Several geothermal research projects receive total of $1.1m U.S. DOE funding

In a release this week, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) announced more than $20.1 million in federal funding for 58 projects supported by DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF).

The projects are a part of a larger Department-wide TCF effort, in which 82 projects will receive more than $33 million in federal funding and more than $36 million in matching funds from the private sector.

TCF projects require a 50% match of non-federal funds. A list of the EERE-funded projects and lab partnerships follows.

The following geothermal energy related projects received funding:

• Argonne National Laboratory: Demonstration of Ceramicrete (R) as a Robust Geothermal Well Cement, $250,000
• Brookhaven National Laboratory: Sustainable Well Cement for Geothermal, Thermal Recovery and Carbon Storage Wells, $249,999 – companies involved HERO (Seattle, WA), Imerys (Chesapeake, VA), Resource cementing (Rio Vista, CA), and Trabits Group (Wasilla, AK)
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Geothermal Resource Portfolio Optimization & Reporting Technique, $112,500 – companies/ groups involved CanGEA (Calgary, Canada), Hungarian Geological Survey (Budapest, Hungary), International Geothermal Association (Bonn, Germany), Jacobs Engineering, Inc. (Auckland, New Zealand), Reykjavik Energy (Reykjavik, Iceland)
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Recovery of Lithium from Geothermal Brine with Lithium-Aluminum Layered Double Hydroxide Chloride Sorbents, $500,000 – companies/ groups involved All American Lithium (Brawley, CA), Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho Falls, ID)

Source: U.S. Department of Energy/ Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy