Award Data

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will develop and ready for commercialization a scalable, low-cost process for purification of water containing Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) using anodic oxidation with boron-doped ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD®) thin films. Resent research demonstrated that there is considerable potential for the development of electrochemica ...

Establishing a secure domestic supply of clean energy has emerged as an existential challenge facing the US, given geopolitical threats to global energy supplies and serious risks arising from climate change. Utility-scale wind turbine technology has grown rapidly to supply 2% of US electricity needs, but many regions are not suitable for large wind turbines. Distributed generation of wind energy ...

Increasing the steam temperature of supercritical boilers from 1,000F to 1,400F can raise the operating efficiency of next-generation AUSC coal-fired power plants from about 32% to about 42% and address compelling environmental issues, while also enhancing national security, domestic employment, economic stability, balance of trade and U.S. GDP through increased use of domestic coal. Low Cr conten ...

Conventional Li-ion cells/batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles have difficulty meeting USABC goals for performance/cost that are required for commercially-viable EV. The prevailing large format pouch/prismatic has the advantage of low packaging weight/volume, 10% at cell level, but is doubled (100% increase) in transitioning to the battery. Aside from the reduced energy density (accommodatio ...

Near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM) offers the use of a nano-dimension light energy source with a diameter much smaller than the wavelength of light to achieve resolutions significantly (around 10 times) better than that of the usual optical microscope. NSOM has found wide usages and become an important measurement instrument for nano-technologies, nano-manufacturing, optical technologie ...

It is becoming increasingly apparent that we, as a nation, need to quickly develop smarter solutions to control the overall generation and distribution of electrical energy as power demand across the grid expands in response to the increasing population and the growing prospect of energy intensive technologies coming online. Peak demand spikes occurring regularly throughout the power grid have rea ...

A Light Water Reactor (LWR) is equipped with control and shutdown rods that are inserted into and withdrawn from the core to control the power level in the reactor. The positioning of the control and shutdown rods is performed via the plants rod control system, which in a typical Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) includes a number of subsystems and components such as the Control Rod Drive Mechanism ...

Difficulties associated with thick lithium-diffused entrance windows on the outside of p-type coaxial and point-contact germanium gamma-ray detectors have always been a technical hindrance. The lithium dead layer limits the low-energy detection range and adds background in the energy spectrum, thereby limiting commercial access to application areas including pure-science measurements, programmatic ...

A 200 kW CW fundamental RF power coupler (FPC) with an adjustable in situ coupling factor would be highly desirable for a number of applications; for example, the 352 MHz light source at APS. The normal process of adjusting the coupling by rotational movement usually requires breaking the vacuum between the coupler and the RF cavity resulting in prolonged down-times and the risk of introducing con ...

Current and future synchrotron radiation light sources and free electron laser facilities are in need of improvements in Electron Gun Technology, especially regarding the cost and efficiency of photoinjectors. Novel electron gun features are needed to enhance the intensity and reduce the emittances of electron bunches produced at a high repetition rate using laser excitation. The generation of Sur ...