Award Data

Project Summary/AbstractWith over a trillion cups of caffeinated beverages consumed each year, caffeine is arguably the world's most frequently consumed stimulant. Caffeine is widely used to enhance athletic performance, body composition, pain relief, and mental acuity. Naturally caffeinated beverages include coffee, black and green tea, cola, cocoa, guarana, yerba maté, and Yaupon tea. Accor ...

Statement of the problem or opportunity:The conventional approach to industrially producing nitrogenous fertilizers helps feed about half of the world's population but is energy inefficient and requires extensive infrastructure. Together, the conventional Haber and Ostwald use about 1 - 2 % of the world's produced energy and produce almost 3 % of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. A r ...

Shellfish aquaculture is a rapidly expanding agricultural industry in the United States, with landings more than doubling in the last 5 years and creating many new jobs. Culture techniques and the water-filtering nature of oysters make them a very low impact crop with arguably, a net benefit to the environment (a unique trait compared to other intensively farmed proteins). Comprised of salt and br ...

Routine use of antibiotics at subtherapeutic levels in the livestock industry has been criticized for triggering antimicrobial resistance. FDA has recommended the withdrawal of medically important antibiotics for production practices in the U.S. as of January 2017. Although various alternatives to antibiotics are currently on the market, none is able to match the efficacy of antibiotics. We recent ...

Through the proposed USDA SBIR program, NanoSonic will provide wildland firefighters with lightweight, highly breathable, 2-way stretch fire protective garments with a previously unavailable combination of breathability, thermal protection, flexibility, and comfort during wildland firefighting operations. While current PPE garments meet NFPA 1977 standards, they are often criticized for their infl ...

Large-scale swine production has grown dramatically in the past two decades, creating adverse environmental and health effects. In North Carolina alone, health impacts of atmospheric emissions are estimated to exceed $300 million. Coupled with environmental damages, this has resulted in moratoriums on new facilities, as well as tougher regulations for waste streams. An effective treatment and odor ...

The food supply chain consists of many potential contamination points including growing, harvesting, post-harvest handling, transport, processing, distribution, storage and packaging, and finally preparation by the consumer. There are 9.6 million cases of foodborne illness annually in US with an annual economic impact of $15.5 billion. Contamination also leads to spoilage of food and significant l ...

The one-step cane sugar process respondsto the USDA NIFA SBIR Program Priorities in regards to agriculturally related manufacturing technology and energy efficiency. The technology developed from this project will (1) reduce the energy and water consumed per cane sugar product, (2) provide an economic alternative for producing U.S. Food Grade sugar worldwide, (3) eliminate hazardous solid waste pr ...

Climate change is predicted to have major impacts on hydropower operations as weather extremes become more common. Typical hydropower facilities were designed and built to provide base load power. Further, increased addition of intermittent generation sources to the power grid over the last 20 years, such as solar and wind power, has resulted in hydropower operations being required to cycle on and ...

Adding Value and Sustainability to the Food Industry: Mealworm Protein Ingredient as Extract and PowderThe goal of this SBIR effort is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. The insect based food market is currently valued at $105M and is growing to $1.53 billion by 2021. To date only whole insect powders, not fractionated or extracted protein products made from insects ...