S.A. researchers land $1.7 million grant

A $1.7 million U.S. Energy Department grant will go to Texas A&M University researchers in San Antonio.

The group will develop a way to generate electricity from low-temperature waste heat — one of 66 cutting-edge projects across the county selected for funding by the Energy Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The department announced $130 million in grant awards Wednesday. The program looks for projects with technical promise that haven't attracted private-sector investors.

The grant will go to the San Antonio arm of the Texas Center for Applied Technology, a seven-member group affiliated with the engineering school of A&M's main College Station campus and the Engineering Experiment Station, the engineering research agency for the state and also part of the A&M system.

Michael Martin, interim director of energy and environmental sustainability at the Texas Center for Applied Technology, said it's hard to describe the project without “letting the cat out of the bag.” The project involves proprietary technology, and San Antonio-based clean technology company ERRA Inc., which also has offices in New Jersey, is a partner in the project.

“We're going to make electricity from things that give off heat, and there are lots of things that give off heat,” Martin said.

An example would be creating electricity from waste heat from things such as exhaust flues or boilers, he said.

Martin hopes this is the start of more energy research projects coming to San Antonio.

“This is a stepping stone,” he said. “We want to be a center for research.”

Martin said that even though the technology has tested well in the lab, everyone in the office was “jumping for joy” when they heard about the grant award. “It was a long application process and there are many competitors for this,” he said.

The work will be done from the new A&M campus on the South Side, which is also a partner in the grant project, but Martin said that students won't have direct involvement in the project in the beginning.

“Anytime you have something like this, you look down the road in how they would utilize this device as the experiment progresses. How does this fit into the curriculum? It's physics in action. It's chemistry in action,” Martin said. “You have a real working model on your campus. Not a lot of campuses have things like this, especially not a campus as new as San Antonio.”

Matt Koch, senior research engineer, will be the principal investigator.

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http://tees.tamu.edu/|Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station

The other Texas recipient of the Energy Department grant, e Nova Inc. in Kingwood, will receive $640,000 to develop a gas compressor powered by waste heat from the exhaust of a gas turbine.

The Energy Department said the compressor could be used to increase the efficiency of gas turbines or to compress natural gas for pipeline transport.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a news release that the projects represent, “swinging for the fences and trying to hit home runs to support development of the most innovative technologies and change what's possible for America's energy future.”