Award Data

The increased share of intermittent renewable energy sources (e.g. wind, solar) has economically strained the base power sources (e.g. coal, gas, nuclear) that are required to maintain a reliable energy grid. Nuclear power plants are especially susceptible as they require high capacity factors to offset the significant capital and operational expense. Efforts are being made to develop software to ...

Hydrogen has been widely used in many applications from aerospace and chemicals to fuel cells and satellite power supply. Although hydrogen is not toxic, it has a very broad flammability range (4%-74% concentration in air and 4%-94% in oxygen), leading to explosion in the presence of heat source. Thus, hydrogen monitoring is of paramount importance during the processes of hydrogen production, tran ...

Commercial sources of rare earth elements include bastnaesite (La, Ce)FCO3, monazite, (Ce, La, Y, Th)PO4, and xenotime, YPO4. However, the processing of these materials to extract and recover the rare earth elements is challenging and very process intensive. However, there are numerous domestic sources of rare earth elements, from waste materials such as coal fly ash, which could be extracted bene ...

To meet performance and cost targets for electric vehicles, substantial improvement is still required in lithium-ion batteries. A low-cost, high-capacity silicon anode will greatly aid in this effort, but current methods for generating functional nano-silicon for anodes use expensive metallurgical, templating, gaseous, or other top-down engineering processes. This project proposes to use the natur ...

The monitoring of gaseous exhaust (e,g., NOx, NH3) and particulate matters (PMs) has been critical in the automotive diesel engine combustion emission control, for which various catalytic converters need be operated efficiently and environment-friendly, including diesel oxidation catalysts (DOC), diesel particulate filters (DPF), and selective catalytic reduction (SCR). For instance, in the DPF, t ...

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 team of Signature Research, Inc. and Michigan Technological University will develop and demonstrate methods and metrics to evaluate the performance of machine learning-based computer vision algorithms with low numbers of samples of labeled EO imagery. We will use the existing xView panchromatic dataset to demonstrate a proof-of-concept set of tools. If successful, in Phase II, we will extend t ...

Particle accelerators are used in a variety of ways to the benefit of people at large. Part of the challenge in making the benefits of these machines accessible to the broader society is their cost and complexity. The cryogenic system that cools the superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavity contributes to this problem. Recent advances from Fermilab have shown that the conventional liquid helium ...

The Department of Energy Office of Fusion Energy Sciences is seeking the development of wrap-able radiation-resistant electrical insulators for superconducting magnet coils used in fusion energy reactor systems. These insulators must: (1) exhibit low gas generation under irradiation, (2) have higher pot life, and (3) exhibit attributes of insulation systems with high bond and higher strength and f ...

Controlled thermonuclear fusion promises to radically transform our society, providing nearly limitless renewal energy. Cost-competitive fusion requires plasma facing components (PFC) which can sustain extreme photon and energetic particle fluxes over a lifetime of years, as these components will dictate the maintenance and overhaul periods of future reactors. Robust, scalable PFCs manufacturing m ...