Award Data

Advanced Thermal and Environmental Concepts, Inc. proposes to utilize electrohydrodynamic (EHD) technology to reduce the amount of frost that forms on cold plates in food freezers. The defrost cycle consumes about 5-15% of the energy to operate an industrial food freezer. During Phase I of our project, we used EHD technology to reduce frost mass by 35% and frost height by as mush as 65% under cert ...

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS IN RURAL AREAS ARE FACED WITH COMMUNICATION GAPS IN THE GATHERING, SHARING, ANDDISSEMINATION OF INFORMATION DUE TO CHANGES IN THE CO COMPLEXION AND NEEDS OF THEIR CONSTITUENCY, NEW LEGISLATION,TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS, SOCIAL CHANGES TURNOVERS IN IN LEADERSHIP, AND CHANGES IN THE ECONOMY. UNDER PHASE I, WE PROPOSED TO ESTIBLISH THE TECHNICAL MERIT AND FEA ...

Recognition and separation on newly-hatched poultry chicks by sex require intensive human labor in broiler hatchery operations. Segregation of chicks by gender and grow-out in gender specific management schemes offer significant benefits to the broiler industry. This project will develop an automated online vision inspection system to recognize the sex of baby chicks and separate them into differe ...

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AT MULTI-UNIT NUCLEAR GENRATING STATIONS, CONTROL ROOM OPERATORS ARE GENERALLY LICENSED TO OPERATE ALL SIMILAR UNITS. SIMULATOR TRAINING CONDUCTED AT THE LICENSEE TRAINING FACILITY OCCURS ON ONE SIMULATOR WHICH MAY NOT EXACTLY MIMIC ANY UNIT. INADEQUATE TRAINING ON UNIT-TO-UNIT AND UNIT-TO-SIMULATOR DIFFERENCES, IN CONJUNCTION WITH LIMITED PER-PERSON SIMULATOR TRAINING HOURS, CAN RESULT IN INCREAS ...

DACCO SCI, INC., proposes a Phase II SBIR program to develop a corrosion inhibitor system using extracts from tobacco plants. The Phase I results show the extract to be very effective in preventing corrosion of steel and aluminum either individually or when coupled with dissimilar metals. Under many conditions, the tobacco extract performs as good as or better than chromates, which have been the c ...

Simulation models that replicate the dynamics of rural growth and decline would provide aninvaluable analytical tool for rural leaders, program administrators, educators and communityprofessionals. A Rural Community Modeler (RCM) was developed in a previous Phase I effortusing the system dynamics methodology to interrelate social, educational, economic,demographic, environmental and agricultural ...

Insect pests are annually responsible for multi-million dollar grain losses. A promising detectionsystem is the ARS-developed Acoustic Location Fingerprinting Insect Detector (ALFID) which countsinsects in a grain sample by pinpointing sounds from individual adult and larval (potentially the mostdestructive in wheat) stages. The low-cost piezo-electric microphones currently used are sufficiently ...

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Phase I research proved the feasibility of EnerTech's Slurry Carbonization technology for economically producing clean and marketable fuels from high-moisture agricultural residues and wastes, especially animal manures. The Slury Carbonization technology effectively transformed low-grade animal residues, through a moderate temperature and pressure carbonization process, into a uniform and especial ...