CROSSCUTTING TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AT THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED SEPARATION TECHNOLOGIES

[摘要] The U.S. is the largest producer of mining products in the world. In 1999, U.S. mining operations produced $66.7 billion worth of raw materials that contributed a total of $533 billion to the nation's wealth. Despite these contributions, the mining industry has not been well supported with research and development funds as compared to mining industries in other countries. To overcome this problem, the Center for Advanced Separation Technologies (CAST) was established to develop technologies that can be used by the U.S. mining industry to create new products, reduce production costs, and meet environmental regulations. Much of the research to be conducted with Cooperative Agreement funds will be longer-term, high-risk, basic research and will be carried out in five broad areas: (a) Solid-solid separation (b) Solid-liquid separation (c) Chemical/Biological Extraction (d) Modeling and Control, and (e) Environmental Control. Distribution of funds is being handled via competitive solicitation of research proposals through Site Coordinators at the seven member universities. The first of these solicitations, referred to as the CAST II-Round 1 RFP, was issued on October 28, 2002. Thirty-eight proposals were received by the December 10, 2002 deadline for this RFP-eleven (11) Solid-Solid Separation, seven (7) Solid-Liquid Separation, ten (10) Chemical/Biological Extraction, six (6) Modeling & Control and four (4) Environmental Control. These were first reviewed and ranked by a group of technical reviewers (selected primarily from industry). Based on these reviews, and an assessment of overall program requirements, the CAST Technical Committee made an initial selection/ranking of proposals and forwarded these to the DOE/NETL Project Officer for final review and approval. This process took some 7 months to complete but 17 projects (one joint) were in place at the constituent universities (three at Virginia Tech, two at West Virginia University, three at University of Kentucky, three at University of Utah, three at Montana Tech, three at New Mexico Tech, and one at the University of Nevada, Reno) by May 17, 2003. These projects are listed by category, along with brief abstracts of their aims and objectives.

[发布日期] 2003-11-15 [发布机构] Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (United States)

[关键词] Research Programs;Pollution Control;Technology Utilization;Separation Processes;32 Energy Conservation, Consumption, And Utilization