Award Data

The conversion of corn and other biomass to fuel grade ethanol not only would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources but also would be a major industrial application for agricultural products. However, the process of drying the ethanol to fuel grade consumes significant amounts of energy, incurring costs that continue to increase as cost of natural gas increases. This project will deve ...

The need for natural gas continues to grow, and recent increases in petroleum prices have been paralleled by large increases in the price of natural gas. However, natural gas at the source often has high concentrations of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, which must be removed. Although existing commercial polymeric membranes (e.g. cellulose acetate and polysulfone) do a good job of sweetenin ...

Distillation is a major chemical unit operation and consumer of significant energy. Often, water or another intermediate boiling component can become trapped within the distillation column and accumulate. This causes various operating difficulties such as flooding, slugging, cycling, instability, and an off-spec product. This project will develop a chemically resistant, non-porous water-venting ...

Catalysis plays a substantial role in the synthesis of the most U.S. commodity chemicals, with huge implications for energy usage. Membrane reactors have been proposed for a number of these syntheses. However, to be competitive with conventional technologies, membrane reactors must demonstrate better selectivity, permeability, and/or stability. This project will develop a novel platform with ke ...

The use of ethanol as a fuel would impact U.S. reliance on foreign oil. However, among the economic obstacles to it widespread use are the costs of shipping fuel-grade ethanol by truck. Shipping ethanol by pipeline would be significantly less expensive, but, unfortunately, pipeline ethanol is hydroscopic, which causes too much water to be present in the fuel. This project will develop a simple, ...

onal evaluation, that concentrates on the service area of Education Data Management. The plan will investigate the requirements involved in providing readable and interpretable test results for teacher and principal use. Realizing testing is only as good as the teaching, teaching is only as good as the environment and the environment is only as good as its resources; this project will be a result ...

School reform efforts call for using scientific approaches to making decisions in education. Currently, data are available to inform decisions, but many educators are not well equipped to understand quantitative information, how to use it, and how to communicate quantitative results. During Phase I, we will conduct focus groups and surveys, and train educators to use data to help students succeed. ...

The treatment of waste water consumes a significant amount of energy, in order to reduce the organic matter to levels safe for environmental discharge. This project will develop a novel microbial-based approach to convert the organic matter in waste water into a valuable commodity, namely hydrogen. This approach would simultaneously clean the waste water and produce a fuel that can be sold to he ...

Individuals with cognitive disabilities represent one of the fastest growing disability groups in the U. S. The potential for computer technology to increase social integration for this population is well-documented. However, cognitive and financial barriers frequently preclude the acquisition and maintenance of personal computer hardware, software programs, and Internet service. The Personal Ac ...

The Personal Access Computer Key a modified Universal Serial Bus designed to accommodate adaptive software capable of being launched on publicly accessible updated computers