Award Data

Better permanent magnets are needed to improve the performance of advanced motors for hybrid electric vehicles. In response to this need, this project will develop high performance permanent magnets with improved magnetic properties at temperatures up to 240 degrees C, high electrical resistivity to reduce eddy current losses in advanced motor applications, and low cost. In Phase I, feasibility ...

Compared with conventional processes used to produce many oxygenated chemicals, processes based on the selective catalytic oxidation of alkanes to produce oxygenates could yield enormous economic, energy, and environmental benefits. However, commercial development of such processes has been hindered, in part, because the excessive heat released by alkane oxidation causes over-oxidation (burning) ...

Due to the economics, politics and environmental impacts of petroleum use, there is growing interest in the use of biomass to partially replace petroleum as an energy source. However, in order to utilize biomass as a feedstock for the production of fuel or chemical products, its structure needs to be significantly altered to facilitate the efficient completion of downstream steps. This alteration ...

It is now an accepted fact that global warming due to greenhouse gases is occurring and could have a devastating effect for future life on earth. The need for the United States to plan, develop, and implement alternative, clean energy technologies is critical. In particular, the photovoltaic generation of electricity from the sun is a sustainable, elegant, clean, and practical source of usable e ...

Improvements to the superconducting magnets used in high energy physics experiments will depend on increasing the critical current density and stability of Nb3Sn superconductor wire. Major improvements in the performance of Nb3Sn wire can be achieved by reducing the effective filament size, deff, in order to reduce flux jumping and magnet instability. The deff can be reduced by increasing the numb ...

While lithium-ion batteries are rapidly penetrating the laptop and cell-phone markets because of their high specific energy, safety is one of the key challenges to be addressed before lithium-ion batteries can replace the nickel-metal-hydride batteries that are commonly used in today¿s Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs). The major safety concern is the possibility of an internal short-circuit, due t ...

The U.S. Department of Energy has started a new Solar America Initiative (SAI) to accelerate the development of advanced photovoltaic (PV) systems. Significant technological advances have been made in the area of multi-junction solar cells for concentrated PV systems. Because these cells typically are suspended at the focal point of the reflecting mirror, the support structure must provide the b ...

Homologous recombination (HR) permits the precise insertion, deletion, or substitution of genetic material in the genome of an organism. HR offers numerous opportunities for modifying plant genomes to enhance our understanding of plant gene function and regulation, especially with respect to enhancing the production of biofuels. Although HR normally occurs at very low frequencies, approximately ...

There is a high interest in developing advanced motors for hybrid electric vehicles that can provide improved performance at an affordable price. One approach to achieving this goal is to improve the magnetic performance of the permanent magnets used in electric motors, while maintaining a good thermal stability at lower cost. Because variable external magnetic fields in motors cause eddy curren ...

The utilization of low cost and abundantly available alkanes as feedstocks for the production of valuable chemicals can bring enormous economic, energy, and environmental benefits to the US, provided that catalytic oxidation processes could replace conventional processes for producing these chemicals. Although several metal oxide catalysts and processes have been developed for producing valuable ...