Award Data

The CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere has seen a drastic increase over the last half- century due largely to burning of fossil fuels. This increase could result in disastrous global climate change if the current rate of release does not decrease. Carbon capture and storage is crucial for the effective reduction of atmospheric CO2. The most important portion of this process is the devel ...

Water expansion during freeze-thaw cycles can cause deterioration in concrete, leading to scaling, cracking, and crumbling over a period of years. Resistance to this damage is achieved with a system of voids formed by adding surfactants to the fresh concrete to stabilize air bubbles naturally entrained during mixing. The volume fraction, size, and spacing of these voids are critical. It is importa ...

Broken rails are a common cause of mainline derailments and a particular concern given the increasing use of our rail system for passenger traffic and petroleum products. The progressive nature of the defects provides an opportunity for early detection of cracks before they become significant enough to cause a derailment. Unfortunately, current inspection technology does not allow these inspection ...

Use of motorcycles helmets significantly reduces the risk of fatality or serious brain injury to riders in the event of a crash, but riders often do not wear helmets in warm weather because of thermal discomfort. We propose to develop an innovative ventilation and cooling system that will maintain a cool, dry environment inside the helmet while also meeting applicable safety standards. The key the ...

Synchrotron-based or FEL-based light sources has proven to be essential tools in many areas of research, including physics, materials science, chemistry, biophysics and biochemistry, medicine, and National security. This project is to develop of a novel electron beam source to meet stringent requirements on improving the performance of light source.

A simplified shale-gas to fuels process will yield environmental and economic benefits while utilizing abundant domestic natural gas resources. Precision Combustion, Inc. will develop a long-sought direct method to convert shale-gas methane into fuels in a compact process that avoids large intensive processing units.

A key requirement for optimum use of subsurface resources is the ability to accurately simulate complex processes. Subsurface Insights will develop a wrapper around existing high end DOE modeling software which will allow commercial entities to efficiently use this software.

Ocean and tidal currents contain a huge amount of power that is currently untapped. This power could be used very efficiently to desalinate water for water-poor regions located near coastlines. A major obstacle is the high cost of manufacturing and deployment of ocean systems. We propose an innovative new technology that can dramatically reduce the manufacturing and deployment costs of hydrokineti ...

In an ideal model, emitted CO2 could be used as a feedstock for producing carbon based solid products and chemicals, which are inherently valuable in the current economy; either as end-products or as intermediates for more valuable commodities. In addition to providing economic stimulus to the U.S. manufacturing industry, the displacement of traditional synthesis routes for these chemicals from f ...

Geothermal heat pumps utilize heat pump technology to access the ubiquitous and plentiful renewable thermal energy in the shallow subsurface. While there are tremendous potential economic and environmental benefits in the development of this resource, high up‐front installation costs and lack of confidence in the performance of geothermal heat pump systems are significant market barriers to the ...