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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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31 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Spectral Analysis of Regular Material Point Method and its Application to Study High Pressure Reverse Osmosis Membrane Compaction and Embossing

Material Point Method (MPM) is gaining widespread interest in applied continuum mechanics. The fact that all the continuum properties are stored on the particles (or material points) and the governing equations are solved on these material points makes MPM extremely suited to problems involving severe material deformations, such as crack propagation, soil movement, and fluid flows. Despite its popularity, only a few studies have focused on the numerical properties of MPM. This presentation introduces a global spectral analysis of the regular material point method. Contrary to previous studies, the analysis focuses on the numerical properties of the method in the spectral space. The amplification factor is derived as a function of the non- dimensional wave numbers. It provides insights into the stability and dissipative properties of the method for various CFL and Fourier numbers. The effect of the grid shape functions, number of particles per cell and their locations inside the grid cell are also analyzed. The EXAGOOP MPM solver (https://github.com/NREL/Exagoop.git) is developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as a part of the NAWI UHPRO project and is based on the AMReX framework. A single-level, uniform cartesian grid is used as the background mesh, while the particle class in AMReX is used to manage the material point operations. Linear hat and B-splines are used as grid shape functions, while the time integration is performed using explicit Euler time integration. EXAGOOP is both CPU and GPU compatible and has been demonstrated to work well on multiple compute architectures. The performance of EXAGOOP on various computing architectures is presented along with its application to study compaction and embossing of high-pressure reverse osmosis membranes. The MPM solution accurately reproduces the membrane deformation. The deformed pore size and structure simulated using MPM also agree well with experimental SEM images.

material point method↗
DOE OSTI2021

Mine Water Use, Treatment, and Reuse in the United States: A Look at Current Industry Practices and Select Case Studies

Mining provides significant economic value while often impacting local water supplies and environments because of freshwater usage and waste disposal practices. In this paper we identify current practices in mine water, including how water is used in mining, influent and effluent water quality, treatment technologies, and end uses with the goal of informing future research on implementable, reliable, and cost-effective advanced water treatment in the mining sector. This study also reviews the available literature to broadly evaluate mining in the United States and performs a techno-economic assessment on water use and disposal for three detailed case studies applicable to lithium, uranium, and copper mines. These case studies highlight specific industry examples of distinct extraction methods, geographical regions, and mined commodities. Hypothetical scenarios based on case study baselines revealed potential impacts to mine water available for beneficial reuse through the use of novel water treatment technologies and alternate water management strategies. Finally, an assessment of national level impacts resulting from the reuse of treated mine source water is presented.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Oil and Gas Produced Water Reuse: Opportunities, Treatment Needs, and Challenges

Advances in water treatment technologies paired with potential restrictions on oil and gas (O&G) produced water disposal could incentivize the beneficial reuse of treated produced water in the O&G industry. However, the remote nature of O&G operations limits the applicability of many of these solutions, which may be spatially inefficient, require operator supervision, or are ill-suited for the complex nature of produced water. Furthermore, the responsible, sustainable reuse of produced water as an alternative water source requires standardized analytical techniques for characterizing and determining the toxicity of treated produced water and improving our understanding of the fate and transport of various constituents. In the past decade, we made little progress in economically treating produced water for beneficial reuse outside of oilfield operations; the sole major breakthrough has been in the development of salt-tolerant fracturing chemicals that allow for reuse of produced water for fracking operations. Guided research should assist in the development of fit-for-purpose solutions to maximize the reuse of treated produced water. This is exemplified by the case studies presented here that detail currently operating treatment facilities for reclamation and reuse of produced water.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Pipe Parity Analysis of Seawater Desalination in the United States: Exploring Costs, Energy, and Reliability via Case Studies and Scenarios of Emerging Technology

As climate change-induced variables exacerbate water scarcities, the use of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) membrane desalination technology for treating seawater could potentially provide a long-term drought-proof source of drinking water. This study carried out a technoeconomic assessment (TEA) for three SWRO desalination plants in the U.S. and one in Israel to set baselines for the cost and energy consumption for seawater desalination. In addition, a breakeven curve for implementing SWRO desalination was estimated in relation to the cost of water conservation measures to meet drought-induced reduction of the traditional water supply. The results show that the cost of SWRO water production scales with the plant capacity while energy intensity is not dramatically different across the plants. The higher cost in some U.S. plants is due to high capital investment, including land acquisition and permitting. Variations in plant capacity utilization have the greatest impact on the levelized cost of water (LCOW) over the plant service life, suggesting the importance of reducing fouling and maintenance-related downtime. Scenario analysis of fixed labor cost reduction through process automation indicates investments in automation and sensing technology could result in long-term savings. Breakeven analysis shows the decision to adopt SWRO is highly dependent on the local cost associated with water conservation to meet water supply reduction. Moreover, a small reduction in SWRO cost can influence a shift toward the adoption of SWRO over water conservation measures. Incorporation of future water demand, water conservation potential, and water stress data around the nation indicates SWRO desalination could be an important contributor to the future municipal drinking water portfolio in the U.S.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Opportunities for Treatment and Reuse of Agricultural Drainage in the United States

Irrigation accounts for 42% of the total freshwater withdrawals in the United States. Climate change, the pressure of a growing population, degrading water quality, and increased competition from other sectors could constrain continuous supply to meet future agricultural water demand. This study presents an evaluation framework to assess the potential reuse of agricultural drainage water for crop irrigation. Using a regional approach, we review the current state of agricultural drainage treatment and reuse and the institutional, economic, and other barriers that can influence the reuse decision. In the 31 eastern states, agricultural drainage contains valuable nutrients that can be reused for irrigation with minimal treatment, while the 17 western states struggle with large volumes of saline drainage that can contain constituents of concern (e.g., selenium), preventing reuse without treatment. Using a new decision-support tool called WaterTAP3, a potential treatment train for saline agricultural drainage was analyzed to identify treatment challenges, research needs, and the potential implementation at a larger scale. As demonstrated by our case study, desalination of agricultural drainage is costly and energy intensive and will require sizable investments to fully develop and optimize technologies as well as manage the generated waste and brine.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Opportunities and Challenges for Industrial Water Treatment and Reuse

As the impact of water scarcity in the United States (U.S.) continues to grow through the 21st century, it is critical to develop strategies to reduce water use and improve the security of water resources. One such strategy is to diversify the sources from which water is supplied. Industrial withdrawals represent the fourth largest category of U.S. water use, the majority of which is sourced from fresh surface and groundwater. In this study, we critically explore the potential of industrial wastewater to serve as an alternative water resource through direct treatment and reuse. We begin by reviewing the state of the art of water use, treatment, and reuse across six representative industries: food and beverages, primary metals, pulp and paper, petroleum refining, chemicals, and data centers and campuses, highlighting key challenges and opportunities toward the expansion of reuse. We then employ a technoeconomic assessment of water treatment processes to analyze the capital investment, operating and maintenance costs, levelized cost of water, and electricity consumption of three specific industrial plants as case studies to better understand where research can promote impactful innovation. Finally, drawing together the results of our literature review and technoeconomic analyses, we provide a broad outlook on the future of industrial water reuse and discuss strategies for its expansion.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Analysis of Brackish Water Desalination for Municipal Uses: Case Studies on Challenges and Opportunities

Brackish water is a widely available, nontraditional water resource that can augment limited freshwater supplies. Although brackish water desalination has been continuously implemented in the United States and worldwide, it is necessary to reduce further its energy consumption, costs, and environmental impacts. This study conducted technoeconomic analyses to evaluate the current desalination and brine management technologies, focusing on the key factors and opportunities for sustainable brackish water desalination for municipal uses. Three case studies were selected as baseline representative of different geographic and operational conditions, including water quality, plant size, pretreatment, desalination, and concentrate management. Here, the technoeconomic analyses and model simulations identified challenges, opportunities, and research priorities to achieve specific pathways for enhanced brackish water desalination regarding levelized costs of water, electricity intensity, water recovery, zero liquid discharge, and brine valorization.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Cost and Energy Metrics for Municipal Water Reuse

Municipal water reuse can contribute to a circular water economy in different contexts and with various treatment trains. This study synthesized information regarding the current technological and regulatory statuses of municipal reuse. It provides process-level information on cost and energy metrics for three potable reuse and one nonpotable reuse case studies using the new Water Techno-economic Assessment Pipe-Parity Platform (WaterTAP3). WaterTAP3 enabled comparisons of cost and energy metrics for different treatment trains and for different alternative water sources consistently with a common platform. A carbon-based treatment train has both a lower calculated levelized cost of water (LCOW) ($0.40/m3) and electricity intensity (0.30 kWh/m3) than a reverse osmosis (RO)-based treatment train ($0.54/m3 and 0.84 kWh/m3). In comparing LCOW and energy intensity for water production from municipal reuse, brackish water, and seawater based on the largest facilities of each type in the United States, municipal reuse had a lower LCOW and electricity than seawater but higher values than for production from brackish water. For a small (2.0 million gallon per day) inland RO-based municipal reuse facility, WaterTAP3 evaluated different deep well injection and zero liquid discharge (ZLD) scenarios for management of RO concentrate. Adding ZLD to a facility that currently allows surface discharge of concentrate would approximately double the LCOW. For all four case studies, LCOW is most sensitive to changes in weighted average cost of capital, on-stream capacity, and plant life. Baseline assessments, pipe parity metrics, and scenario analyses can inform greater observability and understanding of reuse adoption and the potential for cost-effective and energy-efficient reuse.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Zero Liquid Discharge and Water Reuse in Recirculating Cooling Towers at Power Facilities: Review and Case Study Analysis

Zero liquid discharge (ZLD) systems installed at power facilities with the primary purpose of meeting water discharge regulations have the added benefit of providing high quality effluent that can be reused in the facility. This paper provides a review of water use in power sector recirculating cooling towers and a baseline assessment of on-site water reuse at natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power facilities. Two NGCC facilities with reverse-osmosis (RO) or brine-concentrator processes followed by evaporation ponds were selected as case studies; data from these facilities were used to quantify the water, energy, and cost implications of implementing conventional and emerging ZLD technologies. At one case study facility, model results show that implementation of ZLD would reduce water withdrawals by 18%, which is less than savings associated with implementation of dry cooling but comparable to current efforts to reduce water withdrawals by increasing cycles of concentration. Implementation of ZLD using high-recovery RO resulted in a doubling of the levelized cost of water (LCOW). LCOW increased more when a brine concentrator was used. For both case studies, the ZLD system using high-recovery RO required less than 0.1% of a facilitiy's annual electricity generation and the ZLD system using a brine concentrator process required less than 0.8%. Additionally, increasing the evaporation pond area to minimize required ZLD system recovery rates and reduce system electricity costs does not reduce the LCOW. Instead, the LCOW increases because less water is recovered and more water is lost to evaporation. Furthermore, if water availability decreases or water competition/cost increases, facilities may be incentivized to maximize water recovery from ZLD systems.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Using Parameter Sweep in WaterTAP to Analyze New Water Treatment Technologies

We describe a powerful and generalized parameter sweep tool in this report that was originally developed to analyze the performance of existing and novel water treatment models being developed in WaterTAP. Since WaterTAP is built upon IDAES and Pyomo, the parameter sweep tool can be used to systematically explore and debug the behavior of most Pyomo and IDAES numerical models. In order to enable meaningful analyses, the parameter sweep tool has been designed with the following features: 1) Model flexibility: The parameter sweep tool does not enforce any restrictions on the types of models that can be used with it. As long as a Pyomo model can be solved and the parameter is active and mutable, the tool only needs functions that describe how to run the model, the sweep parameters, and the output quantities of interest. 2) Flexible sampling: The parameter sweep tool has inbuilt functions to generate samples from a random distribution or a multidimensional Euclidean space. Furthermore, the users have to ability to supply samples generated from a tool of their choice. 3) Multiple sweep types: A user can choose from one of 3 types of parameter sweeps depending on their needs. 4) Detailed outputs: Outputs generated by the parameter sweep tool can be stored in detailed H5 file or user-friendly CSV files for post processing. 5) Parallel computing: The parameter sweep supports shared and distributed memory parallel computing to enable the use of high performance computers (HPC) for large-scale analyses. 6) Modular: The parameter sweep tool is self-contained and can easily be integrated within an outer-loop analysis or as desired by the user. 7) Ease of use: The tool is well documented and a simple sweep can be easily executed by following the online documentation in a few lines of code. We demonstrate the use of the parameter sweep tool on a simple water treatment system from the WaterTAP repository and show its parallel scaling performance on an Apple laptop and NREL's Eagle HPC. The parameter sweep tool is actively being used with models currently being developed within WaterTAP and we expect its use to grow beyond it to other IDAES and Pyomo models.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Benchmark Model for Wastewater Treatment Using an Activated Sludge Process

This is benchmark model for wastewater treatment using an activated sludge process. The activated sludge process is a means of treating both municipal and industrial wastewater. The activated sludge process is a multi-chamber reactor unit that uses highly concentrated microorganisms to degrade organics and remove nutrients from wastewater, producing quality effluent. This model provides pollutant concentrations, mass balance, electricity requirements, and treatment costs. This model will be continuously updated based on the latest data.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Catalyst Design in Nitrate Removal

Based on the volcano plot developed by Dr. Goldsmith group (Report linked in submission), we utilized DFT (density functional theory) calculations to search for bimetallic materials in the application of catalysts in aqueous nitrate removal. The calculations are conducted via the high-throughput automated workflow package developed by our group (Github linked in submission) using VASP commercial first-principles calculation software.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

WaterTAP-REFLO models of Solar Still, Solar Still ZLD, Enhanced Evaporation pond results for baseline analysis

This folder contains results from models that were adapted into WaterTAP-REFLO. The files contain inputs and outputs for solar still, solar still ZLD, and enhanced evaporation pond unit process models for 4 different locations in the USA: Phoenix, Miami, Houston, and Baltimore. The WaterTAP-REFLO implementation may be different and thus may have different results. The data structure and content are described in a ReadMe.txt file. For WaterTAP-REFLO documentation and/or contact the developers please see: https://github.com/watertap-org/watertap-reflo.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗