Award Data

As the single largest consumer of materials and energy use worldwide, the construction sector remains a prime target for materials reuse reform. (Krausmann et al., 2009; De Ia Rue du Can & Price, 2008). Construction and ongoing operation of the built environment extracts a significant amount of resources -- and on an ongoing basis. According to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), buildings ac ...

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have emerged as a pervasive and persistent threat to drinking water throughout the world. Called ‘forever chemicals” because their high stability leads PFAS to build up in the environment. PFAS accumulates in the blood from exposures and is associated with various cancers and other illnesses. There is an urgent need for a technology that can both remo ...

The EPA has established health advisory levels at 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for combined PFAS concentration. Water resources are susceptible to contamination by PFAS release from industry and landfill sites. Consequently, there is a need for on-site pretreatment technologies for PFASs in industrial wastewater. Electrochemical treatment has been shown to be effective for the mineralization of PFA ...

Aging infrastructure is a major challenge faced by the water utilities in the USA and across the globe, and with an overall rating of D by the ASCE, water distribution systems are no exception. Approximately 240,000 water main breaks occur in US systems every year with a cost of at least $3.6 billion. As such, innovative, economical, and sustainable solutions are needed in renewing the water trans ...

Of the18,000 miles of pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP) within the drinking water transmission infrastructure laid between 1945 and 1996 in the United States, almost one-half, or 8,600 miles of pipe, is considered to be end-of-life infrastructure, awaiting funding for replacement. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the United States a grade of D for its drinking water inf ...

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 ...

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 ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will explore the synthesis and use of novel lignin-derived carbon-magnetite nanocomposites for removal of aqueous phosphate– a run off pollutant from agricultural farms that leads to eutrophication of lakes and other water reservoirs. The intellectual property related to nanocomposite synthesis (and associated applications) is exclu ...

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 ...