Award Data

Biomass heating/cooking stoves in developing countries do not efficiently cook food or heat houses, while consuming too much fuel and emitting pollution resulting in respiratory illnesses, premature death, and climate change. Affordable technologies found in 1.) EPA approved heating stoves, 2.) DOE funded cooking stoves, and 3.) TEG (thermoelectric generation) lighting devices, improve heating, co ...

Two major waste streams, thermoplastics and used automotive tires, need a technological and economic method to decrease their entry into our environment. Both have long life-cycles as waste, causing many deleterious environmental problems. The Phase I, II , and Ill goal is to divert plastic and tire waste and its pollution away from landfills and the environment into transformational new technolog ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will employ Nanofiltration to generate sulfate ion feedstocks and high current density on-site generation (synthesis) of the powerful oxidant peroxodisulphate (“persulfate”) with novel, high reliability boron-doped untrananocrystal-line diamond (UNCD) electrodes to dramatically lower the cost of unconventional fossil fuel (FF) waste water ...

A team of EP Purification and the University of Illinois engineer and chemists is pursuing the commercialization of low cost microchannel plasma modules capable of efficiently producing ozone for water treatment. The conservation of water resources for human consumption is a growing national priority. Contamination of ground municipal water by animal manure, fertilizer and pharmaceuticals, for e ...

In 2011, there were 60,000 dairy farms in the US. Of there, 56,600 had herds of fewer than 500 animals. Currently, manure digester installations are only considered economical for herds of at least 500 animals. There require turbine or diesel generator sets of 100 Kilowatt size and larger. The need exists for a smaller waste to energy conversion approach for implementation on small farms were ...

Rare earth element (REE) based Nd-Fe-B and Sm-Co permanent magnets have been widely used because of their excellent magnetic properties. The applications of Nd-Fe-B and Sm-Co rare earth permanent magnets include hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), power generator for wind turbines, high performance industrial motors, hard disk drives for computers, travelling wave tubes for satellite communications, ...

This Phase I Small Business Innovation Research Project develops methods of recycling rare earth alloys from used nickel metal hydride batteries. Alloys of rare earth metal, nickel and other metals provide functional hydride storage materials that are critical to the operation of nickel metal hydride batteries and their applications. The current fleet of hybrid electric vehicles relies upon nick ...

Current anaerobic digester systems are designed for capturing energy from waste from large heads of farm animals. GHD, Inc., a leading manufacturer of anaerobic digesters, has stated that a minimum dairy heard size for economical implementation of a biogas system as 800 cows. These require turbine or diesel generator sets of 100 Kilowatt size and larger, a limiting factor in economically scaling ...

Rare-earth element (REE) based Nd-Fe-B and Sm-Co magnets have been widely used because of their excellent magnetic properties. The applications of Nd-Fe-B and Sm-Co rare earth permanent magnets include hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), power generator for wind turbines, high performance industrial motors, hard disk drives for computers, travelling wave tubes for satellite communications, headphone ...

The integrity of water piping infrastructures is essential for providing safe drinking water and for the treatment of wastewater. As pipelines age, they deteriorate, corrode, and crack. Existing techniques, such as visual observation and closed circuit TV, for assessing piping integrity are expensive and have difficulty accessing particular regions of piping structures. Ultrasonic guided waves, on ...