Award Data

Copper is a commodity essential to modern society and its production is very energy intensive. Half of U.S. copper consumption goes to electrical, heating, and plumbing infrastructure in building construction and energy use for copper production topped 43 trillion BTUs in the early 1990s. Currently the U.S. imports about 1/3 of the 2.6 billion pounds of copper used annually. This opens our economy ...

Establishing a secure domestic supply of clean energy has emerged as an existential challenge facing the US, given geopolitical threats to global energy supplies and serious risks arising from climate change. Utility-scale wind turbine technology has grown rapidly to supply 2% of US electricity needs, but many regions are not suitable for large wind turbines. Distributed generation of wind energy ...

Vacuum glazing requires a scratch-resistant Low-E coating. Microscopic pane spacers are required to prevent the two panes from touching under external pressure, but create high contact stresses which can scratch glass and existing Low-E coatings during pane movement with temperature change. Hard pyrolytic coatings can be used, but allow four times more radiant heat loss than sputtered coatings, co ...

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) technology promises to provide an efficient method by which electricity can be generated from coal-derived syngas, biofuels, and natural gas, while increasing energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The large capital costs attributed to the cathode low performance and long-term stability issues are a current limitation of SOFC technologies that must be a ...

Continued global dependence on fossil fuels and concomitant release of CO2 has driven a societal push to mitigate CO2 emissions, largely through various means of sequestration. But implementation of carbon sequestration costs money and there are still unresolved environmental concerns, therefore, other approaches to mitigating net CO2 production and release are required. In an ideal model, emitted ...

Efficient utilization of our nations fossil and renewable energy sources is a top priority to secure a sustainable energy future. Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) based power systems represent an emerging technology that have the potential to produce clean electric power at nearly twice the efficiency of small-scale combustion engines and to nearly eliminate the release of NOx and SOx to the environme ...

Fossil fuels currently supply more than 85% of the worlds energy needs with the ensuing generation of 80% of all anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas is considered to be a major contributor to global warming. There is a concerted effort towards capturing carbon dioxide at the source of generation and sequestering the gas. However, with existing technologies ...

Superconducting radio frequency (SRF) accelerating cavities are being successfully used for acceleration of electron beams worldwide. The use of superconducting structures helps maximize the accelerating gradient, which is a highly desirable trait for applications involving linear accelerators or storage rings. Application of todays multi-spoke accelerating structures in future SRF electron linacs ...

in accelerators for light sources, first as passive cavities for stabilizing the beam and later in the accelerating sections. In this SBIR proposal, Niowave and Brookhaven National Lab will collaborate to adapt the quarter wave cavity geometry for use as an accelerating structure for light sources. The interaction between the electron beam and higher-order modes in the accelerating cavities can le ...

As recognized by the National Nanotechnology Initiative and the Department of Energy, Scanning Probe Microscopes are vital to the advancement of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Although there has been a steady improvement in the capabilities of commercial Scanning Probe Microscopes, instruments optimized for energy research and capable of operating over wide temperature and pressure ranges do not ...