Tom Sarkus

Division Director - Major Projects Division
National Energy Technology Laboratory
Biography: 
Tom Sarkus has 36 years of technical & managerial experience, including 29 years in project management at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.

He has managed or supervised DOE funding that enabled major clean coal technology demonstration projects, including: Pure Air's 528 MWe SO2 scrubber at Northern Indiana Public Service Company's Bailly Generating Station near Chesterton, IN; Air Products'​ 80,000 gallons/day liquid phase methanol unit at Eastman Chemicals'​ coal-to-chemicals complex in Kingsport, TN; granulated coal injection on a blast furnace at Burns Harbor, IN; coal-based IGCC (integrated gasification combined-cycle) power plants at Wabash River (262 MWe, net; in West Terre Haute, IN) & Tampa Electric's Polk Generating Station (250 MWe, net; near Mulberry, FL); a 265 MWe (net) circulating fluidized-bed boiler at JEA's Northside Station in Jacksonville, FL; and on-site lignite upgrading at Great River Energy's Coal Creek Station in Underwood, ND. Additionally, hosted over 20 technical conferences on topics of unburned carbon in fly ash, SO3, reburning technology, and selective catalytic & non-catalytic reduction technologies for NOx control. Lead author of Coal chapter in The World Scientific Handbook of Energy, Vol 3 (2013).

His specialties include: clean coal technologies; air pollution control technologies; flue gas cleanup; advanced coal-based electric power generation technologies (e.g., fluidized-bed combustion; integrated gasification combined-cycle), carbon capture & sequestration.