Have an interest in nuclear-related studies and research? The DOE wants you! The agency has just announced that it is seeking applicants for $5 million worth of scholarships and fellowships as part of its efforts to recruit and train the next generation of nuclear scientists and engineers.

This opportunity is open to any student enrolled in two-year, four-year and graduate engineering and science programs related to nuclear energy at accredited U.S. universities and colleges.

Besides some obvious studies categories such as nuclear physics, materials and engineering, DOE says it is also willing to consider applicants from mechanical and electrical engineering programs as well as chemistry, radiochemistry, health physics and even nuclear policy tracks. The door is also open to students in two-year programs certificate programs or minors in nuclear power, maintenance, radiation protection and engineering technologies.

DOE says the undergrad scholarships will average $5,000 per year, but it says that it also has budgeted for three $25,000 scholarships for distinguished undergraduate students. The maximum award for fellowships will be $50,000 per year over three years. Winners will be notified by June 2010; the actual awards will be distributed in July 2010.

The application deadline is April 26, 2010. There are links to the scholarship and fellowship applications through DOE’s Nuclear Energy University Program website.

ACerS recently conducted a wonderful “Materials Challenges in Alternative & Renewable Energy 2010″ conference Feb. 21-24  in Cocoa Beach, Fla. Co-organizers Jack G. Simon and George G. Wicks, along with their advisory and technical planning committee, put together an outstanding technical program that included 160 presentations and posters, and 227 people from around the globe attended.

The first day of the conference opened with several 40-minute “tutorial” sessions led by some of the top people in the field. We will have videos available of some of the tutorials in a few weeks. In the meantime, ACerS and the tutorial presenters are making their PowerPoint presentations available for download:

Hydrogen Storage Technologies: A Tutorial with Perspectives from the US National Program [3MB]
Ned T. Stetson, Technology Development Manager, Hydrogen Program, DOE

Air Force Energy Program [2MB]
Bobby Diltz, Energy Systems Research Group, Air Force Research Laboratory Airbase Technologies Division

Photovoltaics: Past, Present, and Future [4MB]
Ryne P. Raffaelle, Director, National Center for Photovoltaics, National Renewable Energy Lab

Material Needs in Alternative and Renewable Energy for the Automotive Industry [6MB]
Mark Verbrugge, Director, Chemical Sciences and Materials System Lab, General Motors R&D

Wind Energy: Background, Technology, Opportunities, & Material Challenges [3MB]
Jose Zayas, Program Manager, Wind & Water Power Technologies, Sandia National Labs

Advanced Materials & Manufacturing for the Clean Energy Future
P.J. Dougherty, Strategic Marketing Innovations

Advances in Battery Technology (to come)
Yet-Ming Chiang, MIT and cofounder of A123 Systems

Materials Challenges in Nuclear Energy (to come)
Steve Zinkle, Oak Ridge National Lab

Credit: David Shankbone, used with permission under Creative Common/GNU license.

According to recent press reports, large glass companies, such as Corning and Guardian, claim that even as the economy improves, they are unlikely to bring domestic employment and production back of commodity-type glass products such as float glass to pre-recession levels.

“Those who are looking through the rearview mirror, waiting for the glass industry in this country to come back, should know it isn’t going to come back, not the way it was,” Russell Ebeid, Guardian’s chairman, said in an interview with Louis Uchitelle of the New York Times. (Glass Global also provides an edited version of the Times article.)

Labor organizations and some small U.S. manufacturers argue that many emerging overseas manufacturers, such as Chinese glassmakers, are competitive in the United State’s marketplace because they have received significant government subsidies. The subsidies help offset, for example, the cost of shipping glass across the Pacific. Fuel price fluctuations and its affect on shipping have undermined some of the price advantages in certain commodity exports - not just float glass – from Asian emerging markets.

According to the Times article, the Guardian float-glass plant in Carleton, Mich., is operating at less than 85 percent of capacity. Employment has fallen to 410 people, from 520 in January 2008.

Guardian’s Ebeid, however, disagrees with what it sees as the premise of the Times piece, namely, that the companies, themselves, are to blame for the shift of the glass business overseas. In a followup letter to the editor, Ebeid wrote,

“Guardian Industries has grown by building a strong American manufacturing base — only then pursuing global business opportunities. We manufacture close to our markets to be most competitive — so we have built eight float-glass manufacturing plants throughout the United States, all running continuously. When Guardian expands in new markets, jobs are actually added in the United States for support and technology development personnel.

Increasingly, our customers in emerging markets want energy-efficient windows, mirrors and advanced architectural glass. Guardian products have met these needs with recent American investment in high-technology equipment, research and development.

For very high-technology products, we continue to export glass from our American plants to China, Japan, Brazil and many other markets. In our view, the American glass market is not declining.”

Another float-glass maker, Pilkington North America runs two production lines in Rossford, Ohio. The Japanese-owned company makes glass for the automotive industries. A Pilkington spokesperson told Glass Global that production there “have been down over the last 12 to 18 months,” she said.

“The U.S. glass industry [sic] is no doubt at a critical juncture,” the spokesperson said the Obama administration’s stimulus package like the advanced energy manufacturing credit will help.

The Times story noted that U.S. glass makers still had the upper hand in some domestic glass markets. For example, it reported that beer and wine bottles are still made in America by companies such as Owens-Illinois. Anchor Hocking and Libbey still produce consumer tableware and some specialty glass products. The Times points out that Anchor Hocking, which has one Canadian plant but no overseas facilities, has leveraged its production capabilities to meet the demands of picky big-time retailers, such as Walmart, who are notorious for demanding just-in-time deliveries from suppliers.

Danielson

David Danielson, one of the project directors of DOE’ relatively new $400 million ARPA-E program gave today’s keynote presentation at the ACerS’ Electronic Materials and Applications conference. Danielson has a good reputation in the world of materials and venture funding, and his message was that like DARPA, its DoD counterpart, it is indeed interested in high-risk, high-reward projects, but with a strong bias toward funding efforts that can reasonably be seen as getting closer to the marketplace. In other words, they won’t be funding basic science, but if you have better piezo mousetrap, they might be interested in talking to you.

Moreover Danielson’s message is that there are plenty of opportunities for ceramists and materials scientists and engineers in general. He made a point of emphasizing that the opportunities are in funding, but also in employment: ARPA-E is still ramping up its staffing and is looking for program directors and fellows.

He says that ARPA-E is already funding many materials-oriented efforts, including ones involving planar sodium batteries, vertically aligned carbon nanotube-based ultracapacitors, CNT membranes for CO2 capture, GaN-on-SI electronics for electric vehicles, direct growth of monocrystalline equivalents and new magnetic materials 75% less rare earth elements but have twice the energy density.

Danielson also talks about specific game-changers in electronic ceramics. Besides (grid-scale) Na batteries mentioned above, he specifically mentioned solid-state capacitors, ceramic electrolytes in lithium batteries, high-energy battery cathodes, grain boundary-engineered (i.e., ‘virtual single crystals”) thin film for photovoltaic applications, high-temp superconductors and low-cost methods for growing single-crystal Si wafers and ZnO, GaN crystals for LEDs.

Danielson is also promoting participating in ARPA-E via attending their workshops and helping to develop programing and serving as a reviewer of proposals.

Monolithic ceramics represent the dominant and best-established segment of the industry). Ceramic matrix composites and ceramic coatings will achieve the more rapid gains, primarily due to their enhanced strength and durability.

A recently released report by the Freedonia Group shows that advanced ceramics will continue to penetrate applications such as capacitors, cutting tools, orthopedic joint implants and membranes, where they are valued for their favorable performance characteristics. Demand is estimated to be lower for body armor, as the Obama administration’s goal is to significantly reduce military involvement in Iraq.

The use of advanced ceramics is highly dependent on the health of the electronic components and electrical equipment industries, which combined accounted for 43% of total demand in 2007. The U.S. electronic components industry is projected to remain sluggish, limiting further advanced ceramics demand.

The medical product market will post the most rapid gains, benefiting from the increasing utilization of ceramics in joint implants and dental procedures.

Other markets set to post above-average gains include chemicals and plastics, environmental, industrial machinery and transportation equipment.

In the environmental market, pollution control is the largest application, but interest in reducing the country’s dependence on foreign oil will also provide opportunities. Emerging applications include the use of ceramic bearings in wind turbines and ceramic materials in photovoltaic modules.

The full report can be viewed at ceramicindustry.com.