Award Data

As part of its mission to protect human health and the environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency develops and promotes innovative cleanup strategies that restore contaminated sites to productive use, reduce associated costs, and promotes environmental stewardship. Testing and characterization of the environment for potentially harmful contaminants is a costly endeavor. Current technolo ...

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 ...

Distributed energy offers a means of providing reliable, cost-effective electrical power to residents of rural communities. These requirements often cannot be met by current distribution methods due to limitation of remote central station power generation and transmission. With the migration of population from urban areas to rural areas and the increased power demands placed on electrical gri ...

This SBIR project addresses the problem of waste and low manufacturing yield in the typical thin film manufacturing process. It has the potential to make a significant impact on energy utilization and become a critical component to making thin film processes cost effective, leading to waste-free manufacturing. Thin film deposition processes are extensively used in man-critical industries wit ...

In this program, Omega Optics, Inc. and the University of Texas, Austin, propose a novel lab-on-chip photonic crystal slot waveguide infrared spectrometer for detection and spectroscopic analysis of BTEX hydrocarbons (benzene and toluene) in water and greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) in air. The device utilizes the unique dispersive properties of slow light photonic crystal waveguides together ...

There is a finite amount of fossil fuels, which will only last a few more decades. Therefore, it is imperative to develop renewable sources of energy. An area that has recently attracted a lot of attention is the conversion of renewable oils to biodiesel, primarily through the methanolysis of triglycerides. The use of an immobilized lipase as a heterogeneous biocatalyst to transform oils into ...

The goal of this Phase I research project is to develop a novel adaptive nanostructured coating for cutting tools optimized for dry machining applications. Dry machining eliminates the use of metalworking fluid. Today, it is estimated that more than 100 million gallons of metalworking fluid are used each year in the United States. Some of the fluids in use are oil-based, but even the ...

Some bioterrorism agents cause disease at very low infective doses and their presence can be masked by the environment. Therefore, ultrasensitive detection is required for homeland defense applications. In this Phase I research project, Operational Technologies Corporation (OpTech) proposes to couple DNA aptamers made by the Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment (SE ...

Chlorinated hydrocarbons represent the most prevalent contaminants in the subsurface, threatening the quality of groundwater at aquifers. Existing technologies for monitoring these contaminants require expensive, labor-intensive methods of sample collection and analysis. The goal of this Phase I research project is to develop a low-cost, compact, reliable, automated, unattended, and lo ...

This SBIR project addresses the problem of waste and low manufacturing yield in the typical thin film manufacturing process. It has the potential to make a significant impact on energy utilization and become a critical component to making thin film processes cost effective, leading to waste-free manufacturing. Thin film deposition processes are extensively used in man-critical industries with sign ...