Award Data

Septic systems, widely used by >25% of U.S. households, represent a 6-billion-dollar market with a 5-7% projected growth rate. There is growing interest in non-potable reuse of septic tank effluent, yet existing disinfection methods are either costly (e.g., UV) or require households to handle hazardous chemicals (e.g., chlorine tablets). This project will validate a promising septic tank technolog ...

Microplastics are environmental pollutants ubiquitous in marine and freshwater environments and have been established to have deleterious impacts on aquatic life and human health. Preventing Microplastics from getting into waterways or removing it once it is there, is the mission of EPA’s Trash Free Waters program and, as the production of plastics continues to grow, EPA is looking for innovativ ...

VISIMO’s ML Toolkit for Grey Literature Screening will reduce bias in, and improve accuracy of, systematic reviews (SRs) for chemical risk assessment. Grey literature is notoriously difficult to screen and tag, and despite its importance, researchers often exclude grey literature from their SRs due to necessity. VISIMO’s Toolkit will enable researchers to filter full documents of all types and ...

CleanRobotics has developed a robotic, artificial intelligence (AI) powered system, called TrashBot, for sorting and auditing recycling, landfill, and compost from facilities with transient populations. Our system has the unique capability of ensuring proper waste sorting of up to four waste streams with the added cost reduction of eliminating user intervention. Discarding waste becomes an educati ...

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Exposure to radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, resulting in about 21,000 deaths annually. This exposure is due to accumulation of radon in the soils below homes and subsequent diffusion or convection into our living spaces. TDA Research, Inc., (TDA) proposes to develop a novel low‐cost radon mitigation system, using a state‐of‐the‐art metal‐organic fra ...

Treating the air in common, high traffic areas to eliminate biological contaminants (e.g., virus, bacteria, fungus) could reduce the transmission of airborne diseases. UV germicidal irradiation has been shown to inactivate all types of microorganisms including drug‐sensitive and multi‐drug‐resistant bacteria and different viral strains. TDA Research, in collaboration with Arizona State Unive ...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has exposed weaknesses in society’s ability to rapidly respond to a global public health problem. SARS-CoV-2 and variants are highly contagious and can cause mild to extremely severe disease and death. It is believed that the main route for transmission is aerosol droplets naturally discharged from an infected person. XCMR is developing breakthrough res ...

CleanRobotics seeks to improve the US recycling system by using robotic sorting, powered by object detection, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to sort up between 2-4 streams (recycling, compost, landfill, etc) at the point of collection. This will improve the collection and sortation of recyclables in the US, where total collection rates are 35% and successful sortation rates a ...

This project will develop an engineered soil product and process that repurpose waste-stream glass into soil suitable for horticultural and green infrastructure projects. The project supports the EPA's goal to improve sustainable materials management. Recycling of solid waste materials, like glass, remains challenging to cities due to costs of recycling in comparison to landfill disposal. Process ...