Award Data

An estimated 70% of supercomputing cycles worldwide are spent solving large-scale systems of linear equations. Sparse linear equations are at the core ¿ and constitute the primary bottleneck ¿ of important DOE research problems in energy fusion, accelerator simulations, and astrophysics, among other research challenges. The DOE has co-funded an ambitious research program to develop the LAPACKr ...

An estimated 70% of supercomputing cycles worldwide are dedicated to solving numerical linear algebra problems, and large-scale ¿least-squares¿ computational problems are an important subset of numerical linear algebra. Sca/LAPACKrc, a multimillion dollar program to develop FPGA-accelerated linear algebra software, already has demonstrated speedups larger than 100x per commodity processor for a ...

Federated search technology can facilitate scientific discovery by providing one-stop access to a large number of information sources. However, performance bottlenecks and limitations in the ability to retrieve the most relevant results limit the benefits of this technology to DOE researchers, to other scientists, and to the public. This project will assess the performance of the entire federate ...

The Department of Energy, particularly through the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), provides access to high quality scientific and technical content to scientists, researchers, and the public through a number of science portals. Despite this service, thousands of additional information sources are hard to identify and access; yet, the availability of such sources would lead ...

Large stores of unique seismic information ¿ generated from earthquakes, nuclear tests, and oil and gas exploration ¿ exist in both public and private repositories. However, much of this data exists as optically scanned images that are not useful for further analysis. In order to access and analyze these records, it is critically important to develop automated and accurate image analysis techn ...

This project will identify and screen refractory metal alloys and coating systems that would enable an innovative turbine airfoil concept to be used to increase the efficiency of the gas turbine engines used in Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants. In Phase I, engine simulation tests will be conducted to identify which of two candidate material systems is more damage toleran ...

Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants are attractive alternatives to current pulverized coal technologies in large-scale stationary applications. However, in order to meet target efficiencies greater than 50%, the inlet temperature may need to be raised to 1500ºC (2732 ºF) or higher. Therefore, this project will develop innovative cooling approaches for the hottest section ...

This phase I STTR proposal is aimed at reducing cost of energy generation in crystalline silicon solar cells. Cost of the Si wafer itself accounts for over 50 % of energy conversion, therefore, economic use of Si can potentially reduced costs by a factor of 10 by reducing current mass/watt ratios of ~ 3 g/W to ~ 0.4 g/W. Economic use of Si in the form of thin (~ 25 µm) films can reduce energy gen ...

A novel electron gun is needed to improve the electron sources at DOE user facilities. Currently, accelerator system performance is limited by the high power requirements, low duty cycle, and low repetition rate of electron guns, which must produce a brief electron pulse in a 10-100MV/m environment. In this project, a previously-developed resonant cavity technology, which simultaneously energize ...

Raman spectroscopy is a powerful tool for on-line process control in chemical plants.However, its low sensitivity and high cost has prevented the widespread adoption of Raman spectroscopy by the chemical and petrochemical industries. This project will develop a novel concept for a Raman probe that not only will provide higher sensitivity but also will be more affordable due to its simple structur ...