This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Under this award, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), College of Engineering (COE), will create a Sustainable Energy Laboratory (SEL) for fundamental research in new high-risk science and engineering that will lead to critical breakthroughs in sustainable energy-related technologies and materials. The majority of the 9,163 square feet of space to be renovated in the 1963-built Dougherty Engineering Building to create the SEL was damaged by fire in 2006 and is currently undergoing a $5.7 million renovation, which brings the building up to code and allows the renovations under this award. Recently, UTK has aggressively positioned itself to tackle the issues of energy science and engineering by creating the Sustainable Energy Education and Research Center (SEERC), securing an NSF IGERT grant entitled Sustainable Technology through Advanced Interdisciplinary Research (STAIR), hiring new faculty with research expertise in sustainable energy, and creating a state-funded $30 million Solar Institute and a $45 million Bioenergy Center.
Intellectual Merit: The SEL renovation will provide the necessary infrastructure to perform future research activities conducted by a team of 14 faculty researchers and more than 50 students and post doctoral researchers in an environment that will allow highly collaborative and synergetic activities leading to significant scientific and technological contributions. Specifically, the SEL will significantly enhance the ability of UTK faculty and students to engage in cutting edge sustainable energy related 21st century research that has been significantly restrained due to outdated and obsolete research laboratories. The grant will provide hundreds of linear feet of flexible casework, a half dozen acid fume hoods, hydrogen safety systems, and other fixed equipment. This renovation will transform some of the most unpleasant, unproductive laboratory space in the college into valuable, information-generating research areas to finally enable breakthroughs in sustainable energy research. The dedicated SEL on campus will greatly advance research flexibility and research training capabilities. The SEL will focus on four major research thrust areas: (1) characterization and measurement functions, (2) energy conversion and storage, (3) advanced vehicle systems, and (4) renewable power generation. The common thematic thread linking these areas is their connection to end-use sustainable energy technologies. Each thrust area is divided into subtasks with a highly qualified team of senior researchers, post-doctoral research associates, and graduate students.
Broader Impacts: The broader impacts will be leveraged by aligning SEL research activities with the STAIR IGERT grant that has well-established programs currently in place. The STAIR program has implemented a comprehensive approach relative to education, outreach, and the inclusion of under-represented groups in the context of sustainable energy. These activities include: (1) a focused effort to encourage participation in sustainable energy science in grades K-12, including outreach to regional school teachers and high and middle school students, (2) efforts to encourage participation of under-represented minorities in sustainable energy-related opportunities, including recruiting summer students from the COE's Tennessee Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (TLSAMP) program, which is geared toward African-American, Hispanic-American and Native-American students, and coordinating with the COE's DOE-funded Pipeline Engineering Diversity Program (PEDP) program, (3) efforts to involve undergraduate students in research through research assistantships, undergraduate research courses taken as electives, and volunteer positions, and (4) outreach activities that include workshops to elementary school students at the American Museum of Science and Energy and staffing the summer Materials Camp offered to local high school students.
Dougherty Hall at the University of Tennessee Knoxville was partially renovated to provide space for the Sustainable Energy Laboratory. This construction project: 1) Created 9,153 square feet of sustainable energy research space of which over 5,000 square feet is wet lab space with 9 chemical fume hoods and hundreds of feet of flexible casework on the second and mezzanine floors of the building. 2) Consolidated individual investigator laboratories to create synergetic collaborations between primarily leading scientists and engineers in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) and Mechanical Engineering (ME). 3) Develop the cornerstone research center for novel and critical investigations in end-use technology for the sustainable energy arena at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. This opportunity for success in the service of a vital societal need through multidisciplinary inquiry and application depends critically on the existence of a substantial laboratory space (i.e., the SEL) designed and implemented to sustain this collaboration. 4) Upgraded over 5,600 square feet of recently renovated, but currently bare, fire-damaged space to functional space for SEL research on the Mezzanine of Dougherty Hall. 5) Renovated about 3,500 square feet of space into new functional wet labs for energy conversion research with a room for computational chemical engineers on the second floor of Dougherty Hall. 6) Constructed new airhandling system on the roof for the second floor wet laboratories. 7) Supplied hydrogen and other gases to key laboratories on the Mezzanine and Second Floor for research related to fuel cells. For this construction project, substantial completion occurred on July 17th, 2013, and a certificate of occupancy was provided by State Fire Marshal’s Office on August 22nd, 2013. Subsequently, faculty researchers, staff, graduate students and undergraduate researchers moved into the renovated labs. They have commenced work that will be reported in 12 months as scholarly outcomes such as refereed publications, professional presentations, completed undergraduate and graduate theses/dissertations and new research proposals to agencies and organizations external to the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
