Award Data

Septic systems, widely used by >25% of U.S. households, represent a 6-billion-dollar market with a 5-7% projected growth rate. There is growing interest in non-potable reuse of septic tank effluent, yet existing disinfection methods are either costly (e.g., UV) or require households to handle hazardous chemicals (e.g., chlorine tablets). This project will validate a promising septic tank technolog ...

Microplastics are environmental pollutants ubiquitous in marine and freshwater environments and have been established to have deleterious impacts on aquatic life and human health. Preventing Microplastics from getting into waterways or removing it once it is there, is the mission of EPA’s Trash Free Waters program and, as the production of plastics continues to grow, EPA is looking for innovativ ...

Methane (CH4) is the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2). Human activity related radiative forcing by methane accounts for about half of that caused by CO2. In the U.S., the largest industrial source of CH4 is oil and gas systems. Fugitive sources are often identified as potentially large sources of CH4 emissions; however, multiple measurement challenges inhibit more co ...

The Can I Recycle This (CIRT) Materials Recovery Platform is a tech-enabled circular economy solution that aggregates decentralized waste, recycling, recovery and reuse schemes across the U.S. MSW recycling system currently faces a number of challenges, including confusion about what materials can be recycled, recycling infrastructure that has not kept pace with today's diverse and changing waste ...

CleanRobotics has developed a robotic, artificial intelligence (AI) powered system, called TrashBot, for sorting and auditing recycling, landfill, and compost from facilities with transient populations. Our system has the unique capability of ensuring proper waste sorting of up to four waste streams with the added cost reduction of eliminating user intervention. Discarding waste becomes an educati ...

There is a lack of specific, low-cost, rapid, sensitive, fieldable detection systems for animal/zoonotic disease that can simultaneously test for multiple diseases in a single test. State of the art field-detection kits for animal diseases consist mainly of ELISA test kits and PCR devices. However, both these techniques can only test for a single disease per test, thus screening for multiple disea ...

There is a lack of specific, low-cost, rapid, sensitive, fieldable detection systems for animal/zoonotic disease that can simultaneously test for multiple diseases in a single test. State of the art field-detection kits for animal diseases consist mainly of ELISA test kits and PCR devices. However, both these techniques can only test for a single disease per test, thus screening for multiple disea ...

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) frontline personnel face enormous challenges to identify counterfeit State licenses in an operational setting. With printing technology continuing to advance and become more affordable, it is no surprise that United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Fraud Document Analysis Unit (FDAU) has seized an exponentially increasing number of high-quality count ...

Exposure to radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, resulting in about 21,000 deaths annually. This exposure is due to accumulation of radon in the soils below homes and subsequent diffusion or convection into our living spaces. TDA Research, Inc., (TDA) proposes to develop a novel low‐cost radon mitigation system, using a state‐of‐the‐art metal‐organic fra ...

Treating the air in common, high traffic areas to eliminate biological contaminants (e.g., virus, bacteria, fungus) could reduce the transmission of airborne diseases. UV germicidal irradiation has been shown to inactivate all types of microorganisms including drug‐sensitive and multi‐drug‐resistant bacteria and different viral strains. TDA Research, in collaboration with Arizona State Unive ...