Award Data

The objectives of this research are to enhance and accelerate the in situ bioconversion of sequestered carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into methane in the presence of hydrogen-rich coal macerals and paraffin. Methanogens require a source of hydrogen and an electron acceptor such as carbon dioxide in order to generate methane. The abundance of hydrogen coupled with sequestered carbon dioxide in ...

Density functional theory is used by many researchers funded by the Department of Energy as a method for predicting the behavior of chemicals and materials used in energy applications. However, results of these calculations are often not standardized and, even when they are, expert-level understand of the methods is needed in order to properly perform a simulation. The energy research community a ...

Liquid-metal coolants are one of the most promising solutions for the challenges of advanced high temperature nuclear reactor systems.They optimize heat transfer, neutronics, safety, and compactness of the reactor systems.Molten lead and lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) are the primary coolant candidates due to their unique thermo-mechanical and neutronics properties.However, they are highly corrosive ...

New automotive engine technologies, such as direct injection with stratified charge combustion, are being explored under programs of the DOE and others that offer significant increases in efficiency and reductions in emissions. Research tools are needed to help determine how best to adequately control the combustion process throughout the engine operating envelope, to optimize combustion efficienc ...

Laser based advanced accelerators can achieve very high accelerating gradients, but their duty cycle is limited by the laser power availability and media recovery time. Inverse Free Electron Laser (IFEL) is a vacuum farfield laser accelerator scheme which does not rely on a medium (plasma) or a structure (metal or electric) and therefore is potentially capable of accelerating charged particles ver ...

A key requirement for microalgae biofuels production is a very low cost harvesting technology. Commercially available solidliquid separation technologies applicable to microalgae, such as chemical coagulation, membrane separations and centrifugation, are too costly for biofuels production or other lowcost microalgae processes, such as wastewater treatment. A low cost harvesting process is bio floc ...

The multidisciplinary area of GEOINT is changing and becoming more complex. A major driver of innovation in GEOINT collection and processing is artificial intelligence (AI). AI is being leveraged to help accomplish spatial analysis, change detection, and image or video triage tasks where filtering objects of interest from large volumes of data is critical. NGA is confronting the changing GEOINT l ...

Cost-effective and power-efficient radiation tolerant semiconductors are needed in various harsh environments, such as particle detectors, communication satellites, high-altitude avionics and medical imagining equipment. These include amplifiers, voltage regulators, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital logic circuitry. However, radiation-tolerant high-speed ADCs currently cost more than ...

Electronic power conversion systems introduce major cost and reliability issues in most distributed energy resources and energy storage systems. This project will develop a power conversion system based on an emerging wide-bandgap, SiC-based semiconductor technology. This system will be capable of operating at high power densities, high temperatures, and high frequencies, and will provide advant ...

Metrology is a multi-billion dollar industry that is an indispensable part of science and manufacturing. A variety of techniques including interferometric microscopes, scanning electron microscopes (SEM), X-ray, and atomic force microscopes (AFM) are used in X-ray mirror manufacturing. The performance of any tool directly depends on the ability to characterize and tune it ...