Award Data

Many communities face water scarcity as a fundamental challenge to their economic and social development. Seawater is an abundant source which can be reached by most of the countries in the world. In order to utilize seawater as potable water, it is required to remove the high salinity. Desalination technologies are intended for the removal of dissolved salts that cannot be removed by conventional ...

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 ...

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 ...

Renewable algae fuels are the source of energy for the future. It was demonstrated that algae fuels can be produced and they were successfully used in demonstration airplane flights and cars. The cost of algae oil is still high and cannot compete with fossil fuels. High algae growth and ability to accumulate oil fast are the key factors that will make algae based biofuels affordable. Diatoms are t ...

A recent report by the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee entitled “Challenges at the Frontiers of Matter and Energy” pointed to the need to better understand hierarchical and heterogeneous materials, often at the mesoscopic scale. Such structures can be studied by x-ray and neutron scattering techniques, but they do not generally yield narrow signals in momentum or energy space. The nat ...

For economically viable large-scale production of microalgae based food and biofuel to become a reality, significant improvements in algal productivity need to be achieved. With current regulatory guidelines, large scale outdoor cultivation of microalgae for these products restricts the use of transgenic algal strains, which in the laboratory, have thus far been the primary strategy taken to effec ...

Neutron scattering is one of the most useful methods of studying the structure and dynamics of matter. These methods require large installations at national laboratories, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and other facilities constructed or planned in the US and around the world. These facilities serve a large and diverse community ...

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 next generation of very high field accelerator magnets (20 T or more) are expected to be made with high-temperature superconductors (HTS) along with conventional low-temperature superconductors (LTS) to reduce cost. The operation and protection of these magnets becomes very challenging particularly if the HTS coils are made with the tapes and operate at a much lower current than the LTS coils ...

The rate of climate change in the Arctic is larger than elsewhere on Earth. The Arctic has unique and complex couplings and feedbacks between the surface and the atmosphere that in turn modify the radiative balance there differently than elsewhere. Current understanding holds that an increase in downwelling long wave radiative flux, driven by increased water vapor and clouds, may be accelerating c ...