Award Data

A promising approach to the clean use of abundant U.S. coal resources is the production of hydrogen through coal gasification. The synthesis gas resulting from coal gasification is required to undergo several processes in order to produce hydrogen of sufficient purity for fuel cells or hydrogen-fueled turbines. Therefore, systems that combine purification and separation of syngas to produce high ...

Governments and industry have recently placed significant emphasis on finding affordable renewable fuels to supplement and/or replace fossil fuel use. Biodiesel produced from microalgae has been identified as a highly attractive option for affordable renewable fuel. This project will develop a low cost, high-efficiency algal biomass harvest and dewatering process. In Phase I, a small scale syst ...

There are a large number of opportunities for extracting energy from flowing streams of water. Many of these streams are manmade. As an example, more than 15,000 publicly owned wastewater treatment facilities operate in the United States. These facilities process in excess of 34,000 million gallons of water per day (34,000 MGD). This project will develop technology for harvesting energy in was ...

Regardless of the final choice of magnet technology and optics layout, most collider schemes will have a finite crossing angle with which bunches collide, resulting in a reduction in luminosity. It is accepted in the community that crab cavities can be developed to reduce this relative angle and increase the luminosity. Therefore, this project will develop a prototype 800 MHz crab cavity, fabric ...

Modern synchrotron light sources have come to rely upon superconducting radio frequency (SRF) acceleration to achieve high luminosity. To date, the workhorse in this area has been the SRF system developed by Cornell in the mid-1990¿s for the CESR-B machine. However, as the quest for higher performance continues, this system is being stretched beyond its design limits. Required increases in inp ...

High-repetition-rate (>1 MHz), high-bunch-charge (up to 1 nC) electron sources will be critical components of next generation light sources, which will be needed to upgrade DOE user facilities. These electron sources must possess high gradients at the cathode surface to provide for low emittance electron bunches. In order to achieve the desired performance levels (= 1 mmmrad at appropriate bunch ...

Future third generation light sources, such as the NSLS-II synchrotron light source proposed for Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), push the operating current and subsequent beam power to levels beyond the capabilities of single CESR-B/KEKB cavities. The proposed light source requires 500mA and 1000kW of radiated beam power that must be provided through the power couplers/windows. The develop ...

The International Linear Collider (ILC) represents the next great undertaking for the worldwide high energy physics community. In addition to technical challenges posed by the project, the political realities demand a reduction in the cost of the components of this massive facility. The helium vessels that enclose each of the 16,000 superconducting cavities have been identified as a cost driver ...

Advanced high-power solid state switches are desired to improve energy efficiency, increase lifetime, and decrease operating costs of RF accelerators. This project will develop compact, low cost, optically pumped silicon switches that can achieve (1) current risetimes less than 50 ns while operating at up to 10 kA peak current, (2) di/dt > 100 kA/µs, and (3) a capability of blocking >5 kV. The ...

In the proposed Phase I SBIR program, Aymont Technology and CoolCAD Electronics will design and demonstrate prototype silicon carbide (SiC) avalanche photodiodes (APD) specifically designed for high-efficiency, single-photon counting of 121.6 nm Lyman-alpha photons. This detector will be provided to relevant personnel at NIST for calibration and testing. Both discrete APDs and arrays will be used ...