NREL Laboratories in Denver West Building 16

A few minutes by car from NREL's research and development complex on South Table Mountain in Golden are numerous laboratories housed in Building 16 of Denver West Office Park. Most of these laboratories support research in transportation technologies, including the development of advanced vehicle and fuel systems that eventually will be transferred to the marketplace.

Building 16 also houses laboratories that support NREL's research in photovoltaics, other electric and hydrogen technologies, and basic energy sciences.

Transportation Technology Laboratories

Researchers in transportation technologies work on reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil supplies and improving our air quality. Their work includes developing and demonstrating alternative fuels and advanced vehicle systems that can supply a significant portion of the nation's transportation needs. Research focuses on reducing ancillary loads, improving automotive power electronics, and developing better fuels for advanced engine technologies.

Ancillary Loads Reduction Laboratory

This lab houses an array of advanced testing and measurement equipment. It is used to improve the efficiency of ancillary vehicle systems, such as climate control, power steering, and oil pumping. All of these use fuel but do not propel the vehicle. Researchers also explore related ways to reduce fuel consumption.

The lab's most sophisticated piece of test equipment is ADAM, the ADvanced Automotive Manikin. The world's most advanced thermal manikin—it breathes, heats, sweats, and indicates its comfort level—ADAM helps engineers design cars and systems that provide greater comfort while using less fuel. The manikin's surface sensor measures heat loss at 120 independently controlled zones. Data from the manikin goes to a computer model that simulates human thermoregulatory responses; another computer predicts human thermal comfort. (PDF 659 KB) Download Adobe Reader.

This lab also houses a thermal passenger compartment simulator fashioned from an actual car. As the passenger cabin is exposed to simulated sunlight and changing external temperatures, humidity, and wind flow, its interior is cooled by an air conditioning system and monitored with sensors linked to an electronic data acquisition and control system. The cabin simulator allows researchers to make rapid, repeatable, and realistic evaluations of advanced climate control concepts and to predict their impacts on thermal comfort and fuel economy.

Another promising experimental focus is a thermoacoustic device that uses waste heat to generate sound. As sound waves cycle through compression and expansion, this device uses them to drive a heat pump that cools the car. NREL researchers are performing optimization studies for a standing-wave thermoacoustic cooler, and they have completed a design for multiple heat exchangers within such a device.

Electrical Systems Laboratory

The electric drive system is the foundation for hybrid electric and fuel cell vehicles. Developing low-cost, high-power integrated power electronics devices is thus key to making hybrid electric and fuel cell vehicles practical.

In this lab, researchers work to improve these devices by developing and testing power management components and systems with significantly reduced cost, weight, and volume while increasing efficiency and reliability.

Fuel Chemistry Laboratory

Work in this lab supports DOE's Vehicle Technologies program. A central issue in screening fuels for use in compression ignition engines or advanced combustion engines is ignition quality. This is a measure of how readily a fuel will auto-ignite in hot, compressed air. Researchers in this lab study the effects of fuel chemistry on ignition properties and develop fuels that support more efficient engine designs that make use of both current technology and advanced combustion concepts.

Using an Ignition Quality Tester^TM, researchers can precisely measure ignition delay under computer-controlled temperature and pressure. The Fuels Chemistry Laboratory also houses chromatographs and other equipment for measuring toxic unregulated exhaust emissions. This is important to better understand the impacts and compliance of advanced engines and fuels being proposed for high fuel-efficiency transportation.

Photovoltaic Technology Laboratories

The National Center for Photovoltaics (NCPV) at NREL helps to implement the Department of Energy's National Photovoltaics Program by encouraging the most efficient use of the nation's PV resources. The national program exists to support the U.S. PV industry in improving the cost-effectiveness, performance, and reliability of its solar electric products. Building 16 laboratories focus on small laser equipment, combinatorial film growth, laser scribing, and recrystallization.

In the small laser equipment lab, researchers develop electro-optical equipment for a variety of applications in the photovoltaic field. Typical applications include monitoring the stages of solar cell processing for commercial production, analyzing solar cells and materials to determine the effects of defects and impurities, and characterizing submicron defects in the silicon wafers used in the microelectronics industry.

Light-source equipment includes devices with lasers or intense incoherent lamps (or both). All light sources are properly shielded so they are not hazardous. The equipment developed in this lab has frequently been licensed for commercial purposes.

In the combinatorial (COMBI) film growth lab, researchers use a dual-source deposition chamber to deposit a gradient of combinations of two semiconductor materials on a single substrate. This method provides a wide range of compositions and structures so researchers can test for optimal characteristics in one or two runs rather than hundreds. And it drastically cuts the time they need to explore various materials and growth technologies. Invaluable in uncovering the best conditions for PV film growth or finding new and interesting alloys, this system is used to optimize PV module coatings, such as transparent conducting oxides.

A new PV R&D lab in Building 16 houses large, pulsed lasers. Already in use in the PV and electronics industries, these lasers can be used for processes such as recrystallizing thin films or other materials as well as precisely etching or scribing circuitry interconnections. Several new PV technologies being developed at NREL will require these kinds of capabilities.

Electric and Hydrogen Technologies Laboratories

NREL's Hydrogen Technologies and Systems Center and Electric Systems Center is helping our nation make the transition to a new energy future—one built on diverse and abundant renewable resources, distributed electricity generation, and integrated renewable-hydrogen production systems. Leading these crosscutting efforts, staff in this center contribute to advances in PV, bioenergy, transportation, wind, buildings, and basic sciences.

Fuel Cell Testing and Development

In this laboratory, researchers work on advanced membranes for proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells as well as on metal bipolar plates. Current fuel cell membranes can operate at about 80°C or less and at high relative humidity. However, for automotive applications, fuel cells should operate well at a minimum temperature of 120°C and at low humidity levels. (PDF 1.0 MB) Download Adobe Reader.

Advanced membranes would allow designers to incorporate today's radiator technologies in fuel cell vehicles as well as keep parasitic loads from humidifying the gas streams, thus reducing costs and improving efficiency. NREL is developing a composite membrane material that is effective at higher temperatures and lower humidity levels, to better match actual automotive operating conditions.

To enable fuel cells to be mass-produced, we must identify also bipolar plate materials that are compatible with assembly line processes. NREL is therefore conducting corrosion tests of stainless steel materials to study the relationship between alloy composition and bipolar plate performance. Researchers are also investigating coating materials and methods of enhancing the plates' performance.

Photoelectrochemical Hydrogen Production

Because using sunlight is one of the cleanest ways to produce hydrogen for energy, NREL researchers in this lab work on semiconductor-based systems that directly split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Multijunction cell technology developed by the PV industry is being used in photoelectrochemical (PEC) light harvesting systems that generate sufficient voltage to split water and that are stable in a water/electrolyte environment. (PDF 1.2 MB) Download Adobe Reader.

NREL's PEC system produces electricity from sunlight without needing expensive, complex electrolyzers. The system has a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 12.4% (lower heating value) using captured light. Research is under way to identify more efficient, lower cost materials and systems that are durable and stable against corrosion in an aqueous environment.

Scientific Computing

The Center collaborates with NREL scientists on the design of data structures, software systems, algorithms, and numerical methods for simulation and modeling. The center's capabilities include a variety of high-performance computer systems, numerical modeling, applications, data visualization capabilities, and expertise in their use.

The Center's equipment currently includes a 24-processor SGI Altix system, a 100-node Linux cluster from Atipa, and an IBM SP parallel computer. In one recent project, Computational Sciences staff used molecular mechanics calculations to study atomic-level details of the process of hydrolyzing cellulose to glucose for bioethanol fermentation. In another project, they searched atomic configurations to identify optimal ones for photovoltaic applications. These include an investigation of aluminum gallium arsenide with a minimum band gap (levels of energy/wavelengths of light that the material will absorb to produce current) and of a cadmium selenide quantum dot with maximum band gap. In support of transportation technologies, the center has developed models of coolant flow and heat transfer for various sizes, shapes, and configurations of heat exchangers. They have also created models of computational fluid dynamics for vehicle interiors and the ADAM Manikin (top of page).

NREL Contacts

Barbara Goodman, Director

Center for Transportation Technologies and Systems
(303) 275-4455

Larry Kazmerski

National Center for Photovoltaics
(303) 384-6600

Satyen Deb

Materials Sciences
(303) 384-6405

Dale Gardner

Hydrogen Technologies & Systems
(303) 275-3020

Steve Hammond

Scientific Computing Center
(303) 275-4121