Award Data

Septic systems, widely used by >25% of U.S. households, represent a 6-billion-dollar market with a 5-7% projected growth rate. There is growing interest in non-potable reuse of septic tank effluent, yet existing disinfection methods are either costly (e.g., UV) or require households to handle hazardous chemicals (e.g., chlorine tablets). This project will validate a promising septic tank technolog ...

Microplastics are environmental pollutants ubiquitous in marine and freshwater environments and have been established to have deleterious impacts on aquatic life and human health. Preventing Microplastics from getting into waterways or removing it once it is there, is the mission of EPA’s Trash Free Waters program and, as the production of plastics continues to grow, EPA is looking for innovativ ...

CleanRobotics has developed a robotic, artificial intelligence (AI) powered system, called TrashBot, for sorting and auditing recycling, landfill, and compost from facilities with transient populations. Our system has the unique capability of ensuring proper waste sorting of up to four waste streams with the added cost reduction of eliminating user intervention. Discarding waste becomes an educati ...

Exposure to radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, resulting in about 21,000 deaths annually. This exposure is due to accumulation of radon in the soils below homes and subsequent diffusion or convection into our living spaces. TDA Research, Inc., (TDA) proposes to develop a novel low‐cost radon mitigation system, using a state‐of‐the‐art metal‐organic fra ...

Treating the air in common, high traffic areas to eliminate biological contaminants (e.g., virus, bacteria, fungus) could reduce the transmission of airborne diseases. UV germicidal irradiation has been shown to inactivate all types of microorganisms including drug‐sensitive and multi‐drug‐resistant bacteria and different viral strains. TDA Research, in collaboration with Arizona State Unive ...

CleanRobotics seeks to improve the US recycling system by using robotic sorting, powered by object detection, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to sort up between 2-4 streams (recycling, compost, landfill, etc) at the point of collection. This will improve the collection and sortation of recyclables in the US, where total collection rates are 35% and successful sortation rates a ...

Welkin Sciences proposes investigating scintillation-hardening techniques applicable to DoD's strategic communication systems, focusing on hardening specific SATCOM links within the Ballistic Missile Defense System Communications Network that are of particular interest to DTRA and its customer, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). These new scintillation-hardening techniques are based on computationa ...

Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are an increasing problem in waterways all over the world, costing an average of $17 billion in damages each each year. HABs have shut down water supplies to entire US cities in recent years. Blooms occur when nutrient-rich waters stimulate cyanobacterial growth, resulting in unsightly sludges that discolor waterways, rendering them dangerous to humans, liverstock and ...

The Ocean Color and Cloud Monitor (OCCaM) is a hyperspectral based instrument suite with ocean color and cloud observational capabilities. Following the successful Phase I SBIR design period, the Phase II effort will focus on the integration of the Phase I design into a benchtop unit for testing and validation of the design concept. The payload was designed to meet the SWaP requirements of a comme ...

Welkin Sciences proposes to develop a comprehensive capability to formulate, analyze, simulate, prototype, and test scintillation-hardened receiver designs, including those enabled with built-in Matched Channel Filter (MCF) functionality. During Phase I, several MCF design architectures will be analyzed using CommLink, our high-fidelity computer simulation framework. Emulation of the type of down- ...