HPC4EnergyInnovation Program: Collaborations for U.S. Manufacturers

The High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) Program seeks qualified industry partners to participate in short-term, collaborative projects with the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Laboratories. HPC4EI is the umbrella initiative for the HPC4Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) and HPC4Materials (HPC4Mtls) Programs. HPC4Mfg is the sponsor of this solicitation. Through support from DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) the selected industry partners will be granted access to high performance computing (HPC) facilities and world-class scientists at DOE’s National Laboratories.DOE’s HPC4Mfg Program is interested in establishing collaborations that address key energy and decarbonization related challenges for domestic manufacturers. The HPC4Mfg Program is designed to improve manufacturing processes, address products’ lifecycle energy consumption, and increase the efficiency of energy conversion and storage technologies

by providing access to national lab supercomputing resources and expertise for high performance computing projects. This program harnesses the raw processing power of national lab supercomputers to decarbonize U.S. industry and move us closer to an equitable, clean energy future that benefits all Americans.Eligibility for the HPC4Mfg Program is limited to entities that manufacture in the United States for commercial applications and the organizations that support these entities.The solicitation will encourage applicants to partner with a diverse range of universities, community colleges, and non-profit organizations, especially those located in disadvantaged communities, to ensure the equitable use and benefits of HPC National Laboratory resources and technologies.Selected projects will be awarded up to $300,000 to support compute cycles and work performed by the National Laboratory. The industry partner must provide a participant contribution of at least 20% of the total project funding. The industry contribution must come from non-federal funding sourcesIn addition, follow-on projects to previously awarded, successful projects in these areas will be considered. Follow-on projects should focus on the further implementation of the demonstrated HPC application in the industrial setting, taking it closer to operational use and broad national impact. Selected follow-on projects will be awarded up to $300,000 to support computing cycles and work performed by the National Laboratory, university, and non-profit partners. The industry partner must provide a participant contribution of at least 33.3% of the total project funding; of this, at least half must be in cash to support the National Laboratory work.Background DOE maintains world-class HPC expertise and facilities, currently hosting several of the top 20 most powerful computers in the world as ranked by TOP500 in June 2021. From detailed subatomic-level simulations to massive cosmological studies, researchers use HPC to probe science and technology questions inaccessible by experimental methods. Scientific insights gained from these computational studies have drastically impacted research and technology across industrial sectors and scientific fields. Examples include additive manufacturing, aerospace, oil recovery, drug development, climate science, genomics, and exploration of fundamental particles that make up our universe. From industry to academia, the scientific need for advanced computing continues to drive innovation and development for future high performance computers and their capabilities.There is high potential for U.S. industry to utilize the power of HPC. The HPC4EI Program is intended to provide HPC expertise and resources to industry to lower the risk of HPC adoption and broaden its use to support transformational and early-stage technology development. The HPC4EI Program hopes to provide this HPC expertise by supporting targeted collaborations between industry and DOE’s National Laboratories.Successful applicants will work collaboratively with staff from one or more of the DOE National Laboratories to conduct project activities across the various HPC areas of expertise, including development and optimization of modeling and simulation codes, porting and scaling of applications, application of data analytics, as well as applied research and development of tools or methods.To make the broadest impact across the industry, the project teams are expected to present their results at workshops associated with the program and at regional and national conferences. Publications are also encouragedHPC4MfgDOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is the primary sponsor of the HPC4Mfg Program. Other Technology Offices within EERE and DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management may also sponsor select projects in this portfolio. AMO partners with private and public stakeholders to decarbonize industry and increase the competitiveness of the U.S. manufacturing and clean energy sectors through process innovations, research and development, and technical assistance and workforce training. AMO supports cost-shared research, development, and activities in support of crosscutting next-generation technologies and processes that hold high potential to significantly improve energy efficiency and reduce energy-related emissions, industrial waste, and the life‐ cycle energy consumption of manufactured products.The primary goal of the HPC4Mfg Program is to reduce carbon emissions across the industrial sector and improve the efficiency and productivity of U.S. manufacturing. The program solicits proposals that require HPC modeling and simulation to overcome impactful manufacturing process challenges resulting in reduced energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and/or increased productivity. Proposals should provide a realistic assessment of the energy impact, emission reduction, the improvement in U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, and the increase in U.S. manufacturing jobs that a successful outcome of the project could have across the industrial sector.Of particular interest to AMO are:• Improvements in manufacturing processes which result in significant national energy savings and carbon emissions reduction. Examples include:a. Process improvements in industries with high decarbonization potential such as paper and pulp,primary metal manufacturing, water and wastewater, glass, cement and chemical industries;b. Improvements in material performance in harsh service environments such as veryhigh temperature or highly corrosive processes;c. Improvements in modeling prediction and closed-loop control for smartmanufacturing systems (e.g. advanced sensors and process controls);d. Improvements in separation and processing for critical materials (e.g. rare earthelements); ande. Electrification of processes.• Efficiency improvements and carbon emissions reduction in energy conversion andstorage technologies. Examples include:a. Improvements in waste heat recovery for thermal energy storage systemsb. Improvements in design and process optimization for battery or fuel cell component manufacturing and system assembly that improve capacity, operational lifetime, or reduce embodied energy/carbonc. Conversion of combined heat and power units to low carbon fuels.• Reductions in CO2 or CO2-equivalent emissions. Examples include:a. Improvement in the performance of carbon-capturing processes.b. Modification of fossil-fueled systems to accept low-to-zero carbon fuels.c. Electrification of processes to replace combustion-driven processes.EligibilityEligibility is limited to U.S. manufacturers, defined as entities that are incorporated (or otherwise formed) under the laws of a particular state or territory of the United States, and that manufacture products in the United States or that manufacture, distribute, or otherwise deploy software and hardware systems as described above or that develop and/or manufacture new or modified materials in the United States. Project work must be executed in the United States.U.S. universities, institutes, and other non-profit organizations are also eligible to participate as collaborators. The solicitation will encourage applicants to partner with a diverse range of universities, community colleges, and non-profit organizations, especially those located in disadvantaged communities, to ensure the equitable use and benefits of HPC National Laboratory resources and technologies. Funding for university and/or non-profit participants may be provided by the National Laboratory or the industrial partner. If the funding for a university or non-profit participant is to be provided by DOE through the DOE laboratory partner, funding requests must be less than half of the total DOE funds. Funding provided to a university and/or non-profit by the industrial partner can be considered a component of the industrial partner’s inkind funding contribution.An entity may only submit one Concept Paper and one Full Application. If an entity submits more than one Concept Paper, the review committee will select no more than one proposal from this entity to advance to the Full Proposal (Full Application) stage. This limitation does not prohibit an applicant from collaborating on other applications (e.g., as a potential subrecipient or partner) so long as the entity is only listed as the applicant on one Concept Paper and one Full Application for this solicitation. In organizations with more than 5000 employees, an “entity” can be considered to be a major business unit within the company, for example, an Aerospace Division as distinct from a Central Research Division.Funding Requirements The DOE monetary contribution for each project will not exceed $300,000. For new initial (not follow-on) projects, an industry partner must provide a participant contribution of at least 20% of the total project funding to support industry expertise to the project. Total project funding is defined as the DOE contribution plus the contributions (in-kind and cash) from the industry partner. Cash contributions are funds supplied by the industry partner to collaborators external to the company. The participant contribution can take the form of monetary funds in or “inkind” contributions and must come from non-federal sources unless otherwise allowed by law. For follow-on projects, defined as a project that is using the results of a previously funded project within the HPC4EI portfolio, the industry contribution is 33.3% of the total project funding of which at least half of this amount is a cash contribution. Sample budgets are shown below. Total project size cannot exceed $500,000. DOE funding will be provided to the National Laboratory (or laboratories) in support of their work under the HPC4EI Program.Download the attachment forthe full posting including sample budget, solicitation process, timeline, and concept paper guidelines.