Award Data

Advances in materials and automation are rapidly reshaping the American manufacturing economy, and must be embraced to sustain a strong manufacturing sector in the United States. Additive manufacturing is possibly the fastest growing example of this trend, growing at an astonishing compound annual growth rate of 25.7%. The plastic materials market for additive manufacturing, valued at $700M in 202 ...

Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are used in food packaging, as coatings for cloth (e.g. Scotchgard), firefighting foams, electronics, and industrial and automotive components. Being perfluorinated species, they are engineered to breakdown slowly (half-life >92 years in water), and thus persist for very long times. Their high water-solubility makes them especially dangerous, and much like perchlo ...

Current petroleum-derived-plastics contain additives such as phthalates or bisphenolA that are harmful to human health and the environment. Thus, it’s critical to replace such toxic non-biodegradable plastics with biodegradable bioplastics. To meet bioplastics production need, Altex, and Texas A&M University (TAMU) have teamed up to utilize renewable biomass, such as forest residue, agricultural ...

Fossil fuel power generation plants risk interruptions of service caused by malicious attacks from insider threats and cybercriminals.Although cyber warfare threatens all sectors of the United States’ critical infrastructure, the energy sector’s reliance on networked industrial control systems renders it particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks; therefore, comprehensive situational awareness of ...

Cementing is an integral part of well construction, providing the seal, protection, and support for the casing to maintain barriers that isolate the well.Wells can experience integrity failure due to structural instability in cemented regions due to subsidence and compaction caused by reservoir depletion over the lifetime of the well.Increased knowledge of cement placement, integrity, and conditio ...

One of the gravest threats the United States and international community face is that terrorists or rogue nations acquire nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.Even worse is that some type of device is detonated.The ability to know if material is enriched or the identification of device debris relies significantly on chemical analysis; what is the elemental and isotopic content of a ...

Chemical composition of feedstock petroleum affects the refining methods to produce fuels and other products.Intermediate and final refinery products as well as petrochemical products must be analyzed to meet regulations, required specifications and to provide certificates.Today petroleum refinery management requires analyzing the collected data hourly as opposite to monthly analysis used in the p ...

This project will complete 6 years of work by Coulometrics to develop a new environmentally friendly and lower cost process to produce high-quality LIB anode material that exhibits: • lower cost; • improved purification through an environmentally friendly process, and; • a high quality and consistent material suitable for demanding EV applications.Virtually all graphite for lithium ion batte ...

The DOE’s mission includes helping maximize the benefit and value of America’s petroleum resources while minimizing potential impacts on the environment and human health.Highway vehicles in the U.S.produce 11.6 billion lbs.of NOx and 400 million lbs.of particulates resulting in 22,000 deaths/year12.Even with the projected growth in electric vehicle purchases, our auto industry expects more tha ...

Current bioconversion technologies for producing fuels and chemicals from biomass suffer from significant carbon losses in the form of carbon dioxide.This is a fundamental property of the chemical states of the inputs and outputs, and it results in low carbon efficiency.If recaptured, this excess carbon could be upgraded into additional fuels and chemicals.Industrial Microbes and Opus 12 have deve ...