Award Data

Model predictive control of building HVAC systems has the potential to reduce HVAC energy use by 20% to 40% over existing control strategies, with minimal capital cost. Unlike existing HVAC control strategies that rely on a set of pre-programmed rules, Model predictive control continuously evaluates all possible control strategies to choose the one that minimizes current and future energy use whil ...

Buildings account for 30% of final global energy consumption and 28% of global energy-related CO2 emissions. Advanced analytics and controls software has been shown to curb unnecessary energy use, and generate individual building and portfolio energy savings of up to 47% and 33%, respectively. Unfortunately, the status quo to deploy these powerful technologies is slow, expensive and often inaccura ...

Offshore wind turbines have the inherent drawbacks of being remotely located and subject to harsh weather conditions such as storms, snow and sleet, that subject them to operational stresses. With the growing demand for wind energy in the US, it is imperative to maximize the operational efficiencies of the wind turbines and minimize the Levelised Cost Of Energy (LCOE). Qualtech Systems, Inc. (QSI) ...

An increasingly developed global populations necessitates an increased demand for inexpensive, renewable commercial building blocks and feedstocks in order to preserve human standards of living. Lignocellulosic biomass valorization has emerged as an attractive alternative source for feedstocks, with a more sustainable long-term future. Lignocellulosic biomasses can be hydrolyzed to produce cellulo ...

Nuclear forensic analysis is critical to preventing nuclear terrorism. This analysis involves combining information from multiple microanalytical imaging technologies and other spectroscopic methods in a serial fashion to provide all required information; specifically the size, morphology, composition, and molecular and elemental makeup of the samples. Image registration is a crucial step in all i ...

Battery Resourcers’ goal with this Small Business Innovative Research Phase 1 project is to produce high quality and high purity graphite generated from its Li-ion battery recycling technology. This will lead to low cost anode materials for Electric Vehicle batteries and push the battery cost towards DOE’s goal of $100/kWh. Battery Resourcers’ technology recovers cathode material from a broa ...

Most Rare Earth Elements and other critical minerals used in the United States are imported from other nations. Reliance on foreign supply for this material constitutes an industrial and national security concern. Extracting these materials from seawater using marine energy creates a domestic source that decreases dependence on foreign suppliers and improves industrial supply chain resiliency. The ...

This Small Business Innovation Research project will develop new additive strategies to improve the cost and cell reliability of Li-ion batteries for electric vehicle applications. Xilectric’s technology seeks to dramatically improve Li-ion abuse tolerance to high temperatures and voltages by better maintaining the Li-ion electrolyte. Our additives improve the capacity retention and rate capabil ...

There is a need to develop tools and technologies to improve the detection of diversion, misuse, or sabotage of nuclear materials in nuclear and pyroprocessing facilities. To address this need, the DOE Materials Protection, Accounting, and Control Technologies (MPACT) campaign set a goal of demonstrating a lab-scale of an advanced safeguards and security system for identification and localization ...

Modern heavy-duty and medium-duty compression ignition engines are relatively efficient and power dense but still suffer from relatively high criteria pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, the suite of exhaust after-treatment devices required to meet the current criteria pollutant emissions standards is both complicated and expensive. In some cases the after- treatment system cost r ...