Award Data

Redox flow batteries are a promising technology for electrical energy storage for renewable energy sources; however traditional redox flow batteries are limited in their use due to non-uniform pressure drops and mass transfer limitations, as well as high manufacturing costs related to the felt material costs for the electrode and component alignment challenges during manufacturing.General Statemen ...

Atmospheric aerosols influence the global radiation balance through direct scattering, and perhaps more importantly, through modification of the earth

This project will develop position-sensitive liquid argon detectors for a range of nuclear physics experiments. A particular need is for large area detectors with good energy, spatial and time resolution. Originally developed for calorimetry and the detection of neutrinos, weakly interacting massive particles and neutrinoless double beta decay, liquefied noble gas (LNG) detectors have ...

The single most critical value in any terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration budget is the net primary production. The biggest unknown in determining C sequestration is the allocation, production, respiration, mortality and decomposition of soil organisms. We developed and are refining a new observation/sensor platform, the enhanced automated minirhizotron (EAMR) which, when coupled to a soil sensor ...

Although carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has received the most attention for its potential to reduce emissions, processes that convert CO2 into a useful product can provide a positive return on investment and not just be an unrecoverable cost. Compared to CCS technology, the potential revenue generated by the use of CO2-based product is likely to grow popular with time while reducing ...

In the coming generation of Very High Temperature Reactors (VHTRs), nuclear fuel is encapsulated into billions of small, tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) fuel pellets. To facilitate the licensing and economic competitiveness of the anticipated future generation of VHTRs, improved quality control of TRISO pellets (less than one bad coating in 105) is desired. Presently, characterization of fuel pel ...

Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) has been an extremely productive materials science probe for several decades and is used extensively by researchers studying a wide range of subjects, including polymers, ceramics, metals and biological macromolecules and functions. However, it is limited to length scales from 1 to 100 nm and requires highly collimated and relatively monochromatic neutron beam ...

In order to make large scale commercial production of microalgae based commodity food and fuel products, significant strides 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 thus far have been the primary strategy taken to effectively ...

X-Ray microscopy offers rich internal information of objects under study due to the highly penetrative nature of x-rays. Significant improvements in laboratory x-ray sources, synchrotrons and detector technologies in the past few years have pushed the frontiers of spatial and time resolution enabling time-lapse imaging of structures in the micron scale. Xradia, a US based small business founded in ...

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 ...