Award Data

79252 As environmental regulations become increasingly stringent, there is mounting pressure on automobile manufacturers to substantially lower unburnt hydrocarbon emissions. This will require monitoring the hydrocarbon content in the exhaust with more accuracy than currently possible using the two oxygen sensor system. This requirement is especially important during start-up conditions, which a ...

79737B Only half of the estimated carbon delivered to the atmosphere by human activities in the 1990s remains there. The "missing" carbon was absorbed by terrestrial ecosystems and oceans, thus mitigating human perturbations to the carbon cycle. Carbon isotopes play a central role in understanding this terrestrial carbon sink at a variety of scales, but instrumentation to directly measure carbon ...

78150B The catalytic reforming of diesel fuel in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) systems must overcome a number of challenging issues: (1) the deactivation of the catalyst by sintering and sulfur poising; (2) the requirement for a large fuel processing system as a result of high space velocity requirements; and (3) the lack of durability of the catalysts, which require frequent replacement due to "c ...

79758B Safety concerns over the susceptibility of large Li-ion cells to thermal runaway during overcharge are one of the problems preventing the commercialization of these cells. This problem will be addressed by developing new materials that will be substituted for the cell component believed to be involved in the runaway process. In particular, electrolyte systems that form less a resistive i ...