without affecting the performance and safety of the battery packs.

ARPA-E is seeking information at this time regarding transformative and implementable technologies that can:

• Extend the life of battery materials, cells, modules, and/or pack through regeneration, servicing or maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, and remanufacturing. Examples include selection of electrode materials that can be regenerated through thermomechanical, chemical, and/or electrochemical treatments,
• Develop designs and manufacturing processes for cells, modules and packs that can be easily disassembled to enable servicing, reuse, refurbishing, or remanufacturing, and
• Minimize the overall amount of waste generated, energy consumed, and greenhouse gas emitted throughout the battery manufacturing, servicing, and recycling processes. Examples include designs that avoid permanent bonding or any fabrication that requires destructive disassembly (e.g., shredding).

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME.

Respondents shall not include any information in their response to this RFI that might be considered proprietary or confidential.

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on Monday, April 3, 2023.

Introduction:

The purpose of this RFI is to solicit input for a potential future ARPA-E research program focused on technologies to prevent and/or abate methane emissions. The goal is to reverse the rate of accumulation of methane in the atmosphere, resulting in a decrease in atmospheric methane concentration. ARPA-E is seeking information at this time regarding transformative and implementable technologies that could:

(a) Prevent methane emissions from anthropogenic activities. Examples include addressing improperly abandoned coal mines and oil and gas wells; plugged oil and gas wells that leak; uncontrolled landfill gas; and agricultural-related emissions from farming and ruminants.Emphasis will be on preventing energy-related emissions, but ARPA-E is interested in approaches that could be broadly applied which intervene before methane escapes into the atmosphere.

(b) Abate methane emissions at the source (stack, vents, leaks, etc.).Sources may have steady or variable flow rates and/or concentration.Source temperatures may range from ambient to elevated (i.e. >200 C).System-level approaches are encouraged (i.e. integrated methane collection/capture, reactor, and monitoring/control system).

(c) Remove methane from the air. Examples include approaches which enhance methane oxidation reactions in the troposphere, mineralization (i.e. biological oxidation of methane to CO₂) in soils, or recover methane for use as a fuel or chemical reactant.

Note that some approaches may fit several categories. For example, biological enhancement of methanotropes could be used to prevent methane emissions from coal mines, abate emissions from leaks, and remove methane from air. Priority is oxidation of methane to CO₂. Technologies that recover or beneficially use methane will need to show ability to address at least 1 billion standard cubic feet/yr economically.

ARPA-E is interested in processes that reduce methane emissions by >90% on a life-cycle basis. Inputs, including energy and water, need to be quantified. The performance metrics for cost[1] and water inputs[2] are intended to allow comparison of methane prevention and abatement processes to CO2 control processes. Performance targets include:

a) Net greenhouse gas reduction >90% based on a lifecycle analysis, calculated using 100 year greenhouse gas warming potentials for all relevant species.

b) Freshwater consumption <3 m³/ton CO₂ equivalent

c) Methane reduction cost $150/ton CO₂ equivalent

d) No emission of toxic or environmentally harmful substances

Please carefully review the REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES. Please note, in particular, that the information you provide will be used by ARPA-E solely for program planning, without attribution. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME.

Purpose and Need for Information

The purpose of this RFI is solely to solicit input for ARPA-E consideration to inform the possible formulation of future research programs. ARPA-E will not provide funding or compensation for any information submitted in response to this RFI, and ARPA-E may use information submitted to this RFI without any attribution to the source. This RFI provides the broad research community with an opportunity to contribute views and opinions.

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES

No material submitted for review will be returned and there will be no formal or informal debriefing concerning the review of any submitted material. ARPA-E may contact respondents to request clarification or seek additional information relevant to this RFI. All responses provided will be considered, but ARPA-E will not respond to individual submissions or publish publicly a compendium of responses. Respondents should clearly mark any information in the response to this RFI that might be considered proprietary or confidential. Information marked proprietary or confidential will protected from public release by DOE to the maximum extent permitted by law, such as Exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act.

Depending on the responses to this RFI, ARPA‐E may consider the rapid initiation of one or more funded collaborative projects to accelerate along the path towards commercial deployment of the energy technologies described generally above.

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on October 15, 2020. Emails should conform to the following guidelines:

• Please insert “Responses for Methane Prevention and Abatement RFI” in the subject line of your email, and include your name, title, organization, type of organization (e.g. university, non-governmental organization, small business, large business, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), government-owned/government-operated (GOGO), etc.), email address, telephone number, and area of expertise in the body of your email.
• Responses to this RFI are limited to no more than 10 pages in length (12-point font size).
• Responders are strongly encouraged to include preliminary results, data, and figures that describe their potential processes.

[1] https://netl.doe.gov/projects/files/CostandPerformanceofBituminousCoalandNGPlantswithCCSRev4_091020.pdf

[2] Rosa, L., et al. Nat Sustain 3, 658–666 (2020).

Please carefully review the REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES below, and note, in particular, the information you provide will be used by ARPA-E solely for program planning, without attribution. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME. Respondents shall not include any information in their response to this RFI that might be considered proprietary or confidential.

Background:

Waste heat recovery is a significant opportunity – in 2015, 59.2 quadrillion BTU of energy was wasted mainly in the form of heat[1]. Much of the waste heat has been characterized by its source and its temperature, particularly in the transportation and power generation sectors[2], as well as in the industrial sector[3]; only very limited waste heat characterization has been applied to the buildings sector. In total, approximately 71% of all waste heat sources have been well characterized, as shown in Table 1.

Through aggregated analysis of waste heat data from the literature, ARPA-E found that most waste heat (~75%) is low-grade (≤230^oC). This temperature regime is not easily converted to usable work as its exergy is roughly a third of the total heat generated (Figure 2); a Carnot analysis yields a maximum efficiency of only ~40% (e.g. 25°C cold-side). A majority of the higher grade waste heat resides in the 230°C to 400°C range. This can be seen in Figure 2, which shows the cumulative percentage of total waste heat as a function of temperature differential. Figure 2 also illustrates the cumulative percent of the total maximum work potential at each temperature difference. The maximum work potential is defined here as the amount of waste heat available at any temperature multiplied by the Carnot efficiency at that temperature. From Figure 2, it can be seen that approximately 85% of work potential from waste heat sources across all sectors in the United States comes from waste heat sources at or below 400°C. Thus, ARPA-E is keenly interested in waste heat conversion in this temperature range.

Several technologies exist to realize the opportunity of lower-grade waste heat recovery, and are typically either mechanical, solid state, or hybrid systems. Examples of mechanical systems include the Organic Rankine cycle, and Kalina cycle, while examples of solid-state devices include thermoelectric generators, piezoelectrics, and multiferroics among others. Mechanical systems are often limited by their complexity, large footprint (e.g. size/mass), and parasitic power requirements. These are particularly challenging limitations for waste heat recovery in the transportation or mobile sectors, where a majority of the opportunity lies (Table 2). Solid-state devices have advantages in mobile applications due to their small footprint and lack of complexity and parasitic power requirement. Unfortunately, existing solid-state technologies have low efficiency and high cost. However, there may exist an opportunity to greatly improve most solid-state technologies.

For example, one might seek to improve the performance per unit cost of a thermoelectric generator (TEG). To date, TEG devices remain very inefficient (<6%) and costly. If their figure of merit for TEGs (ZT, a surrogate for device efficiency), were to be improved from current state-of-the-art values of around 0.8 – 1.4 up to 3, device efficiencies could reach approximately 20%. With that level of performance, if device costs could also drop to $1/W, TEGs could significantly penetrate the waste heat recovery market[1]; this would include a significant portion of the work potential in Table 2. Similar transformative performance and cost goals can be envisioned for the other solid-state waste heat recovery systems.

Thus, ARPA-E is seeking input from the broader research and development community regarding lower grade waste heat recovery systems and, in particular, solid-state recovery opportunities. Since preparing technologies for an eventual transfer from lab to market is a key element of ARPA-E's mission, concepts should eventually be commercializable with reasonable operational systems costs (e.g. $1/watt).

Purpose and Need for Information:

The purpose of this RFI is solely to solicit input for ARPA-E’s consideration to inform the possible formulation of future programs intended to help create transformative waste heat recovery systems. ARPA-E will not provide funding or compensation for any information submitted in response to this RFI, and ARPA-E may use the information submitted to this RFI on a non-attribution basis. This RFI provides the broader research community with an opportunity to contribute their views and opinions regarding the needed development path for waste heat recovery technologies, including energy use and adoption consideration in relevant end-use applications. Based on the input provided to this RFI and other considerations, ARPA-E may decide to issue a Funding Opportunity Agreement (FOA). If a FOA is published, it will be issued under a new FOA number. No FOA exists at this time. Additionally, ARPA-E reserves the right to not issue a FOA in this area.

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES:

ARPA-E is not accepting applications for financial assistance or financial incentives under this RFI. Responses to this RFI will not be viewed as any commitment by the respondent to develop or pursue the project or ideas discussed. ARPA-E may decide at a later date to issue a FOA based on consideration of the input received from this RFI. No material submitted for review will be returned and there will be no formal or informal debriefing concerning the review of any submitted material. ARPA-E reserves the right to contact a respondent to request clarification or other information relevant to this RFI. All responses provided will be taken into consideration, but ARPA-E will not respond to individual submissions or publish publicly a compendium of responses. Respondents shall not include any information in the response to this RFI that might be considered proprietary or confidential.

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on Friday, September 30th, 2016. ARPA-E will not review or consider comments submitted by other means. All emails should conform to the following guidelines:

• Please insert "Responses for RFI for FOA DE-FOA-0001607" in the subject line of your email
• Please include name, title, organization, type of organization (e.g., university, non-governmental organization, small busines, large business, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), government-owned/government-operated (GOGO), etc.) email address, telephone number, and area of expertise in the body of your email.
• Responses to this RFI are limited to no more than 10 pages in length (12 point font size).
• Responders are strongly encouraged to include preliminary results, data, and figures that describe their potential medodologies. However, do not include any information in a response to this RFI that might be considered properietary or confidential.
• Questions: ARPA-E encourages responses that address any subset of the following questions of relevance to the respondent and encourages the inclusion of references to important supplementary information.
  

ARPA-E seeks input from researchers and developers in a broad range of disciplines including automotive vehicle control, powertrain control and transportation analytics regarding the development of advanced energy efficiency optimization technologies for future connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). ARPA-E is requesting information on new and emerging full vehicle and powertrain control technologies that can reduce the energy use associated with automotive transportation, beyond those technologies currently expected to be deployed in future vehicles. These additional energy efficiency optimization technologies may include, but are not limited to, advanced technologies and concepts relating to future full vehicle and powertrain control, individual vehicle and powertrain operation, control and optimization facilitated by connectivity, and the reduction of the fuel and/or energy consumed by future individual vehicles undergoing either human operation or automated operation.

Any potential technical solutions that might be of interest to ARPA-E would ultimately require a demonstrable pathway through commercialization and widespread deployment to reduce the fuel and energy consumed in the current and/or future vehicle transportation fleet. Well-established methods of reducing individual vehicle fuel or energy consumption, such as hybridization, electrification, fuel shifting or alternative fuel substitution, weight reduction, aerodynamic drag reduction, waste energy recovery and parasitic load reduction, are specifically not of interest in this Request for Information (RFI).

The emphasis of this RFI is on reducing the energy consumption of individual vehicles, and not on transportation system technologies such as transportation network optimization, ridesharing, or transportation mode shifting. (ARPA-E has previously solicited technology solutions to minimize energy consumption in America’s surface transportation network through the use of network control mechanisms that operate through personalized signals directed at individual travelers through the TRANSNET FOA ). While it is clear that transportation system optimization is an invaluable energy efficiency tool, the focus of this current RFI is on maximizing the energy efficiency of each individual vehicle (while acknowledging that each such individual vehicle will potentially be an element of a broader transportation system).

A range of improved powertrain control techniques will be made possible in the near future by the increase in information available to on-board vehicles through connectivity such as V2X (e.g. look ahead data), and it is clear that certain further improvements in powertrain controls will occur even without this additional technology. In this RFI, it is envisioned that the future total reduction in energy consumption of an individual vehicle will be due to some combination of improved on-board powertrain controls (with improved real or virtual sensing and/or the use of V2X connectivity and real-time optimization), improved vehicle controls (using real or virtual sensing and/or the use of V2X), new inputs from external or fleet-level optimization, and ultimately the ability to operate in a driverless fashion in the case of automated vehicles (thereby removing the effect of the human driver from the vehicle and powertrain control systems).

Technologies contemplated in this RFI are required to be capable of meeting the prevailing regulated vehicle emissions levels at the expected time of commercial deployment, and must ultimately result in equivalent (or acceptable) vehicle performance, utility, cost of ownership and operation, functionality, drivability, power and energy storage density, reliability and maintainability, without compromise.

From a control point of view, currently vehicles operate in isolation as a collection of single ‘selfish’ entities, even in dense traffic. Developments in connectivity and automation will allow vehicles in the future to operate in a cooperative fashion with other surrounding vehicles. The effects of individual vehicle or powertrain control on the cumulative energy efficiency of a cohort of vehicles undertaking cooperative vehicle behavior have not yet been fully explored.

The focus of this RFI is on the potential improvement in the energy efficiency of each individual vehicle in the automotive fleet, through the improvement of powertrain control and vehicle dynamic control, by utilizing emerging technologies and strategies in sensing, communications, information, control and automation.

The purpose of this RFI is to solicit input for ARPA-E consideration to inform the possible formulation of future programs intended to help reduce the total energy used in the transportation sector. This RFI provides the broad research community with an opportunity to contribute views and opinions regarding current and future powertrain and vehicle control technologies, and their use in energy efficiency optimization.

Please carefully review the REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES below, and note in particular: the information you provide may be used by ARPA-E in support of program planning, without attribution. THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS NOTICE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT (FOA). NO FOA EXISTS AT THIS TIME. Respondents shall not include any information in their response to this RFI that might be considered proprietary or confidential.

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION GUIDELINES:

Responses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on February 1, 2016. ARPA-E will accept responses to this RFI immediately.

Please insert “Response to RFI for DE-FOA-0001473” in the subject line of your email, and include:

• Your name;
• Organization;
• Type of organization (e.g. academic, industry, government, individual, non-profit etc.);
• Email address;
• Contact telephone number in the body of your email and;
• Your responses to the questions posed in the PDF document titled "RFI-Energy Efficiency Optimaization - 01.04.2016" provided below.