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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 613 records · Page 34
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2010

Illinois department of public health H1N1/A pandemic communications evaluation survey.

Because of heightened media coverage, a 24-hour news cycle and the potential miscommunication of health messages across all levels of government during the onset of the H1N1 influenza outbreak in spring 2009, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) decided to evaluate its H1N1 influenza A communications system. IDPH wanted to confirm its disease information and instructions were helping stakeholders prepare for and respond to a novel influenza outbreak. In addition, the time commitment involved in preparing, issuing, monitoring, updating, and responding to H1N1 federal guidelines/updates and media stories became a heavy burden for IDPH staff. The process and results of the H1N1 messaging survey represent a best practice that other health departments and emergency management agencies can replicate to improve coordination efforts with stakeholder groups during both emergency preparedness and response phases. Importantly, the H1N1 survey confirmed IDPH's messages were influencing stakeholders decisions to activate their pandemic plans and initiate response operations. While there was some dissatisfaction with IDPH's delivery of information and communication tools, such as the fax system, this report should demonstrate to IDPH that its core partners believe it has the ability and expertise to issue timely and accurate instructions that can help them respond to a large-scale disease outbreak in Illinois. The conclusion will focus on three main areas: (1) the survey development process, (2) survey results: best practices and areas for improvement and (3) recommendations: next steps.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

BETO 2021 Peer Review - Overview of the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium

Catalysis plays a central role in converting biomass and carbon-rich waste feedstocks into fuels and chemicals; however, critical catalysis challenges exist that are limiting commercialization of emerging bioenergy technologies. By leveraging unique U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory capabilities and expertise, the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy consortium seeks to overcome these catalysis challenges and accelerate the catalyst and process development cycle. The foundation of the consortium consists of an integrated and collaborative portfolio of catalytic technologies and enabling capabilities, which positions ChemCatBio to address both technology-specific and overarching catalysis challenges across the development cycle from discovery to scale-up. The core catalysis projects target technological advancements for specific conversion processes, such as catalytic upgrading of biochemical process intermediates, catalytic fast pyrolysis, C1 and C2 upgrading, and electrochemical CO2 reduction, while the enabling technologies provide access to world-class capabilities and expertise in computational modeling, materials synthesis, advanced in situ and in operando catalyst characterization, and catalyst design tools.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Total Cost of Vehicle Ownership - Development of Analysis Webtool and Visualization

This report has been created to give an in-depth walkthrough of the functionality of the Total Cost of Operation webtool. The webtool was created to give users the ability to calculate the total cost of owning a vehicle over from the year they bought the vehicle to the end of the vehicles lifetime. This tool was developed using a combination of front-end and back-end technologies. To create the front-end HTML, CSS, and JavaScript were utilized. On the backend PHP is used as a scripting language with a database powered by MySQL. Through a combination of these technologies, a fully featured well developed webtool was created allowing users to view a cost breakdown of vehicle ownership over the lifetime of that vehicle.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Materials Flows Through Industry Tool to Track Supply Chain Energy Demand

In evaluating next-generation materials and processes, the supply chain can have a large impact on the life cycle energy impacts. The Materials Flow through Industry (MFI) tool was developed for the Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office to be able to evaluate the energy impacts of the U.S. supply chain. The tool allows users to perform process comparisons, material substitutions, and grid modifications, and to see the effects of implementing sector efficiency potentials (Masanet, et al. 2009). This paper reviews the methodology of the tool and provides results around specific scenarios.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Cybersecurity Vulnerability Mitigation Framework through Empirical Paradigm: Enhanced Prioritized Gap Analysis

Existing cybersecurity vulnerability assessment tools were designed based on the policies and standards defined by organizations such as the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Frameworks such as the cybersecurity capability maturity model (C2M2) and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) are often used by the critical infrastructure owners and operators to determine the cybersecurity maturity of their facility. Although these frameworks are exceptional at performing qualitative cybersecurity analysis and identifying vulnerabilities, they do not provide a means to perform prioritized mitigation of those vulnerabilities in order to achieve a desired cybersecurity maturity. To address that challenge, we developed a framework and software application called the cybersecurity vulnerability mitigation framework through empirical paradigm (CyFEr). This paper presents the detailed architecture of CyFEr’s enhanced prioritized gap analysis (EPGA) methodology and its application to CSF. The efficacy of the presented framework is demonstrated by comparing against existing similar models and testing against the cyber injects from a real-world cyber-attack that targeted industrial control systems (ICS) in critical infrastructures.

Gourisetti, Sri Nikhil G.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Distributed Energy Resource Cybersecurity Framework and Cyber Range Integration

Distributed energy resource (DER) systems feature complex, data-driven communications networks that require careful system coordination and constant vigilance to ensure that grid assets are secure. Because DERs are an important component of the decarbonization strategy, agencies need to secure energy data that could implicate issues of national security if compromised. To help federal energy managers assess, monitor, and manage cybersecurity while achieving decarbonization, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Distributed Energy Resource Cybersecurity Framework (DER-CF) offers a comprehensive, web-based assessment tool focusing on cyber governance or policies, technical management, and physical security. The DER-CF currently presents users with a series of pertinent cybersecurity questions that are used to generate a site-specific report and recommendations. This paper outlines a plan to integrate the DER-CF with another key asset-NREL's cyber range-to visualize cybersecurity resilience and compliance and to enhance the usability and accessibility of the DER-CF for federal facility energy managers and planners. This integration will result in a visualization environment to interpret and interact with compliance data. Its development will include regular conversations with stakeholders to assess the effectiveness of these efforts, refine the visualization capability, and ensure its value to our partners.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Critical Infrastructure Decision-Making under Long-Term Climate Hazard Uncertainty: The Need for an Integrated, Multidisciplinary Approach

U.S. critical infrastructure assets are often designed to operate for decades, and yet long-term planning practices have historically ignored climate change. With the current pace of changing operational conditions and severe weather hazards, research is needed to improve our ability to translate complex, uncertain risk assessment data into actionable inputs to improve decision-making for infrastructure planning. Decisions made today need to explicitly account for climate change – the chronic stressors, the evolution of severe weather events, and the wide-ranging uncertainties. If done well, decision making with climate in mind will result in increased resilience and decreased impacts to our lives, economies, and national security. We present a three-tier approach to create the research products needed in this space: bringing together climate projection data, severe weather event modeling, asset-level impacts, and contextspecific decision constraints and requirements. At each step, it is crucial to capture uncertainties and to communicate those uncertainties to decision-makers. While many components of the necessary research are mature (i.e., climate projection data), there has been little effort to develop proven tools for long-term planning in this space. The combination of chronic and acute stressors, spatial and temporal uncertainties, and interdependencies among infrastructure sectors coalesce into a complex decision space. By applying known methods from decision science and data analysis, we can work to demonstrate the value of an interdisciplinary approach to climate-hazard decision making for longterm infrastructure planning.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Industrial Assessment Center for Energy Efficiency, Smart Manufacturing and Cyber Security of Illinois and Northwestern Indiana Small and Medium Sized Manufacturing Companies and Water Facilities (Final Technical Report)

The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) established and implemented a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) from September 1, 2016 through December 31, 2021. The established UIC IAC focused on providing 1) technical assistance to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and water and wastewater facilities in Illinois and northwestern Indiana and 2) education and training university students developing the future energy workforce. The technical assessments incorporated energy efficiency, increasing productivity via smart manufacturing, energy management systems, enhancing on-site cyber security practices, and the promotion of DOE best practices and tools. The educational training enabled UIC faculty and staff to provide classroom education, exposure to industry research, multiple targeted training sessions, real world experience with industry professionals, and live training to implement professional grade audits and recommendations.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS1991

A proposal to extend our understanding of the global economy

Satellites acquire information on a global and repetitive basis. They are thus ideal tools for use when global scale and analysis over time is required. Data from satellites comes in digital form which means that it is ideally suited for incorporation in digital data bases and that it can be evaluated using automated techniques. The development of a global multi-source data set which integrates digital information is proposed regarding some 15,000 major industrial sites worldwide with remotely sensed images of the sites. The resulting data set would provide the basis for a wide variety of studies of the global economy. The preliminary results give promise of a new class of global policy model which is far more detailed and helpful to local policy makers than its predecessors. The central thesis of this proposal is that major industrial sites can be identified and their utilization can be tracked with the aid of satellite images.

Hough, Robbin R.↗
DOE OSTI2015

JEDI: Jobs and Economic Development Impact Model; NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The Jobs and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) models are user-friendly tools that estimate the economic impacts of constructing and operating power generation and biofuel plants at the local (usually state) level. First developed by NREL’s researchers to model wind energy jobs and impacts, JEDI has been expanded to also estimate the economic impacts of biofuels, coal, conventional hydro, concentrating solar power, geothermal, marine and hydrokinetic power, natural gas, photovoltaics, and transmission lines. This fact sheet focuses on JEDI for wind energy projects.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS2011

Bringing Together Users and Developers of Forest Biomass Maps

Forests store carbon and thus represent important sinks for atmospheric carbon dioxide. Reducing uncertainty in current estimates of the amount of carbon in standing forests will improve precision of estimates of anthropogenic contributions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to deforestation. Although satellite remote sensing has long been an important tool for mapping land cover, until recently aboveground forest biomass estimates have relied mostly on systematic ground sampling of forests. In alignment with fiscal year 2010 congressional direction, NASA has initiated work toward a carbon monitoring system (CMS) that includes both maps of forest biomass and total carbon flux estimates. A goal of the project is to ensure that the products are useful to a wide community of scientists, managers, and policy makers, as well as to carbon cycle scientists. Understanding the needs and requirements of these data users is helpful not just to the NASA CMS program but also to the entire community working on carbon-related activities. To that end, this meeting brought together a small group of natural resource managers and policy makers who use information on forests in their work with NASA scientists who are working to create aboveground forest biomass maps. These maps, derived from combining remote sensing and ground plots, aim to be more accurate than current inventory approaches when applied at local and regional scales.

Brown, Molly E.↗
DOE OSTI2015

Advancing the practice of health impact assessment in Canada: Obstacles and opportunities

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is recognized as a useful tool that can identify potential health impacts resulting from projects or policy initiatives. Although HIA has become an established practice in some countries, it is not yet an established practice in Canada. In order to enable broader support for HIA, this study provides a comprehensive review and analysis of the peer-reviewed and gray literature on the state of HIA practice. The results of this review revealed that, although there is an abundance of publications relating to HIA, there remains a lack of transparent, consistent and reproducible approaches and methods throughout the process. Findings indicate a need for further research and development on a number of fronts, including: 1) the nature of HIA triggers; 2) consistent scoping and stakeholder engagement approaches; 3) use of evidence and transparency of decision-making; 4) reproducibility of assessment methods; 5) monitoring and evaluation protocols; and, 6) integration within existing regulatory frameworks. Addressing these issues will aid in advancing the more widespread use of HIA in Canada. - Highlights: • Reviewed current state of practice in the field of HIA • Identified key obstacles and opportunities for HIA advancement • Major issues include lack of consistent approach and methodology. • No national regulatory driver hinders opportunity for widespread use of HIA. • Identified research opportunities vital to developing HIA practice in Canada.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1980

The levels of edit, second edition

The editorial process is analyzed, and five levels of edit are identified. These levels represent cumulative combinations of nine types of edit: Coordination, Policy, Integrity, Screening, Copy Clarification, Format, Mechanical Style, Language, and Substantive. The levels and types of edit, although developed for specific use with external reports at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, cover the general range of technical editing, especially as it applies to an in-house technical publications organization. Each type of edit is set forth in terms of groups of actions to be performed by editor. The edit-level concept has enhanced understanding and communication among editors, authors, and publications managers concerning the specific editorial work to be done on each manuscript. It has also proved useful as a management tool for estimating and monitoring cost.

Vanburen, R.↗
DOE OSTI2019

Remote Off-grid Microgrid Design Support Tool (ROMDST) - An Optimal Design Support Tool for Remote, Resilient, and Reliable Microgrids (Phase II, Final Report)

The objective of the project is to develop an advanced optimization-based design support tool for AC or DC microgrids in remote locations, where utility grids may not be accessible. The mathematical model and the interface are being developed such that multiple design objectives and criteria/constraints can be easily enabled or disabled, to deliver a flexible tool relevant to a large, diverse user base, and to facilitate future feature developments. The new tool delivered by this project leverages the team’s extensive expertise in the development, testing, deployment, and commercialization of the state-of-the-art Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM) – which is the foundation for the new tool. Phase I of the project leverages the microgrid design and decision support tool DER-CAM. Key Phase I developments include the following adaption to the DER-CAM model: a) AC or DC microgrid architectures, b) multiple economic objectives (e.g. single customer vs community vs utility perspective), c) constraints on fuel availability (e.g. total fuel available during outage periods), d) active and reactive power flow constraints for normal and N-1 contingency cases, e) component part load efficiencies (e.g. power electronic devices), and f) interactive data visualization capabilities (e.g. design topology elements). A component library including components’ default technical and economical characteristics was also developed. In Phase II, the project is focused on tool testing and validation, use for real-world microgrid designs, and outreach. Fully developing this tool will have the following impacts: 1) optimal off-grid microgrid designs that replace existing back of the envelope or non-optimal calculations, reducing capital costs and risk of microgrid deployment; 2) removing barriers to microgrid assessments by lowering microgrid soft costs, as the tool is freely usable; 3) reliable and resilient designs that reduce the cost of critical load shedding due to component outages.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2016

Co-Optimization of Electricity Transmission and Generation Resources for Planning and Policy Analysis: Review of Concepts and Modeling Approaches

The recognition of transmission's interaction with other resources has motivated the development of co-optimization methods to optimize transmission investment while simultaneously considering tradeoffs with investments in electricity supply, demand, and storage resources. For a given set of constraints, co-optimized planning models provide solutions that have lower costs than solutions obtained from decoupled optimization (transmission-only, generation-only, or iterations between them). This paper describes co-optimization and provides an overview of approaches to co-optimizing transmission options, supply-side resources, demand-side resources, and natural gas pipelines. In particular, the paper provides an up-to-date assessment of the present and potential capabilities of existing co-optimization tools, and it discusses needs and challenges for developing advanced co-optimization models.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2014

Assessment of Ports for Offshore Wind Development in the United States

As offshore wind energy develops in the United States, port facilities will become strategic hubs in the offshore wind farm supply chain because all plant and transport logistics must transit through these facilities. Therefore, these facilities must provide suitable infrastructure to meet the specific requirements of the offshore wind industry. As a result, it is crucial that federal and state policy-makers and port authorities take effective action to position ports in the offshore wind value chain to take best advantage of their economic potential. The U.S. Department of Energy tasked the independent consultancy GL Garrad Hassan (GL GH) with carrying out a review of the current capability of U.S. ports to support offshore wind project development and an assessment of the challenges and opportunities related to upgrading this capability to support the growth of as many as 54 gigawatts of offshore wind installed in U.S. waters by 2030. The GL GH report and the open-access web-based Ports Assessment Tool resulting from this study will aid decision-makers in making informed decisions regarding the choice of ports for specific offshore projects, and the types of investments that would be required to make individual port facilities suitable to serve offshore wind manufacturing, installation and/or operations.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Final Technical Report: Renewable Energy Feasibility Study and Resources Assessment

In March 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded White Pine County, Nevada, a grant to assess the feasibility of renewable resource-related economic development activities in the area. The grant project included a public outreach and training component and was to include a demonstration project; however, the demonstration project was not completed due to lack of identification of an entity willing to locate a project in White Pine County. White Pine County completed the assessment of renewable resources and a feasibility study on the potential for a renewable energy-focused economic sector within the County. The feasibility study concluded "all resources studied were present and in sufficient quantity and quality to warrant consideration for development" and there were varying degrees of potential economic impact based on the resource type and project size. The feasibility study and its components were to be used as tools to attract potential developers and other business ventures to the local market. White Pine County also marketed the County’s resources to the renewable energy business community in an effort to develop contracts for demonstration projects. The County also worked to develop partnerships with local educational institutions, including the White Pine County School District, conducted outreach and training for the local community.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Analysis and Design for Sustainable Circularity of Barrier Films Used in Sheet Molding Composites Production

Sheet molding composites (SMC) are thermoset based molding compounds with a global market size of USD 2.1 billion in 2020. SMC is usually processed with multilayer barrier/carrier films to prevent emissions from volatile organic compounds (VOC). The plastic barriers are separated from SMC after the curing process and discarded. To illustrate the high consumption volume of SMC barrier/carrier films, Kohler Co., a company which uses SMC in their bath and showering product lines, alone generates over 1M lb/year of SMC barrier/carrier film waste. Therefore, high amount of SMC barrier/carrier film plastic waste creates a great opportunity for reusing, recycling, or valorization at its end of life. This can be achieved through transition from a linear to a circular supply chain design. However, this transition will not be feasible without overcoming the technical and economic barriers. This project aims to tackle this by making the film circular. Different end of life alternatives will be evaluated experimentally. The reusability of the film will be studied through applying different mechanical and solvent cleaning techniques. The operability concerns regarding the utilization of the cleaned film for long run operations will be addressed by thermally stitching the film. Pelletizing of the cleaned film will also be investigated as a viable technique for recycling or downcycling of the film as molded products. In addition to technical barriers, designing a sustainable circular supply chain for SMC carrier film products requires uncovering the collaboration opportunities between suppliers and users at different stages of the value chain to expand its use to other products. These opportunities will be investigated by finding companies willing to buy or treat the plastic film waste. Finally, the economic viability and environmental impacts of these circular design alternatives will be evaluated through techno-economic assessment (TEA) and life cycle analysis (LCA). Techno-economic and life cycle inventory data for various pathways will also be made available as one of the main outcomes of this project. Preliminary LCA results indicate that the current SMC film supply chain (base case) emits 5.81 tonne CO2 eq. and consumes 104 GJ energy per tonne of SMC film. It is estimated that alternative circular pathways result in 14-20% less CO2 emissions and 34-44% reduction in embodied energy. This project will develop a tool to analyze the circularity and sustainability of hundreds of combinations of alternatives in different life cycle stages. Users of this tool will be able to choose the best combination among these alternatives with respect to the selected economic, environmental and circularity objectives.

circular economy↗