Award Data

City planners and engineers need detailed assessments of public rights-of-way to evaluate existing conditions, determine compliance with draft accessibility guidelines, and plan reconstruction projects. Current assessment methods are inadequate and inefficient due to the time and resources required. This project will develop an automated public rights-of-way assessment process and the measuremen ...

The membrane drying process for ethanol plants should be of great value in increasing capacity and/or reducing energy consumption for existing ethanol plants. We will manufacture modules of the novel membrane with a commercial partner. A pilot demonstration unit will be constructed and deployed at an actual ethanol plant for demonstrating the membrane process capabilities and advantages.

Fresh fruit, vegetables, and flowers are transported and stored in refrigerated containers. As the produce ripens, ethylene gas is produced, which further ripens the product and can lead to premature spoilage. Most fruits and vegetables emit ethylene gas which promotes ripening. Certain species, such as apples and bananas, produce more ethylene than others. Elevated ethylene levels can significant ...

Johne's disease (JD) is a significant problem in animal health, and this is underscored by its identification by the USDA as the most important infectious disease in ruminants and one of the priority diseases for 2009/2010. Infection with MAP usually occurs after birth and infected calves go through a short period with mild or no symptoms during which they shed the bacteria in feces. This short pe ...

Farms and dairies generate byproducts containing more than 2 quadrillion Btu of energy per year. This energy is either not used at all or used in old and inefficient processes. Particularly, the use of biogas generated from bio-waste in distributed fuel cell systems presents a realistic, near-term solution that can yield large energy efficiency improvements. However, the biogas often contains rela ...

This Phase I and II SBIR will develop a user-friendly, run-time efficient software package dedicated to fitting and evaluating material models used in finite element codes like LS-DYNA. The software package will consist of a pre-processor, a core driver, and a post-processor. The pre-processor will allow the user to specify the material model, model parameters, and desired load history. The dri ...

No simple/convenient process exists to concentrate wine without developing a burnt taste. This program develops the osmotic distillation process to concentrate wine at room temperature. Osmotic distillation enhances dewatering approximately 10-fold and in so doing makes the process economically attractive.

Rural communities throughout the Rocky Mountain region are in need of diversified, value-added crops to bolster a declining agricultural sector. The goal of this project is to demonstrate scaled-up field production of Osha root and to lay a foundation for long-term producer viability.

RPR's Phase I contract proved the feasibility of concrete recycling based o a shock-producing hammer/anvil concept for fracturing and sizing aggregate and separating reinforcing steel into marketable scrap. The Phase II project will develop a portable self-propelled prototype to remove and process a 12 foot wide roadway at a rate of about a mile a day. This is called "Fast Track" highway removal ...