HPC4EnergyInnovation Program: Collaborations for U.S. Manufacturers

Added:Nov 04, 2019 12:16 pmThe High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) Program seeks qualified industry partners to participate in short-term, collaborative projects with the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories. Through support from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) and DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE), the selected industry partners will be granted access to high performance computing (HPC) facilities and world-class scientists at DOE’s national laboratories. HPC4EI is the umbrella program for the HPC4Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) and HPC4Materials (HPC4Mtls) programs.• The HPC4Mfg Program is interested in establishing collaborations that address key manufacturing challenges by applying modeling, simulation, and data analysis. The program aims to improve energy efficiency, increase productivity, reduce cycle time, enable next-generation technologies, investigate intensified processes, lower

energy cost, and accelerate innovation.• The HPC4Mtls Program is interested in collaborations that address key challenges in developing, modifying, and/or qualifying new or modified materials that perform well in severe or complex environments through the application of HPC, modeling, simulation, and data analysis.Outlined below in the Background Section are topics of interest specific to the offices supporting this solicitation.Eligibility for the HPC4Mfg and HPC4Mtls programs is limited to entities that manufacture or develop products in the United States for commercial applications and the organizations that support them. Additionally, the proposed project must be executed in the United States. Selected demonstration projects will be awarded up to $300,000 to support compute cycles and work performed by the national lab partners. The industry partner must provide a participant contribution of at least 20% of the total project funding for the project.In addition, we will consider follow-on projects to previously awarded, successful demonstration projects in these areas. These projects should focus on the further implementation of the demonstrated HPC application in the industrial setting - taking it closer to operational use and broad national impact. Selected follow-on projects will be awarded up to $300,000 to support computing cycles and work performed by the national lab partners. The industry partner must provide a participant contribution of at least 33.3% of the total project funding; of this, at least half must be in cash to support the national laboratory work.BackgroundDOE maintains world-class HPC expertise and facilities, currently hosting 7 of the top 15 most powerful computers in the world. From detailed subatomic-level simulations to massive cosmological studies, researchers use HPC to probe science and technology questions inaccessible by experimental methods. Scientific insights gained from these computational studies have drastically impacted research and technology across industrial sectors and scientific fields. Examples include additive manufacturing, aerospace, oil recovery, drug development, climate science, genomics, and exploration of fundamental particles that make up our universe. From industry to academia, the scientific need for advanced computing continues to drive innovation and development for future high performance computers and their capabilities.There is high potential for U.S. industry to utilize the power of HPC. The HPC4EI Program is intended to provide HPC expertise and resources to industry to lower the risk of HPC adoption and broaden its use to support transformational and early-stage technology development. The HPC4EI Program hopes to provide this HPC expertise by supporting targeted collaborations between industry and DOE’s national laboratories.Successful applicants will work collaboratively with staff from one or more of the DOE laboratories to conduct project activities across the various HPC areas of expertise, including development and optimization of modeling and simulation codes, porting and scaling of applications, application of data analytics, as well as applied research and development of tools or methods.To make the broadest impact across the industry, the project teams are expected to present their results at workshops associated with the program and at regional and national conferences. Publications in appropriate trade journals are also encouraged.Area 1: HPC4MfgDOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office within Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is the primary sponsor of the HPC4Mfg Program. FE and EERE’s VTO and Building Technologies Office (BTO) also sponsor select projects in this portfolio. AMO partners with private and public stakeholders to support the research, development, and deployment of innovative technologies that can improve U.S. competitiveness, save energy, and ensure global leadership in advanced manufacturing. AMO supports cost‐shared research, development, and demonstration activities in support of crosscutting next-generation technologies and processes that hold high potential to significantly improve energy efficiency and reduce energy-related emissions, industrial waste, and the life‐cycle energy consumption of manufactured products.Improved energy efficiency across the manufacturing industry is one of the primary goals of the HPC4Mfg Program. We solicit proposals that require HPC modeling and simulation to overcome impactful manufacturing process challenges resulting in reduced energy consumption and/or increased productivity. Proposals should provide a realistic assessment of the energy impact, the improvement in U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, and the increase in U.S. manufacturing jobs that a successful outcome of the project could have across the industrial sector.Of particular interest to AMO are:• Improvements in manufacturing processes which result in significant national energy savings. Examples include:a. Process improvements in high-energy consuming industries such as paper and pulp, primary metal manufacturing, glass and chemical industriesb. Improvements in additive manufacturing that will increase adoption• Improvements in the lifecycle energy consumption of products of interest to AMO. Examples include:a. Improvement in jet engine efficiency could save significant energy over the lifecycle of the engineb. Improved materials and shape optimization for lightweighting in transport technologiesc. Semiconductor electrical efficiency• Efficiency improvements in energy conversion and storage technologies. Examples include:a. Improvements in combined heat and power units which save significant energyb. Novel energy storage and energy conversion techniquesc. Improvements in waste heat recoveryd. Wide band-gap semiconductorsArea 2: HPC4MtlsThe HPC4Mtls Program is sponsored by the DOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE) to enhance the U.S. materials-development, fabrication, and manufacturing industry to investigate, improve, and scale methods that will accelerate the development and deployment of materials that perform well in severe and complex energy application environments. This solicitation is aimed at demonstrating the benefit of HPC toward these goals within one year.The program seeks proposals that will address key challenges in developing, modifying, and/or qualifying new or modified materials that perform well in severe and complex energy application environments through the use of HPC modeling, simulation, and data analysis. For each of the program offices supporting this solicitation, we provide a brief description of their mission and the topics of interest to them.The Office of Fossil EnergyFE is the primary sponsor for this HPC4Mtls Program. FE plays a key role in helping the United States meet its continually growing need for secure, reasonably priced, and environmentally sound energy from our abundant fossil energy resources. The Office of Fossil Energy Research and Development (FER&D) Program advances transformative science and innovative technologies that enable the reliable, efficient, affordable, and environmentally sound use of fossil fuels. Fossil energy sources constitute over 80% of the country’s total energy use and are critical to the nation’s security, economic prosperity, and growth. It partners with industry, academia, and research facilities in transformative science and innovative technologies that enable the reliable, efficient, affordable, and environmentally sound use of fossil fuels. FE supports cost‐shared research, development, and demonstration activities in support of crosscutting next-generation technologies and processes that further the development of advanced fossil technologies. Proposals should provide a realistic assessment of the benefits to the domestic materials supply chain and/or fossil energy application (e.g. power plant).Of particular interest to FE in this solicitation are:• Improving the understanding of detailed processes in critical focus areas such as oxidation, corrosion, and electrochemical interactions• Use computational databases and machine learning for catalyst development to synthesis, test, characterize, and scale materials which convert carbon oxides into value-added products with increased energy efficiency, higher selectivity, and lower environmental impacts based on a lifecycle analysis relative to conventional products• Developing machine learning capabilities to predict new materials for energy storage• Developing the capability to predict the mechanical behavior and properties of additively manufactured components for use in advanced power cycles such as supercritical carbon dioxide cycles1. Materials Supply Chain for Fossil Energy Applications:• Reducing the cost of ingot production for nickel superalloys suitable for fossil energy applications• Improved high-temperature mechanical performance for lower-cost alloys as compared with more costly, high nickel/cobalt alloys• Overcoming barriers to scale up new material production from grams to kilograms, and from kilograms to tonnes• Overcoming barriers to the manufacture of components with High Entropy Alloys (HEA)• Developing modeling and simulation tools that will reduce the time to qualification and certification of materials (e.g., American Society of Mechanical Engineers code materials), including but not limited to novel manufacturing processes such as chemical etching, diffusion bonding, and additive manufacturing• Improve speed and quality of welding and other advanced joining methods for nickel superalloys• Advanced manufacturing of components for fossil energy applications, particularly for repair of existing plant components and modular fabrication of new plants• Machine learning within the supply chain to lower costs and improve productivity2. Existing and New Power Plant Applications• Predicting material behavior in specific severe environments, such as high-temperature, cyclic, or oxidative/corrosive environments, found in fossil power plants• Development of coatings, claddings, and other surface treatments to mitigate oxidation, corrosion, and erosion of high-temperature components• AI applications for monitoring and diagnostics of power plants focused on materials failures such as calculating remaining useful life of components or pattern recognition• Analysis of thermal fatigue-driven failures, particularly in coal-fired boilers and natural gas combined cycle heat recovery steam generators.• Improve reliability of dissimilar welds between ferritic and stainless steels or nickel superalloys• Overcoming barriers to the manufacture of components for fuel cells• Developing machine learning capabilities to identify promising new materials for non-battery energy storage technologies that can integrate with fossil energy power generating unitsEligibilityHPC4Mfg, HPC4Mtls: Eligibility is limited to U.S. manufacturers, defined as entities that are incorporated (or otherwise formed) under the laws of a particular state or territory of the United States, and that manufacture products in the United States (HPC4Mfg), that develop and/or manufacture new or modified materials in the United States (HPC4Mtls), or that manufacture, distribute or otherwise deploy software and hardware systems as described above. Project work must be executed in the United States.U.S. universities, institutes, and other non-profit organizations are also eligible to participate as collaborators. Funding for university participants must be provided by the industrial partner and can be considered a component of the industrial partner’s in-kind funding contribution.Funding RequirementsThe DOE monetary contribution for each project will not exceed $300,000. For demonstration projects, an industry partner must provide a participant contribution of at least 20% of the total project funding to support industry expertise to the project. The participant contribution can take the form of monetary funds in or “in-kind” contributions and must come from non-federal sources unless otherwise allowed by law. For follow-on projects defined as a project that is using the results of a previously funded project within the HPC4EI portfolio, the industry contribution is 33.3% of the total project funding of which at least half of this amount is a cash contribution. Sample budgets are shown below. Total project size cannot exceed $500,000. DOE funding will be provided to the national laboratory (or laboratories) in support of their work under the HPC4EI Program.Note: THIS IS NOT A PROCUREMENT REQUEST.See attached file for Sample Budgets, Solicitation Process and Timeline, Concept Paper Guidelines, Fulll Proposal Guidelines and Evaluation Process and Criteria.