The U.S. Department of Energy announced up to USD 28M in funding for a new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program, ULtrahigh Temperature Impervious Materials Advancing Turbine Efficiency (ULTIMATE). The ULTIMATE program will develop and demonstrate ultrahigh temperature materials that can operate in high temperature and high-stress environments of a gas-turbine blade. Projects will specifically target gas turbine applications in the power generation and aviation industries.
The ULTIMATE program will improve the efficiency of gas turbines by increasing the temperature capability of the materials used in the most demanding environments. The temperature capability of current state-of-the-art blade materials has improved steadily to 1100 ºC, through incremental microstructure and chemistry refinement. However, there exists a new opportunity to discover, develop, and implement novel materials that work at temperatures significantly higher than industry standard superalloys, to further increase efficiency and economic gains. ULTIMATE projects will address this need by developing novel ultrahigh temperature metal alloys and coatings integrated with advanced manufacturing processes. The ULTIMATE program will target enabling gas-turbines blades to operate continuously at 1300 ºC in a material test environment—or with coatings, with turbine inlet temperatures of 1800 ºC or higher.
