WPI Research Publication

FALL 2013

WPI Research is the research magazine of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It contains news and features about graduate research in the arts and sciences, business, and engineering, along with notes about new grants, books, and faculty achievements.

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On the banks of the Coosa River in rural Alabama sits a power plant with three towering stacks spouting torrents of steam. Visited regularly by mile-long trains that unload coal onto an enormous black mountain, the plant looks like many other electric generating stations — the sort that spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and help accelerate global warming. But this is the National Energy Technology Laboratory, an experimental plant where the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) tests some of the most promising new ideas for producing cleaner power — including an inorganic membrane that is the product of more than a decade of groundbreaking research by chemical engineers at WPI. 18 > wpi.edu/+research "With global climate change being a potential issue, technology that promotes the efficient capture of CO2 from power generation applications is critical," says Bryan Morreale, the National Energy Technology Laboratory's focus area lead for materials science and engineering. He calls WPI's membrane "a revolutionary approach." The Alabama facility is home to the National Carbon Capture Center, or NCCC, whose mission is to fi nd ways to derive energy from coal without letting greenhouse gases — primarily carbon dioxide, or CO2 — enter the atmosphere. It's an exciting proposition, but it's also fraught with challenges, not the least of which is how to capture carbon. One approach is coal gasification. Rather than simply being burned, as happens in most coal-fi red plants in the

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