Here’s a major opportunity to get DOE funding for good ideas. The website has additional materials, including a download link for the solicitation itself.
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U.S. Department of Energy

http://www.fe.doe.gov/techline/tl_vis21sol1.html

Issued on October 1, 1999

Energy Department Opens First Major Competition For Vision 21 Energy Plants of the Future

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has opened the competition for companies to begin designing a new type of energy facility that could change the way people think about fossil fuel power plants in the 21st century.

Called Vision 21, the new class of fossil fuel plants would produce electricity, chemicals, fuels or perhaps a combination of products in ways tailored to meet specific market needs.

Employing the latest in emission control systems, plus potentially revolutionary breakthroughs in such technologies as gas separation membranes, fuel cell-turbine hybrids, and carbon sequestration, Vision 21 energy facilities would have virtually no environmental impact outside the plant’s immediate “footprint.”

The plants would also be among the first to be developed and designed using advanced visualization and modeling software. Such “virtual demonstration” technology might eliminate the need for some of the expensive engineering and pilot facilities that have been necessary in other large scale development efforts.

The Energy Department will offer up to $30 million for winning projects, with each of the initial projects expected to receive from $1.5 million to $2.5 million. Private industry will be required to provide at least 20 percent of each project’s cost.

The initial set of projects would run for up to three years and would establish the design foundation and analytical capabilities for future development efforts.

The key to Vision 21 will be to integrate the ‘best-of-class’ technologies from across the fossil fuel spectrum – for example, the most fuel-flexible gasifiers and combustors, the most effective way to remove pollutant-forming impurities, the latest in fuel cell and turbine systems, and the most affordable ways to manufacture liquid fuels and chemicals.

Individually, none of these technologies are likely to achieve the increasingly stringent environmental and cost requirements that energy companies will confront in the 21st century. Integrated together, however, these advanced systems could provide consumers with affordable power and fuels along with unprecedented levels of environmental protection.

The Energy Department’s Federal Energy Technology Center is issuing the solicitation and plans to accept proposals throughout the coming year. Beginning around January 31, 2000, the department will announce project selections every four months. The due date for proposals for the first evaluation period is November 30, 1999. Proposals are being requested in three areas:

Technologies that will make up the “modules” of Vision 21 plants, for example, in such areas as advanced gas separation and purification, heat exchangers, fuel-flexible gasifers, advanced low-polluting combustion systems, turbines, fuel cells, and chemical and fuel synthesis processes.

Systems integration capabilities needed to combine two or more of the modules;

Advanced plant design and visualization software leading to a “virtual demonstration” of a Vision 21 plant.

The Energy Department has set a timetable to have Vision 21 technologies and designs ready for use by private industry in building commercial facilities by around 2015. Many experts forecast that the next major wave of U.S. power plant construction will begin around this time.

The Energy Department, however, expects the Vision 21 program to begin benefiting the energy industry well before 2015. The program is expected to produce spinoff technologies – possibly low-cost oxygen separation, better catalysts for the chemical industry, lower cost manufacturing processes, and improved pollution control systems — beginning as early as 2005.