Award Data

Quantifying oceanic CO2 uptake and ocean acidification and understanding their impact on global climate and ocean ecology are key goals of NOAA’s climate change research programs. NOAA’s request for Development of a long-term Lagrangian pH and pCO2 drifter (SBIR Subtopic 8.3.1C) aims to address these goals by developing technology that measures both pCO2 and pH that can be widely deployed in t ...

Researchers are currently hindered from observing dynamic liquid-liquid and liquid-solid interactions in transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) and scanning transmission electron microscopes (STEMs). Yet, solid-state materials and fluids interact in many important ways. For example, solid-state nanoparticles are formed via solution-based synthesis, and biological cells exist live only in a flu ...

Alternative energy sources must be sought to meet the energy demand of our growing economy and to improve energy security while reducing environmental impacts. The conversion of bio-oil from non-food-based biomass to hydrogen for fuel cells would allow significant increases in the use of renewable feedstocks for energy production. This project will develop a non-food-biomass-based power plant wi ...

The Department of Energy is responsible for the investigation and remediation of large-scale subsurface contamination at several existing and former DOE facilities. An understanding the hydrogeology of the vadose zone is crucial to understanding the transport and fate of underground contaminants. This project will develop practical field-based measurement and analysis techniques for determining ...

Concerns over the escalating use of petroleum-based liquid fuels include climate change, trade imbalances, global security issues, and environmental harm resulting from petroleum extraction and processing. Although ethanol is the leading replacement for petroleum-based gasoline, the current corn-based source of ethanol is hindered by serious social and environmental issues. The production of cel ...

This NIST Phase II SBIR effort will two low noise single photon detectors using MgO doped LiNbO3 (LN) periodically poled waveguides and a 980nm (or similar appropriate wavelength) pump to up convert 1550nm photons to 600nm to allow for detection by photomultiplier tube (PMT). The key innovation is using low noise periodically poled waveguides with a long wavelength (1800nm) pump leading to higher ...

Membrane reactors have the potential to improve reactivity and productivity of various chemical syntheses including enzymatic water sensitive reactions. To be of value, higher use temperature, improved chemical resistance and better mass transfer systems are desired. Using membrane systems with improved mass transfer, Compact Membrane Systems will evaluate enhancing enzyme reactivity. Working w ...

Geologic carbon sequestration has been identified as a potential means of reducing the amount of carbon­dioxide emitted into our atmosphere, thereby reducing one of the major contributors to global warming and climate change. A major difficulty with carbon­dioxide sequestration is monitoring sequestration sites and pipelines for leakage, which may come from zones on the order of 1 meter in s ...

Voxtel has demonstrated efficient high-speed photon counting with thresholded linear-mode avalanche photodiode (APD) receivers using multi-gain-stage InGaAs/InAIAs APDs. In contrast to Geiger APDs, thresholded photon-counting linear APD receivers are thought not to suffer afterpulsing, and can support maximum count rates (MCR) up to 2 or 3 orders of magnitude faster than Geiger APDs. However, the ...

This proposal outlines a project aimed at providing a radical improvement in ion source technology that can be applied to the mass spectrometric analysis of actinides. The state-of-the-art secondary ion mass spectrometers (SIMS) employ the duoplasmatron ion source to create the primary ion beam for actinide analysis. The duoplasmatron only has sufficient brightness and a small enough energy spre ...