Established 30 years ago, the CAER is a multidisciplinary research center focusing on energy related industries particularly important to the state of Kentucky although the research has broad application. In addition to program in support of the coal and electric power industries, the center has expanded over time to address issues in carbon capture and management, electrochemical energy storage, biomass energy and biofuels, and other renewable energy systems such as photovoltaic and thermoelectric power.

The new facility will include labs for process development, prototype manufacturing and testing as well as applied research on batteries, capacitors, solar energy materials and biofuels. A portion of the new facility will be equipped specifically for capacitor and battery manufacturing research. The Kentucky Biofuels Laboratory, an analytical laboratory managed as an open access user facility, will also be located within the new expansion.

The CAER project is expected to be completed in summer 2011.

The 11 other projects, all of which were selected as the result of a competition announced by NIST last May, include:

• $15 million to the University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, Pa.) for new laboratories for nanoscience and experimental physics;

• $15 million to Nova Southeastern University Inc. (Fort Lauderdale-Davis, Fla.) for a Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Ecosystem Science research facility;

• $12.4 million to the University of Maine (Orono, Me.) for an Advanced Nanocomposites in Renewable Energy Laboratory for designing, prototyping and testing large structural hybrid composite and nanocomposite components for the deep water offshore wind energy industry;

• $12.3 million to the University of Kansas Center for Research (Lawrence, Kan.) for the new Measurement, Materials and Sustainable Environment Center (M2SEC). Among its features, the facility will house laboratories devoted to biofuels production, characterization and emissions;

• $11.8 million to Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.) for a Center for High Performance Buildings at the Ray W. Herrick Laboratories;

• $11.6 million to the Georgia Tech Research Corporation (Atlanta, Ga.) for a pilot-scale laboratory for carbon-neutral energy solutions. This facility will house energy research efforts including, but not limited to, studies of high efficiency combustion engines, biomass gasification kinetics, biochemical-enzymatic conversion of biomass, and carbon dioxide capture from sources including power plants and combustion engines;

• $10.3 million to the University of Maryland (College Park, Md.) for a laboratory for advanced quantum science in the school’s new Physical Sciences Complex;

• $8.1 million to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Barnstable, Mass.) for the Laboratory for Ocean Sensors and Observing Systems (LOSOS);

• $6.9 million to the University of Nebraska – Lincoln (Lincoln, Neb.) for a nanoscience metrology facility;

• $6.9 million to Georgetown University (Washington, DC) for The Institute for Soft Matter Synthesis and Metrology; and

• $1.4 million to Columbia University (New York, NY) for an ultraclean geochemistry laboratory at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.