Results for “APPLIANCES” — Page 15

DOE OSTI2016

Refrigeration system having dual suction port compressor

A cooling system for appliances, air conditioners, and other spaces includes a compressor, and a condenser that receives refrigerant from the compressor. The system also includes an evaporator that receives refrigerant from the condenser. Refrigerant received from the condenser flows through an upstream portion of the evaporator. A first portion of the refrigerant flows to the compressor without passing through a downstream portion of the evaporator, and a second portion of the refrigerant from the upstream portion of the condenser flows through the downstream portion of the evaporator after passing through the upstream portion of the evaporator. The second portion of the refrigerant flows to the compressor after passing through the downstream portion of the evaporator. The refrigeration system may be configured to cool an appliance such as a refrigerator and/or freezer, or it may be utilized in air conditioners for buildings, motor vehicles, or other such spaces.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2016

A Reasoning And Hypothesis-Generation Framework Based On Scalable Graph Analytics

Finding actionable insights from data has always been difficult. As the scale and forms of data increase tremendously, the task of finding value becomes even more challenging. Data scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are leveraging unique leadership infrastructure (e.g. Urika-XA and Urika-GD appliances) to develop scalable algorithms for semantic, logical and statistical reasoning with unstructured Big Data. We present the deployment of such a framework called ORiGAMI (Oak Ridge Graph Analytics for Medical Innovations) on the National Library of Medicine s SEMANTIC Medline (archive of medical knowledge since 1994). Medline contains over 70 million knowledge nuggets published in 23.5 million papers in medical literature with thousands more added daily. ORiGAMI is available as an open-science medical hypothesis generation tool - both as a web-service and an application programming interface (API) at http://hypothesis.ornl.gov . Since becoming an online service, ORIGAMI has enabled clinical subject-matter experts to: (i) discover the relationship between beta-blocker treatment and diabetic retinopathy; (ii) hypothesize that xylene is an environmental cancer-causing carcinogen and (iii) aid doctors with diagnosis of challenging cases when rare diseases manifest with common symptoms. In 2015, ORiGAMI was featured in the Historical Clinical Pathological Conference in Baltimore as a demonstration of artificial intelligence to medicine, IEEE/ACM Supercomputing and recognized as a Centennial Showcase Exhibit at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Conference in Chicago. The final paper will describe the workflow built for the Cray Urika-XA and Urika-GD appliances that is able to reason with the knowledge of every published medical paper every time a clinical researcher uses the tool.

graph analytics↗

DOE OSTI2017

Refrigeration arrangement and methods for reducing charge migration

A refrigerator appliance including a refrigerant circuit between a condenser, an evaporator, and a compressor that includes two conduits and pressure reducing devices arranged in parallel between the evaporator and the condenser. The appliance also includes a valve system to direct refrigerant through one, both or none of the conduits and pressure reducing devices, and a heat exchanging member in thermal contact with either one pressure reducing device, or one conduit between the pressure reducing device and the valve system.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2017

Cooling system having dual suction port compressor

A cooling system for appliances, air conditioners, and other spaces includes a compressor, and a condenser that receives refrigerant from the compressor. The system also includes an evaporator that receives refrigerant from the condenser. Refrigerant received from the condenser flows through an upstream portion of the evaporator. A first portion of the refrigerant flows to the compressor without passing through a downstream portion of the evaporator, and a second portion of the refrigerant from the upstream portion of the condenser flows through the downstream portion of the evaporator after passing through the upstream portion of the evaporator. The second portion of the refrigerant flows to the compressor after passing through the downstream portion of the evaporator. The refrigeration system may be configured to cool an appliance such as a refrigerator and/or freezer, or it may be utilized in air conditioners for buildings, motor vehicles, or other such spaces.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2018

System and method for optimal load and source scheduling in context aware homes

A controller for controlling energy consumption in a home includes a constraints engine to define variables for multiple appliances in the home corresponding to various home modes and persona of an occupant of the home. A modeling engine models multiple paths of energy utilization of the multiple appliances to place the home into a desired state from a current context. An optimal scheduler receives the multiple paths of energy utilization and generates a schedule as a function of the multiple paths and a selected persona to place the home in a desired state.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2018

Food Service Building Asset Rating Methodology and Analysis

Food Service buildings are extremely energy intensive, using about 5 to 7 times more energy per square foot than conventional commercial buildings. Energy intensive commercial kitchen appliances are the primary drivers, often necessitating high exhaust air requirements. Currently, no standardized method exists to directly compare energy efficiency between different Food Service buildings. Different restaurant types have various types of appliances and cooked food throughput requirements and thus it is challenging to make direct comparisons. Past attempts to categorize Food Service use types into “Quick-Service” and “Full-Service” led to the development of the Standard 90.1 prototype building models. However, these models do not address the highly diverse Food Service use types. This paper proposes a methodology to compare Food Service buildings through an asset rating system. By identifying all unique systems in a kitchen and creating a common baseline, this methodology identifies approaches for normalizing variations in kitchen requirements and to compare all Food Service buildings against one another.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2018

Food Service Building Asset Rating Methodology and Analysis

Food Service buildings are extremely energy intensive, using about 5 to 7 times more energy per square foot than conventional commercial buildings. Energy intensive commercial kitchen appliances are the primary drivers, often necessitating high exhaust air requirements. Currently, no standardized method exists to directly compare energy efficiency between different Food Service buildings. Different restaurant types have various types of appliances and cooked food throughput requirements and thus it is challenging to make direct comparisons. Past attempts to categorize Food Service use types into “Quick-Service” and “Full-Service” led to the development of the Standard 90.1 prototype building models. However, these models do not address the highly diverse Food Service use types. This paper proposes a methodology to compare Food Service buildings through an asset rating system. By identifying all unique systems in a kitchen and creating a common baseline, this methodology identifies approaches for normalizing variations in kitchen requirements and to compare all Food Service buildings against one another.

Asset Rating, commercial kitchens, building rating↗

DOE OSTI2018

Behind-the-meter Transctive Control Approach for Home Energy Management System

Energy efficiency serves as an essential part of demand-side solutions to address the challenges of energy security and carbon emission, and ensure a reliable, affordable and sustainable energy system. In this paper, a behind-the-meter transactive market is proposed for the home energy management system to achieve energy reduction by coordinating home appliances through market bidding and clearing. The proposed approach can achieve the optimal coordination by taking into account the home owner's preferences of energy reduction over different appliances. Thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) including air conditioner and water heater are considered as the example to illustrate the controller design. The proposed controllers for TCLs can translate the trade-off between energy saving and temperature discomfort into the bidding information. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed behind-the-meter transactive design for energy efficiency.

Lian, Jianming↗

DOE OSTI2020

System and method for optimal load and source scheduling in context aware homes

A controller for controlling energy consumption in a home includes a constraints engine to define variables for multiple appliances in the home corresponding to various home modes and persona of an occupant of the home. A modeling engine models multiple paths of energy utilization of the multiple appliances to place the home into a desired state from a current context. An optimal scheduler receives the multiple paths of energy utilization and generates a schedule as a function of the multiple paths and a selected persona to place the home in a desired state.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2021

Data Analysis Approach for Large Data Volumes in a Connected Community

Recent advancements within smart neighborhoods where utilities are enabling automatic control of appliances such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and water heater (WH) systems are providing new opportunities to minimize energy costs through reduced peak load. This requires systematic collection, storage, management, and in-memory processing of large volumes of streaming data for fast performance. In this paper, we propose a multi-tier layered IoT software framework that enables effective descriptive and predictive data analysis for understanding live operation of the neighborhood, fault identification, and future opportunities for further optimization of load curves. We then demonstrate how we achieve live situational awareness of the connected neighborhood through a suite of visualization components. Finally, we discuss a few analytic dashboards that address questions such as peak load reductions obtained due to optimization, customer preference for automatic control of appliances (do they override the automatic control of HVAC?, etc.). 1 1 This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

Chinthavali, Supriya↗

DOE OSTI2022

Resilient, Rural, and Revolutionary: Salisbury Square's Direct-Current Affordable Microgrid Community: Preprint

The technology to interconnect buildings with a dedicated direct-current (DC) power distribution network is in place today; what is missing is a turnkey approach to designing a DC microgrid - and the business models allowing such systems to be deployed, owned, and operated at scale. To close this gap, the Salisbury Square Development Team, comprising clean-energy experts, has engineered a resilient community DC microgrid for an affordable housing community in Randolph, Vermont. Ten single-family, occupant-owned residences and 12 multifamily rental units will share locally generated and stored solar energy via a DC power distribution bus capable of operating during extended grid outages. With a DC power distribution network in place, each home will be equipped with high-efficiency DC lighting and appliances, operating alongside alternating current (AC) appliances, even during an islanded mode of operation. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of what is possible and achievable, the Team collaborated with the local utility, regulatory agencies, a national laboratory, energy-as-service providers, and vendors. The collaborators evaluated microgrid typologies, business models, and energy modeling, and analyzed electrification and resilience. Further, the Team applied the URBANoptTM (Urban Renewable Building and Neighborhood optimization, NREL 2022) software development kit (SDK) to Salisbury Square's single-family and multifamily buildings to validate workflows and identify needs for advanced capability. This paper addresses the barriers to entry, scalability, and impact on residents and system ownership. It also examines the analysis that informed the design and engineering of the DC microgrid and the opportunities to streamline the process.

DER↗

DOE OSTI2026

Estimating Flexibility Envelopes for Residential Customers From Utility Smart Meter Data: Preprint

Demand response from residential customers has significant potential to support power system operations, but accurate flexibility estimation is challenging due to the limited resolution of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) data. Most utility AMI measurements are recorded at hourly intervals, with only a small portion at higher resolutions, and even fewer households have appliance-level energy usage data. To address this issue, this paper proposes a two-stage long short-term memory (LSTM) framework for estimating household flexibility envelopes from low-resolution AMI data. In the first stage, the heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) load and non-HVAC loads are estimated by using a model trained on a small set of households with appliance-level profiles. These estimated data are then used to compute the upper- and lower-flexibility bounds, which are subsequently down-sampled to lower-resolution data. In the second stage, these flexibility bounds serve as training inputs for another LSTM model, enabling direct prediction of flexibility envelopes for households with only hourly AMI data. This method is validated using Pecan Street data from two different areas, and the results demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2026

Experimental Evaluation of a Microchannel Condenser for R600a Domestic Refrigerators

Domestic refrigerators are among the most common household appliances, accounting for approximately 4% of total household energy consumption, which is higher than that of clothes dryers, lighting, or cooking appliances. With nearly 13 million new domestic refrigerators sold annually, even marginal improvements in their energy performance can yield significant reductions in overall energy demand and cost. This study focuses on enhancing the performance of domestic refrigerators using R600a as the refrigerant. Most domestic refrigerators currently employ wire-and-tube condensers, which are bulky and require a larger refrigerant charge. Given that R600a is classified as an A3 flammable refrigerant under ASHRAE standards, minimizing the system charge while maintaining or improving performance is critical. To address this, a compact and light weight single-pass serpentine microchannel heat exchanger (made of aluminum) was adopted as a condenser, replacing the conventional wire-and-tube configuration. The modified system was experimentally tested according to AHAM test standards, and charge optimization was performed. The results demonstrated that the refrigerator equipped with the microchannel condenser achieved a 5.3% reduction in energy consumption compared to the baseline configuration with wire-and-tube condenser.

Murugan, Muneeshwaran [ORNL] (ORCID:00000003340352↗

DOE OSTI2019

Utilising demand response for distribution service restoration to achieve grid resiliency against natural disasters

The increased frequency of power outages due to natural disasters in recent years has highlighted the urgency of enhancing distribution grid resilience. The effective distribution service restoration (DSR) is an important measure for a resilient distribution grid. In this work, the authors demonstrate that DSR can be significantly improved by leveraging the flexibility provided by the inclusion of demand response (DR). The authors propose a framework for this by considering integrated control of household-level flexible appliances to vary the load demand at the distribution-grid level to improve DSR. The overall framework of the proposed system is modelled as a three-step method considering three optimization problems to (i) calculate feasible controllable aggregated load range for each bus, (ii) determine candidate buses to perform DR and their target load demand, and (iii) maintain the load level in each house through home energy management during the DSR, considering uncertainties in load and solar generation sequentially. The optimization problems are formulated as linear programming, mixed-integer linear programming, and multistage stochastic programming (solved using the stochastic dual dynamic programming) models. Finally, case studies performed in the IEEE 123-node test feeder show improvements in resilience in terms of energy restored compared to the restoration process without DR.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2011

Modeling Population Exposures to Pollutants Emitted from Natural Gas Cooking Burners

We developed a physics-based data-supported model to investigate indoor pollutant exposure distributions resulting from use of natural gas cooking appliances across households in California. The model was applied to calculate time-resolved indoor concentrations of CO, NO2 and formaldehyde resulting from cooking burners and entry with outdoor air. Exposure metrics include 1-week average concentrations and frequency of exceeding ambient air quality standards. We present model results for Southern California (SoCal) using two air-exchange scenarios in winter: (1) infiltration-only, and (2) air exchange rate (AER) sampled from lognormal distributions derived from measurements. In roughly 40percent of homes in the SoCal cohort (N=6634) the 1-hour USEPA NO2 standard (190 ?g/m3) was exceeded at least once. The frequency of exceeding this standard was largely independent of AER assumption, and related primarily to building volume, emission rate and amount of burner use. As expected, AER had a more substantial impact on one-week average concentrations.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

DOE OSTI2018

Metal hypersensitivity in the context of connective tissue disease – An opportunity for practice prevention

Highlights: • Metal implants are association with metal hypersensitivity reactions of the skin. • American Contact Dermatitis Society endorses nickel allergy testing. • Metal dental appliances may trigger cutaneous reactions. • Alternative include stainless steel, fiber composite, plastic, and resin-coated. • Alternatives may improve symptoms of fibromyalgia and connective tissue disease. Metal hypersensitivity reactions (MHR) are not associated with metal containing orthodontic implants unless there is a positive history of dermatitis from a high nickel-release item (piercing post, earring, watch). We wish to present this letter to highlight evidence surrounding orthodontic-related nickel hypersensitivity and to bring to the readers attention current American Contact Dermatitis Society (ACDS) guidelines that endorse the importance of addressing metal hypersensitivity reactions in the setting of implantable dental devices.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2011

End-of-life flows of multiple cycle consumer products

Explicit expressions for the end-of-life flows (EOL) of single and multiple cycle products (MCPs) are presented, including deterministic and stochastic EOL exit. The expressions are given in terms of the physical parameters (maximum lifetime, T, annual cycling frequency, f, number of cycles, N, and early discard or usage loss). EOL flows are also obtained for hi-tech products, which are rapidly renewed and thus may not attain steady state (e.g. electronic products, passenger cars). A ten-step recursive procedure for obtaining the dynamic EOL flow evolution is proposed. Applications of the EOL expressions and the ten-step procedure are given for electric household appliances, industrial machinery, tyres, vehicles and buildings, both for deterministic and stochastic EOL exit, (normal, Weibull and uniform exit distributions). The effect of the physical parameters and the stochastic characteristics on the EOL flow is investigated in the examples: it is shown that the EOL flow profile is determined primarily by the early discard dynamics; it also depends strongly on longevity and cycling frequency: higher lifetime or early discard/loss imply lower dynamic and steady state EOL flows. The stochastic exit shapes the overall EOL dynamic profile: Under symmetric EOL exit distribution, as the variance of the distribution increases (uniform to normal to deterministic) the initial EOL flow rise becomes steeper but the steady state or maximum EOL flow level is lower. The steepest EOL flow profile, featuring the highest steady state or maximum level, as well, corresponds to skew, earlier shifted EOL exit (e.g. Weibull). Since the EOL flow of returned products consists the sink of the reuse/remanufacturing cycle (sink to recycle) the results may be used in closed loop product lifecycle management operations for scheduling and sizing reverse manufacturing and for planning recycle logistics. Decoupling and quantification of both the full age EOL and of the early discard flows is useful, the latter being the target of enacted legislation aiming at increasing reuse.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2013

Management of waste electrical and electronic equipment in two EU countries: A comparison

Highlights: Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Review on data regarding WEEE management in Italy and in Romania. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Problems that countries that will enter in the EU will have to solve facing with the WEEE management. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Pilot experiences useful for the awareness campaign of the population. - Abstract: The paper presents some data regarding waste electrical and electronic (WEEE) management in one of the founding countries of the EU, Italy, and in a recent entry into the EU, Romania. The aim of this research was to analyze some problems that countries entering the EU will have to solve with respect to WEEE management. The experiences of Italy and Romania could provide an interesting reference point. The strengths and weaknesses that the two EU countries have encountered can be used in order to give a more rational plan for other countries. In Italy the increase of WEEE collection was achieved in parallel with the increase of the efficiency of selective Municipal Solid Waste collection. In Romania, pilot experiences were useful to increase the awareness of the population. The different interests of the two populations towards recyclable waste led to a different scenario: in Romania all types of WEEE have been collected since its entrance into the EU; in Italy the 'interest' in recycling is typically related to large household appliances, with a secondary role of lighting equipment.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗