Award Data

Accidentally released lubricant into water bodies from hydropower production turbines and other marine (cruises, ships) applications challenges safe water recycling and management, and has invited a number of lawsuits.According to the Environmental Protection Agency, up to 16 million gallons of lubricants per year ? equating to 1.5 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill ? are washed off into wat ...

Every year, the global wind industry loses an estimated $100M or more to damage caused by lightning.A new blade coating will reduce the damage to wind turbine blades caused by lightning by promoting the formation of ionization channels over the surface of the turbine blades, providing a safe external path for lightning energy to reach ground and preventing damaging blade punctures.The coating cons ...

Long-term disposal of nuclear waste continues to be an issue of national and international importance. A 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission report to the Secretary of Energy states, .“..this nation’s failure to come to grips with the nuclear waste issue has already proved damaging and costly and it will be more damaging and more costly the longer it continues….” The proposed thermal salt sealing ...

The U.S. depends on its fleet of nuclear facilities for the clean and reliable generation of electricity. With much uncertainty facing long term, geologic storage facilities, long duration on-site waste storage is being considered. VRC Metal Systems, in collaboration with our academic research partner, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T), and our robotics system developer, Rob ...

High quantum efficiency photodetectors are a critical component of quantum squeezed state systems. Providing optical-to-microwave transduction fidelity allows these systems to significantly improve upon the noise performance of traditionally shot noise limited photonic links and sensors. However, as quantum information science is still a small, but rapidly growing field, there is a distinct lack o ...

The problem being addressed is that electrical generation capacity is expected to fall short in the near future for two reasons. One is that many coal-fired power plants are reaching the end of their life, and the other is that demand for electrical power is expected to increase steadily through year 2050. From emissions concerns, new coal-fired power plants are less likely to be built. While natu ...

Shale gas is reshaping petrochemicals. A big change is the generation of “on purpose” propylene (OPP) plants. These OPP plants in most cases are based on propane dehydration (PDH). The reason for OPP plants is the change of mixtures being fed to crackers produces less propylene. In PDH plants, propane are converted to propylene but not quantitatively (e.g. 85% yield) so there is a need to impr ...