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DOE OSTI2026

Plug Load Management Through Occupant Engagement at Washington State University

To decrease costs and improve building occupant safety, Washington State University (WSU) began planning a plug load management campaign in 2020, with implementation beginning in 2021. This case study describes the campaign's goals, approach, and results over the past 5 years, ultimately showing that occupant- and behavior-focused strategies can meaningfully reduce plug load energy use while improving health and safety.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Application of a Heat Integrated Post-combustion CO 2 Capture System with Hitachi Advanced Solvent into Existing Coal-Fired Power Plant (Final Technical Report)

The goal of this final project report is to comprehensively summarize the work conducted on project DE-FE0007395. In accordance with the Project Management Plan (PMP), Revision F dated 5/10/2019, and Statement of Project Objectives (SOPO) within, the University of Kentucky (UK) Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER) (Recipient) has successfully demonstrated a unique, versatile CO 2 capture system (CCS) using a heat integrated process combined with two-stage stripping for process intensification, heat recovery and demineralized (DM) water generation. This project involved the design, fabrication, installation, testing of and data analysis from the UK CAER 0.7 MWe small pilot scale CO2 capture process installed at Kentucky Utilities (KU) E.W. Brown Generating Station in Harrodsburg, KY. During each of the four project Budget Periods (BPs), UK CAER met all project deliverables, all project milestones, with National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) approved adjustments made to the campaign long-term hours during BP4. The CCS was constructed in modular skids. Two solvent campaigns were initially conducted; the first with a 30 wt% monoethanolamine (MEA) as a baseline, and the second with the Hitachi H3-1 advanced solvent. Additional tests were performed with two advanced solvents including CAER and Proprietary Solvent C. Short-period testing with a higher concentration of 40 wt% MEA was conducted to evaluate the potential saving with high alkalinity. From the various solvent campaigns, unique aspects of the UK CAER CCS technology, as well as its flexibility and versatility were experimentally validated and demonstrated. With respect to solvent evaluation efforts in identifying candidates with significant operational and capital cost savings potential, performance of solvents were evaluated to determine the energy requirements for regeneration; environmental impacts from secondary emissions and degradation products; degradation rates, solvent make-up rates and stability. The assessments were done from parametric tests that determined optimum operating conditions for the individual solvents to maximize process efficiency and minimize the parasitic load of the power plant, and from long term campaigns (1000 hours for 30 wt% MEA and 1000 hours for H3-1) which collectively informed the techno-economic analyses (TEA) of the process. The long term campaigns included corrosion studies which used three types of metal coupons in different sections of the process: (absorber, primary stripper, lean carbon-loaded and rich carbon loaded flow streams in process) to mimic heat and flow dynamics process equipment were exposed to. The estimated corrosion rates were used to elucidate corrosion mechanisms and to further guide process material selection for potential capital cost savings.

gas separation↗
DOE OSTI2021

UKy-CAER Heat Integrated Transformative CO 2 Capture Process in Pulverized Coal Power Plants

The goal of this Phase II Topical Report is to summarize the work for public domain conducted on project DE-FE0031583. Building upon the Design Basis completed during Phase I and in accordance with the Statement of Project Objectives (SOPO), the University of Kentucky (UK) Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER) (Recipient) along with team members has completed the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) for its advanced, versatile post-combustion CO 2 capture system (CCS) at the 10 MWe large pilot scale to be installed at the Wyoming (WY) Integrated Test Center (ITC), using a heat integrated process with split-rich fed, two-stage stripping and any advanced solvent to enhance the CO 2 absorber performance and lower the cost of CO 2 capture. The proposed project (Phases I-III) involves the design, fabrication, installation, testing and evaluation of a large pilot scale facility that will demonstrate the UK CAER transformative CCS integrated with an operating power plant. The work performed in Phase I, detailed in the Phase I Topical Report that was submitted in March 2019, included formation of a project team, securing the host site, and completing pre-FEED design basis, a cost estimation, a preliminary techno-economic analysis (TEA) and an environmental information volume (EIV). The work performed in Phase II, detailed in this Phase II Topical Report, includes completion of FEEDs, completion of a process risk analysis (PRA), obtaining necessary permits, updating the EIV and TEA, updating the cost and schedule estimate for the Phase III scope of work (SOW) and securing the necessary cost share. Updated information is provided on the current status of the UK CAER CCS technology and the project is ready to begin immediately detailed design, construction and operation of the proposed pilot.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Monolithic AlScN/SiC phononic waveguides for scalable acoustoelectric and quantum devices

Unlike conventional surface acoustic wave devices, phononic waveguide systems enable higher circuit density and stronger strain and piezoelectric fields, making them promising for advanced acoustoelectric and quantum applications. One such material system for generating and guiding phonons at gigahertz frequencies is AlScN on SiC, which can be synthesized by sputter depositing AlScN directly onto SiC wafers. The AlScN on the SiC platform allows for tightly vertically-confined acoustic modes with high electromechanical coupling, high speed of sound, and simple fabrication of strip and rib waveguides. Until now, this system has only been studied as a slab waveguide platform, i.e., without any lateral waveguiding. Here, we demonstrate a two-dimensionally confined phononic architecture in AlScN on SiC that supports guided modes at 2.95 and 4.05 GHz. These modes exhibit strong electromechanical coupling coefficients (k 2 = 4.27%) and propagation losses on the order of 10 dB/mm. Furthermore, this architecture is well-suited for phononic routing and power-efficient active or nonlinear devices such as amplifiers, mixers, and oscillators, and is compatible with the integration of quantum systems, including vacancy centers, charge carriers, photons, and spins, either embedded in SiC or heterogeneously integrated on the surface.

Electrical components↗
DOE OSTI2023

Development and Bench-Scale Testing of a Novel Biphasic Solvent-Enabled Absorption Process for Post-Combustion Carbon Capture (Final Technical Report)

A new class of biphasic solvents was developed, and the concept of the enabled carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) absorption process was tested for post-combustion carbon capture in our previous lab-scale research. The primary goals of this project were to advance the development of the novel biphasic CO 2 absorption process (BiCAP) and validate its technical advantages by testing the integrated technology at a 40 kWe bench-scale with actual coal-derived flue gas in a power plant environment. The project was led by the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign (UIUC), and Trimeric Corporation served as a sub-awardee providing support in basic design and techno-economic studies. To achieve the project goals and objectives, solvent management studies, process modeling and optimization, bench-scale equipment design, construction and testing, and technical, economic and environmental assessments have been conducted. The two top-performing biphasic solvents developed in our previous research were used in this project. Biphasic solvent emissions and control were investigated in the laboratory. The emissions of the biphasic solvents from the absorber were comparable to or lower than the reference 30 wt% monoethanolamine (MEA) solution, while they could be more effectively removed in the water wash column. Lab-scale testing of solvent degradation reclamation has revealed that vacuum distillation was feasible for biphasic solvent reclamation. Aspen Plus models were used to optimize the BiCAP, and a CO 2 stripping configuration introducing a secondary cold solvent feed to the stripper was identified to be the most energy efficient. A 40 kWe bench-scale, integrated BiCAP system was successfully designed, fabricated, and installed at the UIUC’s Abbott Power Plant. Parametric testing with synthetic flue gas has demonstrated that the two biphasic solvents required a more than 40% lower heat duty for CO 2 desorption as compared to the reference MEA tested on the same bench-scale skid. Slipstream testing with actual coal flue gas for a total of 31 days in two test campaigns has further demonstrated stable operation of the bench-scale skid. During the first campaign targeting 90% CO 2 removal, the heat duty averaged at 2,183 MJ/tonne of CO 2 captured and during the second campaign targeting 95% removal, the heat duty averaged at 2,450 MJ/tonne of CO 2 captured. A techno-economic analysis has revealed that for integration of the BiCAP into a 650-MWe pulverized coal-fired power plant, the parasitic power loss was reduced by ~20%, and the cost of CO 2 capture was reduced by ~21% ($36.3/tonne on a December 2018 dollar basis) compared to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s baseline Case B12B. As progression from this bench-scale development effort, a new project “Engineering-Scale Testing of the Biphasic Solvent Based CO 2 Absorption Capture Technology at a Covanta Waste-to-Energy Facility” was awarded by the DOE, launched in February 2023, to allow the team to further test the technology and demonstrate its technical and economic advantages at a pilot scale.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Evidence for Environmental Stripping in the Coma Cluster

The stability and longevity of globular clusters (GCs) make them effective tracers of the dynamical histories of galaxies in cluster environments. We construct a catalog of 23,351 GC candidates in the Coma Cluster using imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys. We cross-match galaxy data from the SIMBAD, NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, and Sloan Digital Sky Survey archives to construct a galaxy sample and model their GC populations using the GC specific frequency. We find several galaxies with significantly smaller GC populations than expected from their luminosities, consistent with either tidal stripping or intrinsically low formation efficiencies. We analyze annular and Voronoi GC radial profiles of the two brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs), NGC 4874 and NGC 4889, as well as other Coma galaxies. A two-dimensional Voronoi density mapping reveals GC populations with marked deficits compared to our modeled expectations, including galaxies in proximity to the BCGs (e.g., IC 3998, NGC 4875, and NGC 4876) and others distributed across Coma (e.g., NGC 4908, NGC 4883, and IC 4042). Azimuthal symmetry testing suggests past dynamical interactions may have truncated GC systems in some galaxies, while intrinsic deficits are probable in others (e.g., IC 3973, IC 3976, IC 4040, and IC 4045). Our results show that GC deficits exist in several Coma galaxies and that the two-dimensional density structure reveals environmental signatures, with asymmetry statistics consistent with directional stripping. These findings highlight GC populations as powerful probes of environmental processing and the dynamical histories of galaxies in dense cluster environments.

Pomeroy, Richard T. [University of Texas Rio Grand↗
DOE OSTI2022

Process design of the piperazine advanced stripper for a 460 MW NGCC

The Texas Carbon Management Program is conducting a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) for Piperazine with the Advanced Stripper™ (PZAS™) at a natural gas combined cycle power plant in west Texas. Here, this paper presents the design of the advanced stripper system with an emphasis on the selection of packing type, packing height, column diameter, and heat exchanger size, demonstrates the effect of ambient temperature swing on the regeneration energy requirement, and investigates two alternate process configurations that provide better energy performance than PZAS™. The design uses 2 stripper trains, and each train uses two cold cross exchangers, one hot cross exchanger, a stripper column, a CO 2 exchanger, and a condenser. Each column consists of two sections of random packing with RSR 2 packing at the top and RSR 3 packing at the bottom, with a total packed height of 7.5 m. The cold exchanger was designed with an NTU of 6, the hot exchanger with an NTU of 2, and the CO 2 exchanger with an NTU of 5. At 0.4 rich loading and 0.2 lean loading, this design resulted in a heat duty of 2.85 GJ/tonne CO 2 . The heat duty can vary up to 3.1 GJ/tonne CO 2 due to lower rich loading at higher summer temperature, but the absolute steam requirement is 8–15% lower in the summer. An alternate design, PZAS with hot rich bypass, is proposed, which can reduce the equivalent work of stripping by 1.5–3.5% compared to PZAS at low heat exchanger size, due to a reduction in stripper driving force. Using a hot rich bypass increases the vapor fraction of the total rich bypass stream from 0.3 to 1 mol% compared to using the warm rich bypass, which also contributes to a reduction in lost work in the column. PZAS with hot rich bypass outperforms PZAS in energy requirement below a packing height of 15 m, but fails to do so above 15 m of packing due to a column pinch that results in little change in LMTD of the column. PZAS with hot rich bypass has the potential to minimize capital cost in addition to reducing energy requirement as it requires less packing to strip CO 2 than PZAS and requires only one cross exchanger with 8 heat transfer units.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Modeling Advanced Strippers for CO2 Capture from Gas-Fired Power Plants using Aqueous Piperazine

Energy performance of 5 m piperazine was evaluated with an advanced stripper at the pilot scale, accounting for heat loss. Modeling studies indicated that heat loss at locations other than the heat source impacted the heat duty. For strippers with excess packing, the column was the most important source of heat loss, and values as low as 0.03 GJ/hr can cause pinch and reabsorption of CO2. Solvents like 5 m PZ are more affected by heat loss in the column due to a top-side temperature pinch at high lean loading. Heat loss impacts NGCC CO2 capture more than coal-based CO2 capture. Surface temperature measurements pilot plants showed that heat loss was 50-75% controlled by natural convection. Measured heat loss was correlated with steam flowrate and wind speed and ranged from 8126 to 219668 Btu/hr, representing 35% of the measured heat rate on average. Net heat duty linearly varied with CO2 removal at low lean loading and was similar for coal and NGCC conditions at fixed removal. At 90% removal, net heat duty was about 2.5 GJ/t with 4 and 12% CO2 in the flue gas. 7 At NGCC conditions, strippers with finite packing can benefit from a flashing feed to the top of the column by using a hot bypass. A flashing feed was linked to a reduction in irreversibility of the stripper from temperature driving forces. It also reduces heat duty by up to 6% at fixed packing height and reduces packing requirement for a fixed steam heater size compared to a warm bypass. Lean loading and lean solvent rate were effective handles to maximize profitability of a fixed stripper design at low gas price. High ambient temperature operation can benefit from low pressure stripping to about 0.18 lean loading at 150 ℃ to maintain the cyclic capacity at reduced rich loading. At low gas price, the capture plant was able to maximize profitability even with a high heat duty of 2.7-3.1 GJ/t at a lean loading of 0.2-0.22 mol/mol. Heat recovery by partial water vapor condensation in a gas-liquid exchanger can be replaced by a direct contact condenser (DCC). The DCC improved gas cooling and reduced heat duty compared to the CO2 exchanger at 0.2 lean loading. The DCC when used with a 150 ℃/5.5 bar stripper can reduce the cost of capture compared to the base case by $3- 4/tonne at 15 ft of packing (optimum) but increases cost of capture by $6/tonne with a 120 ℃/2 bar stripper and 10 ft of packing (optimum). The DCC can work effectively with a solvent with a high heat of absorption and thermal stability.

Suresh Babu, Athreya↗
DOE OSTI2021

Pilot scale testing of an advanced solvent in a 0.7 MWe post-combustion CO 2 capture unit

An advanced Amine Promoted Buffer Solution (APBS), APBS-CDRMax® (CDRMax), developed by Carbon Clean Solutions Limited (CCSL), was tested at the 0.7 MWe CO 2 capture facility at Kentucky Utilities E.W. Brown Generation Station using a heat-integrated two-staged stripping CO 2 capture process. The performance of the solvent was evaluated to determine operating conditions that maximized the cyclic capacity of the solvent and results in energy savings. The regeneration energy ranged from 2.9 to 3.3 GJ/ton CO 2 with 14 vol % (dry) CO 2 inlet and approximately 90 % capture. The difference in the reboiler specific heat duty at stripper pressures of 1.7 and 2.1 bar was minimal as similar amounts of water vapor were observed in the CO 2 product stream at stripper outlet. Recycling of product CO 2 increased the inlet CO 2 concentration to the absorber from 14 to 16 vol% which enhanced mass transfer from the gas to the solvent resulting in about 5 % reduction in the energy of regeneration at the lower stripper pressure. The solvent circulation rate was reduced by about 30 % relative to previous 30 wt% MEA campaign for the CO 2 target capture of 90 %. Finally, the reduced solvent make-up rate of CDRMax shows promise for capital and operating cost savings for post-combustion CO 2 capture.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Pilot-Scale Testing of an Integrated Circuit for the Extraction of Rare Earth Minerals and Elements from Coal and Coal Byproducts Using Advanced Separation Technologies

The primary objective of this project was to develop and demonstrate an integrated pilot-scale circuitry for recovering high-value rare earth elements (REEs) from coal and coal byproducts. The target performance was to produce a mixed REE product with content of at least two percent by weight on a dry mass basis in a cost-effective and environmentally benign manner. During the first nine months of the project period (Phase 2 Budget Period 2), pilot plant construction was completed including all field site startup activities such as permitting, engineering design, procurement/bidding, unit fabrication, site construction, equipment installation, module assembly, safety training, and circuit shakedown. During the remaining 21 months of project period (Phase 2 Budget Period 3), detailed field-testing activities were performed including feedstock sample collection and preparation, exploratory testing, circuit modification, detailed parametric study, and performance optimization. A detailed techno-economic analysis was performed based on the pilot plant testing findings which provided various scenarios for REE production. The project successfully accomplished the proposed target performance by producing mixed rare earth oxide (REO) with greater than 90% purity by weight in a continuous pilot scale operation from two distinctly different coarse refuse materials (i.e., West Kentucky No. 13 and Fire Clay coal seams), and at least three secondary sources (i.e., heap leach process and naturally formed acid mine drainage system). Project partners included the University of Kentucky, Virginia Tech, West Virginia University, Alliance Coal, Blackhawk Mining, Mineral Refining Company, and Mineral Separation Technologies. The pilot scale test facility was constructed at a former mining complex owned by Alliance Natural Resource Partners (Alliance Coal). The site was rehabilitated to accommodate the equipment installation, construction and fabrication, electrical power requirement, water line management and containment. The process units constructed and installed included X-ray sorting unit, crushing and grinding unit, physical separation unit, acid leaching unit, solvent extraction unit, and wastewater management unit. A rare earth mineral concentration unit was constructed as a standalone unit for flexible operation. A detailed environmental assessment and control plan was carried out to identify and quantify any potential impacts of the pilot-scale processing circuitry on the human and eco-system health and well-being. Corresponding mitigation strategies and control measures were provided. A conceptual flowsheet was developed to effectively remove thorium and uranium from high purity rare earth oxide mix or any potential radionuclide enriched stream. The two distinct feedstock materials were secured from the Blackhawk Mining Complex in eastern Kentucky where the Fire Clay (Hazard No. 4) seam is processed. The West Kentucky No. 13 (Baker) coarse refuse material was collected from an active process stream at an Alliance coal preparation plant located in western Kentucky. Characterization analysis indicated that both of feed materials generated from the two sources contained >300 ppm of TREEs on a dry whole mass basis which met the requirements for a qualified feed stock. The two feedstocks were further upgraded using a dual x-ray sorter to prepare the feed material for hydrometallurgical circuit. Thermal treatment on feed material prior to leaching was found to: 1) improve the leaching recovery of REEs, 2) increase the leaching kinetics, and 3) allow the leaching reaction to occur at lower acidity. Roasting at 600°C was selected as the pre-treatment condition for both West Kentucky No. 13 and Fire Clay coarse refuse material. Over 40% of leaching recovery was achieved by roasting West Kentucky No. 13 material having a top particle size of 3 mm in the pilot scale operation using 1.2M sulfuric acid leaching at 75OC. Initial pilot scale testing involved continuous operation of the pilot plant for 94 hours. The leaching unit was operated at solid-to-liquid ratio of 1 to 10 (w/v) using 0.5M sulfuric acid solution at a temperature of 75°C. The continuous solvent extraction circuit utilized rougher and cleaner units with DEHPA and TBP as the extractants. An innovative stripping circuit was developed to accumulate the REE concentration in the stripping solution to a level above 600 ppm. A bleed stream from the recycled strip solution was treated using oxalic acid precipitation which produced a high grade rare earth oxalate. The oxalate product was roasted to remove the oxalate which produced a rare earth oxide product having a purity greater 90%. Due to high concentrations of contaminant ions in the pregnant leach solution (PLS), a modified flowsheet was developed that involved pre-concentration of the REEs using multiple stages of precipitation and redissolution. The advantage of this process was improved removal of contamination before the downstream purification process and a significant cost reduction relative to the circuit that utilized the solvent extraction process. The modified circuitry included processes involving leaching, multistage precipitation, redissolution, and oxalate precipitation followed by roasting of the oxalate product. The circuit produced a mixed REO that was 92.96% pure from the initial test. A detailed parametric test plan was carried out which involved varying key parameters including solids feed rate, acid flowrate, acid concentration, multistage precipitation pH, redissolution pH, oxalate precipitation dosage and pH. The response variables included REE recovery, contaminant recovery, REO product grade and overall chemical consumption. Test results indicated that the acid-to-solid ratio is the key parameter to leaching efficiency as performance deteriorated with an increase in solids concentration. The optimal pH determined for REE precipitation and redissolution was 6.5 and 2.5, respectively. Additional tests were conducted to further improve the flowsheet. Recirculating a portion of the PLS to the feed of the leach tanks improved the leaching performance by lowering the pH of the leaching system and reducing the contamination recovery by shortening the residence time. Moreover, the removal of Al prior to REE precipitation significantly reduced the oxalic acid consumption in the oxalate precipitation circuit. The modified circuit produced over 90% grade REO by weight from both West Kentucky No. 13 and Fire Clay coarse refuse material in pilot scale continuous test programs. A case analysis model was developed to project the REE and major contaminants concentration in each PLS stream based on the leaching condition, pH cut point, and oxalic acid dosage. A correlation was established using empirical and semi-empirical models. Using the models, chemical consumption required for each stage was predicted based on the projected performance of the hydrometallurgy circuit. After identifying the optimum conditions, validation tests were carried out for the treatment of both West Kentucky No. 13 and Fire Clay coarse refuse materials in the pilot plant. The actual circuit performance and chemical consumptions were very close to the model predictions. Other than the two coarse refuse sources, several secondary feedstocks were also tested in the pilot plant facility. A “heap leach” system was constructed using the coarse refuse material generated from cleaning the West Kentucky No. 13 seam coal. Using the two stage SX rougher and cleaner circuit, a concentrate with a grade >90% REO was produced while recovering >97% of the REEs from the heap leach PLS. Naturally generated acid mine drainage (AMD) from West Kentucky No.13 mine was processed using the multistage precipitation circuit in the pilot plant in a test conducted for a period of 32 hours. The final grade of the mix RE oxide produced from the AMD was 90.84% with an overall circuit recovery of 64%. The primary source of REE was the selective precipitation steps involving iron and aluminum rejection. The hydrophobic-hydrophilic separation (HHS) process was proven to effectively recover coal from fine waste materials. For REM recovery, the HHS process was able to produce concentrates at grades of approximately 1.8% REE on an ash basis; however, recovery values were typically low, <10%, under the optimal conditions determined in the laboratory-scale testing. Staged testing of the pilot-scale HHS process for coal recovery and semi-continuous laboratory testing for REM testing showed that a total concentration ratio of more than 15x was observed for the REM recovery process. A circuit simulation package was developed for REE extraction and purification using a spreadsheet-based platform (Microsoft Excel). The REESim circuit simulation package is configured to track the mass and volume flows of components passing through a series of unit operations specified and configured by the user. The mass rates can then be utilized by the user to determine important performance indicators such as product mass yields, concentrate purity levels, element-by-element recoveries, and so forth. The techno-economic analysis showed that the roasting and leaching operations were the most expensive capital items, each contributing approximately 30% to the total capital cost. One notable contributor to the high production costs was the low REE recovery observed in the pilot scale trials. The product basket price was shown to have a strong influence on the economic viability of the scenarios, with the scandium price being the most significant influencer. Operating cost was shown to be extremely sensitive to REE recovery, REE feed grade, and leaching acid consumption. An analysis of ten different scenarios for a 500 t/h commercial operation revealed that three were economically favorable, producing internal rates of return varying from 27.7% to 33.1% and payback periods of 4 to 5 years. The project successfully developed and demonstrated a process to recover REEs from coal and coal byproducts in a pilot-plant operation which consistently produced over 90% grade REO mix from varies types of feedstocks. Commercialization analysis showed that the technology readiness level successfully achieved TRL 6 at the end of the project and demonstrated the need and the potential for scaling the process to further advance the technologies toward the goal of providing a domestic supply of REEs at a commercial scale.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
DOE OSTI2020

2020 Exascale Computing Project Annual Meeting (Executive Summary Report)

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP) delivers specific applications, software products, and outcomes on DOE computing facilities. Integration across these elements for specific hardware technologies for exascale system instantiations is fundamental to ECP success. The outcome of the ECP is the delivery of a capable exascale computing ecosystem to provide breakthrough solutions addressing our most critical challenges in scientific discovery, energy assurance, economic competitiveness, and national security. This outcome is not a matter of ensuring more powerful computing systems. The ECP is designed to create more valuable and rapid insights from a wide variety of applications (“capable”), which requires a much higher level of inherent efficacy in all methods, software tools, and ECP-enabled computing technologies to be acquired by DOE laboratories (“ecosystem”). The ECP annual meeting provides a unique opportunity for the core technical expertise in the United States focused on achieving this next plateau of computational science and computing performance to engage in direct discussions on project execution. Face-to-face gatherings in technical communities like this are common and needed for the exchange of scientific ideas and technical performance. The ECP annual meeting stands apart from other technical conferences and meetings in the computing community as it is uniquely and solely focused on the execution of the ECP and the integration of technical activities leading to the creation of the exascale computing ecosystem for the future. The direct interaction of key critical technical staff, who are leaders in their respective fields, and the resulting give-and-take between software, applications, and hardware and the technical co-design therein, is unique and essential to the effective execution of the ECP. The first annual meeting was held in Knoxville, Tennessee, January 31 – February 2, 2017 and brought together, for the first time, a diverse collection of researchers from 16 DOE national laboratories as well as university computer and computational science researchers to discuss shared problems and joint solutions for the development of a capable exascale computing ecosystem. These interactions resulted in focused technical plans and an energized community centered on advances for ECP. The second annual meeting was held in Knoxville, Tennessee, February 5–9, 2018. It included 643 individual thought leaders and performers in application development, software research and deployment, and hardware research and integrators, all of whom are part of the multifaceted, billion dollar HPC community. This meeting provided a platform to discuss and disseminate numerous examples where researchers with common goals and synergistic solutions came together for the first time to deliver tangible results. Additionally, at the 2018 meeting, ECP researchers had the opportunity to digest all US HPC vendor R&D product roadmaps pointing to exascale – not only to learn how their research can play a role, but, more importantly, to influence those roadmaps to ensure successful delivery on DOE applications that will contribute to (if not solve) problems of national interest in national security, science, energy, and health, as well as growing security threats. The third annual meeting was held in Houston, Texas, January 14–17, 2019. With a 19% increase in the number of registrations (768 people), and the change in location, the third annual meeting was considered the most impactful of the three at the time. The new website provided a better platform for the dissemination of the content, the new venue as a meeting hotel instead of a conference center facilitated interactions and discussions after event hours, and the addition of an award-winning mobile event conference app (Whova) transformed dramatically the attendee experience at the event. This fourth annual meeting was held in Houston, Texas, February 3-7, 2020. This meeting had an increase in the number of attendees for a total of 824 people registered (782 attendees) and included numerous enhancements based on feedback and lessons learned from previous meetings, some of which are listed here: Improved quality of the sessions, their material and the whole program.; Had more industry participation and addition of external collaborators from overseas.; Published the full agenda earlier to better accommodate attendance and travel plans based on schedule.; Centralized all sessions in one venue.; Provided additional hotels and room blocks for the attendees.; Improved communication with the audience (links, material, directions, notifications, etc.) to go paperless.; Enhanced side meeting scheduling, management and user experience.; Made available additional space and tables for impromptu meetings and side discussions.; Improved IT and A/V solutions for speakers. In addition, our final survey captured the following points as opportunities for improvement in future meetings: consider a different meeting location that is more pedestrian friendly, reduce talks during working meals to allow more collaboration and informal time, adapt the agenda to acknowledge attendees from different timezones, consider recording some of the tutorials and/or sessions to share broadly with the HPC community, have a larger poster room, provide additional power strips, and improve the WiFi.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗