Award Data

Longer-lived stripper foils operating in present-day DOE accelerator facilities, with elements up to mass 100, would provide substantial operating savings and reduced radiation exposure to maintenance personnel. However, the next generation of rare isotope facilities would need even more robust stripper foils to survive exposure to higher-power density beams of even heavier elements, up to uraniu ...

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 ...

Refinery product streams, particularly those from Ultra Low Hydrodesulfurisation units, are prone to haze due to water emulsions. Hazy fuel cannot be used until the haze is removed, which creates costly scheduling and shipping delays. This project will develop a novel membrane process to rapidly remove fuel haze in real time. The process would be expected to operate on a once-through basis. Ph ...

Distillation is a major chemical unit operation and consumer of significant energy. Often, water or some other intermediate boiling component can become trapped within the distillation column and accumulate. This causes various operating difficulties such as flooding, slugging, cycling, instability, and off-spec product. This project will develop a chemically-resistant, non-porous, water-ventin ...

Membrane reactors have been proposed for a number of syntheses. However, to be competitive with conventional technologies, membrane reactors must provide better selectivity, permeability, and stability. This project will develop a novel platform with enhanced membrane permeability and stability, as needed for broad membrane reactor utilization. In Phase I, a chemically resistant membrane reacto ...

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 ...

Natural gas offers cost and environmental benefits over other conventional energy sources and decreases our dependence on oil imports. However, many sources of natural gas also contain large amounts of non-hydrocarbon gases, which make them uneconomical to market. Removal of these non-hydrocarbon impurities, in order to raise low quality raw gas to pipeline quality, could have significant econom ...

There continues to be a need to produce fuel-grade ethanol from renewable sources. However, the cost of agricultural-based ethanol is quite severe, despite the fact that existing and new legislation provides significant incentives for its use. This project addresses novel routes to enhance the low-cost production of high-quality dry-fuel-grade ethanol by means of a novel water-ethanol separation ...

The Phase I SBIR project will evaluate the feasibility of utilizing a low cost sensor to obtain rail temperatures from a moving train. The two innovative parts of the proposed sensor are (1) a rugged four wavelenght high frequency sensor that accurately measures the natural radiation emitted by the rails, and (2) an advanced algorithm that provides a emissivity compensated temperature from these ...