Award Data

Statement of the Problem: Decommissioned solar panels will account for up to 10 million tons of waste in the USA by 2050. PV recycling has seen little development in reclaiming valuable materials present in low concentrations. Copper and silver account for 1% and 0.1%, respectively, of the total waste mass, but represent 7% and 42% of the waste value. To make mass PV recycling economically viable, ...

C56-36c-272696The Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics promotes the development of state-of-the-art particle accelerators for cutting-edge experimentation. To support these advances, improved high- temperature superconducting (HTS) wires are required in order to build high-field magnets that generate magnetic fields greater than 18 T. One key material for the development of HTS w ...

C56-25b-273571Direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide (CO2) and its conversion to green platform chemicals can provide a pathway for deep decarbonization of our chemical industry. Such technology can also help with sustainability of carbon containing chemicals. DAC technologies can potentially be used everywhere in conjunction with renewable power sources making them potentially carbon negative ...

n DER (Distributed Energy Resource) power delivery systems, the cybersecurity enhancement of OT (Operational Technology) is urgently needed to adapt/survive cyberattacks without disrupting safe operations. However, the modern energy systems with OT and IT systems are connected, allowing cyberattacks to originate in business systems and then migrate to DER energy control systems within the OT envir ...

Superconducting magnets, by offering extremely strong magnetic fields, play a key role for high energy physics explorations. However, magnet quenches due to thermal disturbances, significantly suppress magnet performance, and substantially add to the operating cost of superconducting magnets by boiling away huge amounts of extraordinarily expensive liquid helium. Low temperature superconducting ca ...

Thermisoln LLC, in partnership with the University of Kentucky (UK), is working together to develop a switchable-hydrophilicity solvent (SHS) which can energy-efficiently capture and fixate CO2 from point sources burning fossil fuels, and meanwhile enables the upcycling of gypsum wastes and the cogeneration of a value-added, carbon-free, non-volatile soil fertilizer. Traditional amine scrubbing so ...

Polyethylene furoate (PEF) is one of the bioplastics for making water bottles, beverage bottles, fibers, and films. PEF is a 100 % bio-based polymer derived from plants having the potential to replace the plastic industry’s giant polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is a durable material derived from conventional resources. Commercially, the PEF has been produced in two steps: (1) 2,5-Furan d ...

Incompatible polyolefins, such as polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), account for nearly two- thirds of the plastics produced worldwide and do not naturally decompose. Because of their incompatibility, they must go through an expensive sorting process before recycling. Unfortunately, limited by the low efficiency and high cost of the current recycling process, only 7% of PE and 3% of PP are ...

Executive Order 13817 recently listed 35 minerals deemed critical to the United States’ national security and our economy. Most of these minerals are not available to be mined from conventional sources in the United States; as a result, a mineral dependency vulnerability is created that can adversely impact our nation. A comprehensive review of the potential to extract critical minerals from unc ...

Systems in nuclear power plants (NPPs) utilizes advanced Reliability-centered Maintenance (RCM) methodologies like Time-/Condition-based maintenance (TBM , CBM) for determining the maintenance requirements of objects in its current operating context. Such techniques have been enhancing the safety of the unit, improving equipment reliability and reducing maintenance costs. However, the existing NPP ...