Award Data

Automobiles (cars and trucks for instance) are the predominant mode of transportation in the United States. These vehicles are powered by internal combustion engines that consume fossil fuels such as gasoline. Improving the efficiency of internal combustion engines is an ongoing challenge of enormous impact to energy consumption in the world. In order to improve engine efficiency and thus fuel eco ...

Rural areas in the United States have under-developed solar power capabilities relative to urban areas due to challenges matching energy demand centers with underutilized land and consequent cost challenges related to smaller installations that lack economies of scale. This project addresses these problems by proposing solar installations that operate synergistically with livestock production oper ...

The primary challenges for creating renewable fuels are the ability to process inexpensive non-food feedstocks into biofuels that meet all quality specification, perform indistinguishably from petroleum-based fuels and are compatible with current infrastructure.Our Phase I project demonstrated the feasibility of producing biofuels from waste greases using a novel hydrothermal, continuous-flow cata ...

In topic 11.b, Dispatchable Geothermal Operations, DOE seeks to enable more widespread deployment of geothermal as a dispatchable energy source.TerraCOH’s CO2 Plume Geothermal (CPG™) and Earth Battery™ technologies are ideally suited to meet DOE’s needs.Conventional geothermal power technology has generally been limited to use as a baseload power source, but with increasing penetration of ...

The U.S.s global leadership position in the manufacture of high value chemicals (HVCs) relies on its ability to produce and utilize simple and useful organic (SUO) building block chemicals, a $400 billion a year enterprise based on nonrenewable petroleum feedstock. To maintain U.S.s leadership position in the 21st century, we must seek alternate renewable and economically competitive sources for m ...

AlN is an attractive material for power electronics device applications due to its wide bandgap and resulting high electric breakdown field. One of the major challenges that need to be addressed to achieve full utilization of AlN for power electronics applications is the development of a doping strategy for both donors and acceptors. Ion implantation is a particularly attractive approach since it ...

The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is changing the earths climate. Climate change will cause periods of extremely high daily temperatures, increase the frequency of heavy rainfall, intensify droughts, increase the maximum wind speed of cyclones, and cause sea levels to rise. The unavailability of low-cost, high-performance atmospheric carbon dioxide analyzers constrai ...

The negative-electron-affinity (NEA) photocathodes which produce polarized electrons are a vital component of electron accelerators such as that at DoE Jefferson Lab and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). Future systems, such as the International Linear Collider (ILC), will require a polarized electron beam intensity at least 20 times greater than produced by strained GaAs, which is us ...

Domestic US aquaculture is moving toward fishmeal replacement in aquafeeds with a variety of alternative protein sources including plant-based, terrestrial and marine proteins. In our Phase I work we showed the feasibility of modifying the protein quality of several alternate protein sources, specifically animal byproduct meals, and its potential significant impacts on marine fish production. Th ...

70036 The drive for higher efficiency and lower pollutant emission has necessitated the use of higher temperatures in commercial turbine engines. These higher temperatures result in degradation of the thermal barrier coating that is used on the turbine blades. Therefore, commercial gas turbine engine manufacturers require a sensor that can quickly sense this degradation. This project will d ...