KREC Announces its 2009 Competitive Grants Program Awards

9.28.09 - The Kentucky Renewable Energy Consortium's (KREC) 2009 Competitive Grants Program awarded $864,000 in grants to seven research proposals from researchers at the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville. KREC is administered by KPPC -- the Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center at the University of Louisville's J.B. Speed School of Engineering. When the grants program was announced in May 2009, KREC received 43 letters of interest from six Kentucky universities covering a wide range of renewable energy and energy efficiency research projects including wind, solar, biomass and lithium battery technology.  Twenty-nine of these projects were submitted for review and seven were funded for the 2009 Grants Program.

Awards were made to the following projects:

• Development of a Solid Catalyst-Based Technology for Production of Biodiesel from Waste Vegetable Oils“ $200,000, Mahendra Sunkara & Paul Ratnasamy, University of Louisville
• Large Size, Lithium Ion Batteries for HEV Applications - $199,996, Mahendra Sunkara & Gamini Sumanasekera, University of Louisville
• Nanostructured Device Designs for Enhancing the Performance of Thin Film CdTe/CdS and CIS/CdS Solar Cell Devices“ $181,528, Vijay Singh, University of Kentucky
• Production of High Value Cellulase Enzymes from Tobacco Biomass“ $100,475, Eric Berson & Keith Davis, University of Louisville
• Investigation of Cooling Season Performance of a Solar Heat Pipe System - $91,568, M. Keith Sharp, Ellen Brehob, University of Louisville
• Optimal Energy Usage Control for Residential Solar Photovoltaic Systems“ $50,000, Donald Colliver, University of Kentucky
• Cost Effective Energy Efficient School Design-Applied Research“ Energy Efficiency -- $40,614, W. Mark McGinley, University of Louisville

Cam Metcalf, executive director of KPPC, was impressed by the number and quality of the proposals, saying "This year's competitive grants program generated many outstanding research proposals from six of Kentucky's universities. KREC is pleased to make this investment in research that will enhance the intellectual capacity of Kentucky's universities and advance the study of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies for Kentucky."

More details of the 2009 Grant Program can be found at KREC's Web site -- www.kppc.org/KREC.