Award Data

To advance a strong and economical biofuels and bioproducts industry, tools are needed for breeding microalgae to improve phenotypes of commercial interest, including biomass yield, culture stability, harvestability, and accumulation of valuable compounds. This project aims to increase biomass feedstock yields by the phototrophic green alga Scenedesmus obliquus by using classical breeding approach ...

One of grand challenges in nanoscience and nanotechnology is to achieve fundamental under- standing of the dynamic evolution of materials in actual operating environment, non-equilibrium conditions, or undergoing chemical reactions at the nanoscale. This requires forefront advances in imaging and analysis techniques that combine nanometer-scale spatial resolution, optical excitation and spectrosco ...

The Department of Energy has a mission to ensure America's prosperity and security by addressing energy and environmental challenges. This Phase I project aims to produce domestic, economic and environmentally responsible biodiesel fuel from brown grease, a waste that is currently disposed in landfills or incinerated. The conversion of "brown grease" from wastewater treatment plant’s fats oils a ...

The Department of Energy needs improved radiation resistant electrical insulation materials for the superconducting magnet coils in fusion reactors. To achieve safe, reliable, economic and environmentally benign fusion energy system, DOE is seeking organic/inorganic insulation-capable materials that are wrappable. These materials under irradiation will enable magnet coils to: (1) operate reliably ...

There is a continuing need for high power circulators to protect the next generation of high power RF sources from waveguide reflections that can destroy the device. Currently, the power level of circulators is limited by the materials, specifically ferrites that provide the required non-reciprocal operation. New approaches are required that use materials capable of very high power operation. Stat ...

Renewable sources of energy including solar and wind are fast gaining ground on fossil fuels, in part because of their sustainability and environmental benefits. A major issue, however, has been finding efficient ways to store the energy that renewables generate for use when the demand for energy is high. Lithium-­‐sulfur batteries, which store electrical energy by transferring electrons to or ...

Accurate simulation of nuclear power plant behavior is necessary for both engineering and training applications. An engineering grade simulator, used for design, safety analysis and operations, is characterized by high fidelity, computational power, lack of real-time capability, and user non-interactive environment. By contrast, a training grade simulator, used for operator training and education, ...

Sn-doped In2O3 (ITO) is the industry standard and most widely used transparent conducting electrode (TCE) because of its good electrical and optical properties. However, ITO has a number of disadvantages: ITO is not a suitable TCE for next-generation, high-efficiency, flexible OLEDs, because of its inappropriate work function, difficulty in creating desired patterns, low stability, delaminantion d ...

Replacement of petroleum based vehicles with fuel cell electric vehicles operating on hydrogen produced from domestically available resources would dramatically decrease emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants as well as reduce dependence on oil from politically volatile regions of the world. One major inhibitor to a hydrogen society is the lack of infrastructure, which requires hydroge ...

The Brayton cycle for power generation offers significant advantages over the Rankin cycle typically used. Unfortunately, the Brayton cycle uses very high pressure and high temperature, supercritical CO2 (sCO2) as the heat transfer fluid. New materials that can handle the harsh environment of sCO2 are required to enable power generation and prevent issues with corrosion and erosion or efficiency d ...