Award Data

Ineffective fracture design and practices in unconventional oil and natural gas wells present environmental risks and reduce the production efficiency of hydraulic fracturing, largely due to the inability to measure propped fracture geometry and behavior using current proppants and available tools. In this project, a unique proppant detection technology based on acoustic metamaterials is being dev ...

Power outages from natural disasters not only result in billions of dollars of losses, associated health and safety impacts can result in significant loss of life. After a disaster, damage assessments of electrical grid infrastructure are critical for developing a strategy for power restoration including the optimal allocation of resources. Despite improvements, the damage assessment process is st ...

The detection of individual charged particles, photons and neutrons and estimation of their properties, momentum and direction of arrival is the basis for a wide range of scientific and commercial applications from high-energy, nuclear and astro-physics to medical imaging and diagnosis. We are targeting the data acquisition market for medium to large size scientific experiments in High Energy Phys ...

With the expanding use of desalination and wastewater remediation to meet the nation’s fundamental water requirements, the critical economic and environmental needs for reducing energy requirements and enhancing operational functionality can be addressed by a supported one-atomic-layer-thick membrane that incorporates the chemical structures to avoid fouling and scaling. The development of novel ...

A successful algal industry would be transformative in the US. The very high productivity of algae relative to land plants will drive massive job creation in rural areas, provide biofuel and biopolymers to reduce dependence on foreign sources of oil, reduce fertilizer run-off with its corresponding water quality impairment, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enable use of currently underutilized ...

We will develop an acoustically-telemetered, frequency-multiplexed, gamma-heated thermoacoustic sensors that can simultaneously monitor local gamma flux and coolant temperature at multiple locations in the core of an operating commercial nuclear reactor. These sensors will require no external power source and will telemeter temperature encoded as the frequency of the sound radiated by the sensor a ...

Wellbore integrity is of critical importance for ensuring efficient well operations as well as human health and environmental safety. An increasing numbers of wells are being drilled in areas of large populations that rely on subsurface sources of drinking water. The ability to assess well integrity would further reduce the risk of aquifer contamination due to inadequate cement jobs. A cost-effect ...

Nature is the master manufacturer. We propose to mimic the way the ribosome builds biomolecules in order to make complex molecular building blocks that will, in their first use as a product, function as very complex pores in our water purification and desalination nanomembrane system. These pores will be focused on removing extremely challenging contaminants and toxins. With the expanding use of d ...

Inefficient use of energy wastes capital that could be more productively invested in other segments of the U.S. economy. At the same time, the reinsurance industry is eager to reduce property losses arising from increasingly severe weather. But existing reinsurance loss models do not take into consideration the resiliency benefits of energy efficiency measures. The objective of the Phase I SBIR re ...

Renewable algae fuels are the source of energy for the future. It was demonstrated that algae fuels can be produced and they were successfully used in demonstration airplane flights and cars. The cost of algae oil is still high and cannot compete with fossil fuels. High algae growth and ability to accumulate oil fast are the key factors that will make algae based biofuels affordable. Diatoms are t ...