Award Data

Replacement of petroleum based vehicles with fuel cell electric vehicles operating on hydrogen produced from domestically available resources would dramatically decrease emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants as well as reduce dependence on oil from politically volatile regions of the world. One major inhibitor to a hydrogen society is the lack of infrastructure, which requires hydroge ...

Advanced turbine component manufacturing process by conventional processes are comprised of multiple steps, turbine components are machined from a forged or rolled billet originally made from casting/ingot metallurgy. As a result a long lead times are required prior to acquisition. General Statement of how this problem being addressed: Rapid fabrication of this component can be done by Additive Ma ...

Hydraulic fractures must be contained within the target formation so that they do not contact and potentially contaminate sources of drinking water. To mitigate this risk, research is needed to develop technologies that will advance our ability to diagnose, quantify, and map hydraulic fractures and thus help mitigate the danger that hydraulic fracturing results in the contamination of subsurface p ...

The Department of Energy needs improved radiation resistant electrical insulation materials for the superconducting magnet coils in fusion reactors. To achieve safe, reliable, economic and environmentally benign fusion energy system, DOE is seeking organic/inorganic insulation-capable materials that are wrappable. These materials under irradiation will enable magnet coils to: (1) operate reliably ...

Currently, the most promising types of radiotherapy is proton or carbon therapy, as they have demonstrated significant improvements in clinical efficiency and reduced toxicity profiles. Unfortunately, the high cost of treatments using both proton and carbon beams is the limiting factor preventing hadron therapy from becoming the standard of care for a wider range of cancers. Designing a linear acc ...

The new shale oil and gas boom in the United States has propelled the US to the largest oil and gas producer in the world. A consequence of this prosperity is an oversupply of shale gas on the market. With steady growth in the ethylene market at 4 - 5% per year, new ethylene production capacity near the source of shale gas would create a valuable market for excess shale gas and reduce the flaring ...

Density functional theory is used by many researchers funded by the Department of Energy as a method for predicting the behavior of chemicals and materials used in energy applications. However, results of these calculations are often not standardized and, even when they are, expert-level understand of the methods is needed in order to properly perform a simulation. The energy research community a ...

Renewable sources of energy including solar and wind are fast gaining ground on fossil fuels, in part because of their sustainability and environmental benefits. A major issue, however, has been finding efficient ways to store the energy that renewables generate for use when the demand for energy is high. Lithium-­‐sulfur batteries, which store electrical energy by transferring electrons to or ...

Chemical sensitive imaging of heterogeneous materials and biological cells requires a sensitive, high spatial resolution microscopy method based on vibrational resonances that is capable of performing in situ spectroscopy with both frequency and time resolution. Statement of how this problem or situation is being addressed. In this SBIR/STTR, we will develop a new coherent Raman microscopy techn ...

The capabilities of modern x-ray light sources have opened up new areas of research in the study of in- situ fast irreversible processes. Irreversible processes or “single shot” experiments are challenging since they require detectors that can obtain a succession of x-ray images within the time frame of the process in question. This requires high sensitivity, wide dynamic range x-ray detection ...