Savannah River laboratory receives $3 million for clean energy research

Listen to this article

The Savannah River National Laboratory has received a $3 million award from the Department of Energy to promote research into developing new clean energy technologies.

The award comes from the DOE’s Office of Science Basic Energy Science program and will be used for research into new pathways for hydrogen storage and production technologies, according to a news release.

The award is part of DOE’s recent announcement that it was awarding $540 million to universities and national laboratories to further research into clean energy technologies and low-carbon manufacturing.

The research at Savannah River will focus on providing greater insight into the surface characteristics that promote the dissociation and recombination of hydrogen on a material surface, as well as the behavior of subsurface hydrogen species.

The objective is to provide an in-depth analysis of the interactions between MXenes, a two-dimensional ceramic material, and hydrogen, the news release said. Researchers will also look at how external stimuli can be used to fine-tune the interaction.

The collaborative research effort will be led by Patrick Ward, a researcher at Savannah River National Laboratory, Yury Gogotsi of Drexel University, Kah Chun Lau from California State University Northridge and Paul Weiss from the University of California Los Angeles.

The research is particularly suited to address the DOE’s Hydrogen Shot Initiative, which seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per kilogram in the next decade, and unlock new markets for hydrogen, according to the release.

Savannah River National Laboratory is a DOE multi-program research and development center managed and operated by Battelle Savannah River Alliance LLC.