NETL researchers lauded with DOE Secretary’s Honor Awards for various technology solutions

Teams and individuals alike from the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) received major accolades for their respective work last week in the form of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary’s Honor Awards.

These awards, doled out by U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, recognized outstanding achievements that took researchers above and beyond the DOE’s mission. In this case, that meant advancements in technology to recover rare earth elements, incorporating big data capabilities into a discovery-accelerating platform, and developing a suite of sorbents capable of removing contaminants.

“These awards are among the highest department honors a federal employee or contractor can receive,” NETL Director Brian Anderson said. “The research efforts advanced by NETL’s award recipients are finding solutions to clean our water and air, lower the environmental footprint of energy production and help communities in need of new jobs and industries. These NETL researchers are drivers of meaningful change.”

Guiding the aforementioned rare earth efforts was Dr. Christina Lopano, singled out with the Secretary of Energy’s Excellence Award for her singular accomplishment. Her research has focused on recovering rare earth elements and critical minerals from coal waste streams, such as fly ash and acid mine drainage. By the DOE’s assessment, her research is leading efforts to end reliance on offshore suppliers and create a reliable domestic source of both, thanks to the deployment of synchrotron technology and enhancements of understanding of rare earth elements and their chemical bonds.

This has guided methods to optimize the extraction of valuable rare earth elements, along with other trace metals from rock, coal, and coal combustion byproducts. Along the way, DOE hopes this will spur new economic growth in regions long associated with coal.

Other recipients included NETL’s Energy Data eXchange (EDX) Development and Operations Team and its Multi-Functional Sorbent Technology (MUST) Team, which each received the Secretary of Energy’s Achievement Award. In the case of EDX, this was for efforts to incorporate data capabilities within DOE to keep pace with modern research, resulting in a platform from which more than 20,000 research projects worth of data can be accessed and used to streamline additional projects.

For MUST, the award was earned for developing sorbents that provide practical, affordable, and green approaches to removing selenium and other metals contaminating American water supplies. This contamination can harm people, wildlife, and ecosystems, and so far, MUST represents the only sorbent-based technology that effectively reduces selenium and helps meet federal discharge limits. It is also regenerable and reusable, giving it a recycling advantage that cuts waste and costs alike, making it more accessible for market.