Eon Corporation (United States)

Transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is critical to achieve climate protection objectives. Fuel production using renewable energy and carbon dioxide is an essential part of reducing fossil dependence and reducing overall carbon footprint. One of the highest value applications in current markets is the production of liquid transportation fuels like sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and low (fossil) carbon diesel fuel through carbon capture and utilization pathways. Liquid hydrocarbon fuels only achieve decarbonization goals if they replace fossil fuels and are produced from sustainable carbon resources.With the support of EERE BETO contract EE0008917, OxEon designed and fabricated a system to produce high value, energy dense, liquid transportation fuels from biogas. The technology has completed initial subsystem verification, and the fully integrated pre-pilot system demonstration is scheduled to start operation in Q1 2025. Anaerobic digester gas is first converted to synthesis gas (CO + H2, syngas), the bio-CO2 through CO2-steam co-electrolysis in a SOEC system and the bio-CH4 through a low energy, non-thermal plasma reformer.The combined syngas streams are compressed and supplied to a modular fixed bed FT reactor for production of liquid hydrocarbons, which serve as the feedstock for SAF, renewable diesel, and other qualified marine fuels. The combination of technologies offers several advantages: the yield of biofuel nearly doubles by using bio-CO2 compared to bio-CH4 alone. The FT reactor cooling system generates steam needed in the SOEC, which lowers the effective operating voltage (including phase change energy) from ~1.5 V/cell to < 1.3 V/cell, and oxygen by-product from the SOEC is used in the autothermal reformer, as is some of the FT produced water. The resulting product fuel is all bio-carbon. The system concept block diagram and the pre-pilot demonstration hardware are shown in Figure 1.The pre-pilot demonstration system was designed and fabricated by OxEon Energy and installed at Wasatch Resource Recovery (WRR). WRR is a public-private partnership producing renewable natural gas (RNG) from food waste. The OxEon pre-pilot system, converting anaerobic digester gas CO2 and CH4 to FT hydrocarbons with a production rate of 6-8 gallons/day is in the commissioning phase. Operation is scheduled to begin in Q1 2025. The system will demonstrate a cumulative time on stream of 500-1,000 hours, producing 100-250 gallons of FT synthetic crude. Subsystem verification of the SOEC, plasma reformer, and FT technologies were conducted to demonstrate key performance targets. In addition to the verification run specifically for this pre-pilot demonstration, OxEon has operated each subsystem technology in thousands of hours of validation testing. A current program sponsored by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), includes scope to upgrade FT produced hydrocarbons to MIL-SPEC compliant JP-5 fuel.There is an emerging market for FT technology aimed at a variety of small, distributed resources including biomass, biogas, and cement kiln CO2, augmented by renewable and nuclear-powered CO2 co-electrolysis to increase the sustainable fuel capacity. FT technology to convert these fuel sources to liquid fuels would require smaller systems that can be transported to the site versus site-built plants. Biomass/biogas has previously been an impractical feedstock for FT technology due to shipping logistics to meet required economies of scale. The challenge in developing these resources is producing a small-scale plant at the same cost per bbl/day capacity as large plants. To accomplish this task, OxEon Energy developed a system that uses larger diameter reactor tubes with a heat transfer insert to manage thermal control of the system. OxEon’s FT design requires fewer reactor tubes than the traditional fixed-bed industry design and uses standard pipe sizes for reduced reactor fabrication costs. These modular systems are designed for a 10-15 bbl/day production increment enabling 100 bbl/day modules.OxEon has demonstrated FT operation with a variety of syngas sources including syngas produced via natural gas reformation, reverse water gas shift (RWGS) of CO2, and co-electrolysis of steam and CO2. Extensive performance mapping with the modular FT reactor design has also informed catalyst characteristics such as pore size, support shape, and precious metal promoter loading to allow for targeted FT product production. OxEon’s FT systems have been built and operated for both government and private customers ranging in production from 100 mL/day to 2 bpd. Figure 1

We propose AutoESSV, a versatile method for choosing ensemble strategies by utilizing a split validation set. This approach incorporates a second validation set, enabling the ensemble meta-learner to identify the most suitable ensemble selection strategy for the data while preserving sufficient data for internal model validation. The first validation set focuses on optimizing model weights, facilitating the selection of an ideal ensemble strategy and structure without risking data leakage, thanks to the second validation set. To evaluate our novel ensemble selection method, we benchmark its performance against the state-of-the-art AutoSklearn framework using sixteen classification and regression datasets from the UCI Repository.

Abstract A risk based sampling approach for subsea inspections on the Balance of Plant (BoP) equipment in a commercial scale floating wind farm is presented. A lifecycle cost analysis is performed to compare a prescriptive inspection approach to a risk based sampling approach to demonstrate the cost savings benefit of the sampling approach. The conceptual base case wind farm for the study has 60 × 15MW turbines on three-column semi-submersible floating foundations designed with a 30-year design life. The BoP equipment includes the floating foundations for the turbines and Offshore Sub Station (OSS), mooring lines, and inter array and export cables. The prescriptive inspection approach for the subsea BoP equipment is based on typical regulatory requirements such as those proposed by ABS, current fixed wind practices, and those used for Oil &amp; Gas (O&amp;G) assets. The risk-based sampling approach is based on selected key risks/failure scenarios that drive inspection activities and frequency. A BoP subsea inspection lifecycle cost savings of over 30% can be achieved by using a risk based sampling approach instead of a prescriptive inspection approach. The risk assessment for the sampling approach is primarily driven by consequence cost considerations. Cost comparisons are made between un-detected threats that result in failure versus threats detected in time to mitigate or plan repairs in advance before failure occurs. The risk cost is the cost of the failure event times the probability of occurrence. Comparison is made to the cost delta for different inspection frequencies. Floating wind is a new industry with little reliability data available. However, O&amp;G experience provides useful failure rate data that is used in this study. The risk based sampling approach considers degradation mechanism trends on inspected units that are extrapolated to other non-inspected units based on correlation between units. Monitoring can also affect the consequence of failure by providing early detection. Risk assessment should be conducted in the design phase as less conservative designs may save cost initially, but the higher risk may drive more frequent inspections. The cost savings data presented in this study is of great benefit considering that O&amp;M costs can amount to a substantial 30% of the total lifecycle cost. It is a novel study since it is specific to floating wind, which is a new advancement, and therefore does not have many papers available compared to fixed wind. It will also demonstrate key ways in which O&amp;G knowledge can be transferred to floating wind.

Ferroptosis has been recognized as a unique cell death modality driven by excessive lipid peroxidation and unbalanced cellular metabolism. In this study, we established a protein interaction landscape for ferroptosis pathways through proteomic analyses, and identified choline/ethanolamine phosphotransferase 1 (CEPT1) as a lysophosphatidylcholine acyltransferase 3 (LPCAT3)-interacting protein that regulates LPCAT3 protein stability. In contrast to its known role in promoting phospholipid synthesis, we showed that CEPT1 suppresses ferroptosis potentially by interacting with phospholipases and breaking down certain pro-ferroptotic polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA)-containing phospholipids. Together, our study reveals a previously unrecognized role of CEPT1 in suppressing ferroptosis.

The instability of the surface chemistry in transition metal oxide perovskites is the main factor hindering the long-term durability of oxygen electrodes in solid oxide electrochemical cells. The instability of surface chemistry is mainly due to the segregation of A-site dopants from the lattice to the surface. Here we report that cathodic potential can remarkably improve the stability in oxygen reduction reaction and electrochemical activity, by decomposing the near-surface region of the perovskite phase in a porous electrode made of La1-xSrxCo1-xFexO3 mixed with Sm0.2Ce0.8O1.9. Our approach combines X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry for surface and sub-surface analysis. Formation of Ruddlesden-Popper phase is accompanied by suppression of the A-site dopant segregation, and exsolution of catalytically active Co particles onto the surface. These findings reveal the chemical and structural elements that maintain an active surface for oxygen reduction, and the cathodic potential is one way to generate these desirable chemistries.

The OxEon Energy team continues its 30+ year solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) development history with the design, fabrication, and installation of two reversible solid oxide electrolysis (SOEC)/SOFC demonstration modules scheduled for installation and commissioning in 2023. The high temperature electrolysis (HTE) systems produce hydrogen through electrolysis using solid oxide cell (SOC) technology derived from OxEon’s heritage stack technology and advancements made during stack development for NASA’s Mars2020 mission. The demonstration units integrate reversible SOC stacks with an effective and reliable balance of plant (BOP) system. A 4-stack quad assembly forms the basis for a modular, scalable system. Thermal management includes pre-heaters within the hot section unit (HSU) enclosure and a feed path that takes advantage of the exotherm generated in SOFC mode. The system design applies mechanical compression to the stacks outside the HSU enclosure to minimize insulation envelope size and produce greater force on the stacks.

The smart edge nodes require efficient matrix-vector multiplications for local deep neural network (DNN) inference. Benefiting from its high density and CMOS compatibility, the eDRAM-based computing-in-memory (CIM) [1] –[4], especially with multi-level cells (MLCs) [4], attracts rising attention. However, the performance of prior MLCeDRAM CIM is severely limited by the inconsistency of weight representations during the programming and computing: weights are programmed as fixed voltages while transistor currents are used for computation. Thus, the programming of MLCs requires calibration due to the nonlinear transistor I-V, which can be extremely complicated in the presence of $V_{T H}$ variations. Furthermore, the computing precision is severely degraded by $\mathrm{V}_{\mathrm{TH}}$ variations when small computing currents are used for high parallelism. To fundamentally surmolunt this dilemma, we propose the first currentprogramming eDRAM CIM that unifies the weight programming and computing in the current domain. The enabling technique is a novel 3T1C eDRAM cell (Fig. 1, top right). It confers several key merits: 1) the cell is programmed by the weight current directly with the selfcalibrated voltage generated on the storage capacitor; it essentially stores the weight current instead of a fixed voltage, thus mitigating $V_{\text {TH}}$ variation and nonlinear transistor I-V impacts; 2) a dynamiccascoded read structure is proposed to significantly reduce the V <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">B</inf> sensitivity while not requiring any bias voltage; 3) thanks to the accurately programmed cell, it supports MLC operation (8 current levels) without any calibration, largely increasing density; 4) a voltage-current two-step programming scheme significantly boosts the sub- $\mu \mathrm{A}$ current-weight writing speed. Combining these merits, the proposed eDRAM cell is naturally immune to transistor-level nonidealities, thus allowing a small LSB weight current of only 100nA. A $4 \mathrm{~b}$ CIM cell composed of 2MLCs is developed to support 4bsigned weights. It contains 15 current levels ranging from -700nA to 700nA. Fabricated in a $65 \mathrm{~nm}$ CMOS, the prototype achieves the highest macro-level 4b-MAC energy efficiency of 233-305TOPS/W among eDRAM CIMs.