Reaction Engineering International Selected for DOE Battery Recycling Award

We are proud to announce that Reaction Engineering International (REI) was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on March 28, 2024, to receive a $5.54 million project award to lead a pioneering effort to sustainably recover lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). This initiative is part of a broader $125 million federal effort to improve the economics and accessibility of consumer battery recycling in the United States.

Project Overview: Clean & Affordable Battery Preprocessing

Our project, "A Clean and Affordable Low-Temperature Thermal Method to Preprocess the End-of-Life Lithium-Ion Batteries from Consumer Devices," addresses the critical need for safer and more efficient recycling methods.

REI is developing a novel low-temperature thermal process designed to stabilize and prepare spent batteries for material recovery. To bridge the gap between laboratory innovation and community impact, we will build and demonstrate a pilot-scale continuous system—capable of processing 20 kg/h—housed on a mobile trailer. This mobile unit will serve as both a technical demonstration and an educational tool to encourage battery recycling within local communities.

Key Objectives

Our multi-faceted approach focuses on optimizing the recycling lifecycle through:

  • Safety & Stability: Investigating LIB fire hazards and dry discharge methods.

  • Advanced Processing: Analyzing staged decomposition and black mass separation to maximize material recovery.

  • Sustainability Metrics: Conducting rigorous TEA (Techno-Economic Analysis) and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) to ensure the process is commercially viable and environmentally friendly.

  • Community Engagement: Deploying a mobile pilot-scale facility for real-world demonstration and public education.

Collaborative Innovation

This work is supported by a distinguished group of project partners, combining industry expertise with world-class academic research:

  • Brigham Young University

  • San Rafael Energy Research Center

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

This award, administered by the DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO), underscores REI's commitment to developing the clean energy technologies necessary for a circular economy.

Department of Energy Awards $1,070,000 for Small Business Research and Development to Reaction Engineering International

One of 82 Grants Totaling $100 Million Nationwide to Support Scientific Innovation and Clean Energy Development

[dateline] -- U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm today announced that Reaction Engineering International will receive $1,070,000 as part of 82 Department of Energy grants totaling $100 million to 68 small businesses in 24 states, including projects relating to wind turbine and wind farms, improved battery electrolytes, solar generation of hydrogen, and upcycling of carbon dioxide, along with a wide range of other efforts.

“Small businesses play a critical role in launching scientific discoveries out of our National Labs and into the hands of the American people,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “We’re so excited to watch them put their entrepreneurial spirit behind these bold, exciting projects, and bring these new products and services to market. We are thrilled to support Reaction Engineering International in advancing its technology innovations.”

Through the SBIR/STTR program across the federal government, small business powers the U.S. economy and generates thousands of jobs, both directly and indirectly, the DOE notes. DOE Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) awards aim at transforming DOE-supported science and technology breakthroughs into viable products and services. The awards also support the development of specialized technologies and instruments that aid in scientific discovery.

Reaction Engineering will receive $1,070,000 to advance the use of high performance computing for the simulation of industrial flares, to increase understanding of how to improve combustion efficiency and reduce emissions from these systems.  High performance computing has experienced tremendous advances with support from the DOE, but has been underutilized by US industry. This project leverages the Uintah Computational Framework, developed under  DOE funding, for high fidelity commercial simulation of industrial flares to reduce emissions from these heavily utilized devices.

 Dr. Marc Cremer, Co-President of Reaction Engineering International, who is the Principal Investigator (PI) on this project states, "We are thrilled to continue working with our colleagues at the University of Utah and with our industrial partners to advance our understanding of flare systems through commercial HPC based simulations leveraging the Uintah Computational Framework.  We are focused on making this powerful technology more accessible to US industry, leading to a greater understanding of the impacts of flare design and operation on overall flare performance and emissions." 

More information about all the projects announced by DOE today is available at the following link: https://science.energy.gov/sbir/awards/.

Integrated Reuse and Co-Utilization of Slag, Sludge and Dust With Inherent Heavy Metal Capture and Nanoscale Calcium Carbonate Production as an Enhanced Fluxing Agent in Steel Plants (INSIGHT)

REI will provide process-scale analyses and techno-economic assessments of by-product utilization in iron and steel manufacturing processes. This project aligns with our interests in advancing scale-up assessments for novel technologies in the area of energy and resources. Cost—DOE Funding: $1,226,921 / Non-DOE Funding: $309,553 / Total Funding: $1,536,474

Development of Critical Components for the Modular Staged Pressurized Oxy-combustion Power Plant

DOE has selected seven projects as part of its Critical Components for Coal FIRST Power Plants of the Future. Reaction Engineering International is part of a team led by Washington University (St. Louis, MO) that plans to develop two critical components that are not commercially available for a modular staged, pressurized oxy-combustion (SPOC) plant. The modular SPOC power plant has the potential to deliver near-zero-carbon power to the grid reliably and with high efficiency, low cost, and excellent flexibility.

Testing and Model-Based Optimization of Coal-Fired Primary Heater Design for Indirect Supercritical CO2 Power Cycles

DOE has selected seven projects as part of its Critical Components for Coal FIRST Power Plants of the Future. Reaction Engineering International is part of a team led by Brigham Young University (Provo, UT) that seeks to integrate a novel supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power cycle with a coal-fired primary heater. In the near-term, this effort plans to move the indirectly fired sCO2 technology toward commercialization and advance a new approach to power generation that will be significantly more fuel efficient and cost effective.

High Performance Computing of Completion and Near-Wellbore Erosion

Reaction Engineering International (REI) will develop an HPC solution to model perforation erosion and the resulting pressure drop. The model will require no additional experimental data besides material properties. The software will automate the calculation of erosion and flow characteristics, allowing for application in reservoir/hydraulic-fracturing simulators, with the end goal of optimizing fracturing treatments and diversion agent strategies. The software will be capable of exploring a wide variety of erosion scenarios and ultimately helping to select the best solution to optimize production. Cost — DOE: $156,488

Development of Miniaturized High-Temperature Multi-Process Monitoring System

Reaction Engineering International will design, prototype, and demonstrate a monitoring system for boiler condition management. The key objectives are to miniaturize the design; combine quantitative heat flux, deposition rate, relative surface temperature, and metal wastage measurements into a single sensor; and integrate monitoring output with a plant distributed control system (DCS). The project will culminate with a demonstration and characterization of corrosion, deposition, heat flux, and temperature at multiple locations within a full-scale pulverized coal-fired power plant. Cost—DOE Funding: $648,000 / Non-DOE Funding: $162,000 / Total Funding: $810,000

Combustion Performance and Emissions Optimization through Integration of a Miniaturized High-Temperature Multi-Process Monitoring System

Reaction Engineering International will design, prototype, and demonstrate a monitoring system for boiler condition management. The key objectives are to miniaturize the design; combine quantitative heat flux, deposition rate, relative surface temperature, and metal wastage measurements into a single sensor; and integrate monitoring output with a plant distributed control system (DCS). The project will culminate with a demonstration and characterization of corrosion, deposition, heat flux, and temperature at multiple locations within a full-scale pulverized coal-fired power plant. Cost—DOE Funding: $648,000 / Non-DOE Funding: $162,000 / Total Funding: $810,000

Small-Scale Engineered High Flexibility Gasifier

Reaction Engineering International, as part of a team lead by Southern Research Institute (Birmingham, AL) intends to develop a novel, cost-effective, radically engineered modular gasifier. This gasifier would have applications to 1–5-MW energy-conversion systems, such as combined heat and power (CHP). The pressurized oxygen-blown gasifier will use a simple, small-scale modular design and will produce negligible amounts of tar. The gasifier will also be highly flexible to optimize fuel throughput and thermal efficiency; manipulate coal conversion; and produce syngas of a desired composition. The project, if successful, may reduce the cost of coal conversion via an optimized, factory-built modular system to allow scale-up via modular expansion and deployment at remote sites. Cost—DOE: $1,699,965

Leveraging the Uintah Computational Framework for Commercial Simulation of Industrial Flares

Reaction Engineering International is leading a team of university and industrial collaborators at the University of Utah, Clean Air Engineering, and Dynamite Digits to commercialize the application of the Uintah Computational Framework for commercial simulation of elevated and multipoint ground flares for improved prediction of combustion efficiency using large eddy simulation (LES).  The team is developing a web interface to allow non expert users to setup, simulate, and post process results of these high fidelity simulations run on commercially available high performance computing resources.  Funded by the Department of Energy.  Total Funding:  $1,300,000

Development of Enabling Technologies for Chemical Looping Combustion and Chemical Looping with Oxygen Uncoupling (CLOU)

Reaction Engineering International, as part of a team lead by the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT) will develop technologies to improve system performance and reduce costs of chemical looping combustion and CLOU by focusing on oxygen carrier management and reactor design and operation. Cost—DOE: $1,333,804

Characterizing Impacts of Dry Coal Feeding in High-Pressure Oxy-Coal Combustion Systems

Reaction Engineering International lead a team including the University of Utah, Southeastern University (China), Praxair, Corrosion Management (United Kingdom) and the Electric Power Research Institute to design and construct a dry pulverized coal feeding and firing system for an entrained flow pressurized reactor and to determine how dry feeding affects overall performance of the system. Cost—DOE: $1,229,720 / Non DOE: $307,500 / Total Funding: $1,537,221 (Cost share: 20%)

Characterizing Impacts of High Temperatures and Pressures in Oxy-Coal Combustion Systems

Reaction Engineering International (REI) will team with experts from the University of Utah, Praxair, and Jupiter Oxygen Corporation to perform multi-scale experiments, coupled with mechanism development, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling to generate modeling tools and mechanisms that are capable of describing high temperature and pressurized oxy-coal combustion. Experimental work will be performed at the University of Utah’s Industrial Combustion and Gasification Research Facility using three different pilot-scale reactors including a 100 kilowatt Oxy-Fuel Combustor (above), 1.5 megawatt multi-fuel furnace, and 300 kilowatt Pressurized (17bar) Entrained Flow Gasifier. The experiments will be tailored to provide a comprehensive data set describing heat release profiles, material temperatures, and mineral matter behavior under high temperature and elevated temperature high-pressure flames generated by oxygen combustion of coal with zero or minimum recycle. Mechanism development and CFD-based combustion modeling will be performed by REI. This work builds on DOE contract NT0005288. — Cost: Total: $1,570,596, DOE Share: $1,251,541, Performer Share: $319,055

A HPC-based Flowback and Cleanup Simulator Tool for Horizontal Well Completion and Optimization

Reaction Engineering International was tasked to create a simulation tool that couples geomechanical, reservoir, and fracture flow physics to allow the design of a flowback schedule to optimize fluid recovery and reduce water usage per unit of gas produced. This will result in less water usage per fracturing job, higher recovery rates of water from the well, higher initial production rates and higher ultimate recovery of the resource. This will allow the United States to continue to lead in natural gas production while lowering the amount of water used. Cost—DOE: $149,932