Summary of FY2002 Budget Request to Congress - National Science Foundation

CHEMICAL AND TRANSPORT SYSTEMS $50,150,000

The FY 2002 Budget Request for the Chemical and Transport Systems Subactivity is $50.15 million, a decrease of $570,000, or 1.1 percent, below the FY 2001 Current Plan of $50.72 million.

(Millions of Dollars)

	FY 2000 Actual	FY 2001 Current Plan	FY 2002 Request	Change
	FY 2000 Actual	FY 2001 Current Plan	FY 2002 Request	Amount	Percent
Chemical and Transport Systems	44.24	50.72	50.15	-0.57	-1.1%
Total, CTS	$44.24	$50.72	$50.15	-$0.57	-1.1%

The Chemical and Transport Systems (CTS) Subactivity supports research and education in areas that involve the transport and/or transformation of matter and energy. CTS research and education investments contribute significantly to the knowledge base and to the development of the workforce for major components of the U.S. economy such as the process industries (chemicals, pharmaceuticals, forest products, materials, petroleum, food, and textiles), utilities, microelectronic component manufacturers, and producers of consumer products of all kinds. CTS-funded research in areas such as fluid flow, combustion, heat transfer, fuel cells, sensors, and membranes contribute to advances that are important for the environment, transportation, information technologies, energy conservation, and other areas that impact our daily lives.

The U.S. holds a leadership position in a number of the industrial sectors listed above and this leadership is manifested in continuing positive trade balances. U.S. world leadership positions have come about, in part, from a history of successful basic and applied research and development efforts, often catalyzed by NSF funding. The CTS Subactivity will continue to maintain a position at the cutting edge of important new discoveries. Many emerging areas are located in the boundaries between conventional disciplines.

CTS will continue to support research in important traditional areas such as chemical reaction engineering (approximately $9.0 million), interfacial transport and separations (approximately $8.0 million), fluid dynamics and particle processes (approximately $8.0 million), and combustion and thermal processing (approximately $9.0 million). These areas are essential to ensure continued building of the fundamental knowledge base, which serves as the foundation for advances in many fields.

Reallocations within the base of the FY 2002 budget request of $50.15 million will also permit increases in the following areas:

Information Technology Research (ITR): An increase of $500,000 for a total of $1.90 million to support enhancements in computational tools (algorithms, data mining and visualization) and infrastructure (tera-scale computing facilities) coupled with advances in basic science permit modeling and simulation of complex materials processing and manufacturing techniques. Such simulations enable a significant increase in the breadth and depth of the CTS research portfolio in various ITR-related areas. These areas include the design and utilization of next generation chemical and plasma vapor deposition techniques for microelectronics manufacturing; the simulation of growth of next generation photonic crystals with control of microstructure formation and segregation of dopants and impurities; the manufacturing of optical fibers needed in wide-band networking applications with optimum product quality; and the processing of polymers (plastics) that involves chemical reactions and multi-scale transport phenomena of non-Newtonian fluids. In addition to reducing the time required to introduce new products and processes, advances in process modeling will result in more efficient and environmentally friendly processing and manufacturing systems.

Nanoscale Science and Engineering: An increase of $3.34 million for a total of $16.98 million to support research in the synthesis and processing of matter at the nanometer-length scale which will produce materials with novel physical, chemical and biological properties. Understanding of structural morphologies and properties in the size range from molecular scale to bulk scale via new experimental tools and simulation abilities will permit major advances in many areas central to CTS. The fields of catalysis, fluidics, electronic materials, separation membranes, adsorption media, fuel cells, plasma processing, sensors, and environmental technologies will be significantly impacted. The synthesis of particles, films and 3D structures with functional nanoscale features by methods involving nucleation, molecular and particle self-assembly, controlled thermal and mass transport, as well as chemical reactions, is a priority area for CTS. Furthermore, in order to accelerate the benefits from increased investments in fundamental research on these topics, CTS will allocate funds for Nanotechnology Experimentation and Testing facilities (NEXT), addressing issues that deal with scale-up of synthesis, development of new instrumentation and methods for characterization including predictive models and simulation techniques.

Environmental Technologies: Funds for these programs increase by $1.0 million for a total of $2.7 million. Research related to products and processes that avoid or minimize negative environmental impact will continue to be a CTS priority. Examples of CTS interest areas include: catalysts that minimize undesirable side products, new biocatalysis methods that permit the use of renewable feedstock, separations and purification processes that use less energy, and environmentally friendly solvents, cleaner combustion processes, and process design methods that reduce or eliminate environmental impact. These topics are strongly imbedded in the core of CTS programs. CTS will provide enhanced funding to these environmental technology areas through a reallocation of existing resources. CTS provides leadership for the NSF-EPA joint program, Technology for a Sustainable Environment (TSE).