Award Data

The purpose of this USDA SBIR Phase I project is to determine the feasibility of a novel wood fiber based composite material for structural elements of marine structures, particularly the structural frame of the aquaculture pens manufactured by InnovaSea Systems.InnovaSea has been manufacturing and marketing the Aquapod spherical geodesic fish pens since 2006 and has learned much in the years sinc ...

Nearly 50% of produce is wasted throughout the agricultural supply chain. A significant fraction of this loss is through produce senescence, deterioration with age. In almost all plants, senescence is accelerated by ethylene gas, a hormone that plants produce as they age or are damaged. For decades, 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) gas has been used to inhibit ethylene action in plants and produce ind ...

Suspended ceiling tiles are widely used in commercial and residential construction because they offer flexibility and easy access to utilities. Most of the available tiles absorb water, resulting in sagging, staining, and mold/mildew growth. They also contain potentially hazardous chemicals and release airborne fibers when broken or cut. Existing tiles are not durable, requiring frequent replaceme ...

The global market for bio-based chemicals is at a critical stage of development. With the focus shifting to development of new bio-based routes to chemicals, new synthesis processes with low capital costs (CAPEX) and high energy efficiency need to be developed that will truly compete with their petroleum derived counterparts. For the market to reach its full potential, techno-economic, health, and ...

In most critical software systems, a state that is partially visible through values passed across interfaces contains information that could determine the health of the software system, and whether a failure is likely in the future. Some of this information behaves in a continuous fashion, e.g., the available memory or disk space is easily interpreted to monitor system health. Other values are nom ...

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 ...

"With the rapid growth of biodiesel industry, the production of crude glycerol as one of major biodiesel byproducts has been dramatically increased. Fully utilizing such a large quantity of crude glycerol is critical to the sustainability of biodiesel industry. Lactic acid is an important industrial chemical that is widely used as a food additive for flavoring and preservative, a moistener in co ...

WE PROPOSE THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW RADIO-FREQUENCY VACUUM DRYER THAT UTILIZES AN OVERMODED RESONANT CAVITY TO COUPLE POWER TO WOOD. THE DEVICE WILL BE MUCH MORE ENERGY-EFFICIENT THAN CAPACITOR-PLATE DEVICES THAT ARE CURRENTLY IN USE. THE INCREASE IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY COMPARED TO CAPACITOR-PLATE DEVICES IS GREAT ENOUGH THAT THE INITIAL COST OF OUR PROPOSED DRYER WILL BE RECOVERED IN JUST A FEW YEA ...

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RESEARCH WILL BE CONDUCTED BY HICHEM CORPORATION, TO DEVELOP A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR PYROLYSIS OF SCRAP TIRES. DISPOSAL OF USED TIRES IS A BIG PROBLEM IN THE WORLD, ESPECIALLY USA, SINCE MORE THAN 2.5 MILLION TIRES ARE DISCARDED EACH YEAR. MOST OF THESE TIRES ARE DISPOSED IN LANDFILLS. PYROLYSIS OF SCRAP TIRES HELPS TO RECOVER AND REUSE MOST OF THE VALUABLE CHEMICAL AVAILABLE IN TIRES. PYROLYSIS OF S ...