Award Data

This project aims to advance and commercially translate technology that uses concentrated solar radiation to convert natural gas directly into high-quality graphite and hydrogen. The solar-driven pyrolysis process involves no catalyst and releases zero CO2 as it captures carbon in the form of high-value graphite in a scalable, roll-to-roll (R2R) process. The pyrolysis process also produces a high- ...

Lithium is a strategic mineral commodity that is fundamental to achieving U.S. energy independence. Today, the U.S. is reliant on other countries for a vast majority of its battery critical minerals processing, which poses risk of disruption to domestic supply chain. Our fundamental objective is to take a leading role in the development of a robust domestic minerals extraction and processing suppl ...

Floating offshore wind power is poised for rapid growth in the US, where approximately 2/3 of the US offshore wind energy potential (2.8 out of 4.3 TW) exists over waters deep enough to require the use of floating platforms. However, cost remains an obstacle to extensive, rapid deployment of floating offshore wind. Anchoring floating wind installations to the sea floor is presently up to 15% of to ...

Approximately 21 billion barrels of produced water are generated each year in the United States. A lot of produced waters contain significant concentrations of sodium, magnesium, calcium, and other cations. A sufficient treatment will not only harvest the metals, but also provide freshwater for irrigation, municipal demands, mining, livestock, and manufacturing. The currently mature technologies f ...

In order to accelerate widespread electric vehicle adoption, improving battery energy densities, charge rates, manufacturing costs, and safety is imperative. Herein, we propose a scalable manufacturing process to improve LIB cell design using 3-D electrode architectures which will minimize inactive material (30% decrease) leading to a 15% increase in cell energy density (330 Wh/kg) and a 10% decre ...

C56-30a-273585Electron cyclotron resonance heating is a key fusion technology for: a) plasma heating; b) instability control, to stabilize instabilities such as those from Neoclassical Tearing Modes; and c) electron cyclotron assisted startup. Gyrotrons are a proven vacuum tube technology that can generate sufficient power during continuous operation to satisfy these requirements. In this Phase I ...

This project addresses the needs outlined in Section C56-35 of the Topics for FY 2023 Phase I, Release 2 DoE SBIR/STTR and more specifically the lasers of Type III and IV listed in the table shown in this section. Over the past decade, a growing number of applications have emerged that require stable, high energy and high repetition rate 2 µm wavelength lasers either for direct use or to drive se ...

This project will develop and prototype a new class of lightweight, high-performance wave energy converters for short-duration deployment and installation in smaller-scale applications. It is anticipated that the size of the wave energy converter will be in meter or submeter scale, the weight is in kilogram level or less, while the output power will be 5~10 W/m3 or 50~100 mW/kg. The novel energy h ...

The United States is committed to achieving net-zero emissions in the aviation sector by 2050 as a means of combatting climate change. The use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) which can offset 10% or more GHG emissions from petroleum-based jet fuel is essential to decarbonize this sector. In 2022, SAF accounted for 22 million gallons of the 23 billion gallons of jet fuel consumed at a cost that ...

Floating solar photovoltaics is poised for rapid growth in the United States and globally because it offers new cost-competitive solar deployment options and unique advantages, including avoiding land-use conflicts, higher panel efficiency due to evaporative cooling, and improved water quality and conservation. However, modest cost reductions are still required for floating solar to compete with g ...