Award Data

Potentially insufficient corn stock supplies make necessary the development of industrial yeast strains for converting alternative cellulosic materials for renewable fuel sources. This project investigates the feasibility and develops the capability of using Holographic Optical Trapping as an automated manipulation tool for yeast cells, to characterize and evaluate yeast strains.

Domestic ethanol production has grown substantially over the last 30 years due to a growth in national energy security concerns, more stringent Federal standards for vehicle emissions, and government agricultural incentives. The recently signed Federal energy legislation requires an increase in ethanol production to 7.5 billion gallons a year within the next 10 years. There is, however, a recogniz ...

The alternative sweetener, xylitol, occupies an interesting market niche. Xylitol, a sugar alcohol, is not metabolized via the insulin pathway, and thus has found use as a sweetener for diabetes patients. Yet xylitol has seen limited success in the marketplace. Its relatively high production costs and low availability have restricted its adoption as an alternative sweetener. We believe the introdu ...

An important problem facing rural America is the lack of job opportunities. This is particularly true in much of the arid southwestern U.S. These rural communities have little that they can export into commodity priced markets. Hence, this region has among the highest incidence (% of county population) of poverty in the U.S. Yet, the southwestern U.S. has abundant solar energy which could provide ...

In order to diversify agriculture and enhance agriculture's role as a reliable supplier of raw materials to industry, new biobased products from agricultural materials need to be developed. This proposal will prove the technical feasibility of producing a biobased natural plastic resin which can be economically blow molded into useful products. Metabolix will use a combination of its proprietary h ...

Production of butanol from biomass is hampered by low conversion rate and energy intensive product recovery. A new energy efficient technology that combines ABE fermentation with membrane based butanol product recovery will be developed.

Economic losses due to inadequate ripeness detection in the orchard and post-harvest continue to plague the apple industry. It is anticipated that the in-orchard/packinghouse sensor approach will significantly reduce the waste/spoilage-to-edible-fruit ratio, thereby increasing fruit quality and availability and resultant consumer demand at the domestic retail level as well as in the export market. ...

Durable, economical, and highly functional erosion control materials for use in high stress, arid and semi-arid environments are not generally available. And, few uses exist for value-added products made from woody residuals created by small-diameter forest thinning and wildland/urban interface fuels reduction operations. The project will create a durable erosion control system using the lowest va ...

Conventional methods of providing power require expensive pole-drop utility connections, high replacement cost of battery-backup systems, other regular maintenance, or inordinate size and substandard reliability. The proposed device uses an optimized combination of battery and solar power, which when coupled with sophisticated power electronics circuits, is capable of supplying 50 W-hr/day of elec ...

The short read range of current cattle electronic identification ear tags threatens to hinder the widespread adoption and utility of the USDA-developed National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Tag readers that require placement within inches of an animal's ear in order to read the NAIS number introduce obstacles at various points in the beef production cycle. This project will determine if be ...