Devices and films made of thermochromic V02 nanocrystals promises for many applications and potential technological breakthroughs, such as energy efficiency smart windows, infrared laser protection, infrared camera and so forth.

Smart windows made of V02 nanoparticles have readily demonstrated significantly enhanced solar-heat modulation capability in response to temperature variation (approximately twice the capability as compared to traditional thin film counterparts). However, commercial scale manufacturing of high-quality, property-controlled V02 nanoparticles has not been achieved due to conventional batch processing techniques. These techniques cannot precisely control the size, shape and surface properties in a scaled process, which is largely due to its limited capability of controlling heat and mass transfer in a large batch chemical reactor.

This Argonne invention comprises a new continuous flow synthesis to massively synthesize V02 nanoparticles/rods (B or M phases). This is a solution-phase based hydrothermal, or solvo-thermal synthesis approach that uses a continuous flow micro-reactor. By using a continuous micro-reactor, heat and mass transfer can be precisely controlled and the synthesis reaction can be conducted in an extended range of temperatures and pressures. This is particularly useful and suited to hydrothermal synthesis of high-quality V02 (M) nanocrystals because the phase selection of this material, from its other structures V02 (A, B, R) and phases (e.g. V6013 and V409) depend closely on temperature. At the same time, the reaction can be conducted in a relatively easy, flexible and safe mode (i.e., a limited amount of chemical reagents are heated at a time). This results in well-controlled, nano-particulate products with unique and enhanced infrared (heat) manipulation properties.

Furthermore, this process is scalable and capable of stably manufacturing high-quality V02 nanoparticles or nanorods in specific, and a spectrum of other nano-scale materials in general, at the kilo/day level.

The Invention 

Argonne’s Enhanced Renewable Methane Production System provides a low-cost process that accelerates biological methane production rates at least fivefold. The innovative system addresses one of the largest barriers to expanding the use of renewable methane — the naturally slow rate of production. To overcome this challenge, Argonne researchers examined the natural biology of methane production, the natural processes for carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration, and the environmental quality of the water found in coal bed methane wells. Their research led to the novel, low-cost treatment that enhances the heating value of biogas, delivering a gas that is close to pipeline quality. This system offers an improved means of producing biological methane at wastewater treatment plants, farms, and landfills. 

Argonne’s system also simultaneously sequesters the CO2 produced during the process by reacting with magnesium and calcium silicate rocks. This innovation links the biological conversion (renewable carbon source being converted to methane and carbon dioxide) to a geochemical mechanism (producing solid carbonate-enriched minerals), thus eliminating CO2 emissions. 

Benefits 

• Produces near-pipeline-quality methane 
• Enables simultaneous carbon dioxide sequestration

Applications and Industries

• Wastewater treatment plants 
• Recovery of methane from manure and agricultural processing 
• Recovery of methane from food processing wastes 
• Methane from other carbonaceous feedstock. 

Developmental Stage 

Reduction to practice testing is complete. Researchers are now working on prototype-scale testing with field testing to follow. 

The Innovation

The biogas made from biosolids generated at wastewater treatment plants in the anaerobic digesters (ADs) contains high amounts of CO₂ and hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), and other gases as impurities that reduce its utility. H₂S is corrosive at very low levels. In order to make biogas usable as a transportation fuel, its methane content must be enriched to the level found in natural gas by depleting CO₂; and H₂S levels must also be reduced. Researchers have made various previous attempts to separate CO₂ in biogas production systems and thus enrich the methane content in biogas. However, among the disadvantages of this approach are that the H₂S must be removed separately. Most of these methods are not economical, because post-production processing of biogas is required.

Previously, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory had developed processes for in situ treatment of ADs to enrich the methane content in biogas to the levels found in natural gas. First, the Argonne researchers used pulverized rocks rich in CaCO₃ and MgCO₃ that sequesters the CO₂ (background patent 8,247,009). The pulverized rocks were placed in the AD in removable mesh buckets. However, such rocks must be mined, pulverized, and transported, each of which adds costs.

Argonne researchers next used a locally available agricultural by-product, biochar (charcoal), in the ADs and achieved reduction of both CO₂ and H₂S, with in situ sequestration of carbon, and methane enrichment of biogas to the pipeline-quality level of natural gas with >85% methane. Biochars from various sources perform similarly in methane enrichment in biogas. It is possible that some geographic regions may have biochar sources that may be functionally equivalent to the biochars used in Argonne studies and industrial-scale pilot testing.

The biochar used thus far by Argonne is rich in divalent and monovalent cations, calcium, potassium, and magnesium, which has increased these cations in the digestate that can be used as organic solid fertilizer—leading to a significant revenue stream. Chemical analysis reveals that organic solid fertilizer is rich in nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and sulphur.

Developmental Stage

Pilot-scale process evaluation performed at a third-party site.

Availability/Commercial Readiness

Ready for development under a research partnership

The Innovation

Production of fuels from renewable energy sources can address many important national and global issues. Rising energy costs and the uncertainty in supply of crude oil have the ability to affect national security. Rising CO2 levels resulting from the world’s thirst for liquid fuels pose substantial climate and ecosystem threats.

Photosynthetic bacteria can be a renewable source of fuel molecules. The photosynthetic machinery in these highly pigmented bacteria includes cofactors (chlorophyll, carotenoids, quinones, etc.) that are anchored in the proteins by long hydrocarbon tails. These anchors can be used directly as fuel substitutes once they are separated from the bacteria that produced them. They are more compatible with modern engines than are molecules that comprise current-day biodiesel formulations (sourced from plant fatty acids). In this alternative approach to efficient production of next-generation biofuels, Argonne researchers have engineered photosynthetic bacteria and developed specific Rhodobacter strains and processes that mass produce the fuel molecules (such as phytol, shorter isoprenols, and other atypical alcohols) and export them from the cell to be separated and used directly as fuel in compression-ignited (diesel) engines. The molecules require no further chemical upgrading for use.

The Rhodobacter species of photosynthetic bacteria are facultative and are frequently known to bloom in animal waste lagoons in the summer in the Midwest. This versatility, as such, can be exploited for adaptation of their growth to whatever feedstocks are prevalent in local areas. More than 115 engineered Rhodobacter strains are under evaluation at Argonne, and a variety of screening methodologies has allowed selection of strains that are relatively omnivorous with respect to the nutrient and energy requirements used for conversion processes (e.g., the use of light). Depending upon the type of separations process used downstream for recovery, fuel molecules can be secreted into the fermentation broth or internalized as storage reserves for later harvest and extraction from bacterial cell pellets.

Argonne is pursuing industrial partnerships to scale and commercialize this technology.

The Benefits

The Rhodobacter strains developed at Argonne have the following benefits over traditional approaches:

• Flexibility: the engineered bacteria produce biofuels using a variety of growth modes (including photosynthetic) and can thrive on carbon sources available in most areas. 
• Versatility: the bacteria can grow on waste materials (carbon and water) not currently used for food or as feedstocks for other processes. 
• Simplicity: Direct production is realized by single-celled organisms exporting product into the culture medium. 
• Compatibility: the biofuels produced can be consumed ​“as is” or mixed with other fuels without the need for refining (cracking) or distillation. 
• Transportability: Rhodobacter fuel bioreactors can be set up at any (including those seemingly most remote) location(s) for production of liquid fuel or for conversion in diesel generators to produce electricity on demand. 
• Sustainability: 30–70% of waste from the new process consists of lipids, which can be modified to produce conventional biodiesel. 

Application and Industries

• Transportation sector
• Waste-to-energy facilities
• Remote operations requiring liquid fuels or electricity

Developmental Stage

Experimental-scale production of biofuel achieved; ready for scale up.

Availability/Commercial Readiness

Available for licensing and scale up or further development to focus on production of specialized fuels or chemicals.

The Innovation

Cell membranes are the interface between an organism and its environment. These biological structures contain proteins that are extremely important for many cellular processes (e.g., nutrient uptake, metabolic waste excretion, energy metabolism, and response to external stimuli). Because of their mediating roles between external stimuli and internal cellular metabolism, membrane proteins account for more than 60% of drug targets.

Membrane proteins, however, present unique challenges because they are hydrophobic, which means they are highly unstable and insoluble in the aqueous environments typically used to produce and characterize hydrophilic proteins. It is therefore difficult to produce and purify them in quantities and at a level of quality sufficient for conducting structural or functional studies. That is also why the number of unique membrane protein structures determined to date lags far behind the number of those known for water-soluble proteins.

There are few available systems that enable heterologous expression of membrane proteins. Most were adapted from soluble protein expression systems and usually present challenges for research projects working on membrane proteins. For example, such systems using E. coli often produce insoluble aggregates or cause host toxicity as membrane space is limited. Alternatively, eukaryotic expression systems are costly and cumbersome to implement.

In contrast, a unique system for membrane protein expression invented by Philip Laible and Deborah Hanson in the Biosciences Division at Argonne National Laboratory makes it possible to obtain reasonable yields of functional membrane protein. This proprietary method uses photosynthetic bacteria (Rhodobacter) for the expression of heterologous membrane proteins.

Rhodobacter cells produce extremely large amounts of intracellular membrane when cultured under certain conditions.Synthesis of foreign (or native) membrane proteins and this intracellular membrane can be coordinated in these bacteria. Partial purification of the expressed membrane proteins is afforded because they are sequestered in these membrane vesicles, which are easily separated by size. Vesicles enriched in target membrane proteins can be used directly in many types of activity assays. Recently, work with the Rhodobacter expression system has become less cumbersome by additional engineering of strains that allow the direct uptake of foreign DNA (patent application pending). Previous methods used a two-step process: foreign DNA was first introduced into E. coli cells, which were then mated with Rhodobacter cells – mobilizing and transferring the foreign DNA by a process known as conjugation. Rhodobacter strains can now be manipulated using common laboratory methods (e.g., chemical or electroporetic transformation).

The Benefits

This method offers such advantages as lower production costs, ease of purification, scalability, and high yields of membrane proteins (0.5 mg/L to as high as 20 mg/L culture). The system permits the simultaneous production and sequestration of foreign membrane proteins, yielding a higher fraction of proteins in soluble form, as well as avoiding toxicity to the host. It has strong applications in both the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. As biologics become more mainstream, large quantities of active membrane proteins will be required for regulatory testing. Certain membrane proteins of therapeutic importance have been overexpressed with success, and research is under way to validate the method further for other classes of industrially relevant membrane proteins.

Application and Industries

• A research tool for expression of challenging proteins
• Scaled production for biologics testing and drug discovery efforts

Publication Information

P. D. Laible et al., J. Struct. Funct. Genomics 5: 167–172 (2004)

Developmental Stage

Ready for commercialization

The Invention 

Making fast-acting pharmaceuticals is a goal of almost every drug company. The route of delivering pharmaceuticals in the form of amorphous solids has long been recognized as a possible way to improve dissolution rates and to increase both solubility and bioavailability. Development in this direction is becoming increasingly important due to the emergence of many new drugs that are virtually insoluble in their crystalline form. Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have developed the technique of acoustic levitation to prepare amorphous solids and molecular gels that can be easily applied to the pharmaceutical manufacturing process. This technique would improve the solubility and bioavailability of several drugs. 

The acoustic levitation techniques developed at Argonne keeps the drug solution from making contact with any surface whatsoever during the solvent evaporation process. This containerless process was developed and tested on several over-the-counter and prescription pharmaceuticals. Several of the pharmaceuticals amorphized using the Argonne process remained completely amorphous for four months or longer. Please review the publication for additional details.

Benefits 

A containerless process: 

• Precludes the possibility of a drug’s interaction with its container; 
• Provides a more effective means of synthesizing amorphous pharmaceutical compounds; 
• Offers higher yields than current state-of-the-art methods; 
• Reduces the potential for contamination during the manufacturing process; and 
• Is expected to advance the development of amorphous drug forms, increasingly important due to new drugs that are virtually insoluble in crystalline form.

Applications and Industries 

Pharmaceutical industry 

Developmental Stage 

Proof of principle 

The method allows more rapid, yet still non-invasive, detection and is expected to enhance the treatment experience for breast cancer patients. 

Background and Need 

Because cancer cells grow more quickly than healthy cells, they are typically a few degrees higher in temperature. This attribute makes it possible to use thermal imaging to detect them. For this reason, passive thermal imaging is helpful in detecting breast cancer. In active thermal imaging, heat or cold is applied to an object and an infrared camera is used to observe the resulting temperature change. 

Thermal imaging can be used to analyze even multilayered materials— making the methodology even more useful than conventional processes like X-rays, CT and ultrasonic scanning for such applications. 

The Invention 

A team of researchers from Rush University Medical Center and Argonne National Laboratory is using a 3-D technique to detect early skin changes due to radiation treatment in breast cancer patients. Use of the technique could facilitate earlier delivery of treatment to prevent radiation skin damage in these patients. They can develop a skin reaction that, in severe cases, causes discomfort and can disrupt therapy. However, if detected early, skin reactions are preventable or treatable. 

Clinical tests used 3DTT to measure the skin’s thermal effusivity—a tissue property that quantifies its ability to exchange heat with its surroundings. In the test, a flash of filtered light heats the skin while an infrared camera captures a time series of images that display skin temperatures by color. Using an algorithm to calculate temperature changes and determine the thermal effusivity at different skin depths, the researchers discovered the effusivity values of damaged skin tissue differ from that of healthy skin. 

Preliminary data show that marked reductions in the effusivity levels of irradiated skin occur well in advance of development of high-grade skin reactions. Soon, the team hopes to apply the 3DTT technique in breast cancer patients. Also underway is the development of an even more sophisticated algorithm to improve resolution at subsurface depths.

Benefits 

Three-dimensional thermal tomography offers significant benefits over existing technologies: 

• Is non-invasive and enhances healing. 
• Measures tissue property changes without interrupting treatment. 
• Provides rapid feedback to clinicians during diagnosis and treatment. 
• Detects other conditions, such as skin cancer, where changes in effusivity would enable researchers to locate and quantify the number of cancer cells. 
• Measures skin damage caused by electricity or lightning and to evaluate the progress of skin grafts. 
• Applicable to virtually any material up to about 10 millimeters deep. 
• Enables clinicians to image multilayered materials without knowing the number of layers in advance, unlike other imaging technologies. 
• Offers higher spatial resolution compared to that of other technologies such as X-rays, CT, and ultrasound. 

Applications and Industries 

The 3DTT technique has wide application in medicine as well as in other industries where in situ inspection is required, such as the imaging of engine components or the space-shuttle thermal protection system. 

Developmental Stage 

This technology is ready for prototype development.

Manipulating electron beam cancer therapy so it can be used treat internal cancers and tumors has the potential to revolutionize oncology. This ground-breaking innovation can provide a successful and cost-effective means of treating cancer in previously inoperable or radiation-sensitive areas of the body. 

Technology Description 

By delivering large irradiation doses in a short time, electron beams have proven to be very effective in cancer treatment. But the electron is also strongly absorbed by tissue, limiting this treatment to surface cancers and procedures that require large surgical incisions to expose the body core. 

Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, led by John Noonan, have discovered a way to turn the negative attributes of electron beam cancer therapy into advantages. If the electron beam can be transported to the internal cancer without exposure to tissue, the beam can be absorbed by the tumor only. With this approach, healthy tissue is not exposed to radiation. 

An electron source has been designed to have very low beam emittance. The beam is sub-millimeter in diameter and stays small over meters of transport in free space. It will allow for an articulated, hard-walled laparoscopic tube to be inserted through a small incision and positioned directly at the tumor. The beam can vary energy from 1 million electron volts (MeV) to 10 MeV, permitting it to cover a tumor size of about 0.5 cm to 5 cm, respectively. 

Initially, electron beam treatment can be used on X-ray radiation resistant tumors. The electrons destroy cancerous cells by direct damage to the DNA, and not by electron displacement in molecules as with X-rays. Ultimately, the electron beam therapy would be a competitor to all X-ray treatments. 

Potential Benefits 

The damage volume of the electron irradiation can be controlled very closely by changing the electron beam energy. This precise exposure provides several new cancer therapies or treatments in previously inoperable or radiation-sensitive locations, such as the spine, nerves, optic nerve, and organs. Electron beam treatment of brain tumors is another new opportunity. In this case, the laparoscopic tube provides an advantage. After the irradiation, the tube can be used to evacuate the mass of dead tissue, which can become destructive to healthy brain cells. 

Enormous doses can be delivered to the tumor without worrying about total body dose exposures, as is required for X-rays. The electron beam can be tailored to irradiate a very precise volume, so an oncologist can direct the irradiation at the tumor and whatever adjacent tissue they feel necessary. Another major advantage over X-rays is the amount of treatment time required. X-ray treatments can go on for months, while electron beams may potentially only require one session, providing a significant improvement in patient care. 

The electron beam system is compact so it could fit in an operating room—probably even under the operating table. Except for the electron source, the system uses conventional accelerator technology. The production cost of the unit should be much less than that of existing radiation therapy systems. 

Development Stage

Prototype

Scientific Publication

Noonan J., and Lewellen J.W., 2005, ​“Field-emission cathode gating for RF electron guns,” Physical Review, Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams 8: 033502. 

In particular, the invention relates to systems that utilize a stream-splitting environment MTD to counter cyber-attack attempts and network sniffing, data acquisition attempts. 

Description

Systems and methods for utilizing stream splitting Moving Target Defense (MTD) to provide enhanced computer system communication system security by splitting a data stream in to a plurality of paths is described. In some implementations, Stream splitting MTD, involves splitting a single data stream (e.g., TCP stream) into a plurality of discrete units, then sending and receiving those discrete units from and to different (ideally geographically disparate) receiving servers, with the stream being reassembled on the receiving end. The plurality of discrete units of data include resequencing data. The size of each discrete unit may vary depending on the specific implementation, even down to small unit sizes (e.g., a single packet)