Award Data

Many contaminated DOE sites are located in arid regions where depth to groundwater is significant and/or contaminants were discharged into a vadose zone through which transport to the groundwater table is dominated by unsteady, unsaturated groundwater flow. The absence of an effective means to monitor vadose zone moisture content in profile has been a persistent impediment to developing and calibr ...

Increased use of Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) combined with engine downsizing has pushed automotive turbocharger compressor operation towards and often beyond its efficient and stable operating boundaries. Much of the drive cycle is spent operating the compressor at low flow rates and low pressure ratios, near the compressor surge line, in an area which is usually of low efficiency. Our prelimi ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop a nanopackaging process that can assemble high efficiency solar cells onto flexible panels. This modular, scalable approach leverages disparate, state-of-the-art photovoltaic technologies and integrates them into a single system at low temperature. This can include silicon, gallium arsenide and other III-V technologies. An adv ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will lower the cost of parabolic trough concentrating solar power (CSP), which uses trough-shaped mirrors to focus sunlight on tubes to harvest heat for generating electricity. The tubes are coated with a dark substance, 'absorber', that efficiently absorbs light and can withstand high temperatures. In present-day commercial ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) Phase I project will research autonomous, dynamic power management to reduce power consumption in data center servers by up to 15-20%, strongly supporting the Environmental Protection Agency's push toward low-power data centers and rapid adoption of the new Energy Star label for computer servers. In 2010, data centers in the United States ...

Appareo Systems, LLC, proposes to develop a functional prototype head-mounted position and orientation system (HPOS). The HPOS will be capable of operating in electromagnetic fields of up to 200 volts/meter and will provide at least one degree of accuracy and at least one degree of resolution at a 60 Hz update rate while providing 3 degree of freedom (DOF) information on head orientation, includi ...

Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs) require advanced technology capacitors, which must have low cost and the ability to operate at 150oC. However, current 150oC film capacitor solutions are expensive and have lower energy density compared to materials that operate at lower temperatures. Polypropylene Film Capacitors represent a potentially cost effective solution ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I research project undertakes a major improvement in the cost-benefit equation of learning computer programming. The approach integrates a new programming paradigm particularly suited to real-time, high-interactivity applications, with advances in program liveness and visualization, and game-based learning of essential concepts and skills. The s ...

This Small Business Innovative Research Phase I research project aims to develop a visual interface that allows students to construct and investigate mathematical models. This research is undertaken with the goal of creating a general-purpose environment in which students, teachers, and materials developers may benefit from being able to create such models for classroom use. The innovation respon ...

Historically, remediation efforts at DOE contaminated sites have relied on numerical models to integrate laboratory and field characterization data, predict the fate and transport behavior of contaminant plumes, design remediation protocols to mitigate contaminant migration, and analyze data from field remediation results. Of particular concern is the effect of subsurface heterogeneities and thei ...