Award Data

Thermal batteries are single-discharge reserve batteries that provide a very long shelf life, minimal self-discharge, wide storage temperature range, fast activation under sudden power demand, and also a wide range of temperature operating conditions. 32Upon activation, thermal batteries are heated with an internal pyrotechnic heat charge above the melting temperature of the molten salt electrolyt ...

The Ultimate Goal of these research efforts is to develop ALLVAR Alloy athermalizing strut components that enable size, weight, cost, lead time, and performance enhancements of SiC mirrored optical seekers that must withstand extreme exo-atmosphere, endo-atmosphere, and mechanical loading environments. ALLVAR Alloys offer a brand-new strong and ductile support structure solution that can offer low ...

Biomimetic CO2 to Fuel Enabled by Scalable Catalyst Development and Synthetic Electrochemistry Methane is a primary source of national energy, often in the form of liquid natural gas (LNG), accounting for up to 30% of all energy produced in the United States. Further, LNG boasts a number of benefits over other chemical energy storage methods: it has a higher volumetric energy density than alternat ...

Emrgy, Inc., a pioneer in commercializing hydrokinetic power systems, is teaming with Premier Energy Holdings, Stanford University and University of Tennessee, Knoxville to develop a highly innovative solution to low-cost, riverine and tidal-based clean energy power generation. The project will implement “dynamic tuning” of the hydrokinetic turbine system to optimize performance across variabl ...

This project intends to develop a sensor system that allows in-situ measurement of concrete’s pore solution resistivity, to supplement existing procedures for durability assessment. The innovation includes one or more sensors that are embedded inside concrete and a mobile measuring device to interrogate the sensor.Phase I project will explore candidate body materials for the sensor, manufacturin ...

Energy production has been dominated by hydrocarbon fuels, which are plentiful, cheap, and delivered through an efficient and widespread infrastructure. However, because the combustion of those fuels results in airborne pollutants and CO2 emission, there has been an intense effort to replace those combustion technologies with low-cost, low-emission energy sources. Low-energy nuclear reactions (LEN ...

In missile defense applications, on-board radio frequency (RF) systems perform many critical tasks such as target tracking, detecting and addressing adversarial electronic warfare threats, and guidance. Printed RF systems have the potential to meet many of the stringent environmental and size, weight, and power requirements of missile defense systems with their reduced weight in a conformal and fl ...

Significant effort has been expended into the advancement of flexible, additively manufactured (AM) electronic systems. Less well studied are the effects of additively manufactured RF elements such as antennas, waveguides, and their required interconnects. Primarily, with respect to AM RF elements there is insufficient engineering data to rationally choose the ink materials and substrates and corr ...

Michigan Aerospace Corporation proposes to develop an inexpensive system to sense nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from agricultural fields using laser-based sensors mounted on drones. These sensors include an optical absorption cell, a wind sensor, and a camera for plant health and ground assessment. The measurements from these sensors will be combined and processed with artificial-intelligence-enab ...

In Phase II project, Bhawin LLC aims to fabricate the current concept of solid-state Li-ion battery fabricating a single continuous phase for the anode, electrolyte, and cathode, and thus, eliminating the highly resistive interfaces between the electrolyte and electrodes found in straight solid-state Li-ion batteries. Advanced Li-ion battery technology will play a critical role in the understandin ...