Award Data

This project focuses on the design, integration and optimization of a flexible natural gas combined cycle plant with carbon capture, capable of operating in a highly variable renewable energy environment. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power offer unique solutions in our quest to reduce global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, the increasing penetration of these high variab ...

The significant growth of renewable energy has resulted in significant challenges for existing power generation facilities coping with the variable nature of said renewables. The variability strains grid management resources and has led to an increased requirement for off-design operation of power generation sources as intermittent or cyclic. This results in increased maintenance costs and loss of ...

Food production, and in particular animal-derived meat products, are a major source of green-house gases, compounded by the remarkable inefficiency in biomass conversion (grain to dense muscle tissue in meat), along with growing challenges with food safety, quality and nutrition. To address this growing problem, we propose to exploit the emerging field of cellular agriculture (tissue engineering o ...

Intense short pulse lasers are playing increasingly important role in high-energy physics research. Laser based electron accelerators are innovative tools to obtain GeV to TeV electron energies for high-energy particle physics experiments. The development of such lasers puts stringent challenges on the very limits of the laser materials themselves. The goal of this project is to develop Ho:sesquio ...

In this Phase I STTR program, we propose to develop a conceptual design of a 40-T, ϕ2-cm-warm- bore superconducting solenoid magnet for use in high energy particle physics experiments, e.g., muon ionization cooling, by combining a Low Temperature Superconducting background magnet and a High Temperature Superconducting insert magnet. High Temperature Superconductors must be employed for very-high- ...

Silicon wafers are the single largest cost component within solar photovoltaic modules. To maintain the cost reduction targets outlined in industrial roadmaps, wafer costs need to be significantly reduced. Reducing the cost of wafers requires reducing the kerf-loss and wafer thickness while increasing throughput in tools for processing silicon ingots into wafers. The proposed technology augments t ...

Wind and solar electricity are gaining traction in the marketplace, but the electricity available from these sources is out of synch with demand Protonic ceramic electrochemical cells (PCECs) operating at intermediate temperatures (400 - 650°C) have enormous potential for electricity storage and delivery by reversible operation between electrolysis and fuel cell modes and therefore stand to addre ...

Technologies for terrestrial ecosystem management – in the area of precision agriculture and ecosystem restoration – have made significant advances recently for more sustainable practices by optimizing water, nutrients, and fertilizers Many of these technologies include monitoring and imaging of plants, soil, and crop harvest as well as their interactions, using in situ sensors, remote sensing ...

In spite of the promise of terahertz frequency range, the maturity of terahertz technologies, such as sources or detectors, remains relatively weak In particular, ultrafast optoelectronic switches are a key component to both sources and detectors, but current versions of them require too much power to be commercially viable, particularly for applications involving detector arrays The overall objec ...

It is attractive therefore to turn Carbon dioxide (𝐶𝐶𝑂𝑂2) which is typically considered a pollutant, into a valuable industrial resource. Plasma has long been known as an attractive method of treating 𝐶𝐶𝑂𝑂2 in order to produce other industrial feedstocks such as CO. For this process to be industrially viable, plasma treatment of 𝐶𝐶𝑂𝑂2 must be improved to minimiz ...