Award Data

Problem Statement: In order to obtain energy independence from conventional sources, there is a significant interest in the production of biogas and“green energy” during wastewater treatment. Due to increased emphasis on sustainability and potential for additional revenue streams, utilities are expected to adopt energy production from digester gas in the near future. Although biogas from tr ...

This Phase I Small Business Innovation Research Project develops methods of recycling rare earth alloys from used nickel metal hydride batteries. Alloys of rare earth metal, nickel and other metals provide functional hydride storage materials that are critical to the operation of nickel metal hydride batteries and their applications. The current fleet of hybrid electric vehicles relies upon nick ...

GVD proposed to develop high performance, solventless and PFOA-free, non-stick mold release coatings based on its novel PTFE fluoropolymer technology. Most commercial mold release agents make use of organic solvents that when liberated during the drying process may have a significant air quality impact. The drying/curing process may also be energy intensive, requiring additional consumption of f ...

Sunocs LLC proposes to develop a non-toxic; low cost nanocomposite flame retardant (FR) that can be used in current building materials including flexible and rigid polyurethane foam, high impact polystyrene, and expandable polystyrene. The innovation of this proposal is to use a non-toxic, larger vaporization heat agent that will form a fuel dilution protective layer which will inhabit and stop t ...

OPTRA has developed a novel approach to phase shift cavity ring down spectroscopy (PS-CRDS) using a Fourier transform infrared (FTlR) modulator to impose the spectrally-dependent amplitude modulation on a broadband JR light source. As with previous PS-CRDS measurements, we excite a resonant cavity with amplitude modulated energy and measure the phase shift of the modulated signal exiting the cavit ...

While many applications may have access to harvestable energy in the form of solar radiation (or other ambient light), wind, environmental vibration, or wave motion, not all do. In this proposal, RMD targets the most challenging applications, sensors that must operate for many months or years and which have undependable or no access to environmental energy. These sensors need a self contained, com ...

Ridgetop Group will develop a low-cost reliability and radiation effects characterization tool for state-of-the art silicon-germanium (SiGe) fabrication processes. The significance of this innovation is that SiGe bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) integrated circuits (ICs) have demonstrated extremely high performance for critical DOD applications, and SiGe has also been shown ...

Ammonia has an important role in the chemistry of the atmospheric environment and air quality. Ammonia emissions are a major environmental concern, yet they remain poorly quantified. There is a need for a sensitive ammonia instrument to monitor emissions and evaluate their effects on the local and regional environments. An instrument capable of continuous monitoring is required to understand diurn ...

Infrared (IR) imaging is the best method for detecting leaks of pollutant gases, but current technology based on cooled IR imagers is far too expensive ($75,000 to $150,000) for everyday field use by those who need it to meet regulatory limits¿electric and petrochemical utilities, manufacturing plants, and businesses such as supermarkets. Agiltron will demonstrate a new class of IR imager instrum ...

Until now gamma radiation detection has required large single crystals of sensitive materials that are difficult to produce consistently on an industrial scale. In collaboration with a research group at the University of Texas at Arlington, Agiltron proposes to develop a new class of nanocomposite scintillator materials. The radiation detection characteristics of the synthetic nanoparticles in the ...