Benefiting all South Carolinians—that’s a principle that is foundational for the co-op-supported research happening at the Strategic Approaches to the Generation of Electricity (SAGE), a SmartState Center in the University of South Carolina’s College of Engineering and Computing.
SAGE is one of 51 SmartState Centers established by the General Assembly at USC, Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina to research and create new technologies that can drive economic growth in the state. The focus of SAGE to look into new ways to solve pressing issues that face the power industry and power consumers.
Over a decade ago, South Carolina’s electric cooperatives partnered with Santee Cooper to fund SAGE’s endowed chair. By investing and participating in the initiative, we wanted to ensure that innovations were not only good for the university and the economy, but also good for the people of South Carolina. I had the privilege of serving on an advisory board and collaborating with Michael Amiridis, then the dean of the college of engineering, to recruit a leader for the SAGE project.
As Dean Amiridis conducted interviews, he always came back to the analogy of a three-legged stool. The chair of the program had to be committed to research that 1) was good for the university and its students, 2) had practical applications and 3) was good for people here in South Carolina.
In Dr. Jochen Lauterbach, a chemical engineer who assumed the endowed chair position in 2010, we found someone who thought about energy solutions globally and in new ways. He and his team are integrating traditional generation methods with new technologies that can provide cleaner, more sustainable ways to generate and store electricity. They are collaborating with Santee Cooper to use biomass waste from an Upstate logging company as an alternative fuel to coal. They have also developed a technology for the U.S. military that allows troops to use jet fuel in fuel cells for silent power generation in their vehicles.
One of the most promising solutions under development is a way to store energy from renewables through a chemical most of us have under our kitchen sink—ammonia. Liquid ammonia is a very efficient way to store hydrogen, a fuel that will play an important part in our energy future. SAGE is developing a process that makes it easier to use renewable energy, such as solar, to manufacture ammonia. With machine-learning algorithms, they are also discovering new, low-cost materials that then release pure hydrogen from the ammonia when it is needed for fuel cells or hydrogen combustion engines.
Lauterbach and SAGE are working on other innovations as well, including nano technologies and surface polymers, projects that fall outside the scope of energy. But they continue to focus on the end goal—helping the people of South Carolina thrive.
I want to thank Jochen Lauterbach for continuing to work toward that vision. I also want to welcome back Michael Amiridis in his new role as president of my alma mater.
Michael, let’s get back to work using that three-legged stool as our model.