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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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At least 415 records · Page 23
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 38

The Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 38 is a statistical compendium prepared and published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office. Designed for use as a desk-top reference, the Data Book represents an assembly and display of statistics and information that characterize transportation activity, and presents data on other factors that influence transportation energy use. The purpose of this document is to present relevant statistical data in the form of tables and graphs. The latest edition of the Data Book is available via the Internet. This edition of the Data Book has 13 chapters which focus on various aspects of the transportation industry. Chapter 1 - focuses on petroleum; Chapter 2 - energy; Chapter 3 - highway vehicles; Chapter 4 - light vehicles; Chapter 5 - heavy vehicles; Chapter 6 - alternative fuel vehicles; Chapter 7 - transit and shared mobility; Chapter 8 - fleet vehicles; Chapter 9 - household vehicles; Chapter 10 - nonhighway modes; Chapter 11 - transportation and the economy; Chapter 12 - greenhouse gas emissions; and Chapter 13 - criteria pollutant emissions. The sources used represent the latest available data. There are also three appendices which include detailed source information for some tables, measures of conversion, and energy tables and figures with electricity generation and distribution taken into account. A glossary of terms is also included for the reader’s convenience.

02 PETROLEUM↗
DOE OSTI2021

Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 39

The Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 39 is a statistical compendium prepared and published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office. Designed for use as a desk-top reference, the Data Book represents an assembly and display of statistics and information that characterize transportation activity and presents data on other factors that influence transportation energy use. The purpose of this document is to present relevant statistical data in the form of tables and graphs. The latest edition of the Data Book is available via the Internet (tedb.ornl.gov).This edition of the Data Book has 13 chapters which focus on various aspects of the transportation industry. Chapter 1 focuses on petroleum; Chapter 2 – energy; Chapter 3 – highway vehicles; Chapter 4 – light vehicles; Chapter 5 – heavy vehicles; Chapter 6 – alternative fuel vehicles; Chapter 7 – transit and other shared mobility; Chapter 8 – fleet vehicles; Chapter 9 – household vehicles; Chapter 10 – nonhighway modes; Chapter 11 – transportation and the economy; Chapter 12 – greenhouse gas emissions; and Chapter 13 – criteria pollutant emissions. The sources used represent the latest available data. There are also three appendices which include detailed source information for some tables, measures of conversion, and energy tables with electricity generation and distribution. A glossary of terms is also included for the reader’s convenience.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Transportation Energy Data Book (Edition 40)

The Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 40 is a statistical compendium prepared and published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office. Designed for use as a desk-top reference, the Data Book represents an assembly and display of statistics and information that characterize transportation activity and presents data on other factors that influence transportation energy use. The purpose of this document is to present relevant statistical data in the form of tables and graphs. The latest edition of the Data Book is available via the Internet (tedb.ornl.gov).This edition of the Data Book has 13 chapters which focus on various aspects of the transportation industry. Chapter 1 focuses on petroleum; Chapter 2 – energy; Chapter 3 – highway vehicles; Chapter 4 – light vehicles; Chapter 5 – heavy vehicles; Chapter 6 – alternative fuel vehicles; Chapter 7 – transit and other shared mobility; Chapter 8 – fleet vehicles; Chapter 9 – household vehicles; Chapter 10 – nonhighway modes; Chapter 11 – transportation and the economy; Chapter 12 – greenhouse gas emissions; and Chapter 13 – criteria pollutant emissions. The sources used represent the latest available data. There are also two appendices which include detailed source information for some tables and measures of conversion. A glossary of terms is also included for the reader’s convenience.

02 PETROLEUM↗
DOE OSTI2022

Response of a Pressurized Water Reactor Dashpot Region to Commercial Drying Cycles

The purpose of this report is to document updates to the simulation of commercial vacuum drying procedures at the Nuclear Energy Work Complex at Sandia National Laboratories. Validation of the extent of water removal in a dry spent nuclear fuel storage system based on drying procedures used at nuclear power plants is needed to close existing technical gaps. Operational conditions leading to incomplete drying may have potential impacts on the fuel, cladding, and other components in the system. A general lack of data suitable for model validation of commercial nuclear canister drying processes necessitates additional, well-designed investigations of drying process efficacy and water retention. Scaled tests that incorporate relevant physics and well-controlled boundary conditions are essential to provide insight and guidance to the simulation of prototypic systems undergoing drying processes. This report documents testing updates for the Dashpot Drying Apparatus (DDA), an apparatus constructed at a reduced scale with multiple Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) fuel rod surrogates and a single guide tube dashpot. This apparatus is fashioned from a truncated 5×5 section of a prototypic 17×17 PWR fuel skeleton and includes the lowest segment of a single guide tube, often referred to as the dashpot region. The guide tube in this assembly is open and allows for insertion of a poison rod (neutron absorber) surrogate.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Joint Development of SAS4A Code in Application to Oxide-fueled LFR Severe Accident Analysis

The scope of this project was to pursue specific SAS4A liquid-metal cooled reactor (LMR) safety analysis software extensions to simulate postulated accidents with fuel failures for oxide-fueled Lead-cooled Fast Reactors (LFRs). Since most U.S. LMR experience is on sodium-cooled fast reactor options based on past testing and operation experience with EBR-II and FFTF, the DOE’s legacy fast reactor safety analysis capabilities were focused on metal-fueled pool-type concepts with sodium coolant. In recent years, Westinghouse Electric Company (WEC) has decided to pursue an LFR design as one of their next generation nuclear technology options because of its favorable safety and economics attributes. Oxide fuel is considered among other fuel options due to previous WEC experience with this fuel form. Development of this new technology requires the availability of adequately accurate computational tools, some of which can be adapted from versions of similar software used for analysis of other LMRs. Although Argonne National Laboratory’s (ANL) SAS4A/SASSYS-1 safety analysis software suite (shortened as SAS4A code hereafter for brevity) has the basic capabilities to model LFR system designs, the SAS4A code modules used in the analysis of accidents with fuel/cladding failures lack appropriate models for the unique phenomena that govern as-irradiated oxide-fuel damage mechanisms in lead coolant. Therefore, the objective of this project was to extend the capabilities of SAS4A with mechanistic oxide-fuel failure models in lead coolant for margin to failure assessments, analysis of failure modes, location and timing of failures under different accident scenarios consistent with the whole-plant dynamic response including the reactivity feedback, and assessment of the potential for fuel damage propagation due to potential fission gas jet and fuel-fragment/molten fuel impingement to neighboring fuel pins in an assembly. This report provides mainly a summary of Argonne’s technical contributions in the joint project, but the reports and publications by the Participant team are included as references at the end of the report.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Effect of neutron beamline irradiation on hydrogen equilibrium vapor pressure over hydrided Zircaloy-4

Here, the effect of neutron irradiation on the hydrogen equilibrium vapor pressure over hydrided samples of nickel-plated Zircaloy-4 was evaluated at the Washington State University Research Reactor’s epithermal beamline facility. To enable this study, a measurement capability was designed and assembled to obtain low pressure (<0.1 Pa) measurements over the temperature range of interest (i.e., ~300° - 400°C). Measurement results were in good agreement with tends extrapolated from previous data obtained at higher temperatures as well as recent thermodynamic data. No irradiation enhancement of vapor pressure was observed under the incident flux of epithermal neutrons over this temperature range.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Bioinspired Design of Dissipative Self-Assembly of Active Materials (Final Technical Report)

The major objective of this DOE-funded research program was to establish general, experimentally validated design principles for dissipative, out-of-equilibrium self-assembly of synthetic active materials. In living systems, structures such as actin filaments and microtubules are maintained far from thermodynamic equilibrium through continuous energy consumption. This persistent nonequilibrium operation enables functions including adaptability, self-healing, directed motion, and force generation—properties that are largely absent in traditional equilibrium soft materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

A preconceptual design of an inverted Stable-Salt Reactor

This paper presents a preconceptual design of an inverted stable-salt reactor (SSR), with the unique feature that the static fuel salt is accommodated in one single bulk fuel container, while the coolant salt is circulating through the core via flow tubes penetrating the fuel container.The inverted SSR is expected to substantially decrease the capital cost compared to the state-of-the-art SSR such as the SSR-W designed by Moltex Energy, because one single gas vent at the top of the fuel container is required in the inverted SSR to prevent the leakage of the radioactive fission product gases instead of one gas vent in each of the hundreds of thousands of fuel tubes in SSR-W. In addition, the operation of the inverted SSR is largely simplified. However, numerous challenges associated with the design of the inverted SSR still remain to be overcome. Preliminary neutronics and thermal-hydraulics performance characteristics of the inverted SSR are assessed in this study. A viable core configuration of the inverted SSR is identified, and the superior characteristics of the inverted SSR, including a better neutron economy and a lower maximum fuel temperature, are demonstrated in this paper. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Automation of Solid Oxyde Electrolyzer Cell (SOEC) & Stack Assembly

The work performed under this agreement before the No/Go decision amounted to the following: 1. Preliminary manufacturing requirements defined by business sensitivity, baseline processes & risk assessment; 2. Process & materials development, in-line gauge exploration, and preliminary automation work used to reduce risk & further refine equipment specifications; 3. “Request for Quote” issued to multiple suppliers for major equipment; 4. Application specific equipment, hardware, and fixturing will be more beneficial to fabricate inhouse; 5.Current proposals & estimates meet cycle time, capital spend, & direct labor; space is on target but requires awareness; 6. Team will continue to explore opportunities to reduce risk (dry time, traceability); 7. Go / No-Go, Purchase Orders, Equipment build & commissioning next All other future task were not completed because during the Go /No-Go decision it was confirmed this project was a "No-Go" and did not proceed past BP1; these included the following: 1. Preliminary manufacturing requirements defined by business sensitivity, baseline processes & risk assessment; 2. Process & materials development, in-line gauge exploration, and preliminary automation work used to reduce risk & further refine equipment specifications; 3. “Request for Quote” issued to multiple suppliers for major equipment; 4. Application specific equipment, hardware, and fixturing will be more beneficial to fabricate inhouse; 5. Current proposals & estimates meet cycle time, capital spend, & direct labor; space is on target but requires awareness; 6. Team will continue to explore opportunities to reduce risk (dry time, traceability) In final preparation of the termination of the Automation of Solid Oxyde Electrolyzer Cell (SOEC) & Stack Assembly, Cummins has purchased no equipment with government funds, and there is no government-owned property in Cummins possession related to this project. Minimal labor and travel were completed and paid. This acts as the Final technical report and concludes our business with DOE on this grant.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Flow Sensor Test Article (F-STAr) (Design and Fabrication Status Report)

The Flow Sensor Test Article (F-STAr) is a test article currently under construction for the Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop (METL). F-STAr was designed to provide high sodium flowrate capabilities for sensor calibration, component testing, and fluid studies. Figure 1 shows two solid model views of the new test article. F-STAr includes a high-capacity pump that can provide a nominal flowrate of 120 GPM; a test section support structure that can accommodate a wide array of sub-test articles and their instrumentation; and finally, a heating and cooling system to aid in controlling the testing environment. Initially, F-STAr will be configured to test liquid metal flow sensors, specifically field shift sensors like the Eddy Current Flow Sensors (ECFS) based on the RDT C4-7T standard. To test these sensors, two test sections were designed that attempt to model Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) outlet conditions. Figure 2 shows models of the “Full-Scaled Test Section” (FSTS) that represents a generic SFR fuel handling socket and a “Pseudo-Scaled Test Section” (PSTS) that represents a generic array of scaled fuel handling sockets. While F-STAr will be configured to test ECFS’s, it can also be outfitted to meet other experimental needs. For example, F-STAr could be setup with a test section that includes a fluidic diode or a component test investigating the performance of hydrodynamic bearings. Other test sections include studies of sodium thermal hydraulics like thermal striping. Overall, F-STAr is a flexible test article designed to accommodate many needs. This report will provide a status update on the design and construction of F-STAr. Manufacturing of all components has commenced, and several components have already been completed. These components include the pump and test section assembly stand. Other components, such as the heater, have been completed but were rejected due to the vendor not meeting the requirements of the purchase order. Lastly, the submersible flowmeter and main flange components are under construction, and their status will be reviewed in this report. Overall, most of the F-STAr components and parts will be completed by the end of September 2022.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

A User’s Guide to the PLTEMP/ANL Code

PLTEMP/ANL V4.4 is a program that obtains a steady-state flow and temperature solution, in geometrical extent, for a nuclear reactor core, or a single fuel assembly, including the effect of manufacturing and modelling uncertainties by the means of hot channel factors. It is based on an evolutionary sequence of codes originally used for calculating plate temperatures, hence “PLTEMP”, developed at Argonne National Laboratory over the past 30 years. Fueled and non-fueled regions are modeled. Each fuel assembly consists of one or more plates or tubes separated by coolant channels. The fuel plates may have one to five layers of different materials, each with heat generation. The width of a fuel plate may be divided into multiple longitudinal stripes, each with its own axial power shape. Depending upon the heat transfer method selected, the temperature solution is effectively 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional. The geometry may be either slab or radial, corresponding to fuel assemblies made of a series of flat (or slightly curved) plates, or of nested tubes. A variety of thermal-hydraulic correlations are available to determine safety margins such as onset of nucleate boiling ratio (ONBR), departure from nucleate boiling ratio (DNBR), and onset of flow instability ratio (OFIR). Coolant properties for either light or heavy water are obtained from FORTRAN functions rather than from tables. The code is intended for thermal-hydraulic analysis of research reactor performance in the sub-cooled boiling regime. Both turbulent and laminar flow regimes can be modeled. Options to calculate both forced flow and natural circulation are available. A general search capability for select design and safety parameters is available to greatly reduce the reactor analyst’s time.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Development of a field-deployable qPCR assay for real-time pest monitoring in algal cultivation systems

Outdoor cultivation is commonly used to produce algal biomass for a variety of bioproducts including food, feed, fuel, pharmaceuticals, and nutraceuticals. Outdoor cultivation ponds are highly susceptible to pest pressures that may lead to periods of low productivity or even entire loss of the algal crop. Consequently, there is a need for rapid, real-time tracking of pests for early intervention to mitigate crop loss. In this work, we describe the development of a field deployable, low-cost qPCR assay for detecting both known and novel pests of a farmed eukaryotic alga species, Nannochloropsis sp. We performed a proximity guided metagenome deconvolution approach (ProxiMeta™) to discover novel pests that temporally correspond to periods of reduced pond productivity. This approach provided high-quality metagenome assemblies that were used to design qPCR probes to detect specific pests of interest. The portable qPCR assay, designed to be deployed at remote field locations, enables low-cost surveillance with a rapid (2 h) turn-around time. Frequent sampling allows for early detection and prompts intervention strategies to remedy infected ponds to minimize crop loss. The qPCR assay was used to successfully detect a known predatory bacterium within the order Bdellovibrionales both in the lab and at a remote field location. Furthermore, we assembled the genome of two novel, site-specific pests in the Saprospiraceae family and successfully designed qPCR probes that differentially detected their presence in two different pond locations. Ultimately, this assay has the potential to monitor multiple pests simultaneously and tailor targets to match likely pest infections that differ across geographical locations, helping to mitigate crop loss on a large scale.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Multigene engineering in plants: Technologies, applications, and future prospects

The emerging bioeconomy presents a promising solution to both economic and environmental challenges. Within the bioeconomy, plants serve as a renewable, sustainable, and cost-effective source of foods, fuels, chemicals, and materials. However, traditional breeding and single-gene engineering approaches fall short in addressing complex traits (e.g., drought tolerance, disease resistance, yield, nutrient use efficiency) which are controlled by multiple genes. The complexity of plant biology often necessitates the use of multigene engineering (MGE), which involves simultaneous ectopic expression, up/down-regulation, or editing of multiple genes, to enhance plant traits relevant to the bioeconomy. These genes may be associated with distinct traits or function as components of specific metabolic and regulatory pathways. This review summarizes current technologies for MGE within the synthetic biology-driven Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) framework, detailing its four key stages: Design – gene construct development; Build – DNA assembly and plant transformation; Test – the molecular, biochemical, and physiological characterization of engineered plants; and Learn – computational modeling to refine, multiplex and iterate the process. Despite good progress in the applications of MGE in biofortification, metabolic engineering, and stress resilience, challenges remain in construct stability, coordinated gene expression, and regulatory predictability. We identified optimization paths and future directions to accelerate MGE deployment in sustainable agriculture, with possible societal benefits including reduced production costs, increased yield, and improved food and nutritional security.

AI-aided plant engineering↗
DOE OSTI2024

Electrochemically driven carbon dioxide separation

This project explored the viability of a Ni(OH) 2 based hydroxide exchange membrane carbon capture (HEMCC) device for direct air capture. It is built off an H 2 fuel cell based HEMCC previously developed in the Yushan Yan group at University of Delaware. Taking the same membrane-based, electrochemically driven pH gradient concept, similar flux performance was able to be seen in the Ni(OH) 2 system as the H 2 system when using comparable current densities. The project produced two types of membrane electrode assemblies (MEA). The first was a traditional MEA with two electrodes and a membrane, the second was a flow-through membrane MEA. Consistent performance was achieved with the traditional MEA with an energy cost of 1.1 MWh∙ton -1 and flux of 82 kg∙m -2 ∙yr -1 . This was the most stable of the two designs. This project investigated strategies to improve performance with a flow-through membrane design. Two designs were made, one with a cast phase inversion membrane, and one with powdered membrane layer. The template phase inversion membrane achieved low pressure drop but had performance limitations due to a skin layer of membrane limiting CO 2 gas transport. The powdered membrane layer had better performance but higher pressure drop. Finally, using the powdered membrane, commercial battery materials were able to be used in order to achieve higher flux. This showed that the flow through membrane design does have the capability to overcome flux inefficiencies in the traditional MEA. Moreover, the process design of the system is proposed and given in this project. The process mass and energy balances were calculated for a reference plant of 1000 t/yr CO 2 capture, which contains several subsystems, e.g. air processing subsystem, electrical subsystem, and CO 2 purification and compression subsystem is designed and evaluated. Based on our calculation, When the power consumption for stack is 1 MWh t -1 CO 2 , Additional 382 kWh t -1 CO 2 will be consumed by other subsystem of the plant, i.e. The total power consumption of 1.38 MWh t -1 CO 2 , lower than the final milestone of 1.5 MWh t -1 CO 2 in this project.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

A Code-Agnostic Driver Application for Coupled Neutronics and Thermal-Hydraulic Simulations

While the literature has numerous examples of Monte Carlo and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) coupling, most are hard-wired codes intended primarily for research rather than as standalone, general-purpose applications. In this work, we describe an open source application, ENRICO, that enables coupled neutronic and thermal-hydraulic simulations between multiple codes that can be chosen at runtime (as opposed to a coupling between two specific codes). The application has been designed such that the control flow logic, domain mapping, nonlinear fixed-point iteration, solution transfers, and convergence checks are all agnostic to the underlying physics solvers used. Special emphasis has also been placed on enabling efficient execution on distributed-memory computing environments. The transfer of solution fields between solvers is performed in memory rather than through filesystem I/O. Additionally, solvers can be configured to run on overlapping or disjoint sets of processes. To date, coupling with the OpenMC and Shift Monte Carlo codes, the Nek5000 CFD code, and a simplified heat diffusion and subchannel solver has been implemented in ENRICO. We present results for coupled simulations of a single light-water reactor fuel assembly based on the NuScale reactor using various combinations of the physics solvers. For this problem, the coupled simulations are shown to converge in about four Picard iterations. A comparison of the heat source and temperature distributions computed by ENRICO using OpenMC coupled with Nek5000 and Shift coupled with Nek5000 illustrates remarkable agreement between the codes.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

New Developments and Verification of the Fusion Blanket Simulation Capabilities in the MOOSE Framework

This poster contains new developments and updates in the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) framework related to fusion modeling and simulation, and forms the basis for an on-going effort in modeling whole fusion devices at Idaho National Laboratory using MOOSE. In this work, a slice of the midplane of a proposed ceramic breeder blanket design for the Fusion Nuclear Science Facility is simulated using a combination of neutronics, 1D system level thermal hydraulics for helium, 3D heat conduction, and tritium transport. Previous work focused on the engineering scale full assembly of a blanket sector, but the simulations here form the basis for software quality and verification efforts to increase confidence as the large scale simulations continue. This poster was presented at the Idaho National Laboratory Intern Poster Session 2023.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Lilith: An Enduring Plutonium Critical Assembly [Slides]

A design of an enduring Pu critical assembly has been produced. This is very important to DOE/NNSA missions. This assembly would result in advances/improvements in nuclear data validation, analytical methods validation, dosimetry, reactor kinetics, materials, and more.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Benchmarking FFTF LOFWOS Test# 13 using SAM code: Baseline model development and uncertainty quantification

The development and deployment of advanced reactors, such as the sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR), relies on sophisticated modeling tools to ensure the safety of the design under various transients. The predictive capability of these advanced modeling tools requires validation to garner trust in supporting the licensing of the advanced reactors. For this reason, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) initiated a coordinated research project (CRP) in 2018 for the analysis of the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) Loss of Flow Without Scram (LOFWOS) Test #13.In this study, we present and discuss the benchmarking efforts of the modern system code SAM on the FFTF LOFWOS Test #13. Further, the SAM baseline model was developed according to the benchmark specification, which included a detailed core model with reactivity feedback. Generally, good agreement was observed between the baseline results and benchmark measurements; however, discrepancies persisted, particularly in predicted fuel assembly coolant outlet temperatures. Utilizing the baseline model, uncertainty quantification (UQ) and sensitivity analysis (SA) were conducted with the assistance of various statistical learning and machine learning methods, including kernel density estimation, Gaussian processes, and Sobol indices. Following the baseline model prediction and UQ and SA results, we discuss the reasons for the simulation discrepancies and propose further improvements to the model. This benchmarking effort adheres to the best-estimate plus uncertainty approach and can serve as a valuable example for supporting risk-informed licensing of advanced reactors.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗