North Carolina State University and Research Triangle Institute have received $4.7 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy to help change the way the country uses and produces energy.
The grants were part of $106 million the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy handed out Thursday in 37 grants to produce advanced biofuels more efficiently from renewable electricity instead of sunlight, design completely new types of batteries to make electric vehicles more affordable and remove the carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants in a more cost-effective way.
N.C. State will use $2.7 million to engineer a novel pathway into a high-temperature organism to use hydrogen gas to convert carbon dioxide into precursor compounds that can be used to produce biofuels like butanol.
RTI’s $2 million grant will fund a project to use solvents that exploit a new type of reversible chemical reaction with carbon dioxide. This approach could require 40 percent less energy compared to current processes.
“These projects show that the U.S. can lead the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, which will help create new jobs, spur innovation and economic growth while helping to cut carbon pollution dramatically,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.
