Award Data

New fuel forms are needed to enable gas-cooled fast fission reactors to operate using a once-through deep burn fuel cycle. These small, modular reactors will have a core life of 30 years and will burn the plutonium-239 that is created in the core as well as other transuranics. Deep burn rapidly and effectively reduces the inventory of transuranics from spent fuel without the need for repeated recy ...

Trabus Technologies (TRABUS), working with Louisiana State University (LSU), will develop a predictive analytics-based US Inland Waterways Voyage Planning Analysis tool to help vessel traffic managers, tow boat pilots, and river lock operators maximize transport logistic resources. This tool will use current and forecasted hydrographic, meteorological, lock status, and Marine Safety Information to ...

One of grand challenges in nanoscience and nanotechnology is to achieve fundamental under- standing of the dynamic evolution of materials in actual operating environment, non-equilibrium conditions, or undergoing chemical reactions at the nanoscale. This requires forefront advances in imaging and analysis techniques that combine nanometer-scale spatial resolution, optical excitation and spectrosco ...

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 ...

Modern quantum information systems employ optical photons for long distance communication, operating at ambient temperature, between microwave cavities, which house microwave photons used in quantum computing and microwave detection. These optical photons, carried by fiber-optic or free-space links, offer a low-cost, uncooled alternative to bulky, expensive microwave coaxial cables, which are loss ...

The power output of the high power lasers used in physics research is limited by the materials available for making the gain media in the laser. Future increases in power will require new and better materials. Operation at high power creates great thermal stresses that can lead to effects such as birefringence, thermal lensing or even physical fracture damage to the host itself. Effective cooling ...

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 ...

Wastewater from oil and gas production has high total dissolved solids (TDS) and organics and needs to be treated for safe disposal or reuse. Coal-fired power plant discharges and mining effluents share similar high TDS and organic contents. This project targets the development of an energy efficient, and robust supercritical desalination technology to treat hypersaline solutions, destroying organ ...

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 ...

Radiation therapy is used to treat over 60% of cancer patients and is used in nearly half of the curative cases, however, in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), there is a large underserved population, with technology per capita 2 or more orders of magnitude lower than in the US. Many LMIC still utilize outdated Cobalt-60 machines, which result in excessive normal tissue dose, present safety ...