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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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DOE OSTI2021

Grid Value Investigation of Medium-Voltage Back-to-Back Converters: Preprint

This paper presents the work which investigates the value that the medium voltage back to back (MVB2B) converter can bring to the grid, through two potential applications: voltage regulation powered by the reactive power adjustment function, and the distributed energy resource (DER) adoption enhancement powered by the quantitative power transfer function. Two groups of distribution systems have been prepared for the value investigation, including IEEE 123-bus system for voltage regulation study and two utility provided realistic distribution systems for DER adoption enhancement study. The analysis results have demonstrated that the MVB2B converter can bring significant value to the grid through the two aforementioned applications. Particularly, with MVB2B converter transferring power between two feeders, a substantial amount of backfeeding solar power can be avoided, and the size of the energy storage which is used to store the extra solar power can be significantly reduced.

28 EE - Advanced Manufacturing Office (EE-5A)↗

DOE OSTI2025

REIMAGINING HEAT EXCHANGERS FOR NEXT GENERATION ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS

Air-to-refrigerant heat exchangers (HXs) are essential components in space conditioning, refrigeration, and power systems, and recent efforts have focused on making these devices more compact, reducing refrigerant charge and lowering manufacturing costs. Historically, HX innovation has been limited by available computational resources, design tools, and manufacturing constraints. The best available technologies utilize tube-fin and micro- or macro-channel tubes with fins, which are not necessarily the optimal designs achievable with current technology. In this paper, we highlight the latest advancements in air-to-refrigerant HXs, specifically emphasizing innovations achieved through shape and topology optimization. A multi-scale design optimization approach is introduced, alongside similar methods in literature, which enable highly sophisticated shape-optimized tube designs with more than 50% reduction in size and 25% reduction in refrigerant charge, essential for A3 refrigerant charge limit compliance. The frameworks integrate traditional heat and mass transfer science with state-of-the-art machine learning, genetic algorithms, and adjoint algorithms to create novel designs. While many of these innovative designs may not be manufacturable using conventional methods, they allow us explore the boundaries of what is possible. These novel air-to-refrigerant HXs are key enablers for ultra-low-refrigerant charge heat pump and refrigeration systems.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2026

Spinel high-entropy oxides (FeNiCrMnZnX) 3 O 4 (X = Al, mg) as anode materials for high-performance lithium-ion batteries

To address the high cost, cobalt dependency, and resource constraints typical of conventional high-entropy oxide (HEO) anodes, this study reports the successful synthesis of two Co-free, six-component spinel-type HEOs(FeNiCrMnZnAl) 3 O 4 (HEO-Al) and (FeNiCrMnZnMg) 3 O 4 (HEO-Mg), via a sol-gel method. The distinct effects of Al 3+ and Mg 2+ incorporation on the electrochemical performance and lithium storage kinetics were systematically investigated. XRD, Raman, and TEM characterizations confirm that both materials possess a pure spinel phase, uniform particle size, and homogeneous elemental distribution. Notably, electrochemical evaluations reveal that HEO-Al delivers a superior reversible capacity of 480.7 mAh g −1 after 100 cycles at 0.1 A g −1 , and maintains 354.5 mAh g −1 after 1000 long-term cycles at 1 A g −1 , significantly outperforming HEO-Mg. Kinetic analysis indicates that HEO-Al exhibits lower charge transfer resistance, a higher Li + diffusion coefficient, and a pseudocapacitive contribution of up to 82%. Furthermore, these findings demonstrate that Al substitution effectively optimizes the structural stability and lithium storage kinetics of Co-free HEOs, providing a viable strategy for designing low-cost, highly stable HEO anode systems.

Anode materials↗

DOE OSTI2020

MARBLE: A Multi-GPU Aware Job Scheduler for Deep Learning on HPC Systems

Deep learning (DL) has become a key tool for solving complex scientific problems. However, managing the multi-dimensional large-scale data associated with DL, especially atop extant multiple graphics processing units (GPUs) in modern supercomputers poses significant challenges. Moreover, the latest high-performance computing (HPC) architectures bring different performance trends in training throughput compared to the existing studies. Existing DL optimizations such as larger batch size and GPU locality-aware scheduling have little effect on improving DL training throughput performance due to fast CPU-to-GPU connections. Additionally, DL training on multiple GPUs scales sublinearly. Thus, simply adding more GPUs to a system is ineffective. To this end, we design MARBLE, a first-of-its-kind job scheduler, which considers the non-linear scalability of GPUs at the intra-node level to schedule an appropriate number of GPUs per node for a job. By sharing the GPU resources on a node with multiple DL jobs, MARBLE avoids low GPU utilization in current multi-GPU DL training on HPC systems. Our comprehensive evaluation in the Summit supercomputer shows that MARBLE is able to improve DL training performance by up to 48.3% compared to the popular Platform Load Sharing Facility (LSF) scheduler. Compared to the state-of-the-art of DL scheduler, Optimus, MARBLE reduces the job completion time by up to 47%.

Han, Jingoo↗

DOE OSTI2021

Architected mesoporous crystalline magnesium silicates with ordered pore structures

Novel approaches to harness earth abundant silicates as building blocks for carbon dioxide removal, capture, utilization, and storage are gaining increasing attention in the context of sustainable and low carbon energy and resource recovery. Advancing a calibrated understanding of these fluid-silicate interactions is essential for developing scalable processes. One of the challenges in developing predictive controls over these interactions is the compositional and morphological heterogeneity of naturally occurring, heterogeneous magnesium silicate minerals. To address this challenge, the synthesis of architected mesoporous crystalline magnesium silicate (Mg 2 SiO 4 ) is proposed. While synthesis routes for producing amorphous mesoporous magnesium silicates have been developed via sol-gel methods, approaches to synthesize crystalline magnesium silicates with well-controlled pore size distributions have not been explored. The conventional approaches of converting matter that is amorphous to crystalline states at elevated temperatures results in a heterogeneous pore size distribution. To develop controls on pore size distribution, amorphous mesoporous magnesium silicates are coated with carbon. This approach preserves the pore size distributions during the amorphous to crystalline transformations of Mg-silicates at elevated temperatures. The carbon coating is removed on heating. Magnesium silicate particles produced using this approach have highly ordered pores around 2.58 nm and a specific surface area of 124.25 m 2 /g. In this study, we report the chemical compositions, morphologies, phase transitions, and pore structures of the intermediate materials produced during the synthesis of crystalline mesoporous magnesium silicates. The transitions, and pore structures of the intermediate materials produced during the synthesis of crystalline mesoporous magnesium silicates. Furthermore, the synthesis routes discussed in this study can be applied translationally to produce metal silicates with ordered mesoporous structures.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2022

Characterization of Nb films for superconducting qubits using phase boundary measurements

Continued advances in superconducting qubit performance require more detailed understandings of the many sources of decoherence. Within these devices, two-level systems arise due to defects, interfaces, and grain boundaries and are thought to be a major source of qubit decoherence at millikelvin temperatures. In addition to Al, Nb is a commonly used metallization layer in superconducting qubits. Consequently, a significant effort is required to develop and qualify processes that mitigate defects in Nb films. As the fabrication of complete superconducting qubits and their characterization at millikelvin temperatures is a time and resource intensive process, it is desirable to have measurement tools that can rapidly characterize the properties of films and evaluate different treatments. Here, we show that measurements of the variation of the superconducting critical temperature T c with an applied external magnetic field H (of the phase boundary T c – H⁠) performed with very high-resolution show features that are directly correlated with the structure of the Nb films. In combination with x-ray diffraction measurements, we show that one can even distinguish variations in the size and crystal orientation of the grains in a Nb film by small but reproducible changes in the measured superconducting phase boundary.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

DOE OSTI2022

Multiscale simulation of integrated energy system and electricity market interactions

Accelerating the deep decarbonization of the world's electric grids requires the coordination of complex energy systems and infrastructures across timescales from seconds to decades. Here, we present a new multiscale simulation framework that integrates process- and grid-centric modeling paradigms to better design, operate, and control integrated energy systems (IESs), which combine multiple technologies, in wholesale energy markets. Traditionally, IESs are analyzed with a process-centric paradigm such as levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) or annualized net revenue, ignoring important interactions with electricity markets. This framework explicitly models the complex interactions between an IES's bidding, scheduling, and control decisions and the energy market's clearing and settlement processes, while incorporating operational uncertainties. Through two case studies, we show the importance of understanding and quantifying complex resource-grid interactions. In case study 1, we demonstrate that optimized bidding from one resource shifts the profit distribution for all energy systems in the market. This result suggests new and more flexible IES technologies can disrupt the economics of all market participants, possibly leading to accelerated retirements of less flexible resources. Interestingly, the optimized bidding has little impact on grid-level aggregate statistics, such as total generation costs and renewable penetration rate. While aggregate modeling strategies may remain valid under some IES adoption scenarios for analysis focused on regional outcomes, direct comparisons of IES technologies at specific locations without considering these interactions may lead to misleading or incorrect conclusions. In case study 2, we consider the design and flexible operation of IESs that hybridize conventional generators with energy storage. Through a sensitivity analysis, we find that as the size of the storage system increases, the total number of start-ups for coal- and natural gas-based IESs reduced by 25% and 33.6%, and the total thermal generator ramping (i.e., mileage) reduced by 86.5% and 62.5%, respectively. This shows the primary benefit of storage may not be reduced operational costs (which do not change significantly) but fewer start-ups and less ramping, which may greatly simplify the design, operation, and control of carbon capture systems. The new modeling and optimization capabilities from this work enable the coupling of rigorous, dynamic process models with grid-level production cost models to quantitatively identify the nuanced interdependencies across these vast timescales that must be addressed to realize clean, safe, and secure energy production. Moreover, the proposed general multiscale simulation framework is applicable to all IES technologies and can be easily extended to consider other energy carriers (e.g., hydrogen, ammonia) and energy infrastructures (e.g., natural gas pipelines).

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2025

Voices from Rural Electric Cooperatives: A Call for a DER Integration Playbook for Rural and Agricultural Income & Savings from Renewable Energy (RAISE)

Rural-serving electric utilities (RSEUs)—including electric cooperatives, municipal systems, and small investor-owned utilities—are essential players in the evolving energy landscape. These community-focused entities are increasingly being asked to consider distributed energy resources (DERs) such as rooftop and ground-mounted solar, wind, battery storage, smart water heaters, and demand response programs (NRECA 2025; Lenhart et al. 2020). Yet the path to DER adoption is far from straightforward in the rural context. This report is based on in-depth interviews with managers of rural electric cooperatives across the United States. These conversations offer a grounded, unvarnished look at how DERs are perceived, what barriers exist, and what conditions might enable integration and adoption. While the utilities interviewed vary in geography, size, and DER experience, several clear and common themes emerged across electric cooperatives such that the report recommends the development of a DER Integration Runbook to help utilities assess readiness, define local use cases, engage stakeholders, pilot projects, and iterate, expanding over time.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2022

Mining Nontraditional Water Sources for a Distributed Hydrogen Economy

Securing decarbonized economies for energy and commodities will require abundant and widely available green H 2 . Ubiquitous wastewaters and nontraditional water sources could potentially feed water electrolyzers to produce this green hydrogen without competing with drinking water sources. Herein, we show that the energy and costs of treating nontraditional water sources such as municipal wastewater, industrial and resource extraction wastewater, and seawater are negligible with respect to those for water electrolysis. We also illustrate that the potential hydrogen energy that could be mined from these sources is vast. Based on these findings, we evaluate the implications of small-scale, distributed water electrolysis using disperse nontraditional water sources. Techno-economic analysis and life cycle analysis reveal that the significant contribution of H 2 transportation to costs and CO 2 emissions results in an optimal levelized cost of hydrogen at small- to moderate-scale water electrolyzer size. The implications of utilizing nontraditional water sources and decentralized or stranded renewable energy for distributed water electrolysis are highlighted for several hydrogen energy storage and chemical feedstock applications. Finally, we discuss challenges and opportunities for mining H 2 from nontraditional water sources to achieve resilient and sustainable economies for water and energy.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2022

Design for Carbon Conversion Product Pathways with Nuclear Power Plant Integration (PCC)

Coal is a globally abundant resource that historically has been used for power generation via combustion. As the power industry replaces coal with cleaner methods of generation, energy rich coal could be used in other chemical and fuel applications. This study presents a coal utilization option in which coal combustion is replaced with a carbon-free nuclear power plant and the coal is upgraded to valuable products for a variety of markets. Coal is prepared for conversion first by the pyrolysis process, which will optimize solid, liquid, and gaseous products based on the market size and potential product value, maximizing the monetary value of coal. This process is designed using bituminous coal from the Appalachian region as a basis to provide a pathway to preserve or transition coal-related jobs and create new jobs associated with the clean energy transition. Process modeling will be used to determine each component’s sensitivities, costs, inputs, and outputs Advanced and light-water reactors are considerations to supply the heat, steam, and electricity to the process. This paper focuses on the technical and market analysis used to determine the optimal processes and product pathways for the carbon refinery. Product pathways are on activated carbon, formic acid synthesis, and methanol synthesis for further upgrading to marketable chemical and polymer products.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

DOE OSTI2025

High-Performance Computing Based EMT Simulation: Power Grid with IBRs

Electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation of power grids with high-fidelity models of inverter-based resources (IBRs) is time-consuming and difficult to scale. The necessity for high-fidelity models of IBRs that incorporate the dynamics of individual inverters within IBRs has been showcased in recent studies. These studies focused on events with partial power reduction in each IBR during a transmission line fault in the power grid. These types of events have been documented in multiple North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) reports in the past decade. It is imperative then to find solutions to speed-up EMT simulations and scale the size of the region with IBRs studied in EMT simulations. In this paper, a combination of numerical simulation algorithms with high-performance computing techniques are employed in discretization and linear solvers employed in the proposed RE-INTEGRATE EMT simulation platform for power grid with IBRs. For ease of scalability, modular and object-oriented programming is used as these techniques are implemented. Additionally, automation software is developed to convert legacy software codes to the proposed RE-INTEGRATE EMT simulation platform. Thereafter, this platform is evaluated on multi-core central processing units (CPUs). Finally, scale-up tests are performed to showcase the scalability that is possible.

Marthi, Phani Ratna Vanamali [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000↗

DOE OSTI2022

M2CT-22IN1202096 Design for Carbon Conversion Product Pathways with Nuclear Power Plant Integration

Coal is a globally abundant resource that historically has been used for power generation via combustion. As the power industry replaces coal with cleaner methods of generation, energy-rich coal could be used in other chemical and fuel applications. This study presents a coal utilization option in which coal combustion is replaced with a carbon-free nuclear power plant and the coal is upgraded to valuable products for a variety of markets. Coal is prepared for conversion first by the pyrolysis process, which will optimize solid, liquid, and gaseous products based on the market size and potential product value, maximizing the monetary value of coal. This process is designed using bituminous coal from the Appalachian region as a basis to provide a pathway to preserve or transition coal-related jobs and create new jobs associated with the clean energy transition. Process modeling in the AspenOne Suite will be used to determine each component’s sensitivities, costs, inputs, and outputs. Dispatch modeling in the FORCE toolset will optimize the entire system and calculate the NPV for the refinery lifetime. Advanced and light-water reactors are considerations to supply the heat, steam, and electricity to the process. This paper focuses on the technical and market analysis used to determine the optimal processes and product pathways for the carbon refinery. Product pathways are on activated carbon, formic acid synthesis, and methanol synthesis for further upgrading to marketable chemical and polymer products.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

DOE OSTI2022

M2CT-22IN1202096 Design for Carbon Conversion Product Pathways with Nuclear Power Plant Integration

Coal is a globally abundant resource that historically has been used for power generation via combustion. As the power industry replaces coal with cleaner methods of generation, energy-rich coal could be used in other chemical and fuel applications. This study presents a coal utilization option in which coal combustion is replaced with a carbon-free nuclear power plant and the coal is upgraded to valuable products for a variety of markets. Coal is prepared for conversion first by the pyrolysis process, which will optimize solid, liquid, and gaseous products based on the market size and potential product value, maximizing the monetary value of coal. This process is designed using bituminous coal from the Appalachian region as a basis to provide a pathway to preserve or transition coal-related jobs and create new jobs associated with the clean energy transition. Process modeling in the AspenOne Suite will be used to determine each component’s sensitivities, costs, inputs, and outputs. Dispatch modeling in the FORCE toolset will optimize the entire system and calculate the NPV for the refinery lifetime. Advanced and light-water reactors are considerations to supply the heat, steam, and electricity to the process. This paper focuses on the technical and market analysis used to determine the optimal processes and product pathways for the carbon refinery. Product pathways are on activated carbon, formic acid synthesis, and methanol synthesis for further upgrading to marketable chemical and polymer products.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

DOE OSTI2024

The Future of Vehicle Grid Integration: Harnessing the Flexibility of EV Charging

This document lays out a shared vision for a beneficial, EV-integrated future where EVs are safely and securely connected, reliably served, and harmonized with the electric grid. It was developed as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) EVGrid Assist initiative. Stakeholder input was gathered through individual and collective conversations, including eight listening sessions with more than 100 participants representing utilities of different sizes and operating structures, manufacturers of vehicles and chargers, national associations, standards organizations, Tribes, fleet managers, consumer advocates, charging network operators, community-based organizations, utility regulators, consultants, vendors, labor, and environmental justice organizations. This document focuses on the future of electric on-road U.S. transportation, specifically the integration of light-duty vehicles (LDV) and medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MHDV) and their charging infrastructure with the electric grid. However, many of the insights here may apply to electrifying other transportation modes, as well as other distributed energy resources (DER).

EVGrid Assist initiative, EV-integrated future, el↗

DOE OSTI2024

The Future of Vehicle Grid Integration: Harnessing the Flexibility of EV Charging

EVGrid Assist initiative, EV-integrated future, el↗

DOE OSTI2023

Procedure for locating oil and gas wells in the Appalachian Basin

Locating undocumented (or poorly documented) oil and gas wells for environmental assessment is often difficult. Remnant features that confirm the presence of a well (intact casing/wellhead, well bore, etc.) are typically less than a meter in size and often are obscured from direct observation on the ground or from the air (by dense vegetation, for example). To efficiently find such features, it is useful to first systematically compile publicly available digital data at progressively smaller scales prior to embarking on field campaigns. Further, the information presented here describes the procedure developed and used by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory to locate potential oil and gas well sites for follow-up field verification and characterization. Digital data are first compiled from national and state resources such as well location/production databases, historical topographic maps, historical aerial photographs, and LiDAR data. Although each data set is likely to be incomplete or inaccurate to some extent, combining the data resources using geographic information system technology can generate potential well site targets with a higher degree of confidence, which improves the efficiency of fieldwork activities. This workflow was developed in the Appalachian Basin region, and although certain aspects may be unique, the general process would be applicable to locating undocumented wells in other regions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2026

Hydropower potential derived from streamflow extremes for Alaska, USA

Alaska is an expansive region known for its abundant natural resources, including thousands of miles of streams and rivers. These rivers represent potential opportunities for future hydropower development that could provide reliable energy supply for local communities. There is limited long-term high temporal resolution streamflow data available for the region, making data-driven estimates of potential hydropower and its variability across the state challenging. This study provides a novel data-driven approach for hydropower capacity estimation across Alaska. We use supervised machine learning to develop a relationship between the daily and peak flow duration curves in order to augment the size of our dataset from 44 sites to 67 sites. We perform a stochastic hydropower estimation across the 67 sites and identify approximately 1000 MW of total potential hydropower capacity distributed across these sites. Our study provides the first step towards more comprehensive hydropower estimation for this critical region, highlighting the need for future work integrating high-resolution spatial data, community needs, and economic constraints in estimates of potential hydropower development in Alaska.

Hydropower↗

DOE OSTI2022

Structural complexity and primary production resistance are coupled in a temperate forest

The capacity of forests to resist structural change and retain material legacies–the biotic and abiotic resources that persist through disturbance–is crucial to sustaining ecosystem function after disturbance. However, the role of forest structure as both a material legacy and feature supporting carbon (C) cycling stability following disturbance has not been widely investigated. We used a large-scale disturbance manipulation to ask whether legacies of lidar-derived canopy structures drive 3-year primary production responses to disturbance. As part of the Forest Resilience Threshold Experiment (FoRTE) in northern Michigan, USA we simulated phloem-disrupting disturbances producing a range of severities and affecting canopy trees of different sizes. We quantified the legacies of forest structure using two approaches: one measuring the change in structure and primary production from pre-to post-disturbance and the second estimating resistance as log transformed ratios of control and treatment values. We found that total aboveground wood net primary production (ANPP w ) was similar across disturbance severities as legacy trees rapidly increased rates of primary production. Experiment-wide, the disturbance had limited effects on change in mean structural complexity values; however, high variance underscored large differences in the magnitude and direction of complexity's response at the plot-scale. Plot-scale structural complexity, but not vegetation area index (VAI), resistance strongly predicted ANPP w resistance while temporal VAI and structural complexity changes did not. We conclude that the presence of material legacies in the form of forest structure may affect primary production stability following disturbance and that how legacies are quantified may affect the interpretation of disturbance response.

lidar—remote sensing↗