Award Data

The recycling of thermoset composite materials produces valuable fibers and a liquid hydrocarbon byproduct. The liquid hydrocarbons constitute a potential hazardous wastestream that could prevent the recycling process from being adopted on a large scale by government and industrial users. This project addresses the conversion of these liquid hydrocarbons into useful products. Phase I showed tha ...

The recycling of thermoset composite materials produces valuable fibers and a liquid hydrocarbon byproduct. The liquid hydrocarbons constitute a potential hazardous wastestream that could prevent the recycling process from being adopted on a large scale by government and industrial users. This project addresses the conversion of these liquid hydrocarbons into useful products. Phase I showed tha ...

Animal waste is a potentially valuable energy resource, but it cannot be shipped economically. If the waste could be converted to hydrogen, the hydrogen could be used in fuel cells to provide electricity and space heating to farms and other rural facilities. Unfortunately, the only presently available technology for doing this conversion, steam reforming, is not economical for small installatio ...

Wet biomass is a potentially valuable energy resource but it cannot be shipped economically. If wet biomass could be converted to hydrogen, the hydrogen could be used in fuel cells to provide electricity and space heating to farms and other rural facilities. However, the only presently available technology for this conversion, steam reforming, is not economical for small installations. This pro ...

The development of microfluidics devices for use in micro-fabricated chemical sensors would improve the capability for detecting weapons of mass destruction. Although a myriad of microfluidics transport devices have been demonstrated, full commercialization has not yet been realized due to an absence of design standards that would enable variable interconnects and flow paths. In addition, these ...

Recent clinical trials have cast doubt on the efficacy of Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) for brain tumor treatment when low energy, reactor-generated neutron beams are used. It has been predicted that higher energy, accelerator-produced neutron beams would have an epithermal neutron spectrum that would be much more effective. Therefore, this project will design and fabricate an innovative ...

NanoSD, Inc. with its partners will develop a transparent, nanostructured thermally insulating film that can be applied to existing single-pane windows to reduce heat loss. To produce the nanostructured film, the team will create hollow ceramic or polymer nanobubbles and consolidate them into a dense lattice structure using heat and compression. Because it is mostly air, the resulting nanobubble s ...

GaN-based devices are the basis of a variety of modern electronics applications, especially in optoelectronics and high-frequency / high-power electronics. These devices are based on epitaxial films grown on single-crystal wafers. The single-crystal wafer substrates are limiting because of their size, expense, mechanical properties and availability. If one could make GaN-based devices over large a ...

This SBIR/STTR project targets the development of a validated modeling/design tool for predicting the behavior of spouted fluidizied beds for chemical looping combustion/gasification applications of coal and biomass fuels and fuel blends. Chemical looping is an advanced energy conversion technology for generating a pure CO2 effluent, which can then be sequestered or utilized. A spouted fluidized b ...

Despite incremental improvements in the technology, polyfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) membranes are still not an ideal fuel cell membrane material and their drawbacks (e.g., high cost and low mechanical strength at high temperature) require development of alternative polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) for successful adoption of fuel cells as reliable and inexpensive energy conversion devices. The g ...