This agreement provides funding under the inflation reduction act (IRA) to texas aandm university engineering experiment center for hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) reclaim and innovative destruction

This Project Grant award from the Environmental Protection Agency's Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) Reclaim and Innovative Destruction Grants program (CFDA 66.047) provides $1,500,000 to Texas A&M University Engineering Experiment Center (Tees) to develop and validate technologies to reduce the time and cost of reclaiming HFC refrigerants in the U.S.

The key products and services to be delivered under this 5-year award include:

1. Designing and testing an intensified modular unit capable of separating a range of complex multi-component HFC refrigerant mixtures
2. Incorporating a data-driven decision-making framework for reverse logistics with high supply chain visibility to optimize HFC reclamation in terms of quality, cost, market dynamics, stakeholder collaboration, safety, and environmental regulations
3. Developing a cohesive strategy, framework, and materials for community engagement and education to increase industry and consumer understanding and perception of reclaimed refrigerants
4. Establishing an economically sustainable, scalable, smart toll manufacturing paradigm for HFC reclamation to increase reclaimed HFC volumes and reduce costs

The project aims to advance HFC reclamation technologies and processes to support climate change mitigation efforts. No sub-awards are included under this assistance agreement.

The recipient will reduce the time and cost of reclaiming hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants in the U.S. By: 1) designing and testing an intensified modular unit capable of separating a range of complex multi-component mixtures, and 2) incorporating a data-driven decision-making framework for reverse logistics with high supply chain visibility that takes into account quality, cost efficiency, changing market dynamics, stakeholder collaboration, safety, and environmental regulation. Utilize the results from the technical validation to develop a cohesive strategy, a framework, and associated materials for community engagement and education towards increasing industry and consumer engagement, and enhancing their understanding and perception regarding reclaimed refrigerants. The proposed smart-reclaim framework aims to achieve an increase in reclaimed HFC and reduction in cost from the baseline operation through the establishment of an economically sustainable, scalable, smart toll manufacturing paradigm for HFC reclamation.activities:the activities that will be preformed are: intensified process designs to reduce the energy consumption and separations costs, solvent selection and screening, process optimization to handle extreme refrigerant compositions, pilot scale testing and validation, define objectives and parameters of the pilot scale study, process simulations, rapid prediction of refrigerant compositions, data collection, feature engineering, model selection and training, validation and testing, development of smart-reclaim framework, network representation, data-driven reverse logistics network modeling, market insight, and the smart-reclaim framework trial. Subrecipient:no subawards are included in this assistance agreement.outcomes:the anticipated deliverables include: -reduced time or cost to reclaim by : 1) designing and testing an intensified modular unit capable of separating a range of complex multi-component mixtures, and 2) incorporating a data-driven decision-making framework for reverse logistics with high supply chain visibility that takes into account quality, cost efficiency, changing market dynamics, stakeholder collaboration, safety, and environmental regulation. -increased knowledge and understanding of HFC reclamation through a data-driven decision-making framework. -publicly shared research, technical reports, papers, and/or webinars, including applicable quantifiable data, to the extent IT is available, that identify and provide information about market improvements to increase the reclaim of hfcs - demonstration of strategies that reduce barriers to HFC reclamation that are scalable and replicable. -evidence for development and scale-up process, demonstration scenarios, and cost structures/business models to apply reclaim or destruction technologies nationally. -utilize the results from the technical validation to develop a cohesive strategy and associated materials for community engagement and education towards increasing industry and consumer engagement, and enhancing their understanding and perception regarding reclaimed refrigerants -achieve an increase in reclaimed HFC and reduction in cost from the baseline operation through the establishment of an economically sustainable, scalable, smart toll manufacturing paradigm for HFC reclamation the expected outcomes include : -design new configurations of extractive distillation, dividing wall extractive distillation (dwed) and vapor compressor extractive distillation (vped) processes. Computationally evaluate their performance to selectively separate mixed refrigerant r-410A into their constituents. Consider ionic liquid (IL) as solvent. Obtain optimized process configurations with reduced overall energy consumption and cost. -SCR