EPA SBIR 2022 Phase I Solicitation

Novel innovations and design efficiencies at both the building and single-family residence (household) scale for development of new treatment technologies tailored to achieve the required treatment (i.e., pathogen and chemical removal). At the building scale, modular treatment technologies would allow the technology to be scaled up or down depending on the size of the building(s) without expensive retrofits. At the household scale, the technology would need to be passive requiring minimal maintenance by homeowners or renters. At both scales, innovation is required to make the technologies cheaper, easier to operate and maintain, easier to monitor to ensure treatment effectiveness, minimize waste byproducts (e.g. brines), increase energy efficiency and easier to retrofit into existing building and housing stock.

Novel innovations and design efficiencies for development of new treatment technologies tailored to achieve the required treatment at the farm scale for irrigation of food or non-food crops. Low-input solutions (i.e., low-energy, low-cost, and/or low-maintenance technologies) or projects are accessible to a wide range of practitioners and would be required for wider adoption by the farming community. Examples of low-input solutions may include cisterns or onsite treatment at the farm scale (e.g., field-scale water filtration units incorporating the zero-valent ion (ZVI) technology), bio-char, passive lagoon systems, wetlands, or other engineered onsite treatment. Innovation is required to make the technologies cheaper, easier to operate and maintain, easier to monitor to ensure treatment effectiveness, minimize waste byproducts (e.g. brines or sludge), increase energy efficiency, and easier to install in existing agricultural farms.

Non-invasive, cost-efficient technologies to support rapid identification, mapping, and replacement of LSLs to protect public health.

Ideally, technologies would have low capital cost of retrofit, be easy to install, have low operation and maintenance costs, have autonomous operations (with or without power supply or batteries) and if powered, could provide monitoring and alarm instrumentation, have no significant loss in flow characteristics (especially for flooding), provide fail safe operations to prevent backups, high long term cost savings or benefits, improve water quality including downstream habitats and provide a way to measure the effectiveness or efficacy of performance.

Technologies for microplastic analysis 5 mm- 1 nm (or any defined subset) in environmental matrices such as water, wastewater, or soil. Technologies should include the extraction and identification of microplastics in those matrices. Of specific interest are the length of time and cost of each sample analysis for the proposed methods.

New, cost-effective technologies, or optimization methods for existing technologies, which demonstrate high percentage removal rates of microplastics (5mm or less in size) from stormwater flows or wastewater effluent.

New measurement technologies that can identify and quantify air toxic emissions. Technologies should provide real time, continuous measurements of concentrations with minimum detection limits below background concentrations or health risk-based thresholds. Additionally, new technology must be able to distinguish targets from potential interfering compounds. Technologies that can be used to detect or identify sources of air toxic emissions would be useful for addressing neighborhood-level concerns, which may not be seen with the current regulatory monitoring network.

Sensor technology for air toxics and odors especially odors and VOCs from industrial and waste management processes and agricultural and animal feeding operations. Important parameters include affordability and ease of use for private citizen users, capability to sense multiple contaminants, and capability to quantify magnitude or intensity of odors.

Inexpensive, reliable, and effective alternative CEMS for HAP metals from stacks at stationary sources. Such CEMS should provide continuous compliance with applicable limits for small and mid-size industries. Furthermore, such technology would provide continuous emissions rate data in terms of the applicable limit (rather than parametric data), thus enhancing practical enforceability. Ideally, responsive technologies would demonstrate that a representative particulate and gaseous metal sample can be collected through the proposed technology’s sample transport system.

Cost-effective, reliable, and accurate technologies for continuous, but not necessarily real-time, measurement of metal HAP emissions from industrial stacks. Such technologies would collect an integrated sample on some sort of media (e.g., sorbent or chemically impregnated filters, etc.) over a period of hours to days which would then be subjected to an on- or off-site analysis somewhat analogous to the approach for mercury monitoring in EPA Performance Specification 12B (40 CFR 60, Appendix B). Of particular interest include laboratory demonstrations of monitoring technology performance such as relative accuracy and detection limits. Ideally, responsive technologies would demonstrate that a representative particulate and gaseous metal sample can be collected through the proposed technology’s sample transport system.

Radon mitigation technologies using sub-slab depressurization has been demonstrated for many years but may not be practical for some applications due to cost or building characteristics. Of particular interest are alternatives to sub-slab depressurization radon mitigation strategies and technologies for low income housing or for high-rise buildings, lower cost alternative materials for soil gas collection plenums in new construction, and effective methods for mitigating radon in well water. Important parameters include low cost of installation and operation, ease of maintenance and operation, and feasibility of retrofitting the proposed technology.

New measurement technologies that address these challenges and provide continuous quantitative CH4 emission rates (e.g. over timeframes of hours or days) to increase the number of tank measurement data points available across production sites, which will improve characterization of this emission source. In addition, as CH4 leaks from storage tanks coincide with the release of additional volatile organic compounds (VOCs), measurement technologies that include VOCs in addition to CH4 are also of interest.

Development of EPA-registered products or FIFRA-regulated devices that can be operated safely and continuously in occupied spaces and inactivate pathogens in the air (and ideally on surfaces). These technologies must be scalable and could be deployed/installed either in-room or in-duct (in HVAC systems).

Such technologies could include, but are not limited to: apps and other devices to help consumers with awareness, planning, inventory management, and other behaviors related to food; smart appliances and improvements to refrigeration; and food packaging or storage that extends freshness and minimizes waste.

Technologies should support more effective collection, sortation, and processing of recycled materials and/or could lead to the increased recyclability of products or increased recycled content within products.

Low impact reusable and recyclable material alternatives to low value plastic items should be available at comparable costs and perform at the same or improved levels as the items they are replacing. Alternatives that are readily compostable or otherwise commonly desirable as feedstock are also of interest.

Materials and technologies should be safe for human health and the environment, as well as have reduced embodied carbon impacts across their full lifecycle from manufacturing, construction, building repair, maintenance, and end of life processes. Examples of low impact construction materials that reduce embodied carbon of buildings include new, innovative, durable, and safe recycled-content construction materials that perform as well as, or better than conventional virgin-material alternatives. Examples of low impact technologies to reduce embodied carbon of buildings include new and improved technologies or techniques that assist in creating efficiency in deconstruction or reuse of building materials, and safe, improved tools to disassemble or deconstruct structures and recover materials for reuse in new construction.

Low impact construction materials should be more durable, resilient, and safe for human health and the environment and can be appropriate for use in either buildings, roads, or bridges. Innovative construction techniques should require comparable times to construct a building, road, or a bridge, and impose comparable construction costs as the use of traditional techniques, while also increasing the resiliency of buildings and other structures to natural disasters. Innovative technologies should provide fast and inexpensive ways to segregate and decontaminate debris streams created in the disaster aftermath, to enable increased recovery of usable materials.

Technologies for chemical safety testing (to reduce animal testing) that are simple, reproducible, and scalable platforms that can recreate organ-level functions. Ultimately these technologies recapitulate human physiology, compartmentalization, and interconnectivity of the human system and enable the accurate prediction of human responses to environmental substances.

Novel decision support tools that would allow pesticides applicators to consider topography, climate/weather conditions, pesticide characteristics, and planned pesticide application rates – and preferably linked to a farmer-sourced GIS map showing where various crops are planted – in determining if conditions are favorable/unfavorable now (or projected to be over the next 12 hours) to complete the application with minimized risk of potential off-target movement. An example of an app/site with similar functionality is the Kansas smoke management prescribed fire decision support tool, specifically the Kansas Flint Hills forecast map and smoke modeling tool (www.ksfire.org).

Development of pigments, dyes, paints, inks, or other coloration technologies that do not contain unintentional undesirable residuals/contaminants including PCBs and do not create undesirable byproducts including PCBs during the manufacturing process. These proposed products could employ processes that include innovative technologies for coloration such as biomimicry and structural color that do not require traditional pigments, dyes, paints, and inks or the generation of unintentional undesirable byproducts including PCBs. EPA is especially interested in supporting the development of new products that would meet the criteria for certification by EPA’s Safer Choice program: https://www.epa.gov/saferchoice.

Novel tools and models to support greater automation of systematic review processes and improve consistency in the methods used in the evaluation of a chemical, its hazard, and risk and environmental health and safety (EHS) scientific literature and regulatory data.