HARTFORD – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and U.S. Representative John Larson (CT-1)  on Tuesday applauded a major $2.7 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) for United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford. Specifically, the ARPA-E grant will fund United Technologies’ Synergistic Membranes and Reactants for a Transformative Flow-Battery System program to create more effective and affordable clean energy and energy storage solutions.

“Connecticut is an incubator for innovation, and United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford is a prime example,” said Murphy, Blumenthal, and Larson. “We work together in Congress to fight for research and development funding for Connecticut companies. This new federal grant is important seed money for a technology that is in its beginning stages, but with the right research and development opportunities could help us find entirely new ways to generate, store, and use new sources of clean energy.”

The federal grant is funded through ARPA-E’s newest program, Integration and Optimization of Novel Ion Conducting Solids (IONICS). IONICS aims to pave the way for new technologies that are too early for private investment but that address some of the limitations of current battery and fuel cell products.