Award Data

Current anaerobic digester systems are designed for capturing energy from waste from large heads of farm animals. GHD, Inc., a leading manufacturer of anaerobic digesters, has stated that a minimum dairy heard size for economical implementation of a biogas system as 800 cows. These require turbine or diesel generator sets of 100 Kilowatt size and larger, a limiting factor in economically scaling ...

There continues to be a need for low cost production and shipment of fuel-grade ethanol from agricultural sources. Ethanol from agricultural sources has many advantages including developing fuel independence and significantly reducing greenhouse gases. Also, bio-ethanol has significant value as an oxygenated and octane improver. Although ethanol from agricultural sources has many advantages, th ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will explore the synthesis and use of novel lignin-derived carbon-magnetite nanocomposites for removal of aqueous phosphate– a run off pollutant from agricultural farms that leads to eutrophication of lakes and other water reservoirs. The intellectual property related to nanocomposite synthesis (and associated applications) is exclu ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will develop and ready for commercialization a scalable, low-cost process for purification of water containing Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) using anodic oxidation with boron-doped ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD®) thin films. Resent research demonstrated that there is considerable potential for the development of electrochemica ...

"With the rapid growth of biodiesel industry, the production of crude glycerol as one of major biodiesel byproducts has been dramatically increased. Fully utilizing such a large quantity of crude glycerol is critical to the sustainability of biodiesel industry. Lactic acid is an important industrial chemical that is widely used as a food additive for flavoring and preservative, a moistener in co ...

The objective of this project is to evaluate the feasibility of using some newly discovered materials, water-stable metal-organic frameworks (MOF), as filters for pollutants common in indoor air. By way of background, recent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-supported work from Professor Masel’s laboratory has shown that a new class of water-stable MOFs shows unprecedented adsorp ...

The objective of this project is to evaluate the feasibility of using some newly discovered materials, water-stable metal-organic frameworks (MOF), as filters for pollutants common in indoor air. By way of background, recent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-supported work from Professor Masel’s laboratory has shown that a new class of water-stable MOFs shows unprecedented a ...

America needs a clean, affordable, reliable and sustainable product or system to obtain heat for residences in cold climates using renewable, carbon-neutral, plentiful, low-cost biomass fuels of diverse types found close to the location of usage. The available biomass could heat hundreds of thousands of homes, and costly natural gas could be directed to higher-value usage. Gasifiers are devices t ...

This program exceeded all key milestones. Using cellulose Waste, CMS demonstrated novel ethanol drying membranes via small scale dephlegmation process that yields fuel grade ethanol (FGE) at a lower cost than large switch grass ethanol plants. This success yields positive value for cellulose waste. We achieved targeted EPA goals of developing low cost environmentally friendly systems to enhance re ...

There is growing concern about how to limit the release of mercury into the environment. One significant source of mercury is found in fluorescent lamps. Recently, however, compact fluorescent lamps have been heavily promoted in order to conserve electrical energy. While it is true that switching to energy efficient lighting is one of the easiest ways to save energy, reduce CO2 emissions, and save ...