Ohio Ag Connection - Energy Dept. Awards $13 Million in Small Business Grants

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Energy Dept. Awards $13 Million in Small Business Grants
Ohio Ag Connection - 05/24/2018

As part of a $34 million announcement by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Rick Perry for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) research and development projects, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) will fund 87 new projects across 34 states, totaling nearly $13 million in funding.

DOE technology offices award Phase I grants to small businesses that demonstrate technical feasibility for innovations during the first phase of their research. Most Phase I awards are for $150,000 for less than one year. If completed successfully, Phase I projects are eligible for Phase II. Phase II funding awards provide up to $1 million or up to $1.5 million, depending on the technology, and an award known as a sequential Phase II award can provide up to an additional $1 million.

Nine EERE technology offices are funding 10 Phase I topic areas (Advanced Manufacturing I & II, Bioenergy, Buildings, Fuel Cells, Geothermal. Solar, Vehicles, Water, and Wind) across 29 subtopics. In Ohio, EERE-funded projects include:

- Bio-Missions LLC, Reynoldsburg, will receive $150,000 to use engineered clostridia to produce butanol from cellulosic biomass and carbon dioxide. (Bioenergy Technologies Office)

- Biena Tech LLC, Akron, will receive $150,000. Discovery of high efficiency catalysis frameworks vital to national advanced manufacturing goals is a challenging materials science problem. Using big data and machine learning approaches the discovery of nanocatalysts will be accelerated.

- Faraday Technology, Inc., Englewood, will receive $150,000 will use big data and machine learning approaches in the discovery of nanocatalysts so they will be accelerated. Faraday Technology will receive a second $150,000. Wet waste feedstocks alone can satisfy about 15% of the total transportation fuel demand in the US if they can be efficiently and cost-effectively converted to renewable gasoline, diesel, jet, and other hydrocarbon/hydrogen chemicals/biofuels. The proposed carboxylate platform can electrochemically convert a variety of organic waste feedstocks to renewable biofuels

- Tech4Imaging LLC, Columbus, will receive $155,000. A lack of information on how geothermal wells should be properly balanced between harvesting hot water/steam and returning cool water puts wells at risk of being over exploited. An operational control system utilizing an innovative non-invasive mass flow meter and other well data is being developed to equip Well Operators with the tools necessary to analytically manage these valuable resources.

- Acme Express, Inc, Cleveland, will receive $155,000. Current solar panel racking systems are multicomponent and require pre-ordering, transporting, inventorying, and labor-intensive deployment. The proposed automated racking system produces the rack from raw material, on-demand and on-site during the automated installation process, and is expected to reduce cost of commercial (flat-roof) solar installations by 9%.

- Asymmetric Technologies, Columbus, will receive $149,824.84. Improving electric vehicle efficiency and costs requires smaller, lighter, and lower cost electric motors to drive the vehicles. This project proposes to develop a novel electric motor type, using variable flux magnets, that would increase efficiency and reduce requirements for the use of rare earth materials in these machines

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