Award Data

The use of unattended floats, platforms, and drones addresses the immense challenge of cost-effectively characterizing the chemistry of the oceans. The proposed program strengthens this capability by demonstrating the feasibility of Laser Fluorescence Enhanced Flame Spectrophotometry (LFEFS) for the simultaneous and high precision measurement of calcium and strontium. These are key elements of the ...

Precision Combustion, Inc. (PCI) is developing a regenerable high efficiency filter technology for direct removal of gaseous pollutants such as VOCs and CO2 from indoor air. In addition to controllably improving indoor air quality (IAQ), the direct removal of these pollutants will reduce the requirement for building ventilation with outdoor make-up air currently used to dilute the concentration of ...

The United States produces significant quantities of waste materials that are discarded. These wastes include organic components of municipal solid waste (MSW), biosolids from wastewater treatment plants and agricultural wastes. The release of these materials and their byproducts into the environment can have serious consequences, such as pollution of ground and surface water resources and spread ...

Precision Combustion, Inc. proposes to develop functionalized nanocarbons as an improved high capacity, regenerable filter for VOCs and other gaseous contaminants, tailored to the purpose of sorption of a broad array of air contaminants from indoor or industrial sources. The company’s sorbent offers to overcome limitations to air purification inherent to other commercial sorbents, including loss ...

Project Summary: Phosphorus is a nutrient essential to modern food production and to all life on earth, yet phosphate rock from which phosphate fertilizer is produced is a finite resource, which is rapidly being depleted. At the same time, excess phosphorus from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and runoff from farms is causing eutrophication and the resultant degradation water quality. There is ...

In a typical wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), the anaerobic digestion process generates a sidestream with high level of ammonia (NH3-N) and ortho-phosphate (ortho-P), which contributes to as much as 20-40 percent of total nutrient loading to the main plant stream. Traditionally, the sidestream is returned to the main stream and treated in biological nutrient removal processes, at significant cos ...

There has been a renewed push across NASA centers and programs to make Systems Engineering & Integration (SE&I) processes more efficient and results-oriented than the current cumbersome and expensive cross-checking processes using text documents, and transition to a repeatable and a cost-effective process of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). In parallel, Systems Health management (SHM), with ...

In Phase II, the QSI-Vanderbilt team seeks to develop a system-level diagnostics and prognostic process that incorporates a "sense and respond capability," which first uses error codes and discrete sensor values to correctly diagnose the system health including degradations and failures of sensors and components, and then invokes appropriate prognostics routines for the assessment of RUL and perfo ...

Particle size distribution (PSD) is a fundamental environmental measurement, with diverse biogeochemical applications including carbon cycle science, ecosystem and fisheries modeling, and harmful algal bloom (HAB) detection/prediction. There is optimism that estimates of PSD will be available from ocean color measurements (such as NASA's upcoming PACE mission), and will be able to help constrain g ...

A prototype high temperature, single optical fiber thermal imaging system will be developed, tested, and delivered to GRC. The components of the instrument will be specified in detail, designed, fabricated, and purchased where appropriate. The illumination and imaging system will be assembled and system tests will be performed. Given a set of calibration images produced by the diagnostic, the i ...