R&D 100 Awards

Each year since 1969, Battelle and the national labs it manages or co-manages for the U.S. Department of Energy have earned R&D 100 Awards for developing one or more of the 100 most significant scientific and technological innovations worldwide. In 2007, we earned 13 more R&D 100 Awards, increasing our all-time total to 171. The awards are administered through R&D Magazine.

 

Here’s a description of our winning innovations that earned R&D 100 Awards in 2007:

 

Battelle

 

Reactive Bio-Polyols

  • Valuable chemical intermediates derived from soybean and other vegetable oils and low-cost glycerin used primarily for the production of flexible and rigid foams, various types of coatings and composites.
  • Significantly out-performs coatings prepared from competing bio-based polyols and has comparable characteristics as coatings prepared from commonly-used petroleum-based polyols.  Developers: Battelle, Ohio Soybean Council and the United Soybean Board

Battelle Ferrate (VI) Process

  • Produces potassium ferrate and other ferrate salts continuously at high purity levels using inexpensive and readily available feed materials.
  • Potential applications are broad and include decontamination, corrosion prevention, waste water treatment, iron batteries, personal care, antifouling and water disinfection.
    Developers: Battelle

BrainGate Neural Interface

  • Allows disabled individuals to use a personal computers, control home electronics, move wheelchairs and communicate using sensors in the brain that interpret brain activity to determine what the users’ intentions are.
  • Research efforts include linking the technology with muscle simulation devices potentially allowing a user to regain control of their limbs.
    Developers: Battelle and Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

 

Functionalized Nanoporous Thin Films

  • Customized coating that increases detection sensitivity of X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy by a thousand times.
  • Enhances sampling and testing capabilities, testing water for virtually every heavy metal with potential to negatively affect human health and the environment.
  • Coats sampling discs that can easily capture and concentrate heavy metal contaminants in water sources.
    Developers: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and PANalytical

Microchannel Gas-Liquid Processing Device 

  • Heats, cools and removes and recovers water and distills poisonous sulfur from diesel fuel for conversion to hydrogen.
  • Compact size and versatility make it ideal for use in portable or mobile fuel cell applications.
    Useful for distilling diesel fuel to aid in removing sulfur so it can be converted to hydrogen.
    Developers: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Universal Parsing Agent

  • Document analysis and transformation software program that accepts multiple information streams or datasets, finds and extracts the information needed and delivers results in the format that will be most useful.
  • Flexible and adaptable to user needs and can be used to identify and extract very specific or very broad ranges of information.
  • Developed for U.S. government clients, most recently at the Environmental Protection Agency to support a large Web content management system.
    Developers: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

MORE . . .