History
The United States Bureau of Mines selected a location in Albany to be home to the Northwest Electro-development Laboratory on March 17, 1943. The grounds of the center and some buildings had been the home of Albany College (now Lewis & Clark College) from 1925 until 1937. The facility was planned to develop new metallurgical processes as well as study ways to use low-grade resources using the surplus of electricity in the region. In 1945, the name was changed to the Albany Metallurgy Research Center.
Research at the facility in the early years included studying zirconium, which led to advances in producing ductile zirconium under William J. Kroll. This included work with the Navy and the Atomic Energy Commission on development of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the first nuclear powered submarine. In 1955, production of zirconium at the research center stopped when it was taken over by private industry. Other work at Albany included research on titanium casting, recycling metals and alloys, creating sulfurcrete, and studying metal corrosion among other areas.
The center was renamed as the Albany Research Center in 1977, and in 1985 it was listed by the American Society for Metals as a historical landmark. During the mid-1990s until the mid 2000s, the center worked with the Oregon Department of Transportation on preventing corrosion on bridges exposed to salt water. In 1996, the United States Congress eliminated the Bureau of Mines, with the Albany facility then transferred to the U.S. Department of Energy. At first it was a part of the department's Office of Fossil Energy, but in 2005 it became a National Energy Technology Laboratory with the name changing to NETL-Albany. At that time the research center had a staff of 85 people and an annual budget of $10 million. Though he research center began additional upgrades in 2009 to add on two new modular office complexes to the facility and bringing to total staff up to 120 people. During that same year the center received an R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine.
Read more about this topic: Albany Research Center
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