Award Data

Determination of soil gas concentrations and isotopologue ratios are a critical tool in plant, microbial and ecosystem ecology, hydrology, biogeochemistry studies, and interrogation of environmental remediation. In addition, the most abundant elements utilized and exchanged by plants, microbes and ecosystems are carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O) and nitrogen (N), all of which respond to redox c ...

Separations often account for a majority of process costs. This is because all traditional separation processes have inherent weaknesses that prevent the system from achieving perfect (or even near perfect in many instances) selectivity. These weaknesses result in large recycle streams and require multiple separation units in concert in order to produce a product clean enough for use or sale. An a ...

Geothermal brines used in power generation can be a potential source of critical elements, such as lithium. However, current technological approaches cannot achieve high selectivity of target elements available in trace concentrations from a complex geothermal brine matrix with high concentration of non-desirable mineral content. StratoFire and Southern Research propose to develop and optimize an ...

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 ...

The objective of the proposed work is to develop a novel process for the conversion of CO2, water and renewable energy into transportation fuels. The work will combine the efforts of two companies: Dioxide Materials™, experts on using renewable energy (electricity) to convert CO2 and water into syngas; and Primus Green Energy, experts on converting syngas to gasoline. First, Dioxide Materials™ ...

The ages of men have been defined by the materials that make up the tools we use, from the ancient stone and iron ages to the modern nuclear and silicon ages. Over these ages, man’s knowledge has been built upon previous observations. The base of this materials knowledge is understanding the relationships between structure- processing-properties-performance. The top of this pyramid is systematic ...

Thermochemical processing via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is capable of processing a broad range of feedstocks, has a favorable net energy ratio, and produces an energy-dense liquid biooil product. However, there is an obstacle with current HTL processes that has hampered the adoption of this technology—the HTL process produces a considerable amount of aqueous organic byproducts. This proble ...

In the proposed Phase I program, Savengy Technologies, LLC and the University of Central Florida (UCF) will develop physics-based models and build a prototype with the goal of producing a reliable tool to design a commercially viable, energy efficient, low cost thermal desalination unit. This unit is especially suitable for people living in remote areas so that they can be self-sufficient and secu ...

A very large amount of fossil fuel has been transferred to remote or isolated communities for producing potable water and generating power. Reducing and eliminating the fuel use and allowing these facilities to become self-sufficient and secure are essential. In this program we propose to determine the highest throughput ionomer membrane for vacuum desalination and build a scalable prototype of th ...

The objective of the proposed work is to develop, demonstrate, and evaluate new technologies for low-cost, high-accuracy, whole-building CO2 monitoring for demand control ventilation. The work builds on a private/public partnership formed between Dioxide MaterialsTM and the Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering (I-SENSE) at Florida Atlantic University. In previous, NSF-sup ...