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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 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Yttrium Contenting Compositionally Complex Medium-Entropy Li-Garnet Electrolyte with Improved Ionic Conductivity

The compositionally complex medium/high-entropy design concept can greatly expand the categories and affect the properties of the materials. With such a designing concept, a medium-entropy Li-garnet electrolyte with appropriate yttrium content (formula Li 6.6 La 3 ZrNb 0.3 Ta 0.3 Hf 0.3 Y 0.1 O 12 ) shows a record-high ionic conductivity of ∼5.7 × 10 –4 S/cm, the highest reported for any single-site substituted high/medium-entropy Li-garnet. The assembled Li metal symmetric cells also show stable long-term cycling (0.1 mA/cm 2 for over 200 h). Neutron powder diffraction and Rietveld refinement results indicate that a competing conduction mechanism between (1) occupancy on high mobility of 96h sites and (2) the associated site vacancies and the bond length requires an appropriate content of Y for enhanced ionic conductivity. Li-ion hopping through the bottleneck can also contribute to the conductivity. Finally, density functional theory and Born–Oppenheimer molecular dynamics simulations also indicate the high mobility and number of hopping transitions of Li ions, contributing to the high ionic conductivity.

Li-garnet↗
DOE OSTI2026

Physics basis for the reference flat-top plasma scenario in the ST–E1 fusion power plant

As part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Milestone-Based Fusion Energy Development Program, Tokamak Energy has completed the pre-concept design of the ST–E1 fusion power plant. ST–E1 is envisaged to operate in two phases: a pilot plant phase, targeting sustained net power production of 300 - 500 MWe for a duration >1 hr, followed by a commercial power plant phase targeting steady-state operations and a normalised overnight capital cost of ⩽12 000 $\$$/kWe. The design process adopted was highly iterative, integrating all major plant systems and progressing in a phased fidelity approach. At the pre-conceptual stage, the emphasis has been on exploring the design space, identifying the main system-level trade-offs, and making the key decisions that define the overall plant concept, rather than optimising a single operating point. This paper, part of a focused collection detailing the ST–E1 pre-concept design, addresses the development of a series of reference flat-top plasma operating points for the pilot plant phase. A modelling workflow was established to develop and assess candidate plasma design points and explore key dependencies. The workflow includes integrated core plasma modelling, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability assessment, equilibrium generation, scrape-off-layer and exhaust modelling, heating & current drive design and optimisation, and turbulent transport modelling. Using this framework, the impact of several key parameters on the flat-top operating space was investigated, including the density limit, core radiation fraction and divertor power loading, level of external heating and curent drive power and assumed pedestal characteristics. The MHD stability, controllability and micro-stability characteristics of these plasmas were also analysed. These investigations informed the definition of a set of fully non-inductive, flat-top reference operating points that satisfy the high-level ST–E1 mission, including a low and high density case, a case that is stable to resistive wall modes and a case with reduced divertor power loading.

ST–E1↗
DOE OSTI2021

Technology Development for Modular, Low-Cost, High-Temperature Recuperators for Supercritical CO 2 Power Cycles (Final Report)

The program’s focus was to evaluate, advance, and demonstrate recuperator design concepts, materials, and fabrication methods that facilitate the commercial availability of compact and low-cost recuperators. Emphasis was placed on recompression closed Brayton cycles having a turbine inlet temperature exceeding 700°C and differential pressures on the order of 200 bar and were scalable to accommodate plant sizes from 10 to 1,000 MWe. The primary objectives of the first budget period, which included conceptual design, preliminary development, and prototype fabrication and testing, were accomplished. A new recuperator design concept, stacked-sheet heat exchanger (SSHX), was realized during the project. The design was taken from paper to hardware and successfully tested. The SSHX prototype recuperator met or exceeded program thermal, hydraulic and performance/cost metrics goals. The first budget period was extended to retire risk in scaling the recuperator from the kWt to MWt thermal capacity scale. The fabrication and design requirements for the budget period one extension were met. Delays associated with the Covid-19 pandemic prevented the fabrication and testing of the industrial scale prototype.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Pore space partition of metal-organic frameworks for gas storage and separation

Pore space partition (PSP) concept is a synthetic design concept and can also serve as a structure analysis method useful for next-step synthetic planning and execution. PSP provides an integrated chemistry-topology-focused tool to design new materials platforms. While PSP is no less effective for making large-pore materials, the growing importance of small-molecule gas storage and separation for green-energy applications provides impetus for developing small-pore materials for which the PSP strategy is uniquely suited. Currently, the best embodiment of the PSP concept is the partitioned-acs (pacs) platform in which both fine or coarse adjustments to the building blocks have sparked a transformation of a prototype framework into a huge and continuously expanding family of chemically robust materials with controllable pore metrics and functionalities suitable for tailored applications. The pacs compositional diversity results from the platform’s intrinsic multi-module nature, geometric flexibility and tolerance towards individual module variations, and mutual structure-directing effects among various modules, all of which combine to enable the molecular-level uniform co-assemblies of chemical components rarely seen together elsewhere. Here, in this contribution, we present an overview of different pore space engineering methods and how different MOF materials have contributed to important advances in chemical stability, industrial gas storage and gas separation. In particular, we will focus on synthetic assembly of the pacs system, highlighting the differences of pacs materials from other MOF platforms and advantages of pacs materials in enhancing various MOF properties.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

High Temperature, High AN2 Last Stage Blade for 65% Efficiency (Phase I Final Report)

GE Power (GEP), in partnership with GE Global Research (GEGR)(GEP and GEGR are divisions of General Electric Company) have hot and large Last Stage Blade (LSB) technologies necessary for state-of-the art gas turbines to successfully realize ~3100°F turbine inlet temperatures (TIT), an essential element to reaching the DOE goal of 65% combined cycle efficiency (CCeff). The objective of this project was to develop conceptual LSB designs and advance the technological understanding of synchronous vibrations (SV), nonsynchronous vibrations (NSV), and damping that limit the current state-of-the-art LSB designs and applications. In the Phase I project GE Power leveraged existing design and analysis knowledge and techniques for LSB design and performed extensive analytical evaluations to identify and characterize conceptual design concepts. The most promising designs are the basis for development and testing in a potential Phase II project.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Design Initiative for a 10 TeV pCM Wakefield Collider

This document outlines a community-driven Design Study for a 10 TeV pCM Wakefield Accelerator Collider. The 2020 ESPP Report emphasized the need for Advanced Accelerator R&D, and the 2023 P5 Report calls for the ``delivery of an end-to-end design concept, including cost scales, with self-consistent parameters throughout." This Design Study leverages recent experimental and theoretical progress resulting from a global R&D program in order to deliver a unified, 10 TeV Wakefield Collider concept. Wakefield Accelerators provide ultra-high accelerating gradients which enables an upgrade path that will extend the reach of Linear Colliders beyond the electroweak scale. Here, we describe the organization of the Design Study including timeline and deliverables, and we detail the requirements and challenges on the path to a 10 TeV Wakefield Collider.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Safeguards by Design Projects (FY2020 Final Report)

This University Engagement project challenged engineering students at universities, that do not have Bachelor degrees in nuclear engineering but do have research reactors and some nuclear engineering coursework, to incorporate Safeguards by Design concepts into their Senior Capstone Design Project. This University Engagement project was part of the U. S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, Office of International Nuclear Safeguards, Next Generation Safeguards Initiative, Human Capital Development: University Engagement Program. This program exposed university students with Mechanical Engineering majors and Nuclear Engineering minors to the concepts of international nuclear safeguards. FY20, three teams at the University of Rhode Island and one team at the University of Texas - Austin participated in researching, designing, building, and testing projects to support international nuclear safeguards measurements or verification. The projects involved engaging in activities at the university’s research reactors. All the projects engaged students with prototyping a design and/or tool for application at the Universities’ reactor. At the end of the course, most of the students expressed the experience was a positive and they learned more about international nuclear safeguards and applying requirements than they had previously encountered. This school year the projects were further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Both universities cancelled in class room classes, and limited direct student/professor interactions. Furthermore, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) greatly restricted travel, therefore making it impossible to visit the students at the end of the semester for the review of their design projects. The final design and review meeting for the projects happened via the internet. Additionally, while the teams planned to build prototypes this did not happen since there was a social distancing ban on students meeting in person.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Safeguards by Design Projects (Final Report-FY-22)

This University Engagement project challenged engineering students at universities, that do not have Bachelor degree programs in nuclear engineering but do have research reactors and some nuclear engineering coursework, to incorporate Safeguards by Design concepts into their Senior Capstone Design Project. This University Engagement project was part of the U. S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, Office of International Nuclear Safeguards, Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI), Human Capital Development (HCD): University Engagement Program. This program exposed university students with Mechanical Engineering majors and Nuclear Engineering minors to the concepts of international nuclear safeguards. In FY22, three teams at the University of Rhode Island and two teams at the University of Texas - Austin participated in researching, designing, building, and testing projects to support international nuclear safeguards measurements or verification. The projects involved engaging in activities at the university’s research reactors. All the projects engaged students with prototyping a design and/or tool for application at the Universities’ reactor. At the end of the course, most of the students expressed the experience was positive and they learned more about international nuclear safeguards and applying requirements than they had previously encountered. This school year the projects were further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Both universities had limited in classes on campus, still relying on Zoom classes, and limited direct student/professor interactions. Furthermore, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) greatly restricted travel, therefore making it impossible to visit the students at the end of the semester for the review of their design projects. The final design and review meeting for the projects happened via meetings over the internet. Additionally, the teams did build and test some prototypes but could only do so in a limited capacity.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Safeguards by Design Projects (Final Report FY2021)

This University Engagement project challenged engineering students at universities, that do not have Bachelor degrees in nuclear engineering but do have research reactors and some nuclear engineering coursework, to incorporate Safeguards by Design concepts into their Senior Capstone Design Project. This University Engagement project was part of the U. S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, Office of International Nuclear Safeguards, Next Generation Safeguards Initiative, Human Capital Development: University Engagement Program. This program exposed university students with Mechanical Engineering majors and Nuclear Engineering minors to the concepts of international nuclear safeguards.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Design and Commission of Solid State Switch Driver in SLAC Subbooster Modulator

The LINAC sub-booster modulator is a pulsed power supply to provide a 30kV pulse to drive a klystron in SLAC LINAC. It has utilized vacuum tetrode as pulse switch for more than 60 years. With the vacuum tetrode availability becoming less and its cost surging, a natural choice is to use solid state switch in this pulsed power modulator. To commission solid state switch in LINAC sub-booster modulator, a driver board is designed to drive a BEHLKE HTS-LC2 series MOSFET based switches. The design concept and some concerns in design will be presented. The driver board is universal for all HTS-LC2 series switches because they share the same driver signals and connections. After the driver is commissioned, two AI systems are introduced to design one core part of the driver, the results are presented here. During the commission of the driver board in the LINAC sub-booster modulators, some problems happened and were addressed.

AI Circuit Design↗
DOE OSTI2023

Understanding the Uncertainty in the Technical Performance Level Assessment for Wave Energy

In recent years, the design and development of wave energy converters (WECs) has been explored with intense interest, with highly varying design concepts emerging globally across both research enterprises and industry. The design space for WECs is vast - many concepts ranging in functionality, control systems, power development systems, materials, and scale have been ideated and prototyped, but WEC technology has yet to converge. One critical element of the technology trajectory that governs the speed of adoption is the performance of a WEC concept. In analogous but more-established industries (such as aerospace, and environmentally sustainable electronics design), performance assessment is a quantitative method, based on historical data, that is used as an iterative tool to improve the design of these systems early on in the design process. Though more nascent than these approaches, in wave energy R&D, WEC performance has been assessed using the Technology Performance Level (TPL) assessment, which provides designers with a quantitative score, situating a grid-scale WEC concept on a scale from 1-9 (1 being the lowest performance, and 9 being the highest, trending with the oft-used Technology Readiness Level, or TRL). The TPL assessment is designed to be used during design iteration, when a WEC concept is fully ideated, to enable designers to consider potential means of improving the downstream performance of the concept. One concern that may be slowing the adoption of TPL among WEC developers is the inherent uncertainty in the assessment, and how uncertainty in the individual questions asked as part of the assessment may contribute to perceived inaccuracies in the final score. In this work, we explore the uncertainty present in the assessment and quantify this uncertainty using both traditional mathematical operations and a Monte Carlo simulation. Results imply areas of improvement of the TPL assessment, where reducing uncertainty will be most helpful to end users, enabling both TPL practitioners and users to understand with more accuracy those design elements that can be improved to impact device performance most substantively.

techno-economic analysis↗
DOE OSTI2025

Cyber-Informed Engineering Briefing for ABET

Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) is an emerging method to integrate cybersecurity considerations into the conception, design, development, and operation of any physical system, energy or otherwise, to mitigate or even eliminate avenues for cyber-enabled attacks.?CIE concepts use design decisions and engineering controls to prioritize defense against the worst possible consequences of cyberattacks facing critical infrastructure systems and asset owners. These slides offer a deep dive into Cyber-Informed Engineering for engineering educators.

42 - ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

GAMBL – A dual-cooled fusion blanket using SiC-based structures

We describe a novel fusion reactor blanket concept called GAMBL – GA Modular BLanket. This design concept exploits the advantages of SiC-based structures while minimizing their limitations. Material microstructures are tailored for different functions throughout the first wall and blanket, including the use of graded W/SiC composites to enhance heat transfer capabilities and resist erosion at the plasma-facing surface. The design contains a decoupled first wall and breeding blanket, which we show can provide adequate tritium breeding. By decoupling the breeding part of the blanket, we can operate at very low PbLi breeder pressure and support gravity loads in simple, radiatively-cooled structural beams that do not contain coolant. First wall performance capabilities are enhanced by eliminating constraints imposed by the deep blanket. We have performed initial fluid, thermal, mechanical and neutronics analysis of this concept to show its capabilities to meet the design requirements. R&D needs are mostly related to materials development. Except for unique manufacturing needs, no new facilities are required beyond existing or planned facilities for the US base program on steel-based DCLL blankets.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Investigation of neutron noise in a micro-scale, natural circulation molten salt fission battery system

The Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) concept is a rapidly evolving Generation IV design that has recently attracted favorable attention due to the potential for reducing waste generation, realizing passive safety features, and seizing on the opportunity for cost effective economics. A specific novel micro-MSR, natural circulation, battery design concept involves placing all primary components within a single reactor vessel containment without the need of primary forced pumping. This small modular, integral design presents potential cost savings while producing safety, reliable, and transportable carbon-free power for decades. This investigation evaluates the neutron noise induced by density and flow fluctuations in a natural circulation MSR battery concept being developed at the University of Idaho. This study finds numerical solutions to the one-dimensional, one-group, coupled diffusion equations for a bare, homogeneous core, and evaluates neutron flux and delayed neutron precursor concentration noise due to core flow and fuel salt density perturbation sources. Noise analysis shows both point kinetic and space-dependent behavior is present despite the small size, low-flow, closely-coupled nature of the natural circulation MSR concept. Analysis shows that the low flow of the convective system results in noise behavior typically representative of a larger forced-circulation MSR system. Finally, noise techniques may also be useful in MSR core diagnostics as a non-invasive, low-cost radiological option to traditional monitoring schemes.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Extending the Operating Envelope for an Extremely Low NOx Axial Stage Combustion System

The overall goal of this program is to develop a low NOx combustion system which enables a gas turbine combined cycle efficiency of > 65%. The proposed combustion system is a combination of three advanced technologies under development by the Recipient: advanced transition design, the Distributed Combustion System (DCS), and advanced head end. Of note is that the DCS and advanced transition were initially developed with DOE funding under previous Cooperative Agreements. The continued development of these designs has resulted in a proof of concept design which was successfully tested in the Recipient’s state-of-the-art high-pressure rig. The initial rig testing indicated a substantial benefit with respect to high firing temperature operation as well as low NOx operation for the advanced transition and the DCS. Even lower NOx and higher firing temperatures are possible with the addition of the advanced head end to the design. Potential hurdles to the combustion design have been identified, such as high pressure drop and acoustics. The goal of this program is to develop variations of this design which address these hurdles and create an optimized design for implementation into the Recipient’s new high efficiency gas turbine engine.

03 NATURAL GAS↗