Award Data

Hydrogen has been widely used in many applications from aerospace and chemicals to fuel cells and satellite power supply. Although hydrogen is not toxic, it has a very broad flammability range (4%-74% concentration in air and 4%-94% in oxygen), leading to explosion in the presence of heat source. Thus, hydrogen monitoring is of paramount importance during the processes of hydrogen production, tran ...

There is a critical need to accurately monitor the buildup of various fluoride and chloride salts as well as critical states of uranium present in molten salt reactors to prevent corrosion that would not only reduce the efficiency of power generation but also endanger operation safety of the facility. Online monitoring is, thus, needed for key salt parameters and the level of dissolved alloy const ...

Gaseous compounds such as H2, N2, O2, CO, NO, CH4, CO2, N2O and H2S are commonly produced and/or consumed by microorganisms during normal metabolic processes. Since the microbial production and consumption of these gaseous compounds via a variety of reductive and oxidative processes are interconnected, the development of a method for the simultaneous quantification of multiple gas species is highl ...

This project aims to create a general-purpose readout architecture that will allow the rapid deployment of next generation detection systems. The system will be based on the development of a programmable general-purpose integrated circuit (GPIC) that has the front-end electronics required to read out signals from a variety of radiation detectors, especially next generation scintillators and semico ...

There is a growing need to accurately characterize nuclear materials not only for nuclear safeguards and nonproliferation treaty verification but also for forensics and provenance. Presently, nuclear material identification requires samples to be collected and sent to laboratories for analysis using large and expensive equipment, such as inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers (ICP-MS) or se ...

Large size diffraction-grade diamond is needed for high scientific impact applications at synchrotron and Free-Electron Laser (FEL) X-ray sources, stemming from diamond’s unique physical properties in low atomic number and extremely high thermal diffusivity Sufficiently large diffraction-grade diamond crystals, similar in crystalline quality to that of silicon, are required for the fabrication o ...

While aluminum casing materials provide some enhanced performance and thermal loading to explosive ordinance, their overall effectiveness is highly limited by incomplete combustion and long residence times. In order to reduce these problems, the casing material must be designed to facilitate rapid fragmentation through either specialized casing geometries or greatly refined initial particle sizes. ...

A compact laser driver will allow photoconductive semiconductor switches to be used in small EMP simulator "building blocks" (EMPBB). Combined with a battery powered on-board pulsed power system, these EMPBBs will allow the construction of flexible EMP test facilities with nothing more than a single fiber optic timing connection to each EMPBB.

International demand for wood has grown steadily in the past few decades due to the growth in the world’s population and is expected to continue to grow rapidly as policies promoting greater use of renewable energy are adopted globally. Providing over 9% of the global primary energy supply, wood energy is as important as other renewable energy sources. Due to wood’s potential for large-scale c ...

Production of liquid transportation fuels from abundant and renewable lignocellulosic biomass represents a promising and sustainable alternative to present petroleum feedstock platforms. However, despite several decades of substantial efforts, commercialization of cellulosic biofuels has been limited and faces critical challenges, which include increased fossil fuel supply from hydraulic ...