Award Data

The importance of improving postharvest handling can be understood in terms of the primary impact of poor postharvest care--food loss. Technologies for improving postharvest handling focus on extending the shelf life of the fruit or vegetable while maintaining or improving upon the quality of the produce. A major achievement in prolonging produce storage life has been the implementation of cold st ...

To reach the end user, oil and gas production at the wellhead must be transmitted through the country and distributed to a wide range of customers. This logistical system requires natural gas gathering lines, processing facilities, product storage tanks and lots of other equipment. What results is air pollution caused by industry losses during these operations and the use of continuous or intermit ...

To reduce size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-c), military platforms have been evolving towards more integrated platforms that utilize all available space. For radiating systems, this will require exploring innovative design methods, materials and manufacturing approaches to realize cost-effective, customizable and conformal antennas. An attractive solution to this challenge is offered by additive ...

This project aims to develop a low-cost millimeter-wave (mmW) imaging system for ground vehicles, to operate in combination with a long-wave infrared (LWIR) camera. Such a system will mitigate the challenges of driving in degraded visual environments (DVE) including night time, fog, dust, or smoke by providing real-time image of the vehicle surrounding independent from the presence of naturally oc ...

Sonalysts will develop the Authorship and Intent Recognition Environment (AIRE), an adaptive platform that provides automated and semi-automated analyses for Information Operations (IO) based on textual information and other data sources. AIRE will use a variety of analytical techniques, including Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods, as well more explainable methods such ...

There continues to be a need for production of biofuels from agricultural sources. Butanol is a more attractive fuel than ethanol because it leads to better gas mileage, it achieves higher blends with gasoline than bioethanol, it has greater compatibility with existing fuel infrastructure, it is less volatile, it is more amenable to transport via pipeline due to low water absorption, there is no n ...

There continues to be a need for low cost production and shipment of fuel-grade ethanol from agricultural sources. Ethanol from agricultural sources has many advantages including developing fuel independence and significantly reducing greenhouse gases. Also, bio-ethanol has significant value as an oxygenated and octane improver. Although ethanol from agricultural sources has many advantages, th ...

Precision Combustion, Inc. (PCI) proposes to develop an ultra-compact, fuel-flexible reformer, including balance-of-plant components, designed for operation with fuel cell stacks for 300 We portable power generator systems. The reformer technology will be based upon our novel proprietary high mass and heat transfer catalytic elements, which were demonstrated to be superior (i.e., more durable, hig ...

Precision Combustion, Inc. (PCI) proposes an ultra-compact JP-8 conversion kit that will enable a lightweight spark-ignited engine as a man portable multi-fueled power unit, while also advancing a breakthrough cross-cutting add-on reformer technology that could broadly enable lightweight spark-ignited engines to use JP-8 for a wide variety of applications. Achieving the man portable weight goa ...

Although biodiesels have been increasingly used in automobiles, trains, commercial aircrafts and heating systems, they are not currently used in the military aircrafts and land vehicles because they typically do not meet the JP-8 performance criteria as specified by MIL-PRF-83133E. Unintentional contaminations by the biodiesels into the jet fuels can introduce adverse effects, including engine ope ...