Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Technology Marketing Summaries

Here you’ll find marketing summaries for technologies available for licensing from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The summaries provide descriptions of the technologies including their benefits, applications and industries, and development stage.

27 Technology Marketing Summaries
Category	Title and Abstract	Laboratories	Date
Advanced Materials Early Stage R&D Industrial Technologies	Additive Manufacturing - Materials by Design Livermore materials scientists and engineers are designing and building new materials that will open up new spaces on many Ashby material selection charts, such as those for stiffness and density as well as thermal expansion and stiffness. This is being accomplished with unique design algorithms and research into the additive manufacturing techniques of projection microstereolithography, direct ink writing, and electrophoretic deposition. Additive manufacturing is the process of building... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	12/14/2012
Advanced Materials Industrial Technologies	Flow-Through Electrode Capacitive Desalination LLNL has developed an innovative technology known as flow-through electrode capacitive desalination (FTE-CD) that promises to unlock an almost inexhaustible water source for U.S. and global population markets. FTE-CD represents a robust and low-maintenance path for efficiently and cost-effectively producing clean drinking water from seawater and brackish water.and poor water quality increase the risks associated with disease and political conflicts, which makes the lack of clean... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	09/25/2012
Advanced Materials Building Energy Efficiency Early Stage R&D	Indestructible Ultra-filtration: Ceramic HEPA Filters High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters are widely used commercial products to remove airborne particulates from a gas stream in a gas process system or ventilation system. Filter life span is determined by filter design and materials. Existing HEPA filters are made from glass fiber, which is fragile and easily damaged. They are subject to handling errors. Shelf life is reduced by contact with moisture. They are damaged by high pressures, chemical attack, high temperature, and fire.... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	07/25/2012
Advanced Materials	Batteryless Chemical Detection Existing nanosensor technologies employ gas, chemical, and biological detection methods that depend on an external power source (typically a battery) to operate. This limits conventional technologies by constraining both the nanosensor size, and reachable locations. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has developed a superior alternative: the first batteryless sensors using one-dimensional semiconducting nanowires. The commercial applications for this technology include readily deployable... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	07/25/2012
Vehicles and Fuels	Hydrogen Storage and Supply for Vehicular Fuel Systems Various alternative-fuel systems have been proposed for passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks to reduce the worldwide reliance on fossils fuels and thus mitigate their polluting effects. Replacing gasoline and other refined hydrocarbon fuels continues to present research and implementation challenges for the automotive industry. During the last decade, hydrogen fuel technology has emerged as the prime alternative that will finally drive automotive fuel systems into the new millennium. ... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	05/11/2012
Vehicles and Fuels	Reducing Aerodynamic Drag on Heavy Trucks Class 8 tractor-trailers consume 11 to 12 percent of total U.S. petroleum use. As much as 65 percent of the fuel goes to overcoming air resistance, or aerodynamic drag. Making heavy trucks more aerodynamic and reducing air resistance will greatly increase fuel efficiency. However, trucks are much more complicated than cars and planes, which are integrated and streamlined. The two challenges are the gap between the truck and the trailer as well as the trailer’s shape. That box-like... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	04/05/2012
Vehicles and Fuels	Inductrack High reliability and lower maintenance and operating costs make magnetic levitation (maglev) technology integral to advancing the nation’s transportation networks. In urban settings maglev has additional advantages over conventional mass transit and transport systems, including lower noise, higher efficiency, and higher grade and turn capabilities that allow vehicles to run on elevated tracks to eliminate the constraints and costs of underground tunnel operation. Germany and... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	04/04/2012
Energy Storage	Low-temperature Sodium-Beta Battery Rechargeable metallic sodium batteries have application in large-scale energy storage applications such as electric power generation and distribution, in motive applications such as electric vehicles, hybrids, and plug-in hybrids, and for aerospace applications such as powering satellites. So far, two sodium-based battery technologies have shown particular commercial promise: sodium-sulfur and sodium-nickel chloride, both referred to as sodium-beta batteries. Sodium-β battery... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	04/04/2012
Advanced Materials Energy Storage Industrial Technologies	Advanced Carbon Aerogels for Energy Applications Nanomaterials that are emerging out of cutting edge nanotechnology research are a key component for an energy revolution. Carbon-based nanomaterials are ushering in the “new carbon age” with carbon nanotubes, nanoporous carbons, and graphene nanosheets that will prove necessary to provide sustainable energy applications that lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. Carbon aerogels (CAs) are nanoporous carbons that comprise a particularly significant class of carbon nanomaterials for... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	02/06/2012
Advanced Materials Electricity Transmission Energy Storage Industrial Technologies	High-Voltage Insulators and Components One of the ongoing challenges to improving performance in capacitors and other high-voltage electrical structures is to identify and reduce the factors that cause failure. High-voltage devices typically fail following excessive partial discharge activity, which is a localized dielectric breakdown that does not transcend the main electrode gap spacing. One type of failure is anticipated to start at a triple junction, the point at which an electrode and two different dielectric materials... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	02/06/2012
Industrial Technologies	Energy-Efficient and Reduced-Effluent Process for Ultraclean Surface Drying Marangoni drying is used in semiconductor processing and other industries to produce a dry, ultraclean surface on flat substrates. In the conventional Marangoni drying step, e.g., for semiconductor wafer fab, an alcohol or other volatile organic compound (VOC) vapor is blown through a nozzle over the wet wafer surface or at the meniscus formed between the cleaning liquid and wafer as the wafer is lifted from an immersion bath. The Marangoni effect causes a surface-tension... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	01/07/2012
Electricity Transmission Energy Analysis	Improved Characterization and Monitoring of Electromagnetic Sources LLNL's technology is useful in fields such as power systems engineering, security monitoring, and vehicle tracking to identify, locate and monitor a particular source of electromagnetic radiation in a noisy broadband environment. Conventional broadband filtering techniques are often inefficient in reducing unwanted electromagnetic noise, and this inefficiency results in higher energy and processing costs along with imprecise location, monitoring and tracking capabilities. The... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	12/08/2011
Advanced Materials Energy Storage	Environmental Energy Harvesting Energy harvesting is a developing technology that seeks to exploit naturally-occurring energy to power systems, rather than relying on external sources such as batteries. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has developed a method and a device for capturing the chemical energy in organic molecules and converting it into electrical energy. Vibration-based conversion has been commercialized to piezoelectric devices, and the LLNL team believes the time right for matrix-assisted energy... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	07/27/2011
Advanced Materials Solar Photovoltaic Solar Thermal	High-Efficiency Solar Reflector Scientists at LLNL have invented a durable, ultra-thin coating for mirrors that rivals currently used silver, reflecting over a broad spectral range from infrared to visible to ultraviolet light. Silver is an excellent material for high-efficiency reflectors. It has the highest reflectance of all of the metals in the wavelength range from 400 nm through the far infrared. Yet sometimes mirror applications require high reflectance over a broader spectral range (e.g., 300 to 10,000 nm) than... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	07/27/2011
Advanced Materials Industrial Technologies	Two-Phase Liquid Dielectric Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have developed a two-phase liquid dielectric composite with synergistic properties that boost the benefits of each separate form. Fluid dielectrics are versatile compounds that assist or govern numerous industrial processes such as precision cooling, high-voltage capacitance, and the electrical protection of high-voltage switchgear. Liquid dielectrics suppress or instantly quench corona discharge and arcing without forming... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	07/27/2011
Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Startup America	Nanolipoprotein Particles for Hydrogen Production Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has developed a method using nanolipoprotein particles (NLP) to solubilize and isolate membrane bound hydrogenases for the biological production of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a renewable energy carrier that has the potential to replace fossil fuels in our economy. The majority of hydrogen produced today is from natural gas, heavy oils, and coal. The Department of Energy Hydrogen Program technical plan calls for the development and commercialization of hydrogen... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	06/02/2011
Startup America	Traumatic Brain Injury Protection: Blast Pressure Sensors in Helmets The cost of treating traumatic brain injury (TBI) is estimated to run into billions of dollars in the future. To date, the majority of research targeted at understanding and mitigating TBI has focused on impact (blunt trauma), where the duration and magnitude of the acceleration imparted by the impact are typically used to predict damage. However, in some environments, blasts can be a significant contributor to TBI. Using LLNL modeling methods a new mechanism was discovered that may... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	05/10/2011
Hydrogen and Fuel Cell	High Pressure Hydrogen Storage in Carbon Nanotubes Hydrogen storage for transportation is one of the most important problems faced in implementing a “hydrogen economy”. Hydrogen can be produced in many ways, but then must be stored for use by fuel cells. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen, Fuel Cells & Infrastructure Technologies Program has set hydrogen storage goals to be achieved by 2015. New technologies and storage materials are required to meet these goals if a hydrogen economy is to be realized. The... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	05/06/2011
Industrial Technologies	Inexpensive, Environmentally Friendly and Highly Permeable Lignin-Based Ion Exchangers For more than 10 years, a partnership between Kazakh and US researchers has led to the synthesis and testing of highly permeable ion-exchangers. These materials possess an increased availability and concentration of active binding groups, and can efficiently extract a wide spectrum of organic and inorganic compounds, pathogenic and toxic substances from water solutions, soils and biological substrata. Currently considered a waste product of the paper manufacturing industry, lignin... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	05/05/2011
Electricity Transmission Energy Analysis	Distributed Automated Demand Response Many states are increasing standards requirements for contributions from renewable power generation assets such as solar photovoltaic and wind. Intermittent generation from these devices will require corresponding changes in other storage or generation assets or responsive demand. In addition, the solid state inverters used for these new sources of power generation will decrease characteristic response times, which will present system stability challenges. The new technology developed... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	05/05/2011
Industrial Technologies	Carbon Ion Pump for Carbon Dioxide Removal The limitation to reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the expense of stripping carbon dioxide from other combustion gases. Without a cost-effective means of accomplishing this, hydrocarbon resources cannot be used freely. A few power plants currently remove carbon dioxide from flue gas for sale as an industrial product. Oil companies commonly remove carbon dioxide from natural gas to improve its energy content. In both cases, the most common technology is a temperature-swing... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	05/05/2011
Vehicles and Fuels	High Efficiency, Two-Stage Combustion Engine Using Nitrogen-Enriched Air Transportation accounts for 65 percent of U.S. oil consumption. More efficient engine design reduces dependence on foreign oil and lowers carbon dioxide emissions. As fuel prices increase, demand grows for engine technologies that provide enhanced fuel efficiency while meeting strict pollution standards. LLNL has developed a high-efficiency, two-stage combustion engine that provides increased fuel economy and reduced emissions.	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	04/22/2011
Energy Storage	MEMS Fuel Cells--Low Temp--High Power Density Rechargeable batteries presently provide limited energy density and cyclical lifetime for portable power applications, with only incremental improvements forecasted in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, recharging requires access to electrical outlets via a tethered charger. The MEMS Fuel Cell represents a disruptive power source technology that can avoid many of these problems. It uses easy-to-store liquid fuels such as methanol and provides more than three times the operating time ... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	04/22/2011
Energy Storage Industrial Technologies	Deep Sea Hybrid Power Systems for Deep Sea Oil & Gas Recovery An investment in sub-sea (deep-ocean) hybrid power systems is required to enable off-shore oil and gas exploration and harvesting. Advanced deep-ocean drilling operations, locally powered, will provide access to oil and gas reserves otherwise inaccessible. Such technology will therefore enhance the energy security of the United States. The oil and gas industry is being pushed beneath the surface by economic concerns. According to The Economist (September 8th – 14th 2007), there is a... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	12/30/2010
Advanced Materials Industrial Technologies Solar Thermal Vehicles and Fuels	Harvesting Energy from Abundant, Low Quality Sources of Heat The basic concept of energy harvesting is to collect energy from solar or other free sources of thermal energy that exist in the environment and convert them to electricity. In principle, this technique could provide power from low quality sources of energy such as waste heat at low temperatures. A collaboration between LLNL and UCLA has demonstrated that a bulk compound thermoelectric laminate can convert thermal energy to electricity. If produced as a thin-film material and operated at high... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	02/03/2010
Electricity Transmission Energy Storage	Modular Electromechanical Batteries for Cost-Effective Bulk Storage of Electrical Energy The Laboratory has several decades of experience in the development of EMBs for specialized (high-power) applications where pulses of electrical power are required, such as are needed to "ride-through" short interruptions of electrical power from the net. In the course of this development some critical technologies, such as low-cost "passive" magnetic bearings and special designs for the generator/motors and the fiber-composite rotors of the EMB were developed. Some of these technologies, such... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	02/03/2010
Electricity Transmission Energy Storage Wind Energy	Electrostatic Generator/Motor A novel electrostatic (E-S) generator/motor has been developed in the course of improving electromechanical battery (flywheel energy-storage) technology for the bulk storage of electricity. Electromagnetic-type generator/motors employed in present-day flywheel energy storage systems fell short of meeting the low parasitic losses and low capital cost requirements associated with bulk energy storage systems. To overcome these limitations a new configuration of the E-S generator/motor was... read more	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	02/03/2010