Established | 1951 |
---|---|
Director [1] | Charles Gorecki |
Staff | 270 |
Address | 15 North 23rd Street, Stop 9018 Grand Forks, ND 58202 |
Location | |
Website | www.undeerc.org |
The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) is a research, development, demonstration, and commercialization facility for energy and environment technologies development. The center is a nonprofit division of the University of North Dakota, located in Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States.
The center was founded in 1951 as the Robertson Lignite Research Laboratory, a federal facility under the United States Bureau of Mines, named after Charles R. Robertson. [2] It became a federal energy technology center under the United States Department of Energy in 1977 and was defederalized in 1983. The center employs approximately 270 employees. [3]
The EERC has a current contract portfolio of over $208.4 million and the EERC's estimated regional economic impact is $78.1 million. [3] Since 1987, the EERC has had more than 1,300 clients in 50 states and 53 countries worldwide.
The EERC conducts research, development, demonstration, and commercialization activities involving zero-emissions coal conversion; CO2 capture and sequestration; energy and water sustainability; hydrogen and fuel cells; advanced air emission control technologies, emphasizing SOx, NOx, air toxics, fine particulate, CO2, and mercury control; renewable energy; wind energy; water management; flood prevention; global climate change; waste utilization; energy efficiency; and contaminant cleanup.[ citation needed ]
The EERC is located on more than 15 acres (61,000 m2) of land on the southeast corner of the UND campus in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and houses 254,000 square feet (23,600 m2) of laboratories, fabrication facilities, technology demonstration facilities, and offices. [4]
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is one of the United States Department of Energy national laboratories, managed by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science. The main campus of the laboratory is in Richland, Washington.
Grand Forks is the third-largest city in the state of North Dakota and the county seat of Grand Forks County. According to the 2020 census, the city's population was 59,166. Grand Forks, along with its twin city of East Grand Forks, Minnesota, forms the center of the Grand Forks, ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is often called Greater Grand Forks or the Grand Cities.
The University of North Dakota is a public research university in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was established by the Dakota Territorial Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishment of the state of North Dakota.
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is one of the national laboratories of the United States Department of Energy and is managed by the Battelle Energy Alliance. While the laboratory does other research, historically it has been involved with nuclear research. Much of current knowledge about how nuclear reactors behave and misbehave was discovered at what is now Idaho National Laboratory. John Grossenbacher, former INL director, said, "The history of nuclear energy for peaceful application has principally been written in Idaho".
The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is a U.S national laboratory under the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy. NETL focuses on applied research for the clean production and use of domestic energy resources. NETL performs research and development on the supply, efficiency, and environmental constraints of producing and using fossil energy resources, while maintaining their affordability.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US specializes in the research and development of renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy systems integration, and sustainable transportation. NREL is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Department of Energy and operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, a joint venture between MRIGlobal and Battelle. Located in Golden, Colorado, NREL is home to the National Center for Photovoltaics, the National Bioenergy Center, and the National Wind Technology Center.
The Red River Valley Research Corridor is the name that has been given to a region in the American state of North Dakota. It roughly comprises the corridor along the Red River of the North. The Research Corridor is anchored by North Dakota State University (NDSU) and the University of North Dakota (UND). The corridor was established in 2002 by United States Senator Byron Dorgan in an effort to draw research dollars to the state. Since that year, Dorgan has helped to direct $300 million to research in the corridor.
Ralph Engelstad Arena was a 6,067-seat multi-purpose arena located on the University of North Dakota (UND) campus in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was home to the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux hockey team, and was the host of the 1983 Frozen Four tournament. It was originally named the Winter Sports Center, but was renamed in 1988 to honor alumnus Ralph Engelstad. The arena closed in 2001 and was replaced with the new $104 million Ralph Engelstad Arena on the north end of campus.
Coal Creek Station is the largest power plant in the U.S. state of North Dakota. Located near the Missouri River between Underwood, North Dakota and Washburn, North Dakota, it burns lignite. Its two generators are each rated at 605 megawatts, with a peak total production of nearly 1.2 gigawatts. Great River Energy had announced its intention to close the plant in 2022 if a new owner could not be found. On June 30, 2021, Great River Energy announced that they had reached an agreement to sell the plant to Rainbow Energy Center, LLC, who plans to continue to operate the plant. On May 2, 2022 the sale of Coal Creek Station and the high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission system was completed.
The Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) is a provincial treasury board crown corporation engaged in research and technology development on behalf of the provincial government and private industry. It focuses on applied research and development projects that generate profit. Some of its funding comes from government grants, but it generates the balance from selling products and services. With nearly 300 employees and $137 million in annual revenues, SRC is the second largest research and technology organization in Canada.
The University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences is located in Grand Forks, North Dakota at the University of North Dakota (UND) and is the only school of medicine in the state of North Dakota.
Charles Raymond Robertson was a U.S. Republican politician.
The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is an office within the United States Department of Energy. Formed from other energy agencies after the 1973 energy crisis, EERE is led by the Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, who is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Alejandro Moreno currently leads the office as the Acting Assistant Secretary.
Cellana, Inc. is an American company which develops of algae-based bioproducts for high-value nutrition, ink, and bioenergy applications, including Omega-3 nutraceutical applications, sustainable ink, aquaculture and animal feeds, human food ingredients, pigments, specialty chemicals, and biofuels. The company, with offices in Hawaii and San Diego, has received multiple multimillion-dollar grants from the United States Department of Energy and United States Department of Agriculture.
Discovery Park is a 40-acre (160,000 m2) multidisciplinary research park located in Purdue University's West Lafayette campus in the U.S. state of Indiana. Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, an energy and resources industry executive who also spent a decade as a top scientist and administrator at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, serves as Discovery Park's Vice President.
Refined coal is the product of the coal-upgrading technology that removes moisture and certain pollutants from lower-rank coals such as sub-bituminous and lignite (brown) coals, raising their calorific values. Coal refining or upgrading technologies are typically pre-combustion treatments and processes that alter the characteristics of coal before it is burned. Pre-combustion coal-upgrading technologies aim to increase efficiency and reduce emissions when coal is burned. Depending on the situation, pre-combustion technology can be used in place of or as a supplement to post-combustion technologies to control emissions from coal-fueled boilers. A primary benefit of refined coal is the capacity to reduce the net volume of carbon emissions that is currently emitted from power generators and would reduce the number of emissions that is proposed to be managed via emerging carbon sequestration methodologies. Refined coal technologies have primarily been developed in the United States. Several similar technologies have been researched, developed, and tested in Victoria, Australia, including the Densified coal technology developed to alter the chemical bonds of brown coal to create a product that is cleaner, stable, exportable and of sufficiently high calorific value to be a black coal equivalent.
Atomics International was a division of the North American Aviation company which engaged principally in the early development of nuclear technology and nuclear reactors for both commercial and government applications. Atomics International was responsible for a number of accomplishments relating to nuclear energy: design, construction and operation of the first nuclear reactor in California (1952), the first nuclear reactor to produce power for a commercial power grid in the United States (1957) and the first nuclear reactor launched into outer space by the United States (1965).
The principle of a fuel cell was discovered by Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1838, and the first fuel cell was constructed by Sir William Robert Grove in 1839. The fuel cells made at this time were most similar to today's phosphoric acid fuel cells. Most hydrogen fuel cells today are of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) type. A PEM converts the chemical energy released during the electrochemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen into electrical energy. The Hydrogen Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 1990 and Energy Policy Act of 1992 were the first national legislative articles that called for large-scale hydrogen demonstration, development, and research programs. A five-year program was conducted that investigated the production of hydrogen from renewable energy sources and the feasibility of existing natural gas pipelines to carry hydrogen. It also called for the research into hydrogen storage systems for electric vehicles and the development of fuel cells suitable to power an electric motor vehicle.
The Kemper Project, also called the Kemper County energy facility or Plant Ratcliffe, is a natural gas-fired electrical generating station currently under construction in Kemper County, Mississippi. Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, began construction of the plant in 2010. The initial, coal-fired project was central to President Obama's Climate Plan, as it was to be based on "clean coal" and was being considered for more support from the Congress and the incoming Trump Administration in late 2016. If it had become operational with coal, the Kemper Project would have been a first-of-its-kind electricity plant to employ gasification and carbon capture technologies at this scale.