Award Data

"Technologies that prevent Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission from natural and man-made sources are needed to address the environmental and human health implications of climate change. One approach is to capture the GHG emissions and secure them in long term storage, i.e., carbon sequestration. However, current carbon sequestration technologies may: A) produce undesirable by products; B) contamina ...

"The increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxides has been linked to climate change, which has a myriad of environmental and human health implications. In response to this growing concern, FuelCell Energy (FCE) has developed novel system concepts for separation of Carbon dioxide from greenhouse gas (GHG) emission sources, using Direct FuelCell® (DFC®) technology. ...

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 ...

"Cellulosic ethanol is a desirable transportation fuel for environmental and economic reasons. One of the issues limiting the commercialization is the utilization of xylose which is not fermented to ethanol by conventional brewing yeasts. Trillium Fiber Fuels is pioneering the use of xylos isomerase to convert xylose to fermentable xylulose. While this can be accomplished with existing industri ...

"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 ...

Interior wood composite panels are widely used for furniture, bookshelf, kitchen cabinets, flooring, and other building materials, and are predominantly made with carcinogenic urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin. New formaldehyde-free wood adhesives that mainly consist of abundant, renewable, and readily available soybean flour and novel curing agents have been developed in a laboratory and successfully ...

The release of volatile organic compounds from industrial processes can have negative impacts on the environment while also posing significant health and safety concerns. In the environment, many of these chemical are considered precursors to ground-level ozone, which is the primary component of smog. In addition, many volatile organic compounds are cancer-causing in humans while others pose dan ...

Under current Hazardous Waste Combustor Maximum Achievable Control Technology rule, heavy metal emissions from the nations thermal hazardous waste combustion facilities are estimated using control efficiencies determined during performance testing and estimated metal feed rates during normal operation. The error in estimates of metal emissions from this approach can be on the order of 100% or mor ...

Lead in household paint and dust is a serious health hazard, as low level lead exposure can result in a number of adverse health effects, especially in children. Onsite and real time detection and quantification of lead in paint/dust are very important to homeowners and certified lead based paint removal professionals. Toward this end, both field-portable equipment (such as X ray fluorescence ins ...

Reduction in dependency of imported petroleum and the quest to identify renewable energy sources has lead to a search for innovative biofuels derived from renewable biomass, that promise long-term reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Butanol is one possible biofuel. It is an industrial fuel that can be produced from crops using acetone-butanol (AB) fermentation by butanolagenic microbes, such ...