Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Contracting”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 307 records · Page 17

Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) ENABLE Program

The Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) ENABLE program, a new project funding approach, allows small Federal facilities to realize energy and water savings in six months or less. ESPC ENABLE provides a standardized and streamlined process to install targeted energy conservation measures (ECMs) such as lighting, water, and controls with measurement and verification (M&V) appropriate for the size and scope of the project. This allows Federal facilities smaller than 200,000 square feet to make progress towards important energy efficiency and water conservation requirements.

Energy, Savings, Performance, Contract, ESPC, ENAB↗

DOE Zero Energy Ready Home Case Study: Greenhill Contracting, Inc., Hickory Ridge

Greenhill Contracting built this 3,912-ft2 house in Gardiner, New York, to the high-performance criteria of the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home (ZERH) program. A highly efficient air-source heat pump heats and cools the home’s interior, while the roof-mounted photovoltaic system offsets electricity usage to cut energy bills to nearly zero. Many months the home owners see a credit on their utility bill.

2017 Housing Innovation Award↗

Energy Savings Performance Contract Energy Sales Agreements

An energy savings performance contract energy sales agreement (ESPC ESA) is a project structure, similar to a power purchase agreement, that uses the multiyear ESPC authority to implement renewable energy projects (referred to as ESA energy conservation measures [ECMs]) on federal buildings or land. The ESA ECM is initially privately owned for tax-incentive purposes, and the federal agency purchases the electricity it produces. An ESPC ESA is one of the most cost-effective methods for implementing on-site distributed energy projects at civilian federal agency sites.

energy savings performance contract↗

North Carolina Implementation Model: Enhancing Performance Contracting for K-12 Schools, Community College, and Local Governments

With funding from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy State Energy Program’s Competitive Financial Assistance program, North Carolina successfully helped 30 local governments implement energy savings performance contracting projects that will result in more than $70 million in lifetime savings.

Energy Savings Performance Contracting, ESPC, Fina↗

Utility Energy Service Contract Boosts Chemical Weapons Destruction Mission at Army Pueblo Chemical Depot

For six decades, the U.S. Army has safely and securely stored chemical munitions at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado. To help fulfill international treaty obligations and to meet a congressional deadline of 2023 for the elimination of these aging weapons, initial destruction of the Pueblo chemical weapons stockpile began in 2015. A utility energy service contract (UESC) executed in 2016 between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Depot’s serving utility, Black Hills Energy (BHE), directly supported this mission with the installation of a new electrical substation that was essential to the Depot’s need for uninterrupted power.

Army Pueblo Chemical Depot↗

Energy Savings Performance Contract Energy Sales Agreements

An energy savings performance contract energy sales agreement - referred to as an ESPC ESA or ESPC with an ESA - is a project structure that uses the multiyear ESPC authority to implement distributed energy projects on federal buildings or land. The distributed energy project implemented under an ESPC ESA is referred to as an ESA energy conservation measure, or ESA ECM.

ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Impact of different standard type A7A drum closure-ring practices on gasket contraction and bolt closure distance - 15621

The Department of Energy, the Savannah River National Laboratory, several manufacturers of specification drums, and the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) are collaborating in the development of a guidance document for DOE contractors and vendors who wish to qualify containers to DOT 7A Type A requirements. Currently, the effort is focused on DOT 7A Type A 208-liter (55-gallons) drums with a standard 12-gauge bolted closure ring. The U.S. requirements, contained in Title 49, Part 178.350 'Specification 7A; general packaging, Type A specifies a competent authority review of the packaging is not required for the transport of (Class 7) radioactive material containing less than Type A quantities of radioactive material. For Type AF drums, a 4 ft. regulatory free drop must be performed, such that the drum 'suffers maximum damage.' Although the actual orientation is not defined by the specification, recent studies suggest that maximum damage would result from a shallow angle top impact, where kinetic energy is transferred to the lid, ultimately causing heavy damage to the lid, or even worse, causing the lid to come off. Since each vendor develops closure recommendations/procedures for the drums they manufacture, key parameters applied to drums during closing vary based on vendor. As part of the initial phase of the collaboration, the impact of the closure variants on the ability of the drum to suffer maximum damage is investigated. Specifically, closure testing is performed varying: 1) the amount of torque applied to the closure ring bolt; and, 2) stress relief protocol, including: a) weight of hammer; and, b) orientation that the hammer hits the closure ring. After closure, the amount of drum lid gasket contraction and the distance that the closure bolt moves through the closure ring is measured. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Effect of Spin-Crossover-Induced Pore Contraction on CO 2 –Host Interactions in the Porous Coordination Polymers [Fe(pyrazine)M(CN) 4 ] (M = Ni, Pt)

Variable-temperature in situ ATR-FTIR spectra are presented for the porous spin-crossover compounds [Fe(pyrazine)Ni(CN) 4 ] and [Fe(pyrazine)Pt(CN) 4 ] under CO 2 pressures of up to 8 bar. Significant shifts in the ν 3 and ν 2 IR absorption bands of adsorbed CO 2 are observed as the host materials undergo transition between low- and high-spin states. Computational models used to determine the packing arrangement of CO 2 within the pore structures show a preferred orientation of one of the adsorbed CO 2 molecules with close O=C=O···H contacts with the pyrazine pillar ligands. The interaction is a consequence of the commensurate distance of the inter-pyrazine separations and the length of the CO 2 molecule, which allows the adsorbed CO 2 to effectively bridge the pyrazine pillars in the structure. The models were used to assign the distinct shifts in the IR absorption bands of the adsorbed CO 2 that arise from changes in the O=C=O···H contacts that strengthen and weaken in correlation with changes in the Fe–N bond lengths as the spin state of Fe changes. The results indicate that spin-crossover compounds can function as a unique type of flexible sorbent in which the pore contractions associated with spin transition can affect the strength of CO 2 –host interactions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Contracted, Not Converted: Photoluminescence Thermochromism in Ultrabright Pure Blue Emissive Hybrid Copper(I) Halide

Thermochromic luminescent materials are promising for applications such as sensors or display technologies. Understanding the mechanism of thermochromic luminescence in these materials plays an important role for their targeted applications. Here, a 0D copper(I) halide (TMP)2CuBr3 and 1D (TMP)Ag2Br3 (TMP = tetramethylphosphonium) are reported. While (TMP)Ag2Br3 is a weak light emitter, (TMP)2CuBr3 demonstrates ultrabright pure blue emission with photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield exceeding 90% within the temperature range 300–80 K. The emission in (TMP)2CuBr3 is attributed to the radiative recombination of self-trapped excitons (STEs) that arise localized on [CuBr3]2− anions. (TMP)2CuBr3 demonstrates excitation-selective PL thermochromism at low temperatures. In the literature, the origin of multiple STEs is often unclear in luminescent metal halides. Here, a detailed temperature-dependent spectroscopic and structural analysis suggests that the PL thermochromism in (TMP)2CuBr3 is associated with the appearance of a second STE state. The appearance of second STE is expected to have a structural origin, and it may be associated with the observed anomaly in thermal contraction near 200 K. The distinct PL features of melt-processible (TMP)2CuBr3 coupled with its remarkable photo- and thermal stability allow its consideration for practical optical applications, including temperature sensing.

Popy, Dilruba [University of Oklahoma, Norman]↗

New insights on wind turbine wakes from large‐eddy simulation: Wake contraction, dual nature, and temperature effects

Abstract Large‐eddy simulation (LES) has been adopted to study wind turbine wakes because it can capture fine‐scale details of turbulent wind flows and interactions with wind turbines. Here, we use the LES version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with an actuator disk model to gain insights on several wake effects that have been traditionally difficult to measure. The first finding is that the wake has a “dual nature,” meaning that the wind speed deficit behaves differently from the added turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and the two are not co‐located in space. For example, the wind speed deficit peaks at hub height and reaches the ground within 8D (D is the rotor diameter), but added TKE peaks near the rotor tip and generally remains aloft. Second, temperature changes near the ground are driven by the added TKE in the rotor area and by atmospheric stability. The combination of these two factors determines the sign and intensity of the vertical heat flux divergence below the rotor, with convergence and warming associated with stable conditions and weak divergence and modest cooling with unstable conditions. Third, wakes do not expand indefinitely, as suggested by similarity theory applied to the wind speed deficit, but eventually stop expanding and actually contract, at different rates depending on atmospheric stability. The implication of these findings is that, in order to study wakes, it is not sufficient to focus on wind speed deficit alone, because TKE is also important and yet behaves differently from the wind speed deficit.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Smoothness of Generalized Solutions of the Dirichlet Problem for Strongly Elliptic Functional Differential Equations with Orthotropic Contractions

In the disk, we consider the first boundary-value problem for a functional differential equation containing transformations of orthotropic contractions of independent variables of the unknown function. We study the smoothness of generalized solutions inside special-type subdomains and near their boundaries and pose strong ellipticity conditions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Synergic regulation of mechanically interlocked molecules via lanthanide-contraction-based metal modulation and constituent ratios

A set of mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs) can be synthesized efficiently using a one-pot procedure by selecting different trivalent lanthanide metal cations (M 3+ , M = La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, or Lu) and adjusting the proportion of the reaction components. In this system, a flexible tetracationic macrocycle, often referred to as the “Texas-sized molecular box”, interacts with terephthalate dianions and trivalent lanthanide metal cations to form various structures. The transition from metal-organic rotaxane frameworks (MORFs) to metal-containing rotaxane supramolecular organic frameworks (RSOFs) is largely dictated by the lanthanide contraction effect, which leads to a decrease in the coordination number of the lanthanide ions. In addition, the nature of the MIMs within the MORFs can be fine-tuned by varying the ratio of the cation to the other components, allowing for additional control over the interlocked system. Furthermore, these findings demonstrate that the choice of metal cation and adjustments in the building block ratios component represent promising strategies for controlling the structures of MIM-based frameworks.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

A generalized and adaptable tensor-contraction-based cluster expansion formalism for multicomponent solids

Density functional theory (DFT)-based simulations of materials have first-principles accuracy, but are very computationally expensive. For simulating various properties of multi-component alloys, the cluster expansion (CE) technique has served as the standard workaround to improve computational efficiency. However, the standard CE technique is difficult to extend to exotic and/or low-symmetry lattices, often implemented via iteration over particular cluster types, which must be enumerated per lattice structure. In this work, we introduce the tensor cluster expansion (TCE), implemented in the open-source code tce-lib, which maps correlation functions to mixed tensor contractions, eliminating the need to iterate over cluster types and additionally making the calculation of correlation functions well-suited for massively parallel architectures like GPUs. We show that local interaction energies are an immediate consequence of the TCE formalism, yielding nearly $\mathcal{O}$(1) energy difference calculations. We then use this formalism to fit CE models for the TaW and CoNiCrFeMn systems, and use these models to respectively compute the enthalpy of mixing curve and Cowley short-range order parameters, showing excellent agreement with ground truth data.

Cluster expansion↗

Generally Contracted Valence-Core/Valence Basis Sets for Use with Relativistic Effective Core Potentials and Spin-Orbit Coupling Operators

A procedure for structuring generally contracted valence-core/valence basis sets of Gaussian-type functions for use with relativistic effective core potentials (gcv-c/v-RECP basis sets) is presented. Large valence basis sets are enhanced using a compact basis set derived for outer core electrons in the presence of small-core RECPs. When core electrons are represented by relativistic effective core potentials (RECPs), and appropriate levels of theory, these basis sets are shown to provide accurate representations of atomic and molecular valence and outer-core electrons. Core/valence polarization and correlation effects can be calculated using these basis sets through standard methods for treating electron correlation. Calculations of energies and spectra for Ru, Os, Ir, In and Cs are reported. Spectroscopic constants for RuO2+, OsO2+, Cs2 and InH are calculated and compared with experiment.

Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory↗