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, which are the sponsors of this solicitation. Through support from DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) and Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), 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. 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. The HPC4Mtls Program is interested in collaborations that address key challenges in developing, modifying, and/or qualifying new or modified materials that perform well in severe or complex environments through the application of HPC, modeling, simulation, and data analysis. Both of these programs harness 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 both the HPC4Mfg and HPC4Mtls Programs 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 sources.In 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.BackgroundDOE 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 encouraged.Area 1: HPC4MfgDOE’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 energysavings and carbon emissions reduction. Examples include:a.Process improvements in high-energy consuming industries such as paper and pulp,primary metal manufacturing, water and wastewater, glass and chemical industries;b.Improvements in material performance in harsh service environments such as veryhigh temperature or highly corrosive processes;c.Integration of advanced object recognition and other machine learning algorithms(e.g. sortation, defect detection) into high throughput industrial processes;d.Improvements in modeling prediction and closed-loop control for smartmanufacturing systems (e.g. advanced sensors and process controls);e.Improvements in separation and processing for critical materials (e.g. rare earthelements); andf.Electrification of processes.•Improvements in the lifecycle energy consumption and carbon emissions reduction ofproducts of interest to AMO. Examples include:a.Improved materials and shape optimization for light-weighting in transporttechnologies;b.Operational efficiency of electronics systems; andc.Increased recycling of waste associated with industrial-scale materials production andprocessing or enable reuse at end-of-life.•Efficiency improvements and carbon emissions reduction in energy conversion andstorage technologies. Examples include:a.Improvements in combined heat and power units which save significant energyand/or increase operational and fuel flexibility;b.Novel energy storage and energy conversion techniques; andc.Improvements in waste heat recovery.•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.Area 2: HPC4MtlsThe Advanced Energy Materials program, funded by DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and managed by DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, is the primary sponsor of the High Performance Computing for Materials program. FECM funds research, development, demonstration and deployment projects to decarbonize power generation and industrial sources, to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and to mitigate the environmental impacts of fossil fuel use.The Advanced Energy Materials program works to characterize, produce, and certify advanced alloys and high-performance materials that are key to realizing dispatchable, reliable, high-efficiency, decarbonized power generation from gas, biomass or hydrogen. In addition, the program aims to encourage change and stimulate innovation in the high-performance materials value chain to spur U.S. competitiveness.FECM partners with industry, academia, national labs, and research facilities on research, development, demonstration, and deployment of carbon management technologies that are essential for decarbonizing key sectors, including power and industrial sectors, some of the largest sources of carbon emissions today. Clean hydrogen is expected to play a considerable role in decarbonizing these sectors. Today, roughly 95% of the hydrogen in the United States is produced from natural gas without carbon capture, which is not clean. However, there is significant potential in applying carbon capture technologies to help advance a cost-effective and low-carbon hydrogen economy.Proposals for the HPC4Materials Program should provide a realistic assessment of the proposed project’s benefits to the domestic materials supply chain and/or fossil energy application (e.g. reduced energy consumption and/or greenhouse gas emissions for power plants or clean hydrogen producers/users).Of particular interest to FECM in this solicitation are:Advanced Structural Materials for Hydrogen Applications•Improving the understanding of the materials impacts including corrosion anderosion effects of gasification of feedstock blends of waste coal, sustainablysourced biomass and waste plastics on materials in high temperature regions of agasifier, including sensitivity analysis of blend percentages and types of feedstocks•Improving the understanding of the material impacts including hydrogenembrittlement effects of blends of natural gas and hydrogen on materials inpipelines, welded joints or compressors, including sensitivity analysis of blendpercentages•Use of computational databases and machine learning for thermal barrier coating(TBC) development for hot gas path components of combustion turbines firingnatural gas-hydrogen blends or 100% hydrogen•Use of computational databases and machine learning for development of ceramicmetal composites for use in components of combustion turbines firing natural gas-hydrogen blends or 100% hydrogenAdvanced Structural Materials for Fossil Energy Applications•Improving the understanding of detailed processes in critical focus areas such asoxidation, corrosion, and electrochemical interactions in creep strength enhancedferritic (CSEF) alloys, austenitic alloys and high nickel superalloys•Improving reliability of dissimilar welds between CSEF alloys, austenitic alloysand/or high nickel superalloys•Developing the capability to predict the mechanical behavior and properties ofadditively manufactured components for use in advanced power cycles such assupercritical carbon dioxide cyclesAdvanced Functional Materials for Hydrogen Applications•Use of computational databases and machine learning for catalyst development tosynthesize, test, characterize, and scale materials which convert carbon oxides intovalue-added products with increased energy efficiency, higher selectivity, andlower environmental impacts based on a lifecycle analysis relative to conventionalproducts•Use of computational databases and machine learning for catalyst development tosynthesize, test, characterize, and scale materials for reforming of naturalgas/methane to produce syngas or hydrogen•Developing machine learning capabilities to predict composition, thermalperformance and mechanical properties of new materials for thermal energystorage•Developing machine learning capabilities to identify promising new materials fornon-battery energy storage technologies that can integrate with fossil energy powergenerating units•Overcoming barriers to the manufacture of components for fuel cellsEligibilityEligibility 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. Funding provided to a university and/or non-profit by the industrial partner can be considered a component of the industrial partner’s in-kind funding contribution.An entity may only submit one Concept Paper and one Full Application for each Sub-Topic area/sponsor of this solicitation; that is, one per HPC4Mfg (Area 1) and one per HPC4Mtls (Area 2). 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 RequirementsThe DOE monetary contribution for each project will not exceed $300,000. For 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. The participant contribution can take the form of monetary funds in or “in-kind” 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.See attached full 2021 Fall HPC4EnergyInnovation Program Solicitation guidelines for:Sample BudgetsProcess and TimelineConcept Paper Full ProposalEvaluation Process and CriteriaPoint of ContactDuring the period of the call for proposals, all questions relating to this announcement should be directed to the HPC4EnergyInnovation Program at hpc4ei@llnl.gov. To avoid compromising the solicitation process, public and private sector partners interested in submitting applications should refrain from contacting National Laboratory proposal partners regarding proposal content while the call for proposals is open.Intellectual Property and Proprietary DataThe HPC4EI Program respects the importance of industry’s intellectual property and data security.Industrial partner awardees are expected to enter into a DOE Model Short Form CRADA with the National Laboratory or Laboratories that will be performing the work. This CRADA contains provisions relating to proprietary information and intellectual property. Because of the need for accelerated placement and execution of the projects, terms of the CRADA will not be subject to negotiation. To review the proposed terms that make up the DOE Model Short Form CRADA, please see the example posted on the HPC4EI solicitation website.A Non-Disclosure Agreement can be put into place during development and submission of the proposal to facilitate discussions while protecting the partner’s proprietary information.To the extent possible, it is preferred that proprietary information NOT be included in the submitted proposal. If company proprietary information is included in the proposal, the specific information should be marked as such. The HPC4EI Program officials will utilize reasonable efforts to treat the information as business sensitive.Significant delays by the industry partner to finalize the CRADA could result in rejection of the proposal.Note: THIS IS NOT A PROCUREMENT REQUEST