Award Data

It is critical to have a validated modeling tool for fluid bed-based chemical looping combustion to develop scaled-up designs of equipment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal and biomass fuels in power generation. The proposed work aims to develop such a modeling tool for widespread use in research and industry.

Neutron-sensitive microchannel Plates (MCPs) are now providing state-of-the-art user-based, high spatial resolution neutron imaging systems at several US government neutron research facilities as well as university research reactors. Using enriched 10B, thermalized neutron detection efficiencies exceeding 50% have been demonstrated, and cold neutron detection efficiencies of up to 70% have been do ...

Despite enormous advantages of high efficiency and fuel flexibility, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have seen limited development in mobile, including aerospace, application areas. On the technical front, this condition has been primarily driven by the low specific power density of SOFCs, typically less than 0.5 kW/kg. On the manufacturing front, limitations have been related to catalyst infiltrat ...

A recent report of the 25-member Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) recommends funding cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments under all budget scenarios, specifically, the next- generation ground-based CMB experimental program whose aim is to provide definitive measurements of the early universe. For this program, large focal plane arrays with ~100,000 superconducting detect ...

Nickel super alloys, such as Inconel®, are leading candidates for fossil energy-based power production components due to their resilience in extreme environments. A significant technical roadblock to the implementation of nickel-based power plant systems is the inability to produce large-scale components in a cost competitive manner. We will address the problem of manufacturing large, low-cost su ...

Since drilling the earliest gas and oil wells, migration of hydrocarbons to the surface has challenged the oil and gas industry. With the recent onset of geologic CO2 sequestration activities, it has become even more important to develop well leakage mitigation strategies that can seal even microscopic apertures around injection, abandoned, and monitoring wells—especially in cases where traditio ...

There is a considerable amount of available, but generally unused energy in rivers, streams and man-made channels, particularly at very low heads of less than 10’. Unfortunately, this resource is disseminated across thousands of locations, each with different head, flow, and site conditions. An affordable technical solution is needed to allow the widespread exploitation of this clean, renewable ...

The rate of climate change in the Arctic is larger than elsewhere on Earth. The Arctic has unique and complex couplings and feedbacks between the surface and the atmosphere that in turn modify the radiative balance there differently than elsewhere. Current understanding holds that an increase in downwelling long wave radiative flux, driven by increased water vapor and mixed phase clouds, may be ac ...

Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas (GHG,) with an atmospheric lifetime of ~114 years and a global warming impact ~300 times greater than that of CO2. The main cause of nitrous oxide’s atmospheric increase is anthropogenic emissions, and over 80% of the current global anthropogenic flux is related to agriculture, including associated land-use change. An accurate assessment o ...

Busek, with its Small Business Technology Transfer partner Sandia National Laboratory (SNL), proposes to undertake the development of a AF-M315E green monopropellant thruster for a potential flight application. Busek will be designing, fabricating, and qualifying the thruster to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5 status. SNL will be performing additional qualification tests for Busek and perfor ...