NCE SMART Blog

NCE researcher and Associate Director Patrick Phelan helped land a $110,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Nanaoscale Exploratory Research.

Here is an abstract of his team’s award:

Proposal Number: CTS-0608850
Principal Investigator: Robert Peck (formerly Patrick Phelan)
Other Investigators: Tae-Woo Lee (Co-Principal Investigator), Ravi Prasher (Co-Principal Investigator), J. Rafael Pacheco (Co-Principal Investigator)
Proposal Title: NER: Nanoparticle Filled Liquid Fuels for Efficient Energy Conversion

This proposal was received in response to Nanoscale Science and Engineering initiative, NSF 05-610, category NER. Nanofuels are liquid fuels that contain a small amount of combustible nanoparticles. The presence of the nanoparticles likely enables the fuel to burn more efficiently, and increases the volumetric heat content of the fuel. Previous work has already shown that adding nanoparticles to other liquids, such as water, improves the heat and mass transfer inside the liquid, in part because of the “stirring” caused by the nanoparticles’ Brownian motion. The purpose of this project is to explore whether such enhanced heat and mass transfer can lead to improved liquid fuels. Any improvement in the combustion efficiency of liquid fuels, such as diesel or gasoline, would have a tremendous impact on fuel consumption and, possibly, on emissions as well. The Broader Impacts of the work are substantial. The fundamental laboratory measurements that we conduct, coupled with theoretical models of how liquid droplets containing nanoparticles burn, will enable us to quantify the beneficial impacts of nanofuels, and lead to new and improved fuels that may lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. The undergraduate and minority undergraduate students that will be involved in the research will receive outstanding introduction to nano science and engineering, and laboratory practice.

Link to the award.