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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Increasing Diversity in Energy Efficiency Professions: JUMP into STEM

A long-term approach to achieving equity in the energy efficiency industry is to increase the overall diversity of the professionals who work in the field. Building science professionals have a direct impact on energy efficiency policy and programs, as many become leaders within the industry. Buildings are used every day by almost all members of U.S. society, so diversity in building science professionals is critical to better understanding the behaviors and needs of the full spectrum of building occupants. Many groups of people, including minorities and women, are underrepresented in the industry. The industry needs to attract a wide range of current college and university students to careers in building science, so that many perspectives are included in the clean energy transition. The JUMP into STEM student competition addresses this need by inspiring students from diverse backgrounds to use creative ideation to solve real-world building science problems. Student teams - comprising an interdisciplinary mix of majors and underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) - respond to one of three buildings-related challenges. Diversity is encouraged through challenge design, competition guidelines, and evaluation criteria for the submission. Winners of the competition are awarded paid building science internships, a gateway to a career in this field. The competition has an advisory panel of diversity experts and a professor team that includes representation from minority-serving institutions. This paper presents the JUMP into STEM approach to fostering diversity and creative ideation on technical challenges and discusses outcomes from the 2019 and 2020 competitions.

buildings↗
DOE OSTI2024

Roles of kaolinite-oil-gas molecular interactions in hydrogen storage within depleted reservoirs

Hydrogen is a clean alternative to fossil fuels, emitting only water vapor during combustion. In a future hydrogen economy, large-scale storage will be an important component of the supply chain. Due to its low volumetric density, conventional surface storage methods are inadequate. Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) offers a viable solution, enabling the storage of millions of cubic meters. Among potential geological sites, including salt caverns, aquifers, and depleted gas reservoirs, depleted oil reservoirs show promise. Studying hydrogen interactions with residual oil and reservoir minerals is vital for understanding the properties of hydrogen and the reservoir post-injection. In this work, we employed molecular dynamics simulations to gain molecular-level insights into these interactions. We investigated hydrogen dissolution in oil, adsorption at kaolinite/oil interfaces, the role of CO 2 as a cushion gas, and the influence of kaolinite’s hydrophobicity on H 2 behavior. The main findings include: (1) hydrogen dissolves more in oil than in water, (2) the introduction of CO 2 suppresses hydrogen dissolution in oil and reduces the interfacial tension (IFT) between oil and gas, (3) CO 2 decreases H 2 partitioning near kaolinite surfaces due to its strong affinity for the hydrophilic gibbsite surface of kaolinite, and (4) CO 2 is more effective than H 2 in reducing IFT between kaolinite and the oil–gas mixture. These findings emphasize the effectiveness of CO 2 as a cushion gas and the important role of clay hydrophobicity in UHS, providing insights that are challenging to obtain experimentally.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2024

Report on Initial Sodium Testing on the Thermal Hydraulic Experimental Test Article (THETA) (Fiscal Year 2024 Final Report)

The Thermal Hydraulic Experimental Test Article (THETA) is a facility that is used to develop sodium components and instrumentation as well as to acquire experimental data for validation of reactor thermal hydraulic and safety analysis codes. The facility simulates nominal thermal hydraulic conditions as well as protected/unprotected loss of flow accidents in a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). High fidelity distributed temperature profiles of the developed flow field may be acquired with Rayleigh backscatter based optical fiber temperature sensors. The facility was designed in partnership with systems code experts to tailor the experiment to ensure the most relevant and highest quality data for code validation. THETA is comprised of a traditional primary coolant and secondary coolant system. The primary system is submerged in the pool of sodium and consists of a pump, electrically heated core, intermediate heat exchanger, and connected piping and thermal barriers (redan). The secondary system, located outside of the sodium pool, consists of a pump, sodium to air heat exchanger, and connected piping and valves. In fiscal year 2023, thermal stratification tests were completed with the primary system online, while the secondary system was being constructed [1]. These tests had shown that the core barrel and intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) outlet required increased thermal insulation. The THETA primary system was removed from METL, cleaned, thermal insulators installed, and then inserted into METL Test Vessel 4. At the time of this writing the THETA primary and secondary system are operational. During this fiscal year 100+ hours of testing was completed to characterize thermal hydraulic phenomena associated with steady state and transient conditions in a pool type liquid metal cooled reactor. A majority of the testing campaign was completed to satisfy the experimental data acquisition requirements for the GAIN Voucher with Oklo, CRADA 2021-21121. THETA is still operational at the time of this publication and future testing is planned for fiscal year 2025. Work is underway to publish existing and future data to an online database to facilitate collaboration with SFR engineers looking to validate their systems code or computational fluid dynamics models.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

CalCharge CRADA000008852 Master Agreement Amendment 1, Battery Consortium – Proprietary Activities

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is partnering with the California Clean Energy Fund to launch CalCharge, an energy storage innovation accelerator, comprised of emerging and established California companies and related organizations developing battery technologies for the electric/hybrid vehicle transportation, the electric grid and consumer electronics markets. The vision of CalCharge is to accelerate the pace of technology innovation, business growth, and cluster development. Calcharge programs will deliver technology acceleration and technical expertise to the energy storage industry, as well as policy and market development support to strengthen the regional economy. LBNL shall collaborate with CalCharge members on the analysis and testing of battery and energy storage technologies. LBNL’s work will include analysis and testing of external design, examination of materials and components either separately or as a whole, and providing data and observations resulting from each collaboration. LBNL shall maintain and provide access to LBNL specialized facilities for research activities performed by or for CalCharge members. In addition, LBNL will provide expertise for short-term consultation, interpretation of testing data, or to clarify technical obstacles if requested by a Member. Over this time frame, Calcharge partnered with several start-ups to provide analytical resources. Those companies include Halotechnics, ZAF Energy Systems, Volkswagen Group of America, Toyota Motor Corporation, and Ensor Inc.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Value of Nuclear Energy to the Reliability of the North American Power System: Results for Western and Eastern Interconnections

This report documents the fulfillment of a milestone for the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program: completing a baseline study of regional impact of nuclear power plants and hydrogen production in maintaining grid services and power quality. Models have been comprehensively demonstrated for the Western Interconnection, or Western Electric Coordinating Council area, and in the Eastern Interconnection for scenarios representative of past extreme events (e.g., drought and heat waves). Understanding the impact on the reliability of the bulk electric system of any reduction in generation capacity from nuclear power, for any reason, is the motivation of this work. Factors that might lead to the premature or unplanned closure of nuclear plants, extended outages, or repurposing of nuclear power include: • Aging infrastructure: Many nuclear power plants in the U.S. are nearing the end of their designed operating lives. Upgrading aging infrastructure can be expensive, and some utilities may choose to retire plants rather than invest in costly upgrades. • Low wholesale electricity prices: The deregulation of the electricity market in many states has led to increased competition and driven down wholesale electricity prices, causing nuclear power operators to seek other revenue sources for their heat and power such as clean hydrogen production. • Renewables growth: The rapid growth of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power is posing a challenge to traditional generation sources like nuclear. While many see renewables as a key part of the clean energy transition, their intermittent nature requires additional grid solutions for reliable power supply. • The potential for regulatory decisions to be in conflict: In its 2021 rulemaking, EPA rule (86 FR 880), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set a compliance date for the ban on processing and distribution in commerce of Decabromodiphenyl Ether (DecaBDE). Since DecaBDE is in many components, particularly wiring, of nuclear power plants which are deemed safety-related or important to safety, three plants would not have been able to restart after their 2023 spring outages, and numerous others would have faced issues in the near future. Fortunately, in this case, the EPA provided relief to the nuclear energy industry. The report provides a summary of the significant role nuclear energy plays in the United States’ power generation mix, supplying around 20% of the nation’s electricity generation, spread across 28 U.S. states. Nuclear power is reliable, mostly unaffected by weather and seasonal changes, and provides a consistent source of baseload power. In terms of capacity, nuclear power plants account for as much as 26% of balancing area power generation capacity. Nuclear power also provides a substantial contribution (e.g., 10% of the inertia in the Eastern Interconnection) of the synchronous spinning mass/inertia that buffers the rate at which frequency changes when a load and generation imbalance occurs (e.g., a large plant trips or a load is suddenly shed due to a transmission outage). This contribution is critical for maintaining grid stability during sudden changes in load or generation.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Disorder-dependent slopes of the upper critical field in nodal and nodeless superconductors

In this work we study the slopes of the upper critical field S = ∂H c2 /∂T at the superconducting transition temperature T c in anisotropic superconductors with transport (nonmagnetic) scattering employing the Ginzburg-Landau theory, developed for this case by Pokrovsky and Pokrovsky [Phys. Rev. B 54, 13275 (1996)]. We find unexpected behavior of the slopes for a d -wave superconductor and, in a more general case, of materials with line nodes in the order parameter. Specifically, the presence of line nodes causes S to decrease with increasing nonmagnetic scattering parameter P = ℏ/2πT c0 τ (T c0 is for the clean limit, τ is the scattering time), unlike the nodeless case where the slope increases. In a pure d -wave case, the slope changes from decreasing to increasing when the scattering parameter approaches P ≈ 0.91 P crit , where P crit ≈ 0.28, at which T c → 0, which implies the existence of a “gapless” state in d -wave superconductors with transport scattering in the interval, 0.91 P crit < P < P crit . Furthermore, we consider the mixed (s + d)-wave order parameter with four nodes on a cylindrical Fermi surface when the d part is dominant, or no nodes at all when the s-wave phase dominates. We find that the presence of nodes causes the slope S(P) to decrease initially with increasing P, whereas in the nodeless state, S(P) monotonically increases. Therefore, relatively straightforward measurements of the disorder dependence of the slope of H c2 at T c can help distinguish between nodal and nodeless order parameters, which is particularly useful for quickly assessing newly discovered superconductors.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2021

How Moist and Dry Intrusions Control the Local Hydrologic Cycle in Present and Future Climates

Models disagree on the magnitude of the intensification of hydrologic cycle extremes under climate change. Changes in these extremes are expected to scale with the Clausius-Clapeyron relation but may locally diverge due to the uncertain response of the atmospheric general circulation. Recent work has identified that the circulation contribution (the “dynamic” component) is the largest contributor to uncertainty in changes in hydrologic cycle extremes. In this work, we develop an exact budget for changes in wet and dry extremes based on changes in the associated moist and dry intrusions behind those extremes. We decompose changes into four contributors: thermodynamic, low-level convergence, anomalous meridional moisture advection, and zonal wave activity convergence. In analyzing these changes, we show that low-level convergence is the main dynamic contributor to the tropical and subtropical annual response, consistent with weakening of the Hadley circulation, and we show that anomalous meridional moisture advection is the primary dynamic contributor annually for the extratropics, consistent with storm track changes. We achieve a clean separation between dynamic and thermodynamic contributions through an empirical scaling between extremes and their associated wave activities, showing again that shifting storm tracks and expanding subtropics are critical to the dynamic response of the transient hydrologic cycle. We infer that changes in the large-scale circulation are predominantly responsible for the annual, dynamic response of hydrologic cycle extremes and therefore an important contributor to uncertainty in future projections.

Hydrological cycle, hydrological extremes, dynamic↗
DOE OSTI2022

In-flight polarization angle calibration for LiteBIRD: blind challenge and cosmological implications

We present a demonstration of the in-flight polarization angle calibration for the JAXA/ISAS second strategic large class mission, LiteBIRD, and estimate its impact on the measurement of the tensor-to-scalar ratio parameter, r, using simulated data. We generate a set of simulated sky maps with CMB and polarized foreground emission, and inject instrumental noise and polarization angle offsets to the 22 (partially overlapping) LiteBIRD frequency channels. Our in-flight angle calibration relies on nulling the EB cross correlation of the polarized signal in each channel. This calibration step has been carried out by two independent groups with a blind analysis, allowing an accuracy of the order of a few arc-minutes to be reached on the estimate of the angle offsets. Both the corrected and uncorrected multi-frequency maps are propagated through the foreground cleaning step, with the goal of computing clean CMB maps. We employ two component separation algorithms, the Bayesian-Separation of Components and Residuals Estimate Tool (B-SeCRET), and the Needlet Internal Linear Combination (NILC). We find that the recovered CMB maps obtained with algorithms that do not make any assumptions about the foreground properties, such as NILC, are only mildly affected by the angle miscalibration. However, polarization angle offsets strongly bias results obtained with the parametric fitting method. Once the miscalibration angles are corrected by EB nulling prior to the component separation, both component separation algorithms result in an unbiased estimation of the r parameter. While this work is motivated by the conceptual design study for LiteBIRD, its framework can be broadly applied to any CMB polarization experiment. In particular, the combination of simulation plus blind analysis provides a robust forecast by taking into account not only detector sensitivity but also systematic effects.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Enhanced Photovoltaic Soiling in an Urban Environment

Natural soiling, or the deposition of ambient particulate matter (PM) onto the surface of solar glass, causes losses in PV production around the world. Much work in the PV community has focused on soiling in dusty desert environments. However, PV systems in urban environments are exposed to different contaminants and thus soil differently. We present an analysis of PV soiling in such an urban environment considering the impacts of meteorological parameters. We present 1 year of results from a soiling station in an urban location in Colorado. Bare glass samples were exposed outdoors for 11 days alongside the station; results from microscopy and light transmittance measurements show how moisture and dew affect the morphology and optics of contamination on glass. The coupon results suggest that natural (rain) cleanings may not be sufficient to clean solar panels in urban environments. Ion chromatography of soiling on the reference cell surfaces suggest that dry brush cleanings may not sufficiently clean chemicals deposited on solar panel surfaces in urban environments.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Advancing Energy Justice in Alaska

NREL works with remote and rural communities across Alaska and the world to develop energy and building technologies that enhance culture, strengthen economies, and improve resilience in a changing environment. Alaska and Arctic communities not only face one of the harshest climates on earth; they also pay some of the highest energy and housing costs in the nation. NREL's Alaska Campus collaborates with communities and tribes to develop affordable, culturally appropriate homes and buildings that combine traditional knowledge and twenty-first century technology. Demonstration homes deployed all over Alaska prove out new technologies in energy efficiency, foundations, indoor air quality, and clean energy. Local workforce development is incorporated into every project: new homes are built by local workers, often including the home's future occupant. With the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, coastal erosion and thawing permafrost are wreaking havoc on roads, buildings, and infrastructure across Alaska. With an inclusive approach to R&D, NREL is helping communities adapt to a changing environment and advancing energy justice in the world's extremes.

Alaska housing prototypes↗
DOE OSTI2024

Sound at Scale: Characterizing Impacts of Noise Ordinances on the Onshore Wind Energy Technical Potential for the United States

Recent surveys have documented the rapid rise of sound ordinances across state and county jurisdictions, which has become crucial for wind energy siting. However, the lack of information on ordinances and computational challenges in turbine sound modeling create uncertainties regarding how evolving policies may affect resource potential and clean energy objectives. Therefore, we develop an approach to evaluate wind turbine sound profiles at millions of locations across the U.S. and translate them into setback distances for every residential structure. Compared to a baseline reference scenario, we find a 7% reduction in the national wind energy capacity potential when accounting for counties with existing sound ordinances. Additionally, when expanding the surveyed sound ordinances nationwide, we observe a potential loss of 53% of the national wind capacity under the most stringent ordinances, with a disproportionate share of this lost capacity coming from high-quality and low-cost wind resource. This work reveals that neglecting sound ordinances results in a significant overestimation of wind resource potential and highlights the important trade-offs between increased wind energy deployment to meet target decarbonization goals and the social/environmental impacts of this deployment that must be considered.

aeroacoustics↗
DOE OSTI2022

Avista’s Shared Energy Economy Model Pilot: A Techno-economic Assessment

As part of the second round of the Washington Clean Energy Fund, Avista Corp received a $3.5 million matching grant in support of a shared energy economy project to test the integration of energy assets–from rooftop solar and battery storage to building energy management systems–that can be shared and used for multiple purposes. The goal of this project is to demonstrate how both the customer and the utility can benefit from this shared energy economy model and demonstrate that the electric grid can become more reliable, efficient, resilient, and flexible. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory was engaged by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Washington State Department of Commerce to work with Avista in assessing the benefits of the shared energy economy model. This report documents the techno-economic assessment of the shared energy economy model, including the definition of use cases and applications, collection and preparation of data and input parameters, development of modeling and optimization methods, and case studies and analysis results.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Anion exchange and extraction chromatography tandem column isolation of zirconium-89 ( 89 Zr) from cyclotron bombarded targets using an automated fluidic platform

The long-lived positron emitter 89 Zr is a highly promising nuclide employed in diagnostic Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging. Methods of radiochemical processing to obtain 89 Zr for clinical use are traditionally performed with a single hydroxamate resin column. In this work, we present a tandem column purification method for the preparation of high-purity 89 Zr from cyclotron bombarded Y metal foils. The primary column is a macroporous, strongly basic anion exchange resin on styrene divinylbenzene co-polymer. The secondary microcolumn, with an internal volume of 33 µL, is packed with an extraction chromatography resin (ExCR) loaded with HDEHP. A condition of “inverted selectivity” is presented, wherein the 89 Zr elution from the primary column is synonymous with the load condition on the secondary column. The ability to transfer 89 Zr from one column to the next allows two sequential column clean-up methods to be performed prior to the final elution of the 89 Zr product. This approach assures delivery of very high purity 89 Zr . The tandem column purification process has been implemented into a prototype automated fluidic system. Optimization of the method is presented, followed by evaluation of the process using seven cyclotron bombarded Y metal foil targets. Once optimized, we found that 93.7±2.3% of the 89 Zr present in the foils was recovered in the secondary column elution fraction (0.8 M oxalic acid). Radiochromatograms of the product elution peaks enabled determination of full width at half-maximum (FWHM) and 89 Zr collection yields as a function of volume. Because of the small size of the secondary microcolumn, a 89 Zr product volume of ~0.28 mL is reported, which provides a substantially increased nuclide concentration over traditional methods. Finally, we evaluated the transchelation of the resulting 89 Zr oxalate product to deferoxamine mesylate (DFOM) salt. We observed effective specific activities (ESA) and bindable metals concentrations ([M B ]) that exceed those reported by the traditional single hydroxamate column method.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗
DOE OSTI2022

Fundamental Issues Identified for Thermodynamic Description of Molten Salt Systems

Thermodynamic modeling of the molten salt systems is critical in the design of advanced nuclear power plants, materials recycling, and many other important clean energy applications. As one of the most capable computational thermodynamic approaches, the CALPHAD (Calculation of Phase Diagrams) method has been widely used for multicomponent thermodynamic database development and further support more physics-based modeling. Although considerable CALPHAD modeling efforts for molten salt systems have been made, we found that no evaluation has been performed regarding the unary thermodynamic models for the molten salt systems despite the fact that more than one pure substance database is available for the CALPHAD modeling. Therefore, the thermodynamic descriptions of the pure salts should be critically evaluated to ensure a high-fidelity molten salt thermodynamic database. In this work, we comprehensively analyzed some selected molten salts using different available thermodynamic descriptions from two databases as an example. One is the SSUB database released by the SGTE (Scientific Group Thermodata Europe), and the other is the FactPS database from the FactSage. Finally, the significant discrepancies observed in the thermodynamic description between the existing CALPHAD pure substance databases and experiments call for an urgent effort to improve.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Logistics simulation of a remediation effort for a hypothetical radiological contamination scenario

To mitigate the effects following a large-scale nuclear or radiological material release in an urban environment and to expedite recovery, the Integrated Wash-Aid Treatment Emergency Reuse System (IWATERS) was developed. IWATERS consists of three operations: washing contaminated surfaces with an ionic wash solution, collecting, and treating the contaminated wash solution on-site to remove contaminants, and reusing the treated solution throughout operations to preserve the clean water resource. This study develops a framework to simulate the logistics of IWATERS deployment, thereby gaining an understanding of the timeline for decontamination operations. For this purpose, the Analysis of Mobility Platform and GoldSim were leveraged for a hypothetical contamination scenario covering 65,200 m 2 of an urban center. The framework reveals that remediation progress is limited by several resources, notably the availability of vermiculite, a reactive clay that is required to treat the contaminated wash solution. Further, this study also presents how the simulation approach can be used to characterize alternatives to reduce the influence of limited resources on operational progress. Overall, this work lays the foundation for evaluating different decontamination methods through detailed logistics simulation, i.e., by refining simulation assumptions and expanding the range of scenarios the simulation can depict.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2022

National Ignition Facility. Facility and Infrastructure Systems Maintenance Plan

Ensuring the reliability of the NIF, including its support systems, laser systems, target diagnostic systems, and utilities, is essential to the availability of the NIF in its support of NNSA missions. NIF is a key capability in the DOE Stockpile Stewardship Program and supports high energy physics experiments for nuclear weapons, energy, and astrophysics applications. High system reliability provides opportunities for shots and scientific discoveries with opportunities to enhance and upgrade capabilities. This Maintenance Plan (MP) identifies the policies and procedures used to perform and support asset management of the NIF Facility and Infrastructure Systems (FInS), NIF Lasers & Alignment (LASE), NIF Target Experimental Operations (TOPS), NIF Target Area Science and Engineering (TASE), and NIF&PS Control Systems (NCS). The FInS systems include the facility, HVAC, contamination control, beampath, and Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) as well as utilities which create the beampath environments, such as vacuum, argon, or clean dry air. The LASE systems are Programmatic systems which include laser diagnostics, alignment, power conditioning, pulsed power, and input laser systems. The TOPS and TASE systems are also Programmatic systems which include target and diagnostic delivery systems and positioners, many different insertable and fixed target diagnostics, and cryogenic and target gas fill systems. Finally, the NCS systems include both software and hardware for industrial and shot operation control systems. Policies governing administrative and operational practices related to maintenance of FInS, LASE, TOPS, TASE, and NCS systems are described in this plan. In addition, the plan provides processes and procedures for managing, tracking, and documenting the work. This document, the NIF Operations Management Plan, NIF-5020544 (Ref. 1), and NIF Shot Operations Plan, NIF-5018506 (Ref. 2), together satisfy the requirements of the Conduct of Operations. Duties, responsibilities, and reporting requirements of the various positions associated with FInS, LASE, and TOPS maintenance are detailed in this plan. The FInS systems include both Real Property systems with asset management requirements specified in DOE Order 430.1C (Ref. 3) and Programmatic systems. In addition, for FInS, there is a list of the System Level Maintenance Plans (SLMPs) in NIF-1007419198 (Ref. 4) which provide the system descriptions and maintenance plan and schedule. In addition, the list includes the Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and Experience Centered Maintenance (ECM) evaluations that have been performed for applicable FInS systems as well as reliability criticality per Section 3.5. The -AM version of the NIF Maintenance Plan focuses on the reliability program for FInS, LASE, TOPS, TASE, and NCS within the context of the overall NIF Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) program and incorporates changes since the -AL version from August 2011 and has been updated to be fully consistent with the updates to Ref. 1. It also includes asset management considerations, updates to the Work Order (WO) process within the NIF Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) which is EAM infor® System Maintenance and Reliability Tracking (SMaRT) (Ref. 5), and updates to metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs).

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Techno-Economic, Feasibility, and Life Cycle Analysis of Renewable Propane: 2025 Update

To clarify the current and future landscape for renewable propane (RP) production, this work evaluates the value proposition of recovering RP from existing and planned hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) biorefineries and surveys emerging technologies under development or deployment. HEFA biorefineries co-produce a propane-rich fuel gas stream, normally used to meet HEFA process heat requirements, from which propane can be recovered and sold to create an additional revenue stream alongside liquid transportation fuels such as renewable diesel (RD) and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). This report updates and extends a 2022 analysis of RP recovery from HEFA facilities by escalating capital and operating costs to 2024 prices, incorporating recent policy developments (including the Section 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit), evaluating RP recovery for both RD- and SAF-focused HEFA facilities at two scales (3,000 and 75,000 barrels per day of feedstock), and quantifying the impact of RP recovery on HEFA liquid-fuel carbon intensity (CI) and associated tax credits using the 45ZCF-GREET model. For a 3,000 BPD RD-focused HEFA facility, approximately 3.5 million gallons per year (MGPY) of RP can be recovered; in this base case, the estimated payback period is 18 months based on the total installed cost of the RP recovery equipment and 36 months based on the total capital investment for the entire RP recovery project. The payback period is slightly shorter for the analogous SAF-focused configuration (approximately 4.3 MGPY RP). Sensitivity analysis shows that CAPEX magnitude, RP recovery plant scale, and CI-driven tax credit valuations are the dominant determinants of project viability. RP recovery may increase the CI of HEFA liquid fuels, which can reduce liquid-fuel tax credits (a key revenue stream for the HEFA biorefinery) and lengthen payback periods. However, RP recovery generally remains economically favorable across a wide range of plausible scenarios and market conditions. The report also summarizes emerging pathways that could expand future RP supply.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hydrogen Production from Polyethylene Pyrolysis

Hydrogen is anticipated to play a pivotal role in the future of clean energy and decarbonization efforts, serving as an energy storage medium, a power generation source, and a clean fuel for transportation. While most hydrogen is produced from carbonaceous fossil feedstocks like natural gas, petroleum, and coal, there is growing interest in using refuse-derived fuels such as waste plastics and municipal solid waste (MSW) as alternative feedstocks. Thermochemical processes such as pyrolysis and catalytic cracking can convert nonrecyclable plastics and organic MSW components to produce hydrogen with lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions when coupled with CO 2 capture. Such approaches not only address waste-management challenges but also reduce methane emissions from landfills. Furthermore, waste feedstocks are low cost and can support meeting demands for hydrogen across various industries. In this work we examined production of hydrogen from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) as a model polymer using pyrolysis. Analytical studies of pyrolysis utilizing gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC/MS) provide insights into conversion pathways for plastic waste, potentially reducing the environmental footprint of traditional hydrogen production methods. This work generates a baseline methodology for hydrogen production from plastic pyrolysis with and without a catalyst and the necessary product distribution baseline from key single plastics. The effect of pyrolysis temperature on the conversion of HDPE was evaluated both with and without a catalyst(s), and the product distributions measured via GC/MS were identified and hydrogen formation was quantified. These results will help guide future research efforts to optimize catalysts and processes for more efficient hydrogen production and mixed plastic waste management.

Catalysts↗