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This case study describes adidas’ successful implementation of a planned RTU replacement program designed to standardize equipment features and reduce costs, enabling the company to streamline acquisitions and ensure each location had the required equipment.
For approximately the last two decades low-permeability formations have become a prominent research area because these are the target of unconventional oil shale exploration, and also the primary trapping mechanism for CO2 sequestration and other such subsurface storage. The objective of this research is focused on the sealing ability and induced seismic risk of such tight formations. Disposal of fluid into the subsurface alters the stress state in both the target reservoir and the surrounding formations from their initial in situ state. Therefore, caprocks must be able to deform and accommodate the altered stress and strain state while maintaining the integrity of the seal. The deformation induced in caprock formations often results in a decrease in the normal stress on faults and fractures, which may induce shear slip and therefore create the potential for induced seismicity and leakage. Deformations induced by fluid injection are generally not instantaneous, but typically occur gradually as a pressure front advances through the reservoir and caprock formations. As such, an injection program design can influence both the rate and magnitude of deformation and associated changes in stress. Many common caprock formation types, such as shales and evaporates, are prone to undergo time-dependent deformation such as viscoelastic and/or viscoplastic response. Both the magnitude of the time-dependent deformation and the associated characteristic time scale are important considerations for selecting or operating an injection site. This paper describes tests intended to characterize these effects using caprock samples from a variety of current or potential storage sites. Triaxial and load relaxation test data are presented and used to quantify the time-dependent deformation behavior of rocks with different textures and compositions.
Inelastic scattering using polarized nucleon targets and polarized charged lepton beams allows the extraction of spin structure functions that provide information about the helicity structure of the nucleon. A program designed to study such processes at low and intermediate Q2 for the proton and deuteron has been pursued by the CLAS Collaboration at Jefferson Lab since 1998. The latest inclusive data with high statistical precision were measured using polarized 6 GeV electrons incident on a 2.5\% r.l. polarized ammonia target. In the framework of pQCD, these results can be used to better constrain the polarization of quarks and gluons in the nucleon, as well as high-twist contributions. Some preliminary results will be shown, along with the expected impact on the NLO global fits and phenomenological models of valent spin structure.
This work focuses on a reverse-engineering program design for the cyclic voltammetry (CV) method to help illustrating, enhancing, and providing robustness in detection probability of the reactions during an electrorefining process. Analyzing the reactions from CV plots for 1.07, 2.49, and 4.98 wt% of zirconium chloride (ZrCl{sub 4}) in a LiCl-KCl molten salt at 773 K under different scan rates from Hoover's study has been accomplished. The results provide the current (Amp) versus potential (V) to investigate the optimum probability of the reactions at each peak. All simulations have been done through the commercial software MATLAB by using various experimental values existing in the literature as a first guess (e.g., the diffusion coefficients, and formal potentials). Preliminary results indicate that the zirconium reactions at each peak from cathodic to anodic side for 1.07 wt% are as followed: combination of Zr{sup +2}/Zr and Zr{sup +4}/ Zr{sup +2} at approximately -1.15 V, Zr{sup +2}/Zr at -1.5 V, Zr{sup +4}/Zr at -1.85 V, 70% Zr/Zr{sup +4} and 30% Zr/Zr{sup +2} at -0.5 V, and Zr{sup +2}/ Zr{sup +4} at - 0.25 V. These mentioned peaks are similar for 2.49 wt% at different voltages. In addition, the highest anodic peak for 4.98 wt% is found to be a combination of 30% Zr/Zr{sup +4} and 70% Zr/Zr{sup +2}. (authors)
A continuous-energy sensitivity coefficients calculation capability has been developed in the MORET 5 Monte Carlo code recently. As discussed in this paper, it relies on the differential operator method, an adjoint weighting model (to avoid calculating the fission source derivatives) and a constrained sensitivity coefficient model for sensitivity profiles to distributions such as, for instance, the fission spectrum. For now, the coefficients are provided per medium, per isotope, per reaction on an energy binning defined by the user. The sensitivity coefficients are currently available for the following quantities: total, elastic scattering, total inelastic scattering, fission, total capture and radiative capture cross sections, average neutron produced by fission and fission spectrum. This paper deals with the validation of this new feature in the MORET code on several benchmarks and applications with various energy spectra and geometrical configurations. This validation is performed through the UACSA expert group and the Jezebel ICSBEP benchmarks, but also thanks to calculations performed in the frame of experimental program design in the STACY facility. Comparisons are made using the MCNP6.1 code and the SCALE6.1 package as references. Preliminary results show a pretty good agreement between the different software. (authors)
Residential and commercial buildings accounted for 40% of U.S. energy consumption in 2022 and represent a significant opportunity for decarbonization through energy efficiency and electrification, and for grid planning. Building stock energy modeling is a powerful tool that can evaluate what-if scenarios as utilities, municipalities, policymakers, building owners and others work towards equitable building decarbonization and climate goals. This presentation will highlight several high-impact use cases of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)'s highly granular, bottom-up building stock energy modeling tools, ResStock and ComStock. These use cases cover a wide range of project scale, from neighborhood electrification analysis and municipality long-term energy planning, to state energy code development and national policy evaluation. This presentation will showcase specific real-world applications for which ResStock and ComStock have been utilized across the country, including California codes and standards cost-effectiveness analysis, New York City affordable housing electrification cost gap analysis, and California targeted electrification and gas decommissioning analysis. For each use case, this presentation will illustrate how ResStock and ComStock played a crucial role in accurately characterizing regional building stocks, providing discrete and aggregated end-use load shapes, and calculating lifecycle consumption, emissions, and costs for a variety of building electrification strategies and scenarios. Finally, this presentation will demonstrate how the data provided by ResStock and ComStock can help unlock significant outcomes for these use cases, including but not limited to, customer bill impact, incentive and program design, and energy equity analyses.
States and local governments seek to accomplish the intersecting goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving building operations, and bettering the daily lives of their communities. Building Performance Standards (BPS) have emerged as a critical policy lever to reach these intertwined climate and societal goals. These policies, if shaped and implemented well, have the chance to not only help reach our nation's climate, energy, and livability goals, but to do so with the active participation of those traditionally excluded from policy processes. This nascent policy movement provides jurisdictions across the country the opportunity to shape these policies from the outset to deliver comfort, health, and safety in our built environment for all. The US Department of Energy in partnership with our National Laboratories have been providing technical assistance for jurisdictions interested in, adopting, and implementing Building Performance Standards. Through this work, the BPS Technical Assistance Network (TA Network) has tracked and documented the innovative and equitable approaches to BPS across the country. The TA Network has crafted foundational technical analysis, such as building stock and emissions impacts, equity prioritization and peak load impacts, and aggregated cost benefit analysis. And by combining powerful technical analysis with dissemination of best practices resources to support equitable implementation, the TA Network provides jurisdictions with the tools and support necessary to embark on their ambitious policy goals.
For the development of heat-pipe cooled microreactors, it is crucial to thoroughly understand the characteristics and functioning of heat pipes across a wide spectrum of operating conditions. Passive heat removal and its long-term performance stability are critical factors in this context. Enhanced experimental data is vital for evaluating the operational lifespan of alkali metal heat pipes. Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has successfully conducted an extended duration test on a high-performance sodium-filled heat pipe, closely monitoring the axial temperature profile, power supplied by the heaters, and heat removed by a gas-gap calorimeter. The results from this testing provide valuable data that are instrumental in supporting heat pipe validation efforts. Specifically, this data aids in the development and validation of Sockeye, the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) tool under the US-DOE NEAMS program designed for heat pipe modeling. By comparing experimental results with Sockeye’s predictions, the tool's accuracy and reliability can be assessed and improved, thereby enhancing its capability to simulate heat pipe operations under various conditions.
Numerical simulation of latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) systems plays a fundamental role in studying the physical process and guiding the engineering design. Discretization of the PDEs describing the nonlinear solidification/melting process of phase change materials (PCMs) leads to a large-scale complex dynamics system, where the system behavior depends on a set of parameters. In a design setting, repeated model evaluations are required over the set of parameters results in significant computational burden. In this paper, an explicit analytic solution was built for the propagation of the solidification front in a cylindrical coordinate. The analytic solution approach is further employed to develop a low computational reduced model (RM) as a module for a shell-and-tube based LHTES heat exchanger. The levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is used as a design metric and the RM model is used to apply system-level constraints in the nonlinear programming formulation that facilitates efficient global optimal design of the PCM properties, flow conditions and tube geometries. The use of LCOE as the design metric prevents over design of the heat transfer rate and also establishes a fair ground for evaluation of different thermal storage technologies and their integrated applications with other systems. Optimal results showed that a higher effectiveness results in a higher LCOE; the velocity of the HTF and the length of the channel are highly correlated with each other; both larger PCM latent energy and conductivity result in lower LCOE.
The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) under the Civil Nuclear Energy Working Group (CNWG) is engaged in a cooperative research effort with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to explore issues related to nuclear energy, including research on accident-tolerant fuels and materials for use in light water reactors. This work develops a draft technical plan for a neutron irradiation program on the candidate accident-tolerant fuel cladding materials and elements using the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). The research program requires the design of a detailed experiment, development of test vehicles, irradiation of test specimens, possible post irradiation examination and characterization of irradiated materials and the shipment of irradiated materials to Japan. This report discusses the conceptual design, the development and irradiation of the test vehicles.
In the United States, Lung Cancer is responsible for more cancer deaths than the next four cancers combined. In addition, the 5 year survival rate for lung cancer patients has not improved over the past 40 to 50 years. To combat this deadly disease, in 2002 the National Cancer Institute launched a very large Randomized Control Trial called the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST). This trial would randomize subjects who had substantial risk of lung cancer (due to age and smoking history) into either a Chest X-ray arm or a low dose CT arm. In November 2010, the National Cancer Institute announced that the NLST had demonstrated 20% fewer lung cancer deaths among those who were screened with low-dose CT than with chest X-ray. In December 2013, the US Preventive Services Task Force recommended the use of Lung Cancer Screening using low dose CT and a little over a year later (Feb. 2015), CMS announced that Medicare would also cover Lung Cancer Screening using low dose CT. Thus private and public insurers are required to provide Lung Cancer Screening programs using CT to the appropriate population(s). The purpose of this Symposium is to inform medical physicists and prepare them to support the implementation of Lung Screening programs. This Symposium will focus on the clinical aspects of lung cancer screening, requirements of a screening registry for systematically capturing and tracking screening patients and results (such as required Medicare data elements) as well as the role of the medical physicist in screening programs, including the development of low dose CT screening protocols. Learning Objectives: To understand the clinical basis and clinical components of a lung cancer screening program, including eligibility criteria and other requirements. To understand the data collection requirements, workflow, and informatics infrastructure needed to support the tracking and reporting components of a screening program. To understand the role of the medical physicist in implementing Lung Cancer Screening protocols for CT, including utilizing resources such as the AAPM Protocols and the ACR Designated Lung Screening Center program. UCLA Department of Radiology has an Institutional research agreement with Siemens Healthcare; Dr. McNitt-Gray has been a recipient of Research Support from Siemens Healthcare in the past. Dr. Aberle has been a Member of Advisory Boards for the LUNGevity Foundation (2011-present) and Siemens Medical Solutions. (2013)
A program underway at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to support private industry design of a system for production of 99Mo includes review of Zircaloy-4 (Zry-4) properties as a potential material for a primary vessel in the system. Because Zry-4 is not a material specified in the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, a review has been performed to obtain the necessary data in the non-irradiated condition from the literature and from additional testing of Zry-4 to enable creation of tables of material properties required for ASME Code Section III Article ND-3000 design. A strategy for an in-vessel surveillance program is also recommended for early detection of potential corrosion and irradiation degradation issues during operational life of the vessel. Additionally, the ASME Code Section II, Part D was reviewed to ascertain the requirements for proposing a new material for Code approval. A plate of Zry-4 procured by ORNL was used to obtain tensile properties that were used as the basis for determining the maximum allowable stresses applicable to the vessel design. The materials properties of primary interest for ASME Code application are tensile properties, fracture toughness, fatigue, and five specific physical properties required by the Code for approval of a new material. The literature review revealed that all reported experimental data showed tensile strengths to substantially exceed the minimum specifications in ASTM B352. Sufficient fracture toughness and fatigue data are available to conclude that Zry-4 has sufficient fracture and fatigue resistance in the unirradiated condition for vessel design and operation. Of the physical properties reviewed, only thermal conductivity revealed a discrepancy that is recommended for further review. A surveillance program plan has been developed that is probably the maximum that would need to be implemented for the specific vessel design considered. Once adequate non-irradiated and irradiated data are available from preproduction testing of the Zry-4 and weld metal and HAZ materials, the program could be reduced to reflect that either initial properties are very good and/or the effects of embrittlement appear to be minimal. However, the overall design of a surveillance program is, of course, also dependent on the ASME Code design class for the pressure vessel.
Modern optimizing compiler design integrates program transformation strategies aimed at reducing data movement to/from main memory by exploiting the data cache hierarchy. But in reality, the effect of these transformations on the actual cache miss count is ignored in compilers due to the lack of precise compile-time models of misses for hierarchical caches. The current state of practice for cache miss analysis is based on accurate simulation. However, simulation requires time proportional to the dataset/problem size as well as the number of distinct cache configurations of interest to be evaluated. This paper takes a fundamentally different approach, made possible by focusing on polyhedral programs with static control flow: instead of relying on costly simulation, this paper develops the first closed-form solution for exact modeling of misses in a set-associative cache hierarchy. It enabling simulation-less selection of program transformations at compile-time to optimize cache misses. A push-button tool implementing the approach is developed and used for extensive validation of the complete framework.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a global leader in the study of energy efficiency and its effective implementation through government policy. The Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts Department of LBNL’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division provides technical assistance to help federal, stat e and local government agencies in the United States, and throughout the world, develop long-term strategies, policy, and programs to encourage energy efficiency in all sectors and industries. In the past, LBNL has assisted staff of various countries government agencies and their con tractors in providing methodologies to analyze cost-effectiveness of regulations and asses s overall national impacts of efficiency programs. The paper presents the work done in collaboration with the Ministry of Energy (MoE) in Chile and the Collaborative Labeling Appliance Standards Programs (CLASP) on designing a Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) and ext ending the current labeling program for refrigerators.
The primary goal of the BEEPs project was to develop a process that could accelerate the development of algae as bioproduction platforms, from initial chemical product concept to an economically viable market supply. Under this program we elected to develop strains of algae that could generate polyurethane precursors, while simultaneously developing basic genetic tools to enable improved algal production systems. This program was specifically designed to incorporate National Laboratories as a means to utilize the expertise and facilities for new bio-production platforms. To that end, we designed a program to collaborate with the Agile BioFoundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and computational platforms at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). In addition to these National Laboratory partners, we also had academic partners from UC Davis and Georgia Tech, as well as commercial partners Algenesis Materials and BASF. To achieve these goals, we initially focused on developing the genetic tools and high throughput screening technologies necessary to generate and assess production of polymer precursors (succinic acid) in algae and cyanobacteria, including advanced promoters and biosensors. In parallel, we computationally identified potential production bottlenecks and then used the developed genetic tools to increase production rates and yields. Constant feedback of data was used in conjunction with machine learning, high-throughput cell sorting, and synthetic biology, for additional targeted metabolic engineering. Multiple rounds of tool design, building, testing, and learning were supplied to partners at PNNL and LBNL to develop new models and tools that could expedite bioproduction platform development and increase yield performance. We targeted, and achieved, the FOA requirement yield metric of 20 g/L, as a milestone and deliverable from at least one of our engineered strains for the production of succinic acid.
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This paper examines the structure of cost-effectiveness tests to illustrate how they can accurately reflect the costs and benefits of CHP systems. This paper begins with a general background discussion on cost-effectiveness analysis of DER and then describes how cost-effectiveness tests can be applied to CHP. Cost-effectiveness results are then calculated and analyzed for CHP projects in five states: Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, and North Carolina. Based on the results obtained for these five states, this paper offers four considerations to inform regulators in the application of cost-effectiveness tests in developing CHP programs.
This report provides state regulators, utilities, and other program administrators with an overview of U.S. industrial energy efficiency programs and assesses some of the key features of programs that have generated increased energy savings.