Award Data

Thermal desorption systems are being utilized to remove toxic mercury compounds from coal. However, high moisture level, poor mixing, and unsuitable heating rate reduce the efficiency of thermal desorption units. Spouted bed reactor, which have been used in various physical operations such as drying, presents a possible solution in reducing moisture level and increasing particles mixing. The propo ...

The SCO2 Brayton cycle is gaining interest across a variety of power generation applications due to its potential for providing higher efficiencies. The range of industrial applications include: industrial waste and heat recovery, coal and nuclear power plants, and renewable energy sources such as solar thermal and fuel cells. Direct fired SCO2 cycle loops require combustors that operate beyond th ...

Drilling is equally important for survey purposes, for oil and natural gas exploration, and in searches for water in arid areas. Drill bits with extended service lives are needed to improve the economics of today’s drilling systems, particularly in high temperature, high pressure and erosive gases environments encountered in deep wells close to sources of hot magma. We will develop diamond-hard ...

Over the past decade, the growth of unconventional oil and gas has resulted in discovery and availability of vast quantities of natural gas across the United States. In many regions, lack or deficit of adequate infrastructure results in gas being stranded, or, in case of oil-associated gas, wastefully vented or flared, needlessly contributing to GHG emissions and global warming. Although manufactu ...

Many emerging technologies in solar energy, electronics, and biophysics require a deep understanding of the behavior of materials on the nanoscale. Recent advances in high resolution chemical imaging show great promise for improving the resolution of widely applicable chemical imaging techniques. We propose to develop a commercial tunable, ultrashort pulse laser source with sub-diffraction illumin ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop high performance, highly durable supports for low Platinum Group Metal (PGM) fuel cells using low-cost techniques to achieve the 2020 targets for cost ($40/kW at the system level, $14/kW at the MEA level), start- up/shutdown durability (5,000 cycles), and less than 10% loss in power after 5,000 hours. Fuel cells for transportatio ...

The advanced manufacturing and engineering sectors of the US economy require turnkey high- performance computing (HPC) software to reliably automate all aspects of the design, manufacture and operation of emerging hardware solutions to societal needs. Robotic systems are a key element of advanced manufacturing. An optimized 4π radiotherapy system is under development, based on a robotic radiation ...

The design and fabrication of vacuum nano-electronic devices is essential to the present and future US economy and energy sources. Highly-resolved 3D electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are required to correctly model and optimize their fabrication and operation; however, the associated run-time and complexity of such HPC codes is prohibitive. The Scientific Discovery through Advanced ...

Future generations of X-ray free-electron lasers will use novel seeding and tapering schemes to extract power from the electron beams with orders of magnitude greater efficiency. The current state-of-the-art free-electron laser codes are not adequately equipped for designing these machines. By developing a new code with these schemes in mind, a new generation of machines can be studied with high ...

Electron-ion colliders (EICs) are the best microscopes for studying the structure of nuclear matter, particularly the nature and origin of spin in nuclei. To be effective, such machines require electron and ion beams with polarizations as high as 80%. Comprehensive end-to-end simulations to study the spin dynamics and optimize the beam polarization require exorbitant computational effort. We will ...