Andlinger Center awards six grants to jumpstart industry-academic collaborations on energy and environmental challenges

By the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

In its second year, the Andlinger Center’s Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners has supported six research projects tackling a diverse range of energy topics, from software for designing better fusion reactors to improved forecasts of the clean energy transition in the face of increasingly severe climate hazards.

“This year’s projects reflect the broad range of research activities of our faculty at Princeton,” said Iain McCulloch, director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment. “They underscore the reality that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the clean energy transition and that we need to develop multiple technologies in parallel to secure a sustainable energy future.”

Projects are funded at one of two tiers. Energy Research Grants provide up to three years of project support and require a minimum 25% contribution from the corporate partner. Energy Seed Awards provide support for a one-year project and require a letter of interest from a corporate partner. Projects are evaluated based on their intellectual merit and potential to have transformative impacts on energy research and society as a whole.

The Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners reflects the University’s ongoing commitment to supporting innovative energy research and emphasizes the critical role that the energy sector will play in securing a sustainable shared future.

Energy Research Grant

Stellarator optimization software suite for commercial reactor design

While the donut-shaped fusion devices known as tokamaks are the most well-studied fusion reactors, alternative devices called stellarators, which resemble a ribbon twisted into a torus shape, have experienced a recent resurgence in research interest. Tokamaks partially rely on a strong electric current within the plasma to generate a confining magnetic field, while stellarators achieve magnetic confinement using external coils and magnets alone. Because they do not depend on an internal plasma current for confinement, stellarators are less prone to the plasma instabilities that commonly occur in tokamaks.

However, stellarators’ complex three-dimensional shapes make them significantly harder to build and optimize than tokamaks, with a design space several orders of magnitude greater in size. To tackle this challenge, researchers led by Egemen Kolemen, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and staff research physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), have developed an open-source software for designing and optimizing stellarators known as DESC. The software, which is more accurate and less computationally intensive than existing alternatives, is already in use at several companies seeking to develop a commercial fusion reactor.

With support from the Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners, Kolemen will collaborate with fusion companies NT-Tao, Thea Energy, Stellarex, and Type One Energy to further develop the DESC software, adding new physics metrics and capabilities to increase its relevance to fusion reactor design. For example, the researchers will augment the DESC code to optimize turbulent heat transport and add modules that incorporate the device’s divertor, the region of a fusion device where the magnetic field lines strike the wall and cause large heat and particle fluxes. These enhancements could enable end-to-end stellarator optimization.

“Universities and national laboratories have significant expertise in the physics and mathematical analyses that underpin fusion reactions, and now private fusion companies are developing intensive knowledge in reactor hardware,” Kolemen said. “The goal of this project is to bring together the academia and private fusion companies: DESC can aid companies in the design efforts of fusion reactors, and companies can add modules to DESC that help researchers better understand the underlying plasma physics.”

Energy Seed Grants

Quantum cascade lasers designed using machine learning tools

Quantum cascade lasers are a type of mid-infrared and terahertz semiconductor laser with high performance in many energy and environmental applications. For example, many atmospheric gases, including greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O), have strong absorption spectra in the mid-infrared region, making quantum cascade lasers ideal for environmental gas sensing. Such a plethora of potential applications means an incredibly vast design space for new quantum cascade lasers, but existing design approaches are largely driven by human intuition. Claire Gmachl, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering, in collaboration with postdoctoral researcher Andres Correa Hernandez, will instead develop and deploy machine learning tools to accelerate the design process for quantum cascade lasers, leveraging the power of machine learning to quickly explore the design space for both new and existing applications. The project will be carried out with corporate partner AdTech Photonics, Inc.

Current collectors for reservoir-free solid-state batteries

Solid-state batteries, a type of next-generation energy storage device, promise higher energy densities than today’s lithium-ion batteries, extending the range of electric vehicles and other devices that depend on them. Despite their promise, however, very few solid-state batteries made from lithium metal have been deployed at an industrial scale, and none of those batteries are “reservoir-free,” or assembled without excess active materials. Kelsey Hatzell, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, will collaborate with co-investigator Bruce Koel, emeritus professor of chemical and biological engineering, to explore how lithium metal interacts with and grows on the battery’s current collector, which collects the electrical current generated by the battery and connects it to the external circuit. The findings from the project will inform new strategies for engineering advanced anode-free or reservoir-free solid-state batteries. The project will be carried out with a corporate partner in the automotive industry.

Climate resilience of the energy transition in Puerto Rico

In navigating its clean energy transition, Puerto Rico’s energy system faces a “superimposed” risk. Driven by a desire to mitigate the impacts of climate change, the Commonwealth has committed to transitioning to 100% renewable energy sources by 2050. Yet in the near term, integrating more intermittent renewable energy sources into the island’s power grid could make it more vulnerable to hazards like hurricanes that are projected to become more frequent and severe partially because of climate change. Ning Lin, professor of civil and environmental engineering, collaborating with co-investigator H. Vincent Poor, the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering, will lead a team of researchers to better understand and improve the climate resiliency of the clean energy transition in Puerto Rico. The interdisciplinary team will leverage advanced climate models to project future climate hazards and evaluate the resilience of Puerto Rico’s energy system under various scenarios of renewable energy integration and energy storage expansion. The project will be carried out with a grid operator in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as a corporate partner.

Integrated CO₂ capture and photoconversion to valuable platform chemicals in bifunctional zeotypes

While carbon capture is an important component in many pathways to economy-wide decarbonization, many existing technologies suffer from high energy and economic costs that have limited their deployment. Furthermore, most existing materials are monofunctional — capable of either capturing carbon dioxide or converting it into other products, but not both. Marcella Lusardi, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute, will explore a class of materials, titanium-functionalized zeotypes, that are capable of both capturing CO₂ and using solar energy to convert that CO₂ into valuable intermediate products like methanol. By characterizing key parameters of these photoactive zeotypes, such as their optimal confining and hydrophilic environments, Lusardi and her research team will better understand the relationship between structure and function in these materials necessary for scaling them into a circular economy solution. The project will be carried out with BASF as the corporate partner.

Durability prediction of nascent alkali-activated metakaolin cements from rapid, non-destructive tests

Concrete is the second most-consumed resource in the world behind water, yet most concrete is made with emissions-intensive Portland cement powder. Consequently, the cement and concrete sector accounts for around 8% of global CO₂ emissions. While many lower-carbon alternatives are in development, including alkali-activated metakaolin, predicting the long-term performance and durability of these sustainable cements remains a challenge. Claire White, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, will use advanced characterization methods to obtain information about the pore structure and permeability of a wide range of alkali-activated metakaolin cements. White and her team will leverage this information to develop a mathematical relationship that can predict the permeability of alkali-activated metakaolin cements based on non-destructive and rapid pore structure measurements. Ultimately, the research will unlock new insights into the durability of sustainable concretes that could encourage greater uptake by industry. The project will be carried out with Modern Habitat Tech — a manufacturer of calcined clay, metakaolin, finished alkali-activated materials, and geopolymers — as the corporate partner.

The Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners was established in 2022 as part of Princeton’s Energy Research Fund. In addition to the Fund for Energy Research with Corporate Partners, the Energy Research Fund established the Dean for Research Innovation Fund for Exploratory Energy Research, which is separately administered by the Office of the Dean for Research.