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his all the College is launching a new

master’s program in Energy Science,

Technology and Policy. This is an

independent, college-wide program that was

initiated by Materials Science and Engineering.

From designing and building devices

or power plants to developing and securing

the smart grid to swaying public policy,

literally every CIT department with perhaps

the exception o BME is involved in energy

research. Considering the expansive energy

work underway in the College, the question

arises: Why did the new program start in MSE?

“There’s a perception that there is no

connection between materials and energy, and

I say the situation is just the opposite. Materials

and energy are closely coupled,” states Gregory

Rohrer, the head o MSE. “Virtually everything

we do in materials has something to do with

energy. Materials are intrinsically connected

to the production, distribution and utilizationo energy and this aects our environment.”

Making his point, Rohrer raises the

example o coal-red power plants. On

average, they are about 30 to 35 percent

ecient, yet plants have been designed that

have 46 percent eciency and 50 percent

is believed achievable. “The increase in

eciency comes rom operating the plants

with higher temperature steam and the key

to this is materials — alloys or the turbines

that remain stable at higher temperatures or

longer times and ceramic coatings that protect

the materials in the turbine,” says Rohrer.

Increased eciency results in lower costs,

better use o ossil uels and greenhouse gas

emissions are reduced by about a third.

Renewable energy eorts grab media

attention, but Rohrer states, “these things are

sometimes oversold. Wind-generated energy

is extremely useul or certain situations, but it

can not replace our current electric generation

capacity. The most reliable estimates indicate

that you can cover the country with windmills;

yet, it will not produce the amount o 

electricity that people will need i they want

to run their air conditioners and computers.”

While large-scale deployment o reliable,

sustainable energy systems that don’t harm

the planet may not materialize in our lietimes,

there are actions we can take now to improve

energy production and mitigate environmentaldamage. MSE is developing materials or

use in highly ecient solid state lighting

systems, industrial batteries, uel cells and the

conversion o solar energy to chemical energy.

“We are poised to transorm the way energy is

produced, stored and used,” says Rohrer.

e f f i c i n c y M a k s a D i f f r n c “What people don’t easily see when

they look at MSE’s research is that many o 

Materials Science and

Engineering:

It’s All About Energy

T

these novel devices, which will o course lead

to more interdisciplinary research.

“BME covers many areas, but equally

important, we are one team and we support one

another. As a small department with a giant

ootprint, we see ourselves as a manager or

promoting collaborative research campuswide,

whereas BME departments elsewhere may

hold a more sel-sucient point o view.Conceptually, this is a nonconventional way o 

looking at a department, but we’re a department

with a unique character,” concludes Wang.

Yu-Li Wang, head of

Biomedical Engineering

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DOE’s Smart Grids Demo Program and has

resulted in a Pittsburgh-based spino company,

Aquion Energy. (See page 10 or “How to

Catch the Wind.”)

Fuel cells represent another major research

area or CIT and Western Pennsylvania. With

support rom the DOE’s Solid State EnergyConversion Alliance (SECA), work is underway

throughout Carnegie Mellon to advance solid

oxide uel cell (SOFC) technology. One goal

is to develop large uel cells that use gasied

coal to produce electricity at power stations

or $400 or less per kilowatt. (Presently,

uel cell-generated electricity costs roughly

$4,500 per kilowatt.) These new systems

would have near zero emissions because they

would capture 90 percent or more o the CO2 

produced. In addition, they would be at least 50

percent or more ecient in converting coal to

energy.Bringing innovative technologies to

market is exciting, but it doesn’t happen

quickly in materials science. On one hand,

CIT’s materials department has a long list o 

patents and strong partnerships with industry.

(The Center or Iron and Steel Making is nearly

100 percent industry unded.) But as Rohrer

explains, “a vast majority o our research

is devoted to scientic understanding, and

that won’t lead to a new product next year.”

Case in point is the work being led by MSE

the projects are directly related to energy

eciency,” says Rohrer. For instance, “Robert

Davis is working on light emitting diode

systems (LED) that probably have ve to ten

times the eciency o normal light bulbs.”

The impact o this work, with regards

to uel costs and environmental implicationscould be ar-reaching, considering that

“worldwide, grid-based electric lighting

consumes 19 percent o total global electricity

production,” states Davis, the John and Claire

Bertucci Distinguished Proessor o Materials

Science and Engineering. Incandescent lighting

and uel-based lamps (which are widely

used around the world or lighting) convert 5

percent or less o the energy they consume into

light. Solid-state lighting (SSL), which uses

semiconductor materials to make the LEDs

that convert electricity directly into light, is

ar more ecient. SSL is being positionedto meet our uture lighting needs — the U.S.

Department o Energy’s (DOE) goal is that

SSL will be 30 to 50 percent ecient by 2015.

This is certainly an improvement over the

present state, but there are signicant scientic

and design hurdles to overcome beore we’ll

see widespread use o this technology in our

daily lives.

Metal production is another area where

energy eciency is o great importance. “The

processing o materials, especially metals,

takes up a signicant raction o world-wide

energy use and these costs are refected in a

product’s price,” states Rohrer. “When you

buy a can o soda, you’re paying, in part,

or the cost o aluminum production. These

costs are signicant because aluminum is an

energy-intensive material. Three percent o the total global electricity supply is used to

make aluminum,” says Rohrer. “However, over

the last ew decades, advances in materials

processing have decreased the amount o 

energy used to make aluminum by about a

third.” Recycling aluminum is worthwhile

because it takes roughly 90 to 95 percent less

energy to recycle aluminum than to make

aluminum rom ore.

I n c r m n a l tr a n s f o r m a i o n sEnergy eciency plays a dominant role

in MSE’s research activities; however, energystorage is o great importance as we pursue

renewable energy sources. A particularly

exciting body o research coming out o MSE

is in large-scale storage batteries.

A thorny problem with wind and solar

arms is that there is no economical way to

store surplus energy to eed into the power

grid or later use. CIT researchers, led by Jay

Whitacre, a proessor in MSE, have created

a sodium ion battery. This promising storage

technology garnered a $5 million grant rom

Gregory Rohrer, head of Materials Science

and Engineering

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Proessor Paul Salvador and Rohrer to convert

solar energy directly to chemical energy by

making photocatalysts rom erroelectric nano-

materials. (Photocatalysts are light-absorbing

materials that change the rate o chemical

reactions.)

Salvador explains that the broad view

o photocatalysis is that water represents

oxidized uel. “I you take water and split it

with sunlight (via a photocatalyst), it generates

hydrogen and oxygen. You burn or react

the hydrogen and oxygen to produce heat or

electricity. You collect the spent uel, which

is water and you start all over again,” says

Salvador. This “closed-loop” process takes

a lot o energy and sunlight is abundant. “I you could cheaply synthesize hydrogen rom

sunlight that would change the way the whole

planet works,” says Rohrer.

Building o this example, imagine a

closed-loop process with carbon and oxygen.

“I you burn carbon with oxygen, you get CO2.

I you could develop a photocatalyst that splits

carbon dioxide back to carbon monoxide and

oxygen, you would have a way o reversing

the carbon cycle. Instead o sequestering CO2,

you would break it down to use as uel. You

would take it out o the air, crack it, burn it,

collect the emissions and you come ull cycle”says Salvador, who has no illusions as to how

dicult it would be to realize this eat. It will

be years beore the science results in tangibles,

but the scenario is ripe with possibilities as

are many o the undamental research projects

underway in MSE. There is abundant, well-

ounded conjecture as to what will be the next

big thing in energy generation, but there’s no

question that materials science and engineering

will play an integral role in the creation and use

o uture energy systems.

“virtually eerythingwe do in materials hassomething to dowith energy. Materialsare intrinsically

connected to theproduction, distributionand utilization ofenergy and this affectsour enironment.”

This new program is intended or students who seek a

distinctive masters program that is based in engineering

and inormed by a broader perspective in economics

and public policy.

Students enroll in the program independent o a

department, but select a disciplinary concentration

within one o six dierent departments (MSE, ECE, CEE,

ChemE, EPP and MechE) in the College o Engineering.

The curriculum consists o 96 units and is designed to

be completed in one academic year.

The program is interdisciplinary and draws instructors

rom all the departments in CIT. It covers a wide range

o issues rom the harvesting and conversion o energy

to its distribution, demand and usage. The subjects will

be covered rom dierent aspects including:

• Thefundamentalunderlyingscienticprinciples

governing and limiting energy conversion and

transport

• Thetechnological,regulatoryandotherbarriers

that exist today — and engineering challenges or

enabling uture power systems and inrastructure

• Sustainabilityandenvironmentalissues

• Thenationalandglobalsocioeconomicalquestions

that govern energy policy and legislature.

Students graduating rom this program will have a

uniqueeducationthatwillbefocusedonenergyand

incorporates the dierent strengths that the various CIT

departments oer. Most graduates will be interested

in careers in utility companies, power plant design and

manuacture, primary metals and other energy-intensive

industries,consultingrmsandgovernmentlabs,as

well as academic institutions.

for more inormation about the Master’s in Energy

Science, Technology and Policy, on the Web, visit

http://neon.materials.cmu.edu/energy

th Ma s r ’ s i n e n r g y S c i n c ,tchno logy and Po l i c y ( eStP)