Award Data

Cathodes in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) that run on hydrogen are coated with a thin layer of conductive ionomer- The ionomer facilitates proton conduction to the costly platinum group metal (PGM) catalyst in the cathode, where oxygen reduction and reaction to form water occurs- Higher catalyst efficiency and lower catalyst loadings are desirable for industry PEMFC cost reductions- ...

C4 olefins are important petroleum refinery and petrochemical plant products- They are used in a variety of downstream processes, such as the production of alkylate fuel for gasoline- About 65 million metric tons of alkylate fuel is produced globally from C4 olefins- Other downstream products are secondary butyl alcohol, maleic anhydride, and butylene oxide, butyl rubber, and methyl methacrylate, ...

Recent advances in horizontal drilling and fracking technology for use in shale formations has significantly increased oil and gas production in the United States- At the same time, they have also brought about a number of issues that await solutions, such as the large amount of water that is needed for pumping into the wells and treatment and disposal of the water mixture that flows back to the s ...

Reliable, high-sensitivity and high-resolution photon detectors, which can alleviate major limitations imposed by photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), for future high energy physics (HEP) and nuclear physics (NP) experiments, are of great interest to DOE- Other fields that could greatly benefit from these detectors include Cherenkov telescopes in astrophysics, positron emission tomography (PET) in medica ...

Xergy and RPI will develop a novel composite membrane that enables electrochemical hydrogen compression at > 1 kg/hour at 875 bar with an energy consumption of 1.4 kWh/kg, given hydrogen input at 100 bar. Phase I of this research will include synthesis of membrane samples, followed by bench-top evaluation of key performance characteristics, including polarization curves, Tafel plots, and evaluatio ...

Military systems operate in complex, adversarial environments where their initial planned operations are often overcome by events, but soldiers use those systems in creative ways to achieve their mission objectives. For example, complex ground robotic systems that were initially deployed for surveillance and explosive ordinance disposal have instead been used as decoys, ammunition carriers, and ot ...

Ethylene demand is expected to increase by 50% domestically and worldwide over the next 5 years with a scramble to increase supply via expansion or grass root facilities. US capacity will remain at about 20% of the world’s supply and exceed 100 BPPY. To meet this challenge, US-DOE has invented a mixed metal oxide catalyst, M1 for the oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane (C2-ODH) to ethylene at hi ...

Synchrotron-based science has had a great scientific impact and will continue to have great impact going forward. For high brightness 3rd and 4th generation light sources, errors are almost completely due to distortion in the front-end optics caused by the high heat loads generated by the broadband radiation from the insertion device. Diamond offers a solution because of its low x-ray absorption a ...

The one remaining barrier to achieving a marketable R-10 window is the high manufacturing cost of solderglass-sealed vacuum glass. To remedy this, edge seal material must be changed from meltable solderglass to cold-weldable aluminum foil, speeding up the manufacturing rate by over 700X. Phase I research showed that rod-shaped pane spacers, or whiskers, are the best shape available. They can enabl ...

With development of shale gas fracking, large amounts of methane and ethane have now become available at low cost. With this low cost ethane it is desirable to convert low cost ethane to high value ethylene. Oxidative dehydration (ODH) for low cost conversion of ethane to ethylene is a potentially attractive route. ODH is an exothermic process for converting ethane to ethylene. By contrast process ...