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Results for “Liquid Extraction”

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 289 records · Page 16
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Thiocyanate Ions Form Antiparallel Populations at the Concentrated Electrolyte/Charged Surfactant Interface

Anions play significant roles in the separation of lanthanides and actinides. The molecular-scale details of how these anions behave at aqueous interfaces are not well understood, especially at high ionic strengths. Here, we describe the interfacial structure of thiocyanate anions at a soft charged interface up to 5 M bulk concentration with combined classical and phase-sensitive and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. At low concentrations thiocyanate ions are mostly oriented with their sulfur end pointing toward the charged surfactants. In this work, the VSFG signal reaches a plateau at around 100 mM bulk concentration, followed by significant changes above 1 M. At high concentrations a new thiocyanate population emerges with their sulfur end pointing toward the bulk liquid. The –CN stretch frequency is different for up and down oriented SCN – ions, indicating different coordination environments. These results provide key molecular-level insights for the interfacial behavior of complex anions in highly concentrated solutions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2017

Extraction of effective solid-liquid interfacial free energies for full 3D solid crystallites from equilibrium MD simulations

Molecular dynamics simulations of an embedded atom copper system in the NPH ensemble are used to study the e ective solid-liquid interfacial free energy of quasispherical solid crystals within a liquid. This is within the larger context of MD simulations of this system undergoing solidi cation, where single individually-prepared crystallites of di erent sizes grow until they reach a thermodynamically stable nal state. The resulting equilibrium shapes possess the full structural details expected for solids with weakly anisotropic surface free energies (in these cases, ~5 % radial attening and rounded [111] octahedral faces). The simplifying assumption of sphericity and perfect isotropy leads to an e ective interfacial free energy as appearing in the Gibbs-Thomson equation, which we determine to be ~179 erg/cm 2 , roughly independent of crystal size for radii in the 50 - 250 A range. This quantity may be used in atomistically-informed models of solidi cation kinetics for this system.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Deconstructing the Soil Microbiome into Reduced-Complexity Functional Modules

The soil microbiome is an invaluable component of the biosphere and critical for ecosystem functions, including biogeochemical cycling, soil-atmosphere gas exchange, degradation of toxic compounds, and promotion of plant growth and stress resistance/resilience. An improved understanding of the soil microbiome will help with predicting how these processes respond to external perturbations, and with harnessing beneficial aspects of the soil microbiome for agronomic applications such as crop amendments. However, the extensive taxonomic and functional diversity inherent within the soil microbiome hinders efficient analysis of this system. Microbial biodiversity in soils is orders of magnitude greater than other commonly studied systems such as the human gut microbiome (Blum, Zechmeister-Boltenstern, and Keiblinger 2019; Berendsen, Pieterse, and Bakker 2012). Thousands of microbial taxa may be found in a single gram of soil (Roesch et al. 2007), and high rates of gene flow and mutation further promote microbial diversification (Sergaki et al. 2018). Concomitantly, functional diversity in soil is similarly extensive. Soil is a heterogeneous mixture of microenvironments with defined physical and chemical attributes (Bach et al. 2018), within which numerous microbial guilds of distinct life-strategies and metabolic capacities can be found (Perez-Garcia, Lear, and Singhal 2016; H.-S. Song et al. 2014). Furthermore, the soil microbiome harbors a significant fraction of rare and/or quiescent members (Blagodatskaya and Kuzyakov 2013) that exist below the threshold of detection of current technologies. Such rare taxa may make significant contributions to process rates (Shade and Gilbert 2015; Dawson et al. 2017), but their scarcity complicates their identification and analysis. Finally, the vast amounts of information generated through holistic analyses of soil communities represent an intense computational burden (Scholz, Lo, and Chain 2012; Prosser 2015) that precludes assessment of the complete functional and taxonomic diversity contained in this ecosystem.

Naylor, Dan T.↗
DOE OSTI2019

DarkSide: Latest results and future perspectives

DarkSide is direct-detection dark-matter experimental project based on radiopure argon. The main goal of the DarkSide program is the detection of rare nuclear elastic collisions with hypothetical dark-matter particles. The present detector, DarkSide-50, placed at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), is a dualphase time projection chamber (TPC) filled with ultra-pure liquid argon, extracted from underground sources. Surrounding the TPC to suppress the background there are neutron and muon active vetoes. One of argon key features is the capability to distinguish between electron and nuclear recoils, exploiting the different shapes of the signals. DarkSide-50 new results, obtained using a live-days exposure of 532.4 days, are presented. This analysis sets a 90% C.L. upper limit on the dark matter-nucleon spin-independent cross-section of 1.1 × 10 -44 cm 2 for a WIMP mass of 100 GeV/c 2 . The next phase of the project, DarkSide-20k, will be a new detector with a fiducial mass of ~ 20 tons, equipped with cryogenic silicon photomultipliers (SiPM).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Building Blocks from Biocrude: High-Value Methoxyphenols (Final Scientific/Technical Report)

Integrating biofuels production with bioproducts presents an opportunity to explore options for recovering high-value chemicals as additional revenue-generating products from biofuel conversion pathways. Thus, the overall objective of this project was to develop a comprehensive separation strategy to economically recover valuable methoxyphenols (MPs) consisting of guaiacol, 4-methylguaiacol, 4-ethylguaiacol, 4-propylguaiacol, eugenol, and isoeugenol from biocrude as building blocks to demonstrate that bioproducts could enable cost-effective production of biofuels via integrated catalytic pyrolysis and hydroprocessing. The upgradability of the remaining biocrude fraction to biofuel after separation of the products was evaluated by hydrotreating. Finally, techno-economic analysis (TEA) was performed to examine the economic potential of recovering select MPs from biocrude in parallel with biofuels production.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Conceptual Model Testing Related to SDU 6 Drainwell Observations

From its inception in the early 1950s through the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the Savannah River Site (SRS) produced nuclear materials for national defense in five reactors. Additionally, irradiated reactor fuel and target tubes were dissolved in nitric acid to recover plutonium and uranium using the PUREX (Plutonium Uranium Reduction EXtraction) process. Liquid waste from these chemical separations processes was then stored onsite in 51 underground tanks. Eight waste storage tanks have been operationally closed (i.e. cleaned and grouted) and the remaining tanks hold a mixture of liquids, insoluble solids, and precipitated salts (SRMC-LWP-2022-00001), the latter generated by evaporating water from the liquid waste. Waste is currently being retrieved from tanks and separated into 1) high-radioactivity, low-volume, and 2) low-radioactivity, high-volume components, principally through the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) (SRMC-LWP-2023-00001). The former waste stream is vitrified in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), stored onsite, and destined for offsite disposal in a deep geologic repository. The latter stream is mixed with dry cementitious materials in the Saltstone Production Facility (SPF) and the wet slurry placed in onsite Saltstone Disposal Units (SDUs) within the Saltstone Disposal Facility (SDF), where it hardens into a cement waste form termed saltstone. A low-infiltration surface cover system will be placed over the SDF at closure, where SDUs will then be in the subsurface post-closure (SRR-CWDA-2019-00001).

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2024

Graph-Based Representations and Applications to Process Simulation

Rapid and robust convergence of a process flowsheet is critical to enable large-scale simulations that address core scientific questions related to process design, optimization, and sustainability. However, due to the highly coupled and nonlinear nature of chemical processes, efficiently solving a flowsheet remains a challenge. In this work, we show that graph representations of the underlying physical phenomena in unit operations may help identify potential avenues to systematically reformulate the network of equations and enable more robust topology-based convergence of flowsheets. To this end, we developed graph abstractions of the governing equations of vapor-liquid and liquid-liquid equilibrium separation equipment. These graph abstractions consist of a mesh of interconnected variable nodes and equation nodes that are systematically generated through PhenomeNode, a new open-source library in Python developed in this study. We show that partitioning the graph into separate mass, energy, and equilibrium subgraphs can help decouple nonlinearities and guide decomposition algorithms. By employing the graph abstraction on an industrial separation process for separating glacial acetic acid from water, we implemented a new block decomposition scheme in BioSTEAM and demonstrated that this can accelerate convergence over a traditional sequential modular approach.

Distillation↗
NASA NTRS2019

The 3D Printing of Polyimide Aerogels

Polyimide aerogels are a nanoporous material made by extracting the liquid portion of a wet gel and replacing it with air, while still maintaining the porous solid internal architecture. This results in a material with extremely low densities, low thermal conductivities, high internal surfaces areas, and low dielectric constants. Currently, complex aerogel forms are not possible, since they require molds in order to be shaped. To overcome this challenge, we are attempting to use various additive manufacturing techniques to produce complex architectures. Three different approaches are being studied to accomplish this. One is to print using a viscous wet gel and have the structure solidify at the end of the print, another is to use a mixing tip, where a less viscous gel and the final chemical that causes gelation will be mixed as it is printing, allowing it to gel layer by layer, and the third is to use a UV curable aerogel with a UV light following behind to solidify the gel as it prints. To have these approaches be successful, the printing parameters and the aerogel's chemical formulation need to be optimized. The more harmonious these two factors can be made, the more defined and complex the resulting structure can be. Preliminary results show that 3D printing polyimide aerogels are a viable option, but further optimization must occur for reliable printing.

Nosel, Theresa↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Extraterrestrial Molecular Indicators of Life Investigation (EMILI)

Future missions to Enceladus, Europa, Mars, and beyond may seek the molecular signs of extraterrestrial life through chemical analysis of acquired samples. Particularly on ocean worlds such as Enceladus and Europa, samples may contain trace ocean-borne molecular biosignatures of extant life that may or may not share similarities to those of terrestrial life. In situ analyses must be prepared to detect and characterize a wide range of possible molecular species, structures, and patterns, typically with exquisite sensitivity and within a complex, poorly-characterized planetary environment. The Extraterrestrial Molecular Indicators of Life Investigation (EMILI) is designed to meet or exceed the requirements of such missions for organic molecular analysis through a powerful combination of dual chemical separation and both optical and mass spectrometry detection techniques, realized in an integrated, compact instrument package fully compatible with anticipated flight resources and conditions. The full EMILI instrument combines two sample analysis subsystems to provide wide-ranging and complementary detection of organic compounds and inorganic salts. The Gas Analysis Processing System (GAPS) uses a chemical derivatization protocol with gas chromatography (GC) separation prior to detection in an ion trap mass spectrometer (ITMS) to enable full characterization of lower-polarity, volatile and semi-volatile molecules such as fatty acids and hydrocarbons. The Organic Capillary Electrophoresis ANalysis System (OCEANS) uses a liquid-based extraction protocol with CE separation to enable precise analysis of more water-soluble/polar compounds. OCEANS features a laser-induced fluorescence detection mode to perform ultra-sensitive quantitative analysis of chiral amino acids. In EMILI, OCEANS is additionally coupled to the same ITMS through a novel electrospray ionization interface. The common ITMS allows EMILI to identify and cross-correlate molecular species and patterns, detected through either or both protocols, of molecular weights to over 1000 u, potentially even revealing complex biosignatures such as alien oligopeptides and informational polymers.

Europa↗
DOE OSTI2017

Continuous Membrane Assisted IBE Fermentation from AVAP® Cellulosic Sugars

An economically viable process for the production of butanol from the underutilized natural resources domestically available, economically sustainable biofuel at or below DOE target selling price; suitable for roll-out in multiple regions containing agricultural residues and underutilized forest residuals; and able to compete in the butanol market without subsidy

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Hydrothermal liquefaction for biomass

Catalyst composition and parameters for catalytic hydrothermal liquefaction of biomass to bio-oil fuels target municipal solid waste (MSW) rather than lignin rich plant waste typically sought for bio-oil production. An HTL (Hydrothermal Liquefaction) reactor generates bio-fuel from municipal solid waste (MSW), including receiving, in the HTL reactor, non-lignin based waste from a municipal processing stream, and adding a solvent for extracting sugars from green waste components of the municipal processing stream. The reactor extracts a liquid from the received waste, and converts water soluble products in the liquid into oil soluble products via C—C (carbon-to-carbon) coupling reactions. A catalyst added to the resulting aqueous stream recovers a beneficial oil product, and is optimized by tuning acid and base sites on the solid catalyst.

Timko, Michael T.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Advanced Analysis of X-ray Fluorescence Measurements of the Interfacial Density of Eu Ions at Liquid–Liquid Interfaces for Solvent Back-Extraction

X-ray fluorescence near total reflection (XFNTR) is the primary technique used to measure the element-specific interfacial density of ions at liquid−liquid interfaces. Fluorescence from ions in the bulk liquids can complicate the determination of the interfacial density; consequently, measurements have been previously limited to samples without ions in the upper phase and with concentrations on the order of 10 μM or less in the lower phase. We modify the analysis of XFNTR data to account for ions in both bulk phases, then demonstrate its use in the context of rare-earth separations processes. In a model of ion stripping (i.e., back-extraction), dodecane solutions of di(2-ethylhexyl)- phosphoric acid (HDEHP) loaded with Eu(III) at the 1 mM level are placed in contact with either pure water or aqueous solutions of nitric or citric acid at pH 3. XFNTR measurements of equilibrated, quiescent samples reveal that citric acid solutions produce a disproportionately large depletion of ions from the interface compared to that from the bulk organic solution, whereas stripping by pure water or nitric acid solutions is negligible. As a result, this advance in the methodology of XFNTR may have broad applicability to the investigation of metal ions in chemical and biological processes at liquid−liquid interfaces.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Chitin extracted from various biomass sources: It's not the same

Here this study demonstrates the use of ionic liquids to successfully extract chitin from different biomass sources and the utilization of the resulting chitins to prepare monofilament fibers. Chitin was extracted from five different biomass sources (processed and raw shrimp shell, crab and lobster shell, and fly larvae) using the ionic liquid (IL) 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([C 2 mim][OAc]). While processed and raw shrimp shell yielded chitin of high purity in quantitative yield, crab and lobster shell resulted in lower yields of chitin. Fly larva provided chitin severely contaminated with proteins. Each extracted chitin was re-dissolved in the same IL and dry wet jet spun into monofilament fibers to determine any trends in mechanical properties vs. biomass source. The concentration needed to spin fibers was not consistent and had to be adjusted individually for each type of chitin obtained. Chitin from raw shrimp shell produced the strongest fibers, while the chitin from the crab and lobster produced weaker fibers, although, the latter were twice as elastic. The use of fly larvae led to the weakest and least elastic fibers.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Implementation of tritium transport in a gas-liquid contactor CFD simulation of tritium extraction from lead-lithium in ANSYS fluent

Modifications to the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) software ANSYS Fluent were done to quantify and characterize tritium transport in Gas-Liquid Contactors (GLCs). A double-slit, Ergun-like equation was employed for the porous media model, with Ergun coefficients validated with Sulzer’s Sulcol software. Tritium transport from PbLi within the GLC was verified against analytical models. The geometry of the CFD model was based on the MELODIE GLC experiment. The hydrodynamic CFD pressure drop results align well with SulCol estimations and fall between the predictions of the analytical Delft-Olujic and Billet & Schultes models. In terms of mass transfer efficiency, traditional mass transfer models showed a significant deviation from experimental results when using varying values of H solubility in PbLi. A saturation phenomenon occurred when utilizing high solubility values for hydrogen in PbLi. In conclusion, a modified film theory mass transfer coefficient, incorporating either the Delft-Olujic or Billet & Schultes wettability model, yielded CFD-predicted extraction efficiencies that closely matched experimental measurements.

70 - PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗