Award Data

Shale gas is reshaping petrochemicals. A big change is the generation of “on purpose” propylene (OPP) plants. These OPP plants in most cases are based on propane dehydration (PDH). The reason for OPP plants is the change of mixtures being fed to crackers produces less propylene. In PDH plants, propane are converted to propylene but not quantitatively (e.g. 85% yield) so there is a need to impr ...

The US scientific and industrial research communities in the broad areas of soft matter (i.e., polymers, complex fluids, nano and colloidal solutions, coatings and inks) and biological materials (i.e., drug delivery, hydrogels, tissue engineering) need, but lack, the ability to effectively study these important materials under flow conditions. Shear fields are widely used as much to process and co ...

A growth of renewable energy technologies will help to accommodate the growing demand for electricity, provided that energy storage technologies address the intermittency of renewable energies such as solar and wind power. Lithium polysulfide (Li-PS) redox flow batteries (RFBs) have been considered as one of the most promising electrochemical energy storage technologies because of their high energ ...

Cyber hacking of critical infrastructure is a concern for our national security, especially in the power/electric utility sector where utilities loose $13.2M per attack. Given the vulnerabilities within the value-chain of electric delivery, the distribution network is an enormous blind-spot and highly susceptible to cyber intrusion. This project looks to address this issue, as sought by the DoE, b ...

High quantum efficiency photodetectors are a critical component of quantum squeezed state systems. Providing optical-to-microwave transduction fidelity allows these systems to significantly improve upon the noise performance of traditionally shot noise limited photonic links and sensors. However, as quantum information science is still a small, but rapidly growing field, there is a distinct lack o ...

Climate change and reduction in the cost of renewable energy systems have set the stage for wide-scale decarbonization of the energy economy. Adoption of hydrogen as an energy vector inevitably necessitates the infrastructure of technologies to enable distribution and storage of hydrogen. Xergy’s technological contribution addresses the need to efficiently compress hydrogen gas using electrochem ...

Accidentally released lubricant into water bodies from hydropower production turbines and other marine (cruises, ships) applications challenges safe water recycling and management, and has invited a number of lawsuits.According to the Environmental Protection Agency, up to 16 million gallons of lubricants per year ? equating to 1.5 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill ? are washed off into wat ...

Every year, the global wind industry loses an estimated $100M or more to damage caused by lightning.A new blade coating will reduce the damage to wind turbine blades caused by lightning by promoting the formation of ionization channels over the surface of the turbine blades, providing a safe external path for lightning energy to reach ground and preventing damaging blade punctures.The coating cons ...

With development of shale gas fracking, large amounts of methane and ethane have now become available at low cost. With this low cost ethane it is desirable to convert low cost ethane to high value ethylene. Oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) for low cost conversion of ethane to ethylene is a potentially attractive route. ODH is an exothermic process for converting ethane to ethylene. By contrast pro ...

All fruits and vegetables generate ethylene.Even low concentrations of ethylene accelerate fruitripening.A process that removes ethylene as it is generated can play a central role in maintainingthe freshness of fruits and vegetables.Hence much effort and significant cost normally go into thecontrol of the atmosphere and temperature to which these fruits and vegetables are exposed largelyto reduce ...