Award Data

Heat exchangers are often required to remove waste heat and cool vital components in industrial processes, automobiles, and commercial heating and cooling systems. The thermal efficiencies of these heat exchangers directly affect the overall energy efficiencies of these processes, and many aspects of the heat exchangers can be improved to increase efficiency. Research generally involves investig ...

The Energy Policy Act (EPACT) of 2005 mandated that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) shall establish a ¿Next Generation Nuclear Plant¿ (NGNP) project. For this project, the DOE elected the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) design as a concept that will demonstrate the production of both electricity and hydrogen production without greenhouse gas emissions. The Framatome reactor design is ...

Several hundred beam lines are used around the world at today¿s third-generation synchrotron facilities. These facilities must deal with monochromator-based performance problems due to high heat load. Many have resorted to the use of costly, complicated, high maintenance cryogenic cooling of silicon crystals. Single crystal diamond monochromators present an advantage over the silicon crystals ...

This project will extend the Capability Acquisition Graph (CAG) model to a form that can be easily analyzed with formal methods in order to develop countermeasures for cyber attacks arising from within an organization. The extension will be based on an efficient translation of the problem to Boolean Satisfiability (SAT), in order to exploit the both the speed and capacity of SAT solvers. Extensio ...

For more than four decades, space-based systems have been used to support the detection of activities associated with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This project will develop efficient and scalable tool to evaluate the robustness of radiation-hardened circuits and to automatically generate recommendations for radiation hardening in these space systems. The tool will be based o ...

Bio-ethanol penetration into the marketplace is limited by its cost, making it non-competitive with petroleum-based fuels. Energy consumed during fermentation and distillation steps accounts for 17% of the total cost. Because fermentation is exothermic, the reactor must be cooled to preserve mesophilic microbial viability. Then, the product must then be heated to vaporize the ethanol for purificat ...

Many refinery product streams, particularly those from Ultra Low Hydrodesulfurisation units, are prone to haze due to water emulsions. Haze is also problematic for biodiesel production, as hazy fuel cannot be used until the haze settles or is removed, which creates costly scheduling and shipping delays. This project will develop a novel membrane process for the removal of dissolved and dispersed ...

Process intensification methodologies are need for the chemical processes and bioprocesses used in a biorefinery, in order to make the biorefinery a viable commercial alternative to the production of fuels and chemicals. Because the molecular mixing of reactants can enhance reactions, it is a key to process intensification. Significant process inefficiencies can occur (especially with highly react ...

Higher gas transport membranes would enhance membrane separations, especially those associated with energy savings (e.g., oxygen or nitrogen enriched air). In these systems, gas transport is inversely proportional to the thickness of the membrane¿s active layer. This project will explore a novel route for preparing ultrathin (100-1000 angstroms) membranes with very high selectivity. First, memb ...

Biomass fast pyrolysis fuel (BioOil) is a liquid fuel made from wood chips and the low-grade wood byproducts of timber harvesting. However, when BioOil is stored, its chemicals polymerize, aided by the oxygen present in the BioOil. As a consequence, the viscosity of the BioOil increases over time, and, under extreme conditions, it can become a solid. In addition, the presence of water results i ...