Award Data

Technologies for terrestrial ecosystem management – in the area of precision agriculture and ecosystem restoration – have made significant advances recently for more sustainable practices by optimizing water, nutrients, and fertilizers Many of these technologies include monitoring and imaging of plants, soil, and crop harvest as well as their interactions, using in situ sensors, remote sensing ...

The discovery of large shale gas reserves in recent years has resulted in the reduction of natural gas price and a need to develop new applications for the available resource. Upgrading shale gas to liquid fuels which are more easily transportable and have greater economic value can result in significant benefits to the US. Coupled with this challenging problem the DOE has a goal of further develo ...

As computational density for high-performance computing and big-data services continues to scale, performance scalability of next generation computing systems is becoming increasingly constrained by limitations in memory access, power dissipation and chip packaging. The processor-memory communication bottleneck, a major challenge in current multicore processors due to limited pin-out and power bud ...

Low-temperature plasmas generated by nanosecond electrical pulses, also referred to as transient plasmas, can be used to significantly improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions by enabling stable ignition in gasoline and natural gas engines in dilute conditions (e.g. applications such as methane capture, where methane is captured from landfills and burned to produce electricity) as well as thro ...

High-temperature superconductors (HTS) are a vital technology for future particle accelerators, motors, generators and other electric power systems, fusion reactors, and many other medical and defense applications requiring high magnetic fields. One remaining limiting factor limiting to the implementation of HTS systems is the lack of adequate sensors to monitor the temperature and strain states o ...

Currently spark ignition (SI) engines dominate the light vehicle market, with over 80 million light vehicle engines made worldwide. These SI engines experience exceptionally poor efficiency at low to medium loads and speeds, making it difficult to meet new fuel efficiency standards expected to be imposed in many countries. Low wall temperatures at the end of the combustion process leads to emissio ...

According to a report by the Hydrogen Council, a global lobby set up in January 2017 by Toyota and Air Liquide that includes 27 members such as automakers Audi, BMW, Daimler, Honda and Hyundai, and energy firms Shell and Total, increasing the use of hydrogen in power, transport, heat and industry could deliver around one fifth of the total carbon emissions cuts needed to limit global warming to sa ...

Solar fuels production is necessary for the future of the global economy. To produce solar fuels from CO2, a highly conductive and stable polymer-electrolyte is needed for this demanding application. A promising class of polymer-electrolytes for electrochemical energy applications has been developed, and this project’s goal is to scale-up production, add quality controls, and reduce waste. The n ...

Hydrogen compression represents a key technical challenge for the widespread use of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV). To dispense hydrogen to a FCEV tank, hydrogen must be compressed to a minimum of 875 bar. Conventional compressors account for over half of the refueling station’s cost, have poor reliability, and insufficient flow rates. To enable the widespread use of FCEVs, an additional maj ...

HiFunda will develop a novel joining technology to enable integration of key technologies such as supercritical CO2 cycles that can significantly increase efficiencies and reduce power system size and cost. The technology platform developed will find application across a broad range of industrial sectors resulting in improved energy efficiency and economics for power systems based on coal and natu ...