Award Data

Despite significant advancement in PV technology and efficiency, qualification testing and market penetration, actual performance in the field of operation under a myriad of environemental constraints remains an important topic. PV arrays are subject to degradation mechanisms that can significantly impact power production capability. For revenue-critical PV arrays, detection of underperformance an ...

Managing the flow of water, nutrients, and contaminants in watersheds is vital to addressing pressing issues related to water scarcity, access to clean drinking water, energy production, resilience to natural and anthropogenic perturbations, and ecological restoration. Decisions about the management of watersheds critically depend on the accuracy with which the flow of water and chemicals through ...

Statement of Problem: The US DOE has set a goal to advance photovoltaics (PV) technology to reach installed costs of less than $1/Watt. This requires module costs below $0.50/ Watt. Thin film PV provides the lowest documented production cost per watt ($0.67) of any PV technology. Module reliability has a direct impact on the levalized cost of energy (LCOE), or the cost of the energy produced by ...

The Exascale Computing Project is tasked to develop the next generation of high performance computing systems capable of computing at 50 to 100 times faster than current HPC systems. Computing at this extreme-scale will significantly enhance the value of materials modeling and simulation to basic materials research and engineering In particular, computing at the extreme scale will enable a higher ...

Understanding the genomic basis of economically important plants for growth time, crop yield, responses to drought and disease resistance is of critical importance to sustaining and improving food supplies for humans and livestock, as well as insuring sufficient raw material availability for industries that depend on plant materials, such as biofuel manufacture. Current computational methods for a ...

Computer-aided Engineering software that apply the Finite Element Method to perform a multi-physics analysis have received widespread acceptance for traditional macro-scale material systems. Challenges persist in the modeling of complex coupled processes in environmental/thermal barrier coatings (E/TBCs) used to protect substrate material against the corrosive environment in the hot section parts ...

Tristructural isotropic (TRISO) fuel is a key component of advanced small modular nuclear fission reactors due to its inherent safety at high temperatures and irradiation levels and decreased proliferation risk relative to current reactor fuels. A more efficient cooling method for TRISO fuel compacts would increase heat transfer, allow for an increase in fuel density, and further improve accident ...

Direct Solar in partnership with Colorado State University's Next Generation PV Center (NGPV) and H. B. Fuller Company will develop a new solar module architecture and manufacturing process optimized for crystalline silicon (c-Si) modules that significantly reduces manufacturing costs and improves reliability. The outcome of this program will be a new c-Si module design, streamlined manufacturing ...

Vast amounts of impaired waters are produced in gas and oil wells. Energy-efficient desalination systems are needed to treat these waters to produce fresh water and concentrated brines. Mineral recovery systems can also yield valuable critical materials as byproducts. Savengy Technologies and University of Central Florida (UCF) will develop and commercialize an energy efficient system to treat sha ...

Idaho National Laboratory (INL), under funding from the Critical Materials Institute, has developed a US patented technology to reclaim valuable metals from waste electronic equipment. The Electrochemical Recycling Electronic Constituents of Value (E-RECOV) method uses an electrochemical cell to efficiently recover the bulk of metals from discarded electronics, leading to more complete recycling o ...