High Gain DC-DC Converter Collaborative: The Ohio State University Design.
Abstract not provided.
SEARCH · Engineering Papers
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.
Abstract not provided.
Abstract not provided.
Poster for University professor collaborator.
This set of slides is aimed to improve access to the High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) validation data and optimize the return on the significant investment made by DOE. Supported by the Advanced Reactor Technologies (ART) Gas-Cooled Reactor (GCR) program. Slides include information from FY2009 to FY2023, there are in total 35 DOE NEUP projects focusing on the thermal-fluid experiments related with High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR), producing a large amount of high-quality validation data. NEUP Survey and Database Development for HTGR Thermal-Fluid Experiments is distributed at universities and has not been disseminated to the HTGR community. More collaborating with university PIs and refining the HTGR phenomena summary chart continuously is expected in the future.
Wayne State University (WSU) researchers, in collaboration with the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), have successfully developed a new sorbent media used in a process that concentrated the rare earth content in a coal fly ash sample from southeast MI by >350×, resulting in >13 wt% REO powder. The project developed a new DTPA-associated media that was used to concentrate total REEs. This project demonstrated a coupled hydrothermal extraction and solid-liquid recovery process that produced REO powder from raw fly ash while nearly eliminating the use of organic solvents. The project successfully: 1) identified a commercially viable ash supply with >$2.5 M in REO value being deposited monthly, 2) hydrothermally extracted >77% of REEs in coal fly ash (20% more than acid alone), 3) developed a new sorbent media that was used to concentrate REEs, 4) and engineered a process that resulted in a >13 wt% REO powder. The media also demonstrates a selectivity for mid and heavy REEs over Ce and La and the potential for use in separating individual rare earth elements. An invention disclosure for the sorbent media has been filed with WSU and a patent application will be submitted in the near future. The project examined the potential to couple hydrothermal leaching of coal fly ash with the engineering of a custom ligand-associated media to provide an organic solvent-free method of extracting and recovering REEs. Fly ash feedstock was collected from Detroit area coal-fired power plants, characterized for REE content, and subjected to a bench-top batch hydrothermal leaching/dissolution process inside custom-build pressure reactors at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). This process applied a dissolution technique previously developed to process spent nuclear fuel and other nuclear materials. The modified ash was acidified and the resulting leachate was enriched with REEs along with Ca, Al, and Si. Ligands known to be effective in lanthanide/actinide separation were evaluated based on a series of criteria such as selectivity and association to organosilica through hydrophobicity. Batch experiments were conducted to establish the best conditions (e.g., pH, eluent, etc.) and best ligand systems for the effective extraction of REEs from the alkaline feed solution obtained from the hydrothermal leaching process. Once the organosilica-ligand extraction media was developed for REE concentration, an acidic solution was used to back extract and concentrate the REEs into a heavily REE-laden strip solution. The REEs in the strip solution were precipitated with oxalate to produce rare earth oxides.
This report provides insight into collaboration between Savannah River National Laboratory’s (SRNL) Global Security Directorate, Augusta University (AU) and the Georgia Cyber Center (GCC) team with regards to device analysis, investigation, and R&D efforts. Most recently, the GCC/AU team approached SRNL to receive cybersecurity expertise in a joint effort to identify differences between a potentially questionable PoE injector recovered by Columbia County and an identical one purchased by the GCC. The questionable device was installed at a fire station operated in Columbia County, shown in the figure 1-1 below.
This project developed an innovative micro-environmental control system (µX) that enables office buildings to reduce energy used for heating and cooling by 15% or more. The µX is a compact, quiet, and ergonomic device that is designed to be installed under an office workstation; it is designed to maintain occupant comfort when room thermostat setpoints are incremented by 4°F or more (warmer in the summer and cooler in the winter) to save energy. When ambient room temperatures are outside of the usual comfort range, the µX maintains occupant comfort by delivering personalized cooling or heating locally to each office worker. The µX provides personalized cooling using a micro vapor compression system that includes a new high-performance micro-scroll compressor and a novel thermal storage unit. The vapor compression system operates at night to freeze a phase-change material (PCM). During the workday, the cooling stored in the PCM is released as a cool breeze of air to make occupants more comfortable. The micro-scroll compressor was developed specifically for this application; it is smaller than any of its type, minimizing the amount of power needed. In heating mode, the µX maintains occupant comfort using a foot heating mat with an infrared reflective box. The µX R&D project was conducted by Syracuse University in collaboration with United Technologies Research Center, Air Innovations, Bush Technical, and Cornell University. Over the course of the initial three-year project, the team developed and evaluated four versions of the unit, advancing the concept to Technology Readiness Level 6. The capabilities of individual proof-of-concept prototypes were verified in tests that were conducted with: 1) units in psychrometric chambers, 2) an instrumented manikin in a laboratory, and 3) human subjects in laboratories that simulate office environments. The tests verified that the µX prototypes met or exceeded all performance targets required to enable office buildings to reduce energy used for heating and cooling by 15% or more by maintaining occupant comfort when thermostat setpoints are incremented by 4°F or more.
This technical report discusses the outcomes from a grant to the University of Dallas in collaboration with the University of Kentucky, the United States Naval Academy and Mississippi State University to measure neutron cross sections and to provide educational opportunities in nuclear science for undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.
We review lattice results related to pion, kaon, 𝐷-meson, 𝐵-meson, and nucleon physics with the aim of making them easily accessible to the nuclear and particle physics communities. More specifically, we report on the determination of the light-quark masses, the form factor 𝑓+(0) arising in the semileptonic 𝐾 → 𝜋 transition at zero momentum transfer, as well as the decay-constant ratio 𝑓 𝐾 /𝑓 𝜋 and its consequences for the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements 𝑉 𝑢𝑠 and 𝑉 𝑢𝑑 . We review the determination of the 𝐵 𝐾 parameter of neutral kaon mixing as well as the additional four 𝐵 parameters that arise in theories of physics beyond the Standard Model. For the heavy-quark sector, we provide results for 𝑚 𝑐 and 𝑚 𝑏 as well as those for the decay constants, form factors, and mixing parameters of charmed and bottom mesons and baryons. These are the heavy-quark quantities most relevant for the determination of CKM matrix elements and the global CKM unitarity-triangle fit. We review the status of lattice determinations of the strong coupling constant 𝛼 𝑠 . We review the determinations of nucleon charges from the matrix elements of both isovector and flavor-diagonal axial, scalar and tensor local quark bilinears, and momentum fraction, helicity moment and the transversity moment from one-link quark bilinears. We also review determinations of scale-setting quantities. Finally, in this review we have added a new section on the general definition of the low-energy limit of the Standard Model.
A number of emerging trends will substantially alter the operation and control of the electric grid over the next several decades. These trends include ensuring resiliency under severe weather events, increasing integration of renewable electricity generation, supporting changing electricity demand patterns, and the improving cost effectiveness of distributed energy resources. To address these challenges, the future “Smart Grid” management will need to transition from centralized to coordinated distributed control paradigm. Reliable operation of the Smart Grid depends on distributed intelligence realized through software applications that run on distributed computing devices attached to the power system to collect data and collaboratively manage resources. However, much of the existing software for Smart Grid-enabled devices is either proprietary or developed with custom solutions, which limits interoperability among the heterogeneous devices and hinders the ability to manage system-level reliability, security, and resiliency requirements. Additionally, this approach makes Smart Grid applications hard to maintain, evolve, verify, and replace; resulting in high development and deployment costs. Further development of the Smart Grid requires a reusable software base-layer to move from hard-coded functionality to a plug-and-play architecture capable of managing system-level objectives and constraints in addition to providing consistent common services across heterogeneous devices and applications. Vanderbilt University, in collaboration with North Carolina State University and Washington State University has developed a foundation ‘software platform’ for developing and deploying robust, reliable, effective and secure software applications for the Smart Grid. The Resilient Information Architecture Platform for the Smart Grid (RIAPS) provides core services for building effective and powerful smart grid applications. It offers unique services for real-time data dissemination, fault tolerance, and coordination across apps distributed over the network.
We completed all the Milestones and disseminated results at the 2021 Computational Approaches for Cancer Workshop (CAFCW21) at the SuperComputing21 conference. As part of Milestone 1, we developed and implemented a prototype digital twin of metastatic melanoma patients, performed quality checks on the code and released it as open source. The work has directly driven major grant proposals by the team on computational digital twins and supporting software infrastructure, including a successful fellowship application by the PI. Work was lead by Paul Macklin (Contact PI, Indiana University), in collaboration with Ilya Shmulevich (PI, Institute for Systems Biology), Tina Hernandez-Boussard (PI, Stanford Univ.), Jeffrey Bryan (Co-I, University of Missouri), Snigdhansu Chatterjee (Co-I, University of Minnesota), and Mohammad Fallahi-Sichani (Co-I, U. of Virginia). Postdoctoral student Heber L. Rocha (Macklin lab, IU) performed intensive computational work, in collaboration with Senior Research Scientist Boris Aguilar (Shmulevich lab, ISB).
This project has developed new methods for the cyclotron production of medically relevant radionuclides 71 As and 119 Sb. Arsenic and antimony are chemically homologous elements (group 5A, also known as the pnictogens) that have radionuclides that are of considerable interest within nuclear medicine. Such radiopnictogens include the potentially therapeutic radionuclides 119 Sb (t 1/2 = 38 h) that decays with the emission of 24.5 low energy, high potency electrons per decay with little concomitant photon radiation and 77 As (t 1/2 = 39 h) that decays with average beta energy of 230 keV and diagnostic nuclides 71 As (t 1/2 = 65 h, 28% β+) and 72 As (t 1/2 = 26 h, 80% β+) for positron emission tomography (PET). This work has had major success developing new methods for the cyclotron production and radiochemical isolation of 71 As, supporting parallel developments for 119 Sb, and assessing the chemical similarities between these two homologous radionuclides. This project brought into collaboration two universities with complimentary skill sets, proficiencies, expertise, and facilities: the University of Wisconsin (UWisc) and the University of Missouri (Mizzou). Professors Ellison and Engle have experience in the small cyclotron production and radiochemical isolation of radionuclides, including 72 As and 119 Sb. Their recently developed metallurgic methods for fabricating cyclotron targets have great potential to expand and allow for the biomedical cyclotron production of long- lived, lower positron energy 71 As. Professors Hennkens and Jurisson have significant experience in the reactor production, radiochemical isolation, and biological functionalization of radioarsenic. Recent development of trithiol-based chelator molecules for functionalizing radioarsenic provide a platform for the investigation of the fundamental challenges of the promising low-energy-electron emitter, 119 Sb. Through their positions within their respective University’s graduate schools, the PIs and Co-Is effectively trained of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in nuclear and radiochemistry, sub-specialties specifically identified in the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Isotope Program long-range plan. Annual laboratory research visits for students between UWisc and Mizzou provided essential broad-field experience and scientific networking that is critical for maintaining their path along the training pipeline to productive careers in isotope production. This research collaboration has provided significant benefits to the DOE University Isotope Network and radionuclide-using researchers around the country.
SEE LANL is designed to provide university students a hands-on nuclear safeguards training course based on the courses given to all IAEA inspectors. It aims to encourage networking and collaborations between university students/professors and laboratory staff, introduce students to the variety of safeguards-related technical work at LANL and provides early-career technical staff an opportunity to teach. Further details on the program are provided.
The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and Princeton University will collaborate in the development of microwave-plasma technology to convert methane into hydrogen and valuable solid carbon materials. The effort will combine NETL’s vast resources for microwave-enhanced process development, characterization, and design with Princeton University’s extensive expertise in the study of non-equilibrium plasmas employing supersonic nozzles. Lab-scale experiments will be conducted for different conditions to convert and compare their respective performance in hydrogen production. Computational modeling will be performed to verify results from experimental studies conducted in both labs.
Context. Zirconium-96 is a stable isotope that can be synthesized under different neutron-rich nucleosynthetic conditions. Astrophysical models predict its production to occur in various stellar environments: from low-to-intermediate-mass asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars to massive stars and core-collapse supernovae. Aims. Detections of 96Zr excesses, in combination with other isotopic measurements from presolar grains can provide unique constraints on its stellar origin. Presolar grains are microscopic particles found in primitive Solar System materials, which formed in stellar winds and supernova ejecta. The isotopic composition of each grain can provide us a snapshot of the nucleosynthetic processes that took place during the parent star’s lifetime. Methods. In this study, we measured the stable isotopes of C, N, O, Mo, Zr, and Ru in high-density presolar graphite grains from the Murchison meteorite and found four grains that contain positive isotopic anomalies in 96 Zr carried by their internal subgrains. We analyzed multi-element isotopic datasets from each grain to explore the source of the observed 96 Zr excesses. Results. Comparisons with stellar models indicate that two grains likely condensed in an intermediate-mass AGB star with initial metallicity of Z ≤ 0.014. Their 96 Zr/ 94 Zr ratios also match those predicted for born-again AGB stars undergoing a very late thermal pulse and rapidly accreting white dwarfs. After comparing the relative populations of the aforementioned dust-producing stars, we propose rapidly accreting white dwarfs as a new, and more likely, stellar source for one of the presolar grains. The remaining two grains could have originated in the supernova ejecta of massive stars, due to correlated excesses in the p-nuclides, 92, 94 Mo. Thus, grains with 96 Zr anomalies can have a variety of stellar origins, in agreement with theoretical studies. Conclusions. Our study highlights the importance of multi-element analysis in constraining the types of stars where presolar grains have condensed. These data will help improve our understanding of various nucleosynthesis processes in different stellar phases.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility supports atmospheric and earth system research through a comprehensive network of fixed and mobile observatories. These facilities provide long-term and intensive campaign-based observations of clouds, aerosols, precipitation, radiation, and meteorological state variables. ARM observations are designed to improve the physical understanding and numerical representation of atmospheric processes in earth system models, with particular emphasis on cloud-radiation interactions and precipitation processes. The Coast-Urban-Rural Atmospheric Gradient Experiment (CoURAGE) deploys one of the ARM Mobile Facilities (AMF) to the Mid-Atlantic region surrounding Baltimore, Maryland, for the period 1 December 2024 through 30 November 2025. This deployment focuses on characterizing atmospheric structure, cloud properties, and precipitation processes across strong land-use and surface heterogeneity gradients associated with urban, rural, and coastal (Chesapeake Bay) environments. The CoURAGE deployment complements the Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC), a DOE Urban Integrated Field Laboratory (UIFL), by providing high-quality atmospheric observations needed to connect urban surface processes, emissions, and meteorology to cloud and precipitation responses. In addition to the central urban site, ancillary observing sites were deployed to rural Maryland northwest of Baltimore and to an island site in Chesapeake Bay. These measurements further complement a long-term atmospheric observatory operated in Beltsville, Maryland, by Howard University in collaboration with the Maryland Department of the Environment. Together, these assets form a four-node regional atmospheric observatory network representing Baltimore and its three primary surrounding environments—urban, rural, and coastal/bay. This coordinated observational strategy enables investigation of spatial gradients in boundary-layer structure, cloud occurrence, precipitation evolution, and aerosol-cloud interactions across complex surface regimes. Within this network, vertically pointing cloud radars play a critical role by providing continuous, high-resolution measurements of cloud and precipitation vertical structure.
DOE CESER has sponsored Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to conduct an objective and independent study of potential 6 GHz interference from outdoor operation of unlicensed devices in the 6 GHz band on fixed service (FS) microwave communication links operated by electrical sector incumbents in that band. INL is collaborating with University of Notre Dame (UND), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Lockard & White, Southern Company, and AT&T, to gather data with real-world 6 GHz interference experiments and identify (1) the potential for interference from unlicensed devices and (2) the interference necessary to cause harm to the incumbents. In addition to the functional assessment, a security assessment of the FCC mandated Automatic Frequency Coordination (AFC) System to regulate use of unlicensed 6 GHz standard power devices is also being conducted. A major objective is to create a science-based and defensible methodology used to produce the necessary data and to derive objective conclusions. This proven methodology can then be used to produce objective data and conclusions for other spectrum bands with similar incumbent uses including 4.4 – 4.9 GHz and 7.125 – 7.4 GHz, identified in the reconciliation bill that was adopted on July 4, 2025, as well as the National Spectrum Strategy discussions that are ongoing. This report contains 6 GHz field experiments and findings in the following real-world scenarios with commercial unlicensed standard power (SP) 6 GHz devices regulated by Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC): • University of Notre Dame (UND) Stadium with a capacity of 80,000 spectators, where Wi-Fi operating in 6 GHz has been deployed recently • Southern Company 6 GHz FS microwave link between Columbus and Fortson, Georgia Following are the following key findings from this study. 1. The AFC is under-protective of FS when line-of-sight exists along the path centerline. Data collected at Southern’s 6 GHz fixed link site shows significant erosion of as much as 21.4-24.4 dB of under-protection that can lead to potential service degradation under typical operating conditions. This first key finding is most likely the result of erroneous use of the RF propagation model. INL will collaborate with EPRI and the AFC Functional Requirements Working Group to submit a change request to the WinnForum TS-1014 standard towards correct use of the propagation model by the AFC. 2. There is additive interference effect of about 3 dB from nearly equal power interferers measured from simultaneous operation of two SP AP's operating co-channel with the FS receive from different locations along the path. This second key finding should be used to add the impact of additive interference of operation of multiple APs in the same geographical area, to the next generation of AFCs. INL will collaborate with FCC on the need for the AFC to consider additive interference. We also recommend that additional experiments are conducted on 6 GHz spectrum interference to further improve the AFC operation as the number of outdoor Wi-Fi devices continues to increase. These proposed steps and recommendations will make the co-existence of the incumbents and the 6 GHz outdoor Wi-Fi providers possible without any impact on the incumbents with a win-win outcome for all.
Foam thermal stability was studies at Temple University in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL). The goal of this project is to explore thermally stable foams as hydrofracking fluid media for potential applications in enhanced geothermal system (EGS). Data generated from this project will allow researchers to explore foam as potential fracturing fluid. More than 800 data points on the half-life of foams are recorded in Excel files in the included archive resource (Half-life of Foams with Different Surfactants and Stabilizing Agents). The Excel file within each surfactant folder contains half-life data of the respective surfactant with different stabilizing agents, pressure, and temperature. The respective folders also contains Word files describing the details of the data included in the respective Excel sheet.