The U.S. Department of Energy has funded five institutes as a part of Manufacturing USA, a government-wide initiative focused on coordinating public and private investment in emerging advanced manufacturing technologies. Manufacturing USA brings together industry, academia, and government partners to leverage existing resources, collaborate, and co-invest to advance manufacturing innovation and accelerate commercialization. Better Plants partners can directly benefit from these institutes by joining them as official members. To learn more about the individual institutes, the Better Plants team has put together one-pagers for each of the institutes that are linked below.
Institute for Advanced Composite Manufacturing Innovation
The Institute for Advanced Composite Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI) supports the creation of clean energy solutions and catalyzing manufacturing competitiveness across the U.S. advanced composite ecosystem. Advanced composites are a game changer for American manufacturers paving the way for the next generation of fuel efficient vehicles, compressed natural gas storage, and wind turbines. IACMI’s world-class team of leading industrial manufacturers, material suppliers, software developers, government, stakeholders, and academics focus on lowering the cost of advanced composites by 50%, reducing the energy used to make composites by 75%, and increasing the ability to recycle composites by more than 95% within the next decade.
Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute
The Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) encourages smart manufacturing technology adoption to increase productivity, energy efficiency, and U.S. manufacturing job growth. Smart manufacturing provides clear insight into the entire manufacturing process for everyone, from top management to engineers on the factory floor. This allows for real time decisions regarding energy usage and production efficiency. Smart Manufacturing (SM) is the business, technology, infrastructure, and workforce practice of optimizing manufacturing through the use of engineered systems that integrate operational and information technologies (OT/IT). SM enables the right information and technology to be available at the right time and form to the right people, powering smart decision-making within factories and across entire value chains. In partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, CESMII focuses on improving the precision, performance, and efficiency of U.S. advanced manufacturing.
Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment Institute
The Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Institute is focused on process intensification (PI), including modular chemical process intensification (MCPI) approaches. RAPID’s is building a dynamic community of practitioners who collectively research, develop and advance technologies and workforce development for PI and modular designs. PI and MCPI can potentially dramatically reduce energy, capital and operating cost and make U.S. manufacturing and our workforce more competitive. PI combines multiple process steps into a single unit and MCPI creates a paradigm shift from “economies of scale” to standardize new modular manufacturing techniques such that economies of mass production can be achieved without significant increase in scale, thus enabling use of smaller scale, distributed resources.
Reducing EMbodied-energy and Decreasing Emissions Institute
The Reducing EMbodied-energy and Decreasing Emissions (REMADE) Institute is focused on better understanding and optimizing material reuse, recycling, and remanufacturing in industrial processing. The mission of the REMADE Institute is to enable the early stage applied research and development of key industrial platform technologies that could dramatically reduce the embodied energy and carbon emissions associated with industrial-scale materials production and processing. By focusing our efforts on addressing knowledge gaps that will eliminate and/or mitigate the technical and economic barriers that prevent greater material recycling, recovery, remanufacturing and reuse, the REMADE Institute seeks to motivate the subsequent industry investments required to advance technology development that will support the U.S. manufacturing eco-system.
PowerAmerica Institute
The PowerAmerica Institute is focused on accelerating the adoption of advanced semiconductor components made with silicon carbide and gallium nitride into a wide range of products and systems. Using silicon carbide and gallium nitride to make new wide bandgap semiconductor devices can unlock new energy savings for American manufacturers. These next generation technologies can operate at higher temperatures and voltages, and switch faster than silicon. Applications include power electronic motor controls leading to huge energy savings, power flow control and conditioning leading to a more resilient grid, and enabling chargers and propulsion inverters for electric transportation. PowerAmerica is working to make wide bandgap semiconductor technologies more cost-competitive with silicon-based power electronics, and to facilitate more rapid supply chain integration and workforce development for this new technology.