Award Data

Coal fired power plants are a leading producer of carbon dioxide emissions. To reduce the potential of global warming, carbon dioxide can be captured at the exhaust of coal fired power plants for capture and sequestration. The technology to capture carbon dioxide at the emissions source must be able to be implemented both economically and on a very large scale. Currently, the leading technology t ...

Degradation of reactor components, heat exchangers, and piping systems in nuclear power plants subjected to heat, high pressure and corrosion has been estimated to cost the electric power industry $17.3 billion dollars annually. Eddy current testing is a widely practiced, and critically important nondestructive evaluation method used in power plants, yet it relies on decades-old sensor technology ...

The DOE is looking for a solid-state pulser suitable for driving a 50 , 2 meter long stripline TEM deflector with 10-15 kV, 10 nanosecond flattop pulses at 100 kHz PRF, with 10-3stability (repeatability), and sub-100-picosecond jitter. This is a critical requirement for particle accelerator labs which need to deflect relativistic charged particle packets emerging from the accelerator at 1 MHz rate ...

Statement of Problem: Light water reactor fuel used in current reactors uses slightly enriched uranium oxide (UO2) fuel pellets with zirconium alloy (zircaloy) clad. Zircaloy clad loses all of its tensile strength at temperatures of 500 oC, and balloons outward during the early phases of a loss of coolant accident, thereby blocking the flow of emergency coolant. Also, it reacts exothermically when ...

Some DOE modulators have been under development for a decade, but do not yet meet the specifications for voltage, droop, or pulse width. A fundamental design limitation is that the inverters switch the full current 30 times during each pulse, requiring large and expensive switching transistors. A new architecture was invented, consisting of an SCR-controlled power supply, a solid-state modulator ...

24 Production of Intermediate-Lived Radionuclides for Biomedical Applications Using Small Cyclotrons--Newton Scientific, Inc., 245 Bent Street, Cambridge, MA 02141-2001; (617) 354-9469 Dr. Barbara J. Hughey, Principal Investigator Dr. Ruth E. Shefer, Business Official DOE Grant No. DE-FG02-97ER82442 Amount: $74,999 A recent Institute of Medicine report recommended that the Department of Ene ...

15 Piezoelectric Biosensors for Bacterial Detection and Speciation--Biode, Inc., 20 Freedom Parkway, Bangor, ME 04401-5745; (207) 848-2083 Dr. Jeffrey C. Andle, l, Principal Investigator Dr. Jeffrey C. Andle, Business Official DOE Grant No. DE-FG02-97ER82335 Amount: $74,490 Recent developments in genetically engineered bacteria have opened tremendous opportunities for the Department of Energy ...

In the manufacturing process for photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules, a significant percentage of crystalline silicon wafers and solar cells contain microcracks that are difficult or impossible to detect with the human eye or currently available machine vision systems. These microcracks can propagate through the cells, resulting in power loss and cell breakage, due to mechanical and thermal stres ...

Proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons is a serious threat in the world today. Prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons has reached a state of heightened urgency in recent years. Scintillator based gamma-ray spectrometers are an important tool in checking the proliferation of the nuclear weapons. The performance of the current radioisotope identifiers is limi ...

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) offers high sensitivity to a range of biological processes through the use of targeted radiolabeled probes. PET imaging can provide diagnosis for symptoms of diseases such as Alzheimers disease, head trauma, cancer, and stroke. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in non-invasive plant imaging using short-lived radio tracers, such as 18F and 11C. ...