Award Data

The increased share of intermittent renewable energy sources (e.g. wind, solar) has economically strained the base power sources (e.g. coal, gas, nuclear) that are required to maintain a reliable energy grid. Nuclear power plants are especially susceptible as they require high capacity factors to offset the significant capital and operational expense. Efforts are being made to develop software to ...

High-energy physics, modern medicine and advanced materials research are continually demanding higher magnetic fields. In spite of the discovery of High Temperature Superconductors decades ago and the potential they have for high field use, until recently successful magnets using the technology have remained elusive. Great progress has been made recently in HTS wire performance and this has drawn ...

Approximately 6,300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated as of 2015. However, only ~9 % of these polymers had been recycled as of 2015 in US, and ~79% of them ended up in landfills and natural environment. Almost all different types of plastics are thermodynamically immiscible, and their simple blends have poor mechanical performance. Complete sorting of these polymers present in plastic waste s ...

In this work we address the problem that there are currently no optimized membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) for direct fuel cells for truck applications that dehydrogenate perhydrobenzyltoluene (HDBT) to dibenzyltoluene (DBT) in a reversible fashion. Solving this problem will be a crucial for the development of a direct fuel for the perhydrodibenzyltoluene/dibenzyltoluene fuel pair. The accompl ...

Particle accelerators are used in a variety of ways to the benefit of people at large. Part of the challenge in making the benefits of these machines accessible to the broader society is their cost and complexity. The cryogenic system that cools the superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavity contributes to this problem. Recent advances from Fermilab have shown that the conventional liquid helium ...

The Department of Energy Office of Fusion Energy Sciences is seeking the development of wrap-able radiation-resistant electrical insulators for superconducting magnet coils used in fusion energy reactor systems. These insulators must: (1) exhibit low gas generation under irradiation, (2) have higher pot life, and (3) exhibit attributes of insulation systems with high bond and higher strength and f ...

Controlled thermonuclear fusion promises to radically transform our society, providing nearly limitless renewal energy. Cost-competitive fusion requires plasma facing components (PFC) which can sustain extreme photon and energetic particle fluxes over a lifetime of years, as these components will dictate the maintenance and overhaul periods of future reactors. Robust, scalable PFCs manufacturing m ...

Molten salt reactors (MSR) use molten salts as both a carrier of dissolved fission materials and coolant. High temperature molten salts require highly reliable and robust components, especially, pump. The mechanical pump is considered to be ideal for pumping high temperature and corrosive molten salts compared to the electromagnetic pump because of its efficiency. However, the mechanical pump requ ...

Fiber optic-based sensing devices and systems allow for electromagnetic interference-immune interrogation of temperature and strain distribution within the cryomodule coil winding pack of superconducting magnets. A specific use of fiber sensors is for rapid and redundant quench detection. Novel fiber-optic sensors may also be used for precision measurement of distributed and local temperature and/ ...

Triton will design a high effectiveness, low size and weight, non-metallic heat exchanger. This technology will reduce the size and cost, and improve the efficiency, of commercial and residential HVAC systems. Triton is proposing a novel microscale geometry and manufacturing method to create a heat exchanger material that can be used in any length or width, allowing infinite design flexibility for ...