Cooperative Agreement DEEE0008222

The National Science Foundation awarded a $249,551 Project Grant to the University of Kansas Center for Research Inc. under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships federal grant program (CFDA 47.084). The grant funds the development of a pilot-scale process using extractive distillation and an ionic liquid entrainer to separate the azeotropic refrigerant mixture R-410A into its pure component gases. R-410A, composed of 50% difluoromethane and 50% pentafluoroethane, is a widely used...

This Cooperative Agreement award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program provides $1,249,504 to Icorium Engineering Company to develop a single-stream reclamation process for separating complex refrigerant mixtures into reusable, single-component refrigerants. The project aims to minimize the environmental impact of refrigerants used in HVAC and refrigeration systems by enabling the recovery and reclamation of these...

The Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded Energy Concepts Company, LLC $175,000 under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program to develop an innovative refrigeration cycle for small-scale refrigeration. Energy Concepts will modify an existing propane-fired diffusion absorption chiller to enable operation using heat from renewable energy sources like solar thermal, geothermal, waste heat,...

This Project Grant award from the Environmental Protection Agency's Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) Reclaim and Innovative Destruction Grants program (CFDA 66.047) provides $1,500,000 to Texas A&M University Engineering Experiment Center (Tees) to develop and validate technologies to reduce the time and cost of reclaiming HFC refrigerants in the U.S. The key products and services to be delivered under this 5-year award include: Designing and testing an intensified modular unit capable of...

This two-year, $297,189 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research aims to develop new approaches for ultra-low temperature refrigeration without reliance on rare helium isotopes. Specifically, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will investigate using electrically-tunable spin-orbit interactions in Rashba materials to achieve refrigeration through adiabatic electrification, with a goal of reaching temperatures as low as 0.01 K. If successful,...

The Department of Energy Office of Science has awarded a $249,997 Project Grant to Advanced Cooling Technologies Inc. (ACT) through the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program (CFDA 81.049) to develop a "Cost Effective Swiss-Roll Reformer for Methane Mitigation and Utilization". The grant is intended to support ACT's research and development of an advanced thermal management technology to enable more efficient and cost-effective methane reforming for applications in energy...

This Cooperative Agreement award of $4,832,880.00, issued on January 15, 2025 by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (CFDA 81.089 Fossil Energy Research and Development), aims to collaborate with the University of Oklahoma on the field deployment, full-scale validation, and commercialization of a low-cost emissions reduction retrofit kit for integral reciprocating compressors (IRCs) used in the natural gas industry. The project objectives are to...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) provides $303,669 to R7 Instruments Inc. to develop a novel air-cycle -80°C refrigeration system that uses an acoustic expander instead of a traditional turbine-based expander. The key product is a low-temperature freezer system that does not use potentially harmful synthetic refrigerants, enabling applications in food processing, biological sample...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports research on the combustion behavior of new sustainable and environmentally friendly fuels, including ammonia and dimethyl ether (DME) blends. The $345,000 award to Wayne State University aims to investigate the "autoignition-assisted flame regime" of these fuel mixtures, focusing on...

This $300,000 National Science Foundation project grant supports the development of a new sub-kelvin refrigerator using superfluid helium vortex cooling. Funded under the Engineering (47.041) program, Yale University will analyze, design, build a prototype, and benchmark a two-stage cooling system combining a superfluid vortex cooler and Joule-Thomson precooler. The system aims to achieve high-capacity cooling below 1K without using helium-3, addressing stockpile depletion issues. By...