Award Data

In most wind turbine cases, in the absence of maintenance and repair the polymer composite blades’ service life can be significantly diminished compared to original estimates, and the overall turbine efficiency can severely suffer. Current repair products such as epoxy-based fillers and/or solvent-based paints have very limited abrasion-resistance capabilities. In addition, wind protection tapes ...

Statement of the Problem: Large-area, high-resolution hyperspectral imaging is needed to accurately understand the carbon-cycle between the atmosphere and terrestrial systems. To do this cost-effectively, small UAVs will be needed, for which there are currently no hyperspectral imagers that meet both the performance requirement of DOE and the size/weight requirements for deployment on small UAVs. ...

72428S03-I Combining the unit operations of solvent extraction and fermentation would substantially lower the capital cost and operating expense of converting biomass to usable products. However, attempts to develop these extractive fermentations have suffered from oxygen and mass transfer limitations and long coalescing times. This project will apply novel acoustic agitation technology in the ...

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73147B03-I The removal, sorting, disposal, and treatment of waste rock in mining operations are expensive processes, wasteful of energy, hazardous, and environmentally damaging. The best possible remedy is to avoid creating the waste rock in the first place. This can be accomplished with existing mining techniques if ¿look-ahead¿ ore grading were used to evaluate unmined rock in real time ...

75336-A broad category of experiments in astro-particle and high energy physics requires the construction of ultra-high-purity and ultra-low-radioactive-background, cubic-meter-scale vessels to be used as containers for ionization and scintillation media. Double-beta decay experiments, solar neutrino experiments, and dark matter searches would all benefit from this technology. Plastics are among ...

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells are exciting for many reasons and are one of the more advanced alternative energy technologies to realize early commercialization – fuel cell powered vehicles are on the road- The gas diffusion layer is a critical component in these fuel cell systems which not only controls water and reactant transport, but contributes to thermal management, and provide electr ...

Many freshwater lakes suffer from Harmful Algal Blooms driven largely by nutrient pollution, leading to widespread loss of aquatic life through oxygen deprivation. An associated issue is generation of methane in such lakes, contributing a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Both of these situations urgently need complete water column aeration as part of prevention ...

The proposal will develop multiple design concepts, conduct a trade study, and identify the three (3) most promising concepts for affordable low-profile and wideband satellite communication antennas (LPWSA) with high data rate capability and minimum airstream protrusion for airborne platforms. Specifically, the study will investigate several modified hybrid low-profile antenna array concepts with ...

The exploration and development of new energy resources in remote and environmentally sensitive areas can benefit greatly from a reduction in the size of the associated equipment and operations. This project will develop reliable, small-footprint instrumentation-deployment systems that can operate at lower costs and in environmentally sensitive areas not accessible to conventional drilling system ...