Sandia Labs wins two national awards for energy work

Sandia National Laboratories recently won both the Federal Laboratory Consortium’s (FLC) national 2017 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer and the FLC’s State and Local Economic Development Recognition award.

Sandia received the technology transfer award, which recognizes FLC member staff who produced outstanding work while transferring federally developed technology, for its work on micro-channel heat exchanger (MCHE). MCHE is a heat-exchanger technology that increases the efficiency of power generation, refrigeration, heating and gas processing.

Until recently, only one company – based outside the United States – produced MCHEs on a large scale. Sandia developed Selection, Evaluation, and Rating of Compact Heat Exchangers (SEARCH), a software suite for designing MCHEs. Sandia partnered with Vacuum Process Engineering, a U.S. manufacturer, to commercially produce the heat exchangers.

The economic development award acknowledges exceptional partnerships between federal laboratories and state or local groups that benefit the economy. Sandia received the honor for its work with the New Jersey Transit Corporation, the Department of Energy and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities on the NJ TRANSITGRID, an electric microgrid that can reliably provide power to transportation infrastructure during storms or other times when the centralized power grid is not available.

“Sandia is honored to be recognized by our peers for our work in technology transfer,” Jackie Kerby Moore, Sandia’s manager of Technology and Economic Development and the labs’ representative to the FLC, said. “These awards are meaningful because they show Sandia at its best, working with groundbreaking technology to solve problems of a national scale and create economic competitiveness for U.S. businesses.”