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Starting from an overview of the dynamic behavior of the electricity market the need of the introduction of energy users that will provide a damping capability to the system is derived as also a qualitative analysis of the impact of uncertainty, both in the demand and supply side, is performed. Then it follows an introduction to the investment analysis methodologies based on the discounting of the cash flow, and then work concludes with the illustration and application of the exergonomic principles to provide a sound methodology for the cost accounting of the plant components to be used in the cash flow analysis.
This report summarizes the assistance provided to Shafer Ranches, Inc., Hightower Ranch, and Western Environmental by Sandia National Laboratories under a Leveraged New Mexico Small Business Assistance grant. The work was conducted between April to November, 2014. Therefore, Sandia National Laboratories has been asked to investigate and develop a water treatment system that would result in reduced cost associated with infrastructure, maintenance, elimination of importing water, and improved cattle health.
Abstract not provided.
The overriding objective of our work is to integrate physiological and community ecology of belowground organisms into understanding of soil carbon dynamics to improve predictions of terrestrial ecosystem models. This includes using metagenomics and metatranscriptomics-based methods to understand microbial interactions affecting decomposition and soil carbon dynamics. The focus of the majority of the work directly related to this project was on “cheating”, a poorly understood microbial interaction with a potentially large effect on decomposition. Model organisms were used to determine the types of organisms that cheat based on their known niche and genomic characteristics. In addition, we study plant and microbial traits and plant-microbe interactions that affect species distributions and soil carbon, and also develop bioinformatics tools to increase the power of ecological inferences that can be obtained from omics-based sequence data.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Program (VTP) is developing more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly highway transportation technologies that will enable America to use less petroleum. The long-term aim is to develop "leapfrog" technologies that will provide Americans with greater freedom of mobility and energy security, while lowering costs and reducing impacts on the environment.
The Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) Multi-year Program Plan (MYPP) describes the bioenergy objectives pursued by BETO, the strategies for achieving those objectives, the current state of technology (SOT), and a number of design cases that explore cost and operational performance required to advance the SOT towards middle and long term goals (MYPP, 2016). Two options for converting algae to biofuel intermediates were considered in the MYPP, namely algal biofuel production via lipid extraction and algal biofuel production by thermal processing. The first option, lipid extraction, is represented by the Combined Algae Processing (CAP) pathway in which algae are hydrolyzed in a weak acid pretreatment step. The treated slurry is fermented for ethanol production from sugars. The fermentation stillage contains most of the lipids from the original biomass, which are recovered through wet solvent extraction. The process residuals after lipid extraction, which contain much of the original mass of amino acids and proteins, are directed to anaerobic digestion (AD) for biogas production and recycle of N and P nutrients. The second option, thermal processing, comprises direct hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of the wet biomass, separation of aqueous, gas, and oil phases, and treatment of the aqueous phase with catalytic hydrothermal gasification (CHG) to produce biogas and to recover N and P nutrients. The present report describes a life cycle analysis of energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the CAP and HTL options for the three scenarios just described. Water use is also reported. Water use during algal biofuel production comes from evaporation during cultivation, discharge to bleed streams to control pond salinity (“blowdown”), and from use during preprocessing and upgrading. For scenarios considered to date, most water use was from evaporation and, secondarily, from bleed streams. Other use was relatively small at the level of fidelity being modeled now.
The 9975 shipping package is used within the DOE complex for shipping special nuclear materials. The shipping packages are currently approved for up to 20 years storage in K-Area Complex (KAC) and work continues to provide technical basis to extend that period. Several techniques have been used at Savannah River National Laboratory to monitor the aging performance of Viton ® GLT or GLT-S fluoroelastomer O-rings. These experiments all involve accelerated aging of the O-ring samples at elevated temperatures. This report describes efforts to extend the service life estimate of GLT and GLT-S O-rings used in the 9975 shipping package.
This report reviews the results of the research developed through the support of DOE VTO. It provides an assessment of the fuel and light-duty vehicle technologies that are most likely to be published, developed, and eventually commercialized during the next 30 years (up to 2050). Because of the rapid evolution of component technologies, this study is updated at specific time intervals to continuously update the results based on the latest state-of-the-art technologies.
The GEFORCE project resulted from a collaborative proposal submitted to a U.S. DOE funding opportunity announcement. The CRADA reported herein was put in place to support the GEFORCE project. The project objective was to establish key engine technologies and fuel characteristics that enable very high fuel efficiency with very low emissions in future vehicles. A matrix of study fuels was designed and produced to support engine experiments in an advanced engine. The advanced engine was constructed and prepared for operation in an engine test cell at a 3rd party laboratory. ORNL conducted engine experiments using a 2.0 LTG engine and used the resulting data to estimatefuel economy values for a mid-size sedan using a vehicle model established in Autonomie. The projected fuel economy trends versus driving schedule were consistent with those identified in a previous projectconducted in partnership with the Coordinating Research Council (CRC), AVFL-20. Additional vehicle modeling is anticipated when data are available from the advanced engine.
Argonne National Laboratory propose to enter into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to develop a prototype nanoparticle based ultrathin filtration membrane device capable of removing trace organic contaminants (TrOCs) from household drinking water and potentially reclaimed water.
Domestic hot water (DHW) is the second-largest energy end use in U.S. buildings; it is exceeded only by space conditioning. In this study, the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America research team Advanced Research Integrated Energy Solutions installed and tested two types of recirculation controls in a pair of buildings to evaluate their energy savings potential. Demand control, temperature modulation (TM) controls, and their simultaneous operation were compared to the baseline case of constant recirculation.
Our paper evaluates the application of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and genset plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) to Class-7 local delivery trucks and genset PHEV for Class-8 utility bucket trucks over widely real-world driving data performed by conventional heavy-duty trucks.
We describe experiments that follow species dynamics and gene expression patterns in synthetic bacterial communities including species that compete for the single carbon substrate supplied, methane, and species unable to consume methane, which could only succeed through cooperative interactions. We demonstrate that these communities mostly select for two functional guilds, methanotrophs of the family Methylococcaceae and non-methanotrophic methylotrophs of the family Methylophilaceae, these taxonomic guilds outcompeting all other species included in the synthetic mix. The metatranscriptomics analysis uncovered that in both Methylococcaceae and Methylophilaceae, some of the most highly transcribed genes were the ones encoding methanol dehydrogenases (MDH). Remarkably, expression of alternative MDH genes (mxaFI versus xoxF), previously shown to be subjects to the rare Earth element switch, was found to depend on environmental conditions such as nitrogen source and methane and O 2 partial pressures, and also to be species-specific. Along with the xoxF genes, genes encoding divergent cytochromes were highly expressed in both Methylophilaceae and Methylococcaceae, suggesting their function in methanol metabolism, likely encoding proteins serving as electron acceptors from XoxF enzymes. The research presented tested a synthetic community model that is much simplified compared to natural communities consuming methane, but more complex than the previously utilized two-species model. The performance of this model identifies prominent species for future synthetic ecology experiments and highlights both advantages of this approach and the challenges that it presents.
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