The supercomputer is a 503 TFlops (trillion floating-point operations per second) computer that enables researchers to apply complex model simulations for advanced energy and environmental technology development. This is a unique tool tailored for engineering calculations in support of fossil energy research.

NETL’s supercomputer’s key areas of application include multiphase computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, computational geophysics, and computational materials research.

This new capacity will give us the computational muscle to accelerate the development and design of large scale chemical looping reactors and carbon capture technologies that will allow us to use fossil fuels more cleanly. It will ensure that NETL remains on the forefront of this research, which is critical not only to our economic future but to the environment as well.

—Secretary Moniz

Capable of running simulations ranging from the molecular level to modeling entire power plants and natural fuel reservoirs, the new computer provides enhanced visualization, data analysis, and data storage capabilities that will enable researchers to discover new materials, optimize designs, and predict operational characteristics.

All of the computational, visualization, network hardware, and primary storage servers are installed in a modular datacenter, greatly improving its efficiency. It provides the new computer with one of the lowest power utilization efficiency (PUE) infrastructures available, at times using only 1% of total electrical consumption to cool the equipment. The increase in efficiency translates to electrical energy cost savings of approximately $450,000 annually.

In his remarks at NETL, Secretary Moniz said:

In the last four years, we’ve more than doubled renewable energy generation from wind and solar power. However, coal and other fossil fuels still provide 80 percent of our energy, 70 percent of our electricity, and will be a major part of our energy future for decades. That’s why any serious effort to protect our kids from the worst effects of climate change must also include developing, demonstrating and deploying the technologies to use our abundant fossil fuel resources as cleanly as possible.

The efforts underway here at NETL’s Morgantown campus, as well as its other research facilities, are an important part of a much larger portfolio of clean fossil fuel technologies across the Department of Energy and across the country.

The US Energy Information Administration projects increases in US coal utilization in 2013, and other countries have been increasing their imports of coal. No discussion of US energy security and reducing global CO₂ emissions is complete without talking about coal—and the technologies that will allow us to use this resource more efficiently and with fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

This is why, since President Obama took office, the Department of Energy has invested more than $6 billion to clean coal technologies—particularly in carbon capture, utilization, and storage – helping to ensure that fossil energy use is cleaner, safer, and more sustainable.

—Secretary Moniz