Award Data

To this date there are no commercially available tick traps. A simple tick trap will provide a method for detection of ticks that users can use to make informed decisions about timing appropriate pesticide applications, thus minimizing total pesticide use. Additionally, the traps can be deployed to mass-capture ticks, so that the devices can provide a pesticide-free intervention for controlling ti ...

Grow Plastics has a technology that has been demonstrated to generate sandwich core structures in thermoplastic products. This efficient structure allows the generation of plastic products which are equivalent in strength to solid products, yet use 1/3 of the material. This substantial material reduction allows the production of parts that are lower environmental impact (due to source reduction) a ...

Seawater contains about 3 parts per billion of uranium. With a total ocean volume of approximately 1.3109 km3, there is at least 4.5 billion tons of uranium in seawater which is about 1000 times the amount of uranium known to exist in terrestrial ores. Mining uranium from seawater is economically feasibility if an efficient, reusable and low-cost adsorbent could be developed. In the past year, ...

There is a clear and unmet need for technologies to improve power generation flexibility to enable cost effective and reliable high renewable energy fractions in modern grids. Specifically, gas turbine generator turndown ratio may be improved by extending combustion lean flammability limits. This project will deliver a prototype plasma reformer system integrated with gas turbine combustors to allo ...

Upcoming HEP projects require physical and electrical bonds between opposite points of thin parallel circuit faces which areless than 50 microns in pitch, but current methods, such as bump-soldering and anisotropic conductive adhesives (ACA) and films (ACF) cannot reach these resolution limits and furthermore require heat and pressure that damage delicate circuitry. SunRay ZTACH™ is an anisotrop ...

Current agriculture and off-road equipment requires the use of lubricants to ensure efficient operation of integral hydraulic and gear driven systems. The lubricants, either oils or greases, aid in reducing friction, dissipating heat, prevent oxidation, and seal of water and debris from vital areas of the equipment. During operation, equipment may have slight leaks or suffer catastrophic failures ...

Most of the world's freshwater usage--as high as 70%--goes to agriculture. Unfortunately, in many of the country's major farming regions secure sources of agriculture water are threatened: freshwater aquifers are being over pumped, coastal saltwater intrusion is tainting freshwater supplies, agricultural run-off is dumping nitrates into the environment, and severe droughts are periodically ...

Launching radio frequency (RF) waves from the high-field side (HFS) of a tokamak has the potential to be an efficient off-axis current drive method while reducing the plasma-material interaction issues of the antenna. Researchers at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have proposed to reuse existing equipment at MIT, including CPI klystron ...

The ability to robustly generate increased pulsed power levels at low cost is a challenge for the fusion energy community. Many applications supported by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fusion Energy Science (FES) program would benefit from a commercially available low-cost, robust, high current/voltage pulsed solid-state power supplies including pulsed magnetics, feedback and control systems f ...

It is well known that a Low Temperature Plasma (LTP) can extend the operating envelope of flames, however scaling LTP systems has been identified as a challenge which has had limited technological advancement. Using LTP to enhance flame stability in industrial scale burners can lead to more robust operations while also providing a reduction in NOx emissions and increases in operating efficiencies. ...