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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 253 records · Page 14
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Microfluidic systems, pumps, valves, fluidic chips thereof, and applications of same

Microfluidic systems, pumps, valves and applications of the same are provided. The microfluidic system may be a pump or a valve having a fluidic chip and an actuator controlling the opening and closing of the fluidic channel in the fluidic chip. The actuator may be disposed to tilt from the fluidic chip, forming a tilted-rotor peristaltic pump. Alternatively, the actuator may be a rolling ball actuator, and different fluidic chips may be used in different applications. For example, the fluidic chip may be a spiral pump chip having spiral channels, a rotary peristaltic pump chip having multiple output channels, or a multi-port valve chip having one port interconnected with multiple different ports. An analytical valve chip may switchably interconnect bioreactor and rinse/calibration input channels to sensor and waste output channels. The actuator of a random-access valve can move from one valve position to another without opening or closing intermediate ones.

Reiserer, Ronald S.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Adaptive Laboratory Evolution for Enhanced Performance of Cupriavidus necator on Formic Acid

The need to decarbonize our economy is becoming ever more pressing. CO2, can be electrochemically reduced to formic acid, a soluble C1 molecule that can be used to store carbon and energy. Cupriavidus necator H16, a soil bacterium, capable of consuming and growing on formic acid as its sole carbon source, is well positioned to upgrade CO2-derived formic acid into value added chemicals such as sustainable aviation fuel. To improve the performance of C. necator on formic acid adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE), a proven tool for improving microbial fitness, has been conducted using continuous pH-stat bioreactors. The system works on the basis that consumption of formic acid raises the pH and triggers the addition of more formic acid to maintain the pH at 6.7, such that formic acid is provided at the same rate as it is consumed. This system has been coupled with level control to achieve continuous fermentation where cells acquiring mutations that improve growth on formic acid become more abundant in the population, from which they can be isolate and characterized. This configuration where the dilution rate is controlled by pH-stat has been found to seek out a dilution rate that matches the exponential growth rate of the organism. During developmental experiments it was discovered that formic acid accumulated to inhibitory levels. It was determined that the nitrogen source, ammonium hydroxide, must be tailored to the carbon consumption to avoid formic acid accumulation. ALE has run in three lineages for 2000+ hours and 300+ generations. Growth of evolved isolates derived from all lineages will be evaluated on formic acid and those with improved growth rates or biomass yield will be subjected to whole genome sequencing to identify potentially causative mutations. These mutations will be evaluated individually and in combination to identify those that improve growth on formic acid.

adaptive laboratory evolution↗
DOE OSTI2023

Full-Scale Soft-Sensor Implementations Enable WRRF Hybrid Digital-Twins

Digital twins (DTs) are on the rise in the wastewater treatment industry and, with ever-increasinguse of online data in more complex applications, it is bringing us towards a digital revolution withinwater resource recovery facilities (WRRFs). An integral data requirement is dynamic real-timeinfluent concentrations. However, few WRRFs have the ability to deploy sensors to generate therequired dynamic influent concentrations. This paper presents an innovative approach to generatedynamic influent profiles with a soft sensor primarily using bioreactor airflow rates and DT models.It has been implemented on three different full-scale facilities and demonstrate it is feasible toretrieve 15-minute interval diurnal influent concentrations. This study overcomes a key bottleneckin DT applications - the lack of realistic high-resolution influent profiles - fostering the developmentof DTs. The fact that the data used in this study are commonly available ensures wide applicabilityfor most WRRFs and prepares them for the advanced controls that digital twins can unlock.

Johnson, Bruce↗
DOE OSTI2024

Bioprocess and microbe engineering for total carbon utilization in biofuel production

Some aspects of this invention provide methods and bioreactors for converting a carbon source into a lipid. In some embodiments, lipid production is carried out in an aerobic fermentor and carbon dioxide generated during lipid production is converted into a carbon substrate by CO2 fixation in an anaerobic fermentor. In some embodiments, the carbon substrate generated by CO2 fixation is used as the carbon source for lipid production, thus achieving total carbon utilization in lipid production.

Stephanopoulos, Gregory↗
DOE OSTI2023

CO2 Valorization via Rewiring Carbon Metabolic Network

Energizing the world sustainably requires revolutionizing the way we harness natural resources. New renewable technologies include the microbiological upgrading of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas that causes climate change. This project aims to develop a new bioeconomy by taking up CO2 and converting it into high-value products using an autotrophic microbe. Specifically, the team constructed an acetogenic bacterium, Clostridium ljungdahlii, and developed gas fermentation processes that convert syngas (CO2/H2/CO) to the platform compound 3-hydroxybutyrate (3HB). The project has achieved several key successes, including the design and construction of 3HB genes in the gas-fermenting bacterium, the identification of a native 3HB pathway, the conversion of syngas to 3HB through strain engineering, and the improvement of the conversion through rational and iterative strain development. The optimized strain has achieved industry-relevant production rates (0.1 g/L/h) and titers (9.2 g/L), and sustained continuous gas fermentation for 3HB production for > 50 days in a bench-top gas bioreactor. The project has both industrial and scientific implications, including the exploitation of host microbes and processes to improve industrial-scale production of value-added compounds from CO2, and the promotion of gas fermentation technology. The team is also strengthening R&D synergies with other teams and industrial partners in the CO2 consortium, developing cutting-edge approaches for rapid and rational engineering of gas-fermenting hosts, and dissecting the thermodynamics and kinetics of processes for biological syngas valorization. So far, one patent application and one research article have resulted from this work, and the team anticipates additional significant outcomes from this project.

3-hydroxybutyrate↗
DOE OSTI2025

Impact of Storage Conditions on the Quality and Viability of Switchgrass as a Bioenergy Crop

With growing energy demands and climate concerns, advancements in bioenergy have become imperative. Biofuels promote energy independence, reduce fossil fuel reliance, and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Switchgrass (Panicum virgatumis) is an ideal bioenergy crop due to its ability to thrive on marginal lands unsuitable for food crops and its drought tolerance, rendering it a low-maintenance, high-yield option. In the bioenergy industry, energy crops are typically stored to facilitate supply chain management and ensure a continuous supply despite seasonal availability. However, the effective utilization of bioenergy crops is typically contingent upon addressing the challenges associated with biomass storage. These challenges include high moisture content that promotes biological degradation of the biomass leading to increased risk of pathogenic microbes, and chemical degradation that increases the ratio of inconvertible, inorganic materials. These issues lead to a reduction of feedstock value, diminishing the biomass-to-biofuel conversion efficacy, making switchgrass and other bioenergy crops less effective as fuel sources. This project aims to improve the storage of purpose-grown energy crops. Aerobic storage trials were conducted under varying moisture contents to stimulate real-world environmental exposure. Switchgrass samples were rewetted to 30% or 35% and stored in a bioreactor for approximately one month, or until cellular respiration ceased. Degradation indicators, such as dry matter loss, temperature changes, and cellular respiration, were measured throughout this process. Samples for compositional analysis, 16S, and ITS were taken at three different time points: before, during, and after storage, to monitor changes in biomass, microbial communities, and metabolites over time. Preliminary data indicate that dry matter loss is proportional to cellular respiration, with higher moisture content (35%) leading to higher temperatures and elevated dry matter loss. Compositional analysis and microbial community analysis are in progress. This research will provide a comprehensive understanding of storage, helping to identify stability factors in energy crops and improve best management practices for biomass producers.

09 - BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2022

DISCOVR strain pipeline screening – Part II: Winter and summer season areal productivities and biomass compositional shifts in climate-simulation photobioreactor cultures

Assessing the seasonal biomass productivity and compositional shift dynamics under simulated outdoor culture conditions of the top 22 algae strains selected during Tier I flask screening is an important step in the further prioritization of strains with regard to outdoor pond cultivation. These top 22 strains were subjected to Tier II testing in the PNNL Laboratory Environmental Algae Pond Simulator (LEAPS) photobioreactors, simulating light and temperature conditions of 20 cm deep outdoor ponds during the Arizona winter and summer season. All strains were grown in two consecutive nutrient-replete batch culture experiments at their particular optimal medium salinity to quantify their respective seasonal linear-phase areal biomass productivities. To determine biomass compositional shifts in response to nutrient-depletion, the LEAPS cultures were allowed to enter a 9-day nutrient depletion phase at the end of the second batch run. The following strains were evaluated in winter-season climate-simulated cultures and are listed in the order from highest (7.9 g m -2 day -1 ) to lowest (2.3 g m -2 day -1 ) areal N-replete biomass productivity: Monoraphidium minutum 26B-AM, Tetraselmis striata LANL1001, Chlorella vulgaris LRB AZ-1201, Micractinium reisseri NREL14-F2, Monoraphidium sp. MONOR1, Chlorella vulgaris NREL4-C12, Scenedesmus obliquus UTEX393, Scenedesmus acutus LRB-AP-0401, Nannochloropsis oceanica CCAP849/10, and Stichococcus minutus CCALA727. The following strains were evaluated in summer-season climate-simulated cultures and are listed in the order from highest (31.8 g m -2 day -1 ) to lowest (14.2 g m -2 day -1 ) areal N-replete biomass productivity: Picochlorum renovo NREL39-A8, Scenedesmus obliquus UTEX393, Porphyridium cruentum CCMP675, Picochlorum celeri TG2-WT-CSM/EMRE, Chlorella sorokiniana DOE1116, Stichococcus minor CCMP819, Picochlorum oklahomensis CCMP2329, Chlorella sorokiniana DOE1412 (UTEXB3016), Scenedesmus rubescens NREL46B-D3, Picochlorum soloecismus DOE101, Tetraselmis striata LANL1001, Scenedesmus obliquus DOE 0152.z, and Agmenellum quadruplicatum UTEX2268. All LEAPS cultures experienced a significant reduction in areal biomass productivity in response to nutrient-depletion, from 7-16% in the winter season simulation and up to 1-60% in the summer season simulation. Finally, for 10 of the strains tested, the carbohydrate content more than doubled upon nutrient depletion, and for 9 strains, the lipid content increased by over 50% of the initial content.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Bayesian calibration of bubble size dynamics applied to CO 2 gas fermenters

To accelerate the scale-up of gaseous CO 2 fermentation reactors, computational models need to predict gas-to-liquid mass transfer which requires capturing the bubble size dynamics, i.e. bubble breakup and coalescence. However, the applicability of existing models beyond air–water mixtures remains to be established. Here, an inverse modeling approach, accelerated with a neural network surrogate, calibrates the breakup and coalescence closure models, that are used in class methods for population balance modeling (PBM). The calibration is performed based on experimental results obtained in a CO 2 -air–water-coflowing bubble column reactor. Bayesian inference is used to account for noise in the experimental dataset and bias in the simulation results. To accurately capture gas holdup and interphase mass transfer, the results show that the breakage rate needs to be increased by one order of magnitude. In conclusion, the inferred model parameters are then used on a separate configuration and shown to also improve bubble size distribution predictions.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Performance Evaluation of a High Salinity Produced Water Treatment Train: Chemical Analysis and Aryl Hydrocarbon Activation

Water scarcity and increased energy demands have put a strong focus on improving industries at the heart of the water–energy nexus. Treatment of oil and gas produced water (PW) can help reduce freshwater consumption during hydraulic fracturing, especially in arid regions, while also removing harmful contaminants from entering the environment. However, it is also difficult to treat because PW contains high concentrations of many environmentally toxic contaminants, which require complex and expensive treatment processes to achieve their removal. To demonstrate the possibility of PW treatment and reuse in the O&G industry, a comprehensive environmental toxicity and water quality analysis throughout a five-process treatment train was performed on high salinity (>120 g/L) Permian basin raw PW. Here, the concentrations of naturally occurring radioactive materials were reduced by over 99%, total organic carbon was reduced by 93%, and inorganic constituents, including total dissolved solids, were reduced by over 99%. Compounds that induced the aryl hydrocarbon receptor and caused cytotoxicity in MCF-7 cells were also removed. Overall, the results of this study show that a short treatment train (five distinct unit processes) can be effective in treating PW to a level suitable for use outside of the oil industry.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Removal of Antibiotics from Swine Wastewater Using an Environmentally Friendly Biochar: Performance and Mechanisms

Antibiotics used in the swine industry to treat diseases and improve animal growth are poorly absorbed by swine and have been classified as micropollutants due to their occurrence in surface water, wastewater, and soil. This study investigated the capacity of biochar produced from eastern red cedar to remove target antibiotics that have been extensively used in the swine industry. Biochar was produced by pyrolysis from eastern red cedar at 450 °C. The sorption tests were performed by mixing biochar and a solution (1:10 ratio) containing each antibiotic in 100, 300, 600, and 900 μg L –1 concentrations. The results indicate that red cedar biochar was able to effectively remove up to 99.93% tetracycline, 96.23% oxytetracycline, 98.28% chlortetracycline, 76.4% sulfadiazine, and 78.6% sulfamethazine at the lowest concentrations. The removal efficiencies at higher concentrations declined up to 83.52, 47.23, 64.16, 69.8, and 58.4% for tetracycline, oxytetracycline, chlortetracycline, sulfadiazine, and sulfamethazine, respectively. The biochar exhibited stronger adsorption capacity for chlortetracycline and sulfamethazine compared to the other antibiotics. The likely adsorption mechanisms driving the removal of tetracyclines and sulfonamides are hydrogen-bonding and π–π electron-donor–acceptor, supported by FTIR analyses of the biochar itself. Overall, the results highlighted the potential utilization of eastern red cedar biochar for practical applications, mitigating antibiotic residues from swine wastewater in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner due to its relatively low pyrolysis temperature (450 °C) and sustainable repurposing of an invasive tree species.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Sustainable Aviation Fuel from High-Strength Wastewater via Membrane-Assisted Volatile Fatty Acid Production: Experimental Evaluation, Techno-economic, and Life-Cycle Analyses

To reduce emissions from combustion of fossil fuels, sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) have the potential to decarbonize the aviation sector. Redirecting wastes from conventional waste management practices and using them as cost-effective feedstocks for low-carbon fuels can reduce emissions from both waste disposal and fuel combustion. One approach is to upgrade wet wastes to SAF precursors, such as volatile fatty acids (VFAs). Here, in this study, novel membrane-assisted arrested methanogenesis was developed to convert high-strength wastewater to VFAs. Based on experimental results of VFA production, techno-economic and life-cycle analyses were conducted to estimate the potential economic and environmental benefits of SAF production from high-strength wastewater via VFAs. By evaluating three proposed scenarios for VFA production, a minimum production cost of VFA is achieved at $\$$0.60/kg VFA at a wastewater flow rate of 1100 MT/d. For the corresponding VFA-derived SAF, the estimated minimum fuel selling price is $\$$4.64/gasoline gallon equivalent. The life-cycle analysis shows that up to a 71% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved relative to its fossil-counterpart along with lower water and fossil-fuel consumption.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Bacterial microcompartments as a next-generation metabolic engineering tool: utilizing nature's solution for confining challenging catabolic pathways

Advancements in synthetic biology have facilitated the incorporation of heterologous metabolic pathways into various bacterial chassis, leading to the synthesis of targeted bioproducts. However, total output from heterologous production pathways can suffer from low flux, enzyme promiscuity, formation of toxic intermediates, or intermediate loss to competing reactions, which ultimately hinder their full potential. The self-assembling, easy-to-modify, protein-based bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) offer a sophisticated way to overcome these obstacles by acting as an autonomous catalytic module decoupled from the cell's regulatory and metabolic networks. More than a decade of fundamental research on various types of BMCs, particularly structural studies of shells and their self-assembly, the recruitment of enzymes to BMC shell scaffolds, and the involvement of ancillary proteins such as transporters, regulators, and activating enzymes in the integration of BMCs into the cell's metabolism, has significantly moved the field forward. These advances have enabled bioengineers to design synthetic multi-enzyme BMCs to promote ethanol or hydrogen production, increase cellular polyphosphate levels, and convert glycerol to propanediol or formate to pyruvate. These pioneering efforts demonstrate the enormous potential of synthetic BMCs to encapsulate non-native multi-enzyme biochemical pathways for the synthesis of high-value products.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Exploring Proteomes of Robust Yarrowia lipolytica Isolates Cultivated in Biomass Hydrolysate Reveals Key Processes Impacting Mixed Sugar Utilization, Lipid Accumulation, and Degradation

Yarrowia lipolytica is an important industrial oleaginous yeast due to its robust phenotypes for effective conversion of inhibitory lignocellulosic biomass hydrolysates into neutral lipids. While lipid accumulation has been well characterized in this organism, its interconnected lipid degradation phenotype is poorly understood during fermentation of biomass hydrolysates.

proteomic analysis↗