Award Data

The team of Signature Research, Inc. and Michigan Technological University will develop and demonstrate methods and metrics to evaluate the performance of machine learning-based computer vision algorithms with low numbers of samples of labeled EO imagery. We will use the existing xView panchromatic dataset to demonstrate a proof-of-concept set of tools. If successful, in Phase II, we will extend t ...

Hydrogen has been widely used in many applications from aerospace and chemicals to fuel cells and satellite power supply. Although hydrogen is not toxic, it has a very broad flammability range (4%-74% concentration in air and 4%-94% in oxygen), leading to explosion in the presence of heat source. Thus, hydrogen monitoring is of paramount importance during the processes of hydrogen production, tran ...

Commercial sources of rare earth elements include bastnaesite (La, Ce)FCO3, monazite, (Ce, La, Y, Th)PO4, and xenotime, YPO4. However, the processing of these materials to extract and recover the rare earth elements is challenging and very process intensive. However, there are numerous domestic sources of rare earth elements, from waste materials such as coal fly ash, which could be extracted bene ...

The monitoring of gaseous exhaust (e,g., NOx, NH3) and particulate matters (PMs) has been critical in the automotive diesel engine combustion emission control, for which various catalytic converters need be operated efficiently and environment-friendly, including diesel oxidation catalysts (DOC), diesel particulate filters (DPF), and selective catalytic reduction (SCR). For instance, in the DPF, t ...

DOE seeks development of optimized wind-compatible power converters for industry collaboration with potential cost savings, increased power performance, grid support and to move the grid connection power module from the wind turbine nacelle. Our project approach is to develop a much lower cost, smaller weight, smaller size solid state power converter (PFC PDK), utilizing commercial silicon carbide ...

Fiber optic-based sensing devices and systems allow for electromagnetic interference-immune interrogation of temperature and strain distribution within the cryomodule coil winding pack of superconducting magnets. A specific use of fiber sensors is for rapid and redundant quench detection. Novel fiber-optic sensors may also be used for precision measurement of distributed and local temperature and/ ...

The DOE’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program has funded 2 software packages, LOGOS and SR2ML. One of the key goals of LWRS is to manage the aging of systems, structures, and components (SSCs) so nuclear power plants can continue to operate safely and cost-effectively. The Safety, Risk, Reliability Model Library (SR2ML) is a software package that contains a set of reliability model ...

Metal mesh filters are used to control the transmission of infrared through terahertz radiation in a variety of systems including sensors, cameras, and high-performance telescopes. Currently, high-performance metal mesh infrared filters are fabricated using photolithography but this is a costly and time consuming process and it is limited to filter diameters of 300 mm or less (the largest size tha ...

The Department of Energy Office of Fusion Energy Sciences is seeking the development of wrap-able radiation-resistant electrical insulators for superconducting magnet coils used in fusion energy reactor systems. These insulators must: (1) exhibit low gas generation under irradiation, (2) have higher pot life, and (3) exhibit attributes of insulation systems with high bond and higher strength and f ...

To meet performance and cost targets for electric vehicles, substantial improvement is still required in lithium-ion batteries. A low-cost, high-capacity silicon anode will greatly aid in this effort, but current methods for generating functional nano-silicon for anodes use expensive metallurgical, templating, gaseous, or other top-down engineering processes. This project proposes to use the natur ...