Award Data

From pharmaceuticals and stimulants to industrial chemicals like pesticides and plastic components, the number of contaminants in waste, surface, and groundwater is increasing astronomically. As the hazardous limits of some of these toxins are as low as the 1 part-per-trillion (ppt) range, very sensitive analytical techniques are required. A variety of techniques exist, but they are expensive, lab ...

The goal of the proposed effort is to develop polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB)-free pigments and synthetic pathways that do not unintentionally generate PCB as byproducts. This effort will harness Kebotix’s existing AI-powered platform, which includes a workflow that controls high-throughput computational modeling of molecules and materials, proprietary machine learning methods for process contro ...

Physical Sciences Inc. proposes to develop and mature the Network Fusion Radiation Analysis Tool (NFRAT) to address the need for an enhanced radiation hazard mapping, localization and identification capability in support of contamination avoidance operations and sensitive site exploitation. The NFRAT software will utilize dynamic representations of the radiological environment and statistical mode ...

This work is focused on the development of fabrication technology for large form-factor scintillation crystals for multi-modal detection of radioactive sources, and development of mobile imaging and mapping instruments based on these large format scintillators.

Gamma dosimetry is an integral part of radiation safety and protection for a wide range of military operations. For these applications, Geiger Müller (GM) tube is used as the standard gamma dose rate sensor. The cost-to-performance metric for this sensor type has reached a plateau and new sensor materials are needed for the next generation of dosimeters. Recently there has been a vast development ...

Atom Trap Trace Analysis (ATTA) has proven to be a valuable technique for detecting rare gas radioisotopes. By tuning the frequency of a laser to the resonance of a desired isotope, only atoms of that isotope are captured by a magneto-optical trap (MOT) and detected by observing its fluorescence with a CCD camera. Existing approaches rely on manually selecting a region-of-interest (ROI) of image p ...

The event of nuclear explosion generates harsh radiation conditions, evaluation of which is critical in protecting the military and civilian personnel from serious harm.  Due to these harsh conditions only very simple methods of radiation assessment are employed, such as measurement of equivalent dose.  Improvements to current instrumentation are sought that would provide energy resolved dose in ...

In the condition of a nuclear event, it is critical that warfighters and first responders are equipped with active dosimeters and dose rate meters.  These tools can be made from scintillation-based detector systems that require a high performance photodetector.  The silicon photomultiplier is a compact photodetector that would be ideal for such a detector system, yet their performance suffers fr ...

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We are on the path to an extreme freshwater shortage and one of the US’s largest water consumers is cooling towers used in various applications such as HVAC for large buildings, power plants, data centers, and various industrial processes. In cooling towers, water is evaporated to provide cooling. The vapor is released into the atmosphere and typically forms a visible condensation plume as it mi ...