Proof that scattering implies production in quantum field theory.
Necessity of production processes in relativistic quantum field theory, describing interacting particles
SCATTERING AMPLITUDE↗
SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Results for “Production Processes”
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.
Modeling Framework for the Assessment of a Sustainable Hydrogen Production and Supply Chain Network in California
The cost-effective and sustainable deployment of hydrogen supply and demand networks, especially in large economic regions like California, can be challenging considering the spatial-temporal availability and variability of the different actors across the network such as production processes, distribution modes, and end-users. In this presentation, we will provide an overview and demonstration of a modeling framework used to assess the environmental, economic, and human health impacts of plausible hydrogen production and supply chain networks in California. Scenarios focus on green hydrogen production pathways using water electrolysis and biomass gasification. End-use applications included in the model are transit, medium and heavy-duty trucking, port authorities, and power and aviation companies that currently consume natural gas, diesel, and aviation fuel for their day-to-day operation. Representative locations for hydrogen production and end-use are based on recent projections of the hydrogen economy in California. All mass and energy flows, as well as estimated emissions, are based on H2A process model designs and projections of technology performance, literature review, and LBNL process, economic and life cycle modeling, and not on company data for the sake of this presentation. Human health impacts are included following methodologies developed for the University of California Irvine HyDeal project. Life cycle phases associated with hydrogen production include feedstock preparation (water and biomass), energy production and consumption (renewable, grid, and combination of renewable and grid electricity), maintenance (chemical utilization in electrolysis and natural gas combustion in gasification), carbon sequestration, hydrogen storage (compression and liquefaction), and distribution (truck and pipeline). We apply the framework utilizing California specific emission factors, financial data, and human health damages and explore the impact of network characteristics on results. Example variations include: the inclusion of policy incentives or not, different representations of the electricity grid and source, electrolysis versus gasification versus combinations of both for production, liquefaction versus compression based on producer capacity cutoffs, transportation truck versus pipeline based on existing infrastructure, and ultimate end use. Comparison of these different scenarios can help inform future projects by demonstrating the trade-offs among environmental, economic, and human health impacts. This model, automated in R, is a starting platform upon which new analysis, modeling capabilities, locations, and emission factors can be rapidly tested and integrated.
Zaki, Mohammed Tamim↗
Thermochemical water decomposition
At present, nearly all of the hydrogen consumed in the world is produced by reacting hydrocarbons with water. As the supply of hydrocarbons diminishes, the problem of producing hydrogen from water alone will become increasingly important. Furthermore, producing hydrogen from water is a means of energy conversion by which thermal energy from a primary source, such as solar or nuclear fusion of fission, can be changed into an easily transportable and ecologically acceptable fuel. The attraction of thermochemical processes is that they offer the potential for converting thermal energy to hydrogen more efficiently than by water electrolysis. A thermochemical hydrogen-production process is one which requires only water as material input and mainly thermal energy, or heat, as an energy input. Attention is given to a definition of process thermal efficiency, the thermodynamics of the overall process, the single-stage process, the two-stage process, multistage processes, the work of separation and a process evaluation.
Funk, J. E.↗
Silicon dendritic web growth thermal analysis task
A thermal analysis model is presented which describes the dendritic ribbon process. The model uses a melt-dendrite interface which projects out of the bulk melt as the basic interpretation of the ribbon production process. This is a marked departure from the interpretations of the interface phenomena which were used previously. The model was extensively illustrated with diagrams and pictures of ribbon samples. This model should have great impact on the analyses of experimental data as well as on future design modifications of ribbon-pulling equipment.
Richter, R.↗
Recent Productivity Improvements to the National Transonic Facility
Productivity gains have recently been made at the National Transonic Facility wind tunnel at NASA Langley Research Center. A team was assigned to assess and set productivity goals to achieve the desired operating cost and output of the facility. Simulations have been developed to show the sensitivity of selected process productivity improvements in critical areas to reduce overall test cycle times. The improvements consist of an expanded liquid nitrogen storage system, a new fan drive, a new tunnel vent stack heater, replacement of programmable logic controllers, an increased data communications speed, automated test sequencing, and a faster model changeout system. Where possible, quantifiable results of these improvements are presented. Results show that in most cases, improvements meet the productivity gains predicted by the simulations.
Popernack, Thomas G., Jr.↗
Process Usage of 3M Novec™ Fluids at LANL [Slides]
The following presentation addresses LANL’s use of Novec™ fluids and specific fluid properties; LANL uses several 3M Novec™ hydrofluoroether (HFE) fluids in various production processes; Novec™ HFE fluids currently used are: HFE-71IPA; HFE-72DE; HFE-7100; HFE-7500; Plutonium’s unique properties and challenging manufacturing conditions require fluids to be above all else: non-flammable; chemically inert.
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
A co-registered in-situ and ex-situ dataset from wire arc additive manufacturing process
Recent progress in sensing techniques and data analytics tools have significantly accelerated the development of Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) systems. This data-centric approach emphasizes leveraging sensor data available throughout the production process to optimize performance. Integration of extensive data analysis provides opportunities for improving precision, reducing waste, and enhancing the quality of produced parts. This method relies on AI/ML models and optimization techniques, which are developed using the data collected from various sources, including in-situ sensors, ex-situ imaging, and manufacturing process parameters. The quality and diversity of this data, along with the alignment between different data streams (achieved through spatiotemporal registration) are critical for the successful development of AI/ML and optimization models. In this work, we present a spatiotemporally registered dataset generated during the WAAM process of deposition of a rectangular block. The dataset includes a comprehensive description of the deposition process, process parameters, welding characteristics and acoustic data collected in-situ, and X-Ray Computed Tomography data of the build.
42 ENGINEERING↗
Summary and recommendations
An economic analysis using econometric and cost benefit analysis techniques was performed to determine the feasibility of space processing of certain products. The overall objectives of the analysis were (1) to determine specific products or processes uniquely connected with space manufacturing, (2) to select a specific product or process from each of the areas of semiconductors, metals, and biochemicals, and (3) to determine the overall price/cost structure of each product or process considered. The economic elements of the analysis involved a generalized decision making format for analyzing space manufacturing, a comparative cost study of the selected processes in space vs. earth manufacturing, and a supply and demand study of the economic relationships of one of the manufacturing processes. Space processing concepts were explored. The first involved the use of the shuttle as the factory with all operations performed during individual flights. The second concept involved a permanent unmanned space factory which would be launched separately. The shuttle in this case would be used only for maintenance and refurbishment. Finally, some consideration was given to a permanent manned space factory.
Source record↗
A Review on Solid State Batteries: Life Cycle Perspectives
This report briefly reviews the characteristics of solid-state batteries (SSBs) and the life-cycle analysis (LCA) studies that have been completed for SSBs. Compared with conventional lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), SSBs offer improved safety and potentially higher energy density — both enabled by replacing liquid electrolytes with solid electrolytes and using lithium metal anodes. Several challenges impede the commercialization of SSBs, primarily related to the stability of the interface between the solid electrolyte and the electrodes. Several options are under consideration for SSB electrolyte and cathode chemistries. As a result, the production processes for these components and the corresponding battery packs are still under development and can differ significantly from those used for conventional LIB pack production. A robust comparison of SSBs with LIBs through LCA is important to analyze the environmental benefits and challenges associated with this alternative battery system. While the literature provides only a few LCA studies focused on SSBs, with significant uncertainty in their life-cycle inventories (LCIs), those studies collectively suggest that solid electrolyte manufacturing is the major environmental hotspot, followed by cathode and anode production.
25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
Analyzing Next-Generation Supply Chains Using the Materials Flows through Industry Tool
The Materials Flows through Industry (MFI) tool is a supply chain modeling tool developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) with funding from the Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office. MFI was created to identify and analyze opportunities to reduce the energy and carbon intensities of the U.S. industrial sector (Hanes and Carpenter 2017). In this work, we present an overview of the MFI tool's structure and capabilities, as well as the results of using MFI to analyze a novel NREL-developed process to 'upcycle' PET plastic into higher-value composite materials (Rorrer et al. 2019). This process combines recycled PET (rPET) plastic with inputs that can be derived from biomass, including muconic acid, acrylic acid, and ethylene glycol, to chemically break down the plastic back to its monomers in a process called glycolization. Then, repolymerization and the application of fiberglass yields the valuable glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) composite, a performance material used in the manufacture of wind turbine blades, boat hulls, and other applications. This rPET-derived GFRP was found to have superior strength and fiberglass adhesion compared to conventional GFRP formulations. Our findings indicate that this GFRP production process, were it to be widely commercialized beyond its current lab-scale, could potentially reduce the fossil energy intensity of the GFRP supply chain by between 37% and 58% compared to the conventional method of GFRP manufacture from fossil-derived inputs. We also estimate potential supply chain greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions between 30% and 40% from this process. Scaling these GHG offset estimates up to annual GFRP production in the U.S. would be roughly equivalent to removing between 150,000 and 200,000 vehicles from U.S. roads. These ranges of impact estimates represent the range of differences associated with the various economic allocation methods we have assumed for the intensity contributions from the first life of the PET plastic. Following Shen et al. (2010), we derive economic allocation factors from the current price ratios of clear- and green-colored recycled PET plastic to virgin PET resin ('waste-valuation' approach) or assume them to be zero in a more simplistic allocation ('cutoff' approach). Future work involving the MFI modeling tool will also be discussed, including preliminary results comparing the energy intensity of conventional and bio-based nylons manufacturing. Attendees will also be encouraged to conduct MFI supply chain modeling of their own by requesting a user account on the MFI web application, which is freely available to the public at the following address: https://mfitool.nrel.gov.
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
Comparison of Commercial, State-of-the-Art, Fossil-Based Ammonia Production
This NETL report provides a comprehensive techno-economic analysis of current, state-of-the-art, fossil-based ammonia production processes, explicitly utilizing natural gas as the feedstock. The study thoroughly investigates three distinct configurations: conventional Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) without carbon capture, SMR integrated with carbon capture and storage (CCS), and Autothermal Reforming (ATR) also with CCS. The analysis incorporates detailed equipment cost accounting as part of its methodology. The primary objective is to meticulously evaluate the cost and performance of these established and emerging technological pathways, considering factors such as capital expenditures, operational costs, and energy consumption. While the report acknowledges and quantifies environmental impacts, its central focus remains on the economic and technical feasibility of each process design employing these current technologies. The analysis provides a direct comparison of the Levelized Cost of Ammonia (LCOA) for each pathway, revealing how the integration of CCS within these state-of-the-art systems impacts the overall production cost. The ATR+CCS configuration, representing an advanced approach, emerged with a slightly more favorable LCOA compared to SMR+CCS. This benefit was attributed to its inherent process efficiencies, high carbon capture rates, and economy of scale advantages. The report details the energy consumption profiles for each case, including metrics like net energy consumption and thermal efficiency, which are critical for assessing the performance of these contemporary industrial processes. Sensitivity analyses further explore how variables such as natural gas price, capital costs, and capacity factors influence the LCOA across all scenarios, offering critical insights into the economic robustness and scalability of these current ammonia production technologies.
03 NATURAL GAS↗
Radiation Shielding Analysis of Niowave’s Uranium Target Assembly 2 (UTA-2) Facility for Molybdenum-99 Production
Niowave is seeking to develop a commercial medical isotope production process using a low-enriched uranium accelerator-driven subcritical reactor (ADSR) system to produce molybdenum-99. As part of the US Department of Energy national laboratory support to develop low enriched uranium molybdenum-99 production technologies, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is providing research and development resources to assist Niowave in the design and licensing process of its technology. The goals of this work under the radiation shielding task are to assist Niowave in developing a methodology and framework for efficient radiation shielding simulations of their Uranium Target Assembly 2 facility and to provide preliminary radiation shielding calculations and design recommendations for the facility.
07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
Lightweight Metal Stamping Optimization Enabled by Artificial Intelligence
Successfully manufacturing an automotive body structure made via the sheet metal stamping process depends upon simultaneous consideration of component design, tooling design, stamping process control, and material properties. In many cases, introducing lightweight sheet materials (e.g., aluminum alloys, magnesium alloys, advanced high strength steels) holds the potential to significantly reduce vehicle weight, but challenges the stamping process by introducing materials with inherently less ductility. Successful and repeatable applications require co-developing the stamping process controls with the varying material properties, including formability. During the stamping process, as soon as the forming limit of the sheet is exceeded, the material shows localized necking which quickly leads to splits. Controlling process variability to avoid these material splits will enable deployment of less formable, lighter, and stronger materials for stamped automotive components. A typical optimization procedure for manufacturing requires an iterative process involving parameter setting, execution of computational simulations, and modifying the parameters. The entire process demands substantial computational time, making it impractical for real-time feedback towards rapid corrective actions required for in-line control for running production processes. To overcome this challenge, artificial intelligence (AI) can be leveraged to determine optimal manufacturing parameters within a single manufacturing cycle time. This research proposes an in-line optimization framework incorporating a trained AI model to predict kidney-shaped die forming. Preliminary results indicate that the AI framework can accurately predict draw-in values based on a given parameter set, a process referred to as forward prediction. Furthermore, the AI framework can also predict the optimal parameter set that leads to the desired draw-in values, referred to as inverse optimization (or backward prediction). This research has been performed in collaborations with USCAR (US Council for Automotive Research) and AutoForm. The members of USCAR are Ford, GM, and Stellantis.
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
Techno-economic and Life Cycle Analysis of MixAlco® Processes for Mixed Alcohol Production from Brown Algae
The need for producing renewable fuels from biomass has increased due to depleting fossil resources and environmental concerns. However, the low fraction of biomass carbon converted to product is an undeniable drawback for most current biofuel productions from fermentation due to undecomposed lignin in biomass composition and carbon loss as CO 2 . In this work, two main production routes of the MixAlco® process, the ketonization route (KR) and esterification route (ER) are evaluated for the mixed alcohol production by brown algae, a third-generation biomass without lignin. A novel fermentation process using syntrophic bacteria consortia (SBC) is developed to produce acetic acid from waste gas produced by KR and ER process. The paper investigates the integrated flowsheet for these alternative routes, using techno-economic and life cycle analysis to compare the minimum selling price and environmental impacts. From TEA, we find that the overall costs for KR and ER are lower than the SBC processes. The cost of ketonization routes is lower than esterification routes. The capital cost and operating cost for the ER+SBC process are the highest. Raw materials and utilities are the two major costs for all the processing routes examined. Here, the MSP for the ER+SBC process is the lowest out of all four routes. ER process performs the best in terms of environmental impacts except in water depletion compared with other processes, while the KR process performs the worst regarding the environmental metrics.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Chemistry of peroxide compounds
The history of Soviet research from 1866 to 1967 on peroxide compounds is reviewed. This research dealt mainly with peroxide kinetics, reactivity and characteristics, peroxide production processes, and more recently with superoxides and ozonides and emphasis on the higher oxides of group 1 and 2 elements. Solid state fluidized bed synthesis and production of high purity products based on the relative solubilities of the initial, intermediate, and final compounds and elements in liquid ammonia are discussed.
Volnov, I. I.↗
Cascade model of gamma-ray bursts: Power-law and annihilation-line components
If, in a neutron star magnetosphere, an electron is accelerated to an energy of 10 to the 11th or 12th power eV by an electric field parallel to the magnetic field, motion of the electron along the curved field line leads to a cascade of gamma rays and electron-positron pairs. This process is believed to occur in radio pulsars and gamma ray burst sources. Results are presented from numerical simulations of the radiation and photon annihilation pair production processes, using a computer code previously developed for the study of radio pulsars. A range of values of initial energy of a primary electron was considered along with initial injection position, and magnetic dipole moment of the neutron star. The resulting spectra was found to exhibit complex forms that are typically power law over a substantial range of photon energy, and typically include a dip in the spectrum near the electron gyro-frequency at the injection point. The results of a number of models are compared with data for the 5 Mar., 1979 gamma ray burst. A good fit was found to the gamma ray part of the spectrum, including the equivalent width of the annihilation line.
Harding, A. K.↗
Cascade model of gamma-ray bursts
If, in a neutron star magnetosphere, an electron is accelerated to an energy of 10 to the 11th or 12th power eV by an electric field parallel to the magnetic field, motion of the electron along the curved field line leads to a cascade of gamma rays and electron-positron pairs. This process is believed to occur in radio pulsars and gamma ray burst sources. Results are presented from numerical simulations of the radiation and photon annihilation pair production processes, using a computer code previously developed for the study of radio pulsars. A range of values of initial energy of a primary electron was considered along with initial injection position, and magnetic dipole moment of the neutron star. The resulting spectra was found to exhibit complex forms that are typically power law over a substantial range of photon energy, and typically include a dip in the spectrum near the electron gyro-frequency at the injection point. The results of a number of models are compared with data for the 5 Mar., 1979 gamma ray burst. A good fit was found to the gamma ray part of the spectrum, including the equivalent width of the annihilation line.
Sturrock, P. A.↗
Meteoritical Astrophysics: A New Subdiscipline
A recent remarkable discovery by Katharina Lodders showed that the abundances of extinct radioactivities (relative to reference nuclei) in chondrites, achondrites, and irons are proportional to the squares of their mean lives, whereas no such abundance-mean life relationship is apparent for the data of calcium-aluminum rich inclusions (CAIs) and a variety of other inclusion types. In this talk I shall interpret these results in terms of galactic and solar nebula processes. The first step in organizing the data for interpretation is to require that both the abundance of the extinct radioactivity (as measured by its decay product abundance) and that of the reference nuclide should have the same nucleosynthesis history, or else that a correction to the ratio be made to compensate for the ratio of the two different production processes. The striking feature of this diagram is that the lower edge of the data (the Lodders Line) is remarkably straight; most of the data are derived from chondrites; and its slope on the log-log diagram is two. So the extinct radioactivities are present in proportion to the square of their mean lives. All the other data lie above the Lodders line in this diagram; the sources of that data are in general somewhat larger particles than those that have contributed to the Lodders Line. A straight relationship between abundances of extinct radioactivities
Cameron, A. G. W.↗