Award Data

Generation of carbon-based liquid fuels from reduction of CO2 using solar energy requires the development of improved membranes that provide good ionic conductivity and mechanical properties while minimizing the crossover of gases and reduction products. Using closely coordinated multiscale modeling, synthesis and characterization studies we propose to investigate and develop novel nanostructured ...

Understanding the genomic basis of economically important plants for growth time, crop yield, responses to drought and disease resistance is of critical importance to sustaining and improving food supplies for humans and livestock, as well as insuring sufficient raw material availability for industries that depend on plant materials, such as biofuel manufacture. Current computational methods for a ...

Development of Li-ion conducting membranes capable of supporting Li-metal anode to enable high- performance Li-metal batteries (LiMB) is a priority for the Department of Energy (DOE). State-of- the-art membranes used for Li-ion batteries (LiB) are not suitable for LiMB and have a number of disadvantages including poor cycling performance, low Li-ion conductivity, and electrochemical stability with ...

Novel discoveries are going to prove essential for attaining a significant percentage of oil output rather than solely depending on existing fields to keep up with the energy demanding of the United States. As one of the critical sectors of Exploration and Production, seismic surveys are used to produce detailed images of local geology to determine the location and size of possible oil and gas res ...

The composition of atmospheric particulate matter (“aerosols”) strongly influences health and environmental impacts, but there exist few time-resolved, long-term records of particle-phase chemical composition due to lack of appropriate monitoring tools. Needed is an instrument that is robust, easy-to-operate, with automated calibrations and data reduction, to provide operationally-inexpensive ...

Cost-effective and power-efficient radiation tolerant semiconductors are needed in various harsh environments, such as particle detectors, communication satellites, high-altitude avionics and medical imagining equipment. These include amplifiers, voltage regulators, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital logic circuitry. However, radiation-tolerant high-speed ADCs currently cost more than ...

There are an estimated 1.7 million oil and gas wells in the United States, 771,000 of these are considered marginal producers. Combined they make up 11.3% of the US oil production and 8.3% of the US gas production. In that last 10 years, over 131,000 of these oil wells and 48,000 gas wells have been plugged and abandoned. Most of these wells suffer from paraffin plugging problems. The only way to ...

Vast amounts of impaired waters are produced in gas and oil wells. Energy-efficient desalination systems are needed to treat these waters to produce fresh water and concentrated brines. Mineral recovery systems can also yield valuable critical materials as byproducts. Savengy Technologies and University of Central Florida (UCF) will develop and commercialize an energy efficient system to treat sha ...

Direct Solar in partnership with Colorado State University's Next Generation PV Center (NGPV) and H. B. Fuller Company will develop a new solar module architecture and manufacturing process optimized for crystalline silicon (c-Si) modules that significantly reduces manufacturing costs and improves reliability. The outcome of this program will be a new c-Si module design, streamlined manufacturing ...

DOE is trying to develop accident tolerant fuel and structural materials for future light water reactor (LWR). TREAT irradiation vehicle will be testing new accident-tolerant fuel for nuclear reactors. TREAT irradiation vehicle needs 718 alloy pressure vessel. Fabrication of pressure vessel by additive manufacturing 718 alloy is needed. But 100% dense component by AM fabrication process is difficu ...