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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 631 records · Page 35
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

RFA-17-14597, Methodology for Meeting Containment System Principal Design Criteria to Maximize the Passive Safety Value in Advanced Nuclear Energy Economic Competitiveness

Advanced (Non-Light Water) Reactors are being designed with Passive Safety as an essential and integral feature. To help streamline the licensing of advanced reactors, the DOE and the NRC have drafted Principal Design Criteria (PDCs) for advanced reactors. A question that remains to be answered is: how an Advanced Reactor take credit for passive safety features inherent in certain advanced reactors while at the same time complying the evolving PDC.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

From Modular ADMS to Plug-and-Play Ops: Distribution Grid Operations with Platform-Level Orchestration to Enable Ambitious App Hosting

The core function of the distribution grid is to provide electricity to consumers affordably, reliably, and securely. In pursuing these core objectives, distribution utilities are accountable to customers, regulators, and in some cases, shareholders. Other third parties such as aggregators and microgrids can also have a stake in the smooth operation of the grid. Each of these stakeholders has economic, business, and/or governance objectives that inform their expectations of the distribution grid. This multi-objective, multi-stakeholder environment creates tension that must be reconciled to successfully design and operate the distribution grid. Innovative companies are competing to bring high-tech solutions to electric utilities and their customers that address each of these objectives. Many developers of advanced distribution management systems (ADMS) and distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) have adopted a modular architecture that allows grid operators to select functions and features according to their individual system needs. A modular platform also allows the solution provider to develop and integrate specific new product modules; however, the need to pursue multiple objectives with a fixed set of controllable devices makes integration expensive whether it is done at the product development stage or the deployment stage. This cost creates a significant barrier to adoption and can lengthen the product to market time of new solutions. To fundamentally address the complexity of system integration for distribution grid operations, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity has funded the GridAPPS-D project at PNNL, which streamlines integration by contributing to standards development, defining system architecture, applying advanced mathematics, and developing open-source software to demonstrate the concept of an open data-integration platform for distribution operations. The open data-integration platform concept enables system operators and solution providers to deploy ambitious, best-of-breed applications (or apps) without continually reengineering for integration. Ambitious apps developed by different solution providers will inevitably attempt to achieve different control objectives with the same set of controllable devices. If the open platform itself can resolve these conflicts in a way that achieves the best available outcomes for all apps, doesn’t restrict the ambitious design of apps, and ensures safe and secure operations, apps will be able to plug-and-play with the platform at the same time as other ambitious apps. In this paper, we describe a framework called App Deconfliction that empowers a platform to assign setpoints to controllable devices based on the values preferred by different apps (and even external stakeholder entities like customers or aggregators). The App Deconfliction framework is compatible with several methods for determining setpoint values. We present two methods based on game theory that provide a subtle built-in incentive structure for developers to adapt their apps to the fact that they will be operating in a moderated multi-app environment and to favor device setpoints that have the most effect on their objectives over those that have the least effect. Our simulation-based demonstrations have shown that game-theory-based deconfliction can lead to a 7% improvement in control space utilization compared to design-based methods.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRS1978

ECAS Phase I fuel cell results

This paper summarizes and discusses the fuel cell system results of Phase I of the Energy Conversion Alternatives Study (ECAS). Ten advanced electric powerplant systems for central-station baseload generation using coal were studied by NASA in ECAS. Three types of low-temperature fuel cells (solid polymer electrolyte, SPE, aqueous alkaline, and phosphoric acid) and two types of high-temperature fuel cells (molten carbonate, MC, and zirconia solid electrolyte, SE) were studied. The results indicate that (1) overall efficiency increases with fuel cell temperature, and (2) scale-up in powerplant size can produce a significant reduction in cost of electricity (COE) only when it is accompanied by utilization of waste fuel cell heat through a steam bottoming cycle and/or integration with a gasifier. For low-temperature fuel cell systems, the use of hydrogen results in the highest efficiency and lowest COE. In spite of higher efficiencies, because of higher fuel cell replacement costs integrated SE systems have higher projected COEs than do integrated MC systems. Present data indicate that life can be projected to over 30,000 hr for MC fuel cells, but data are not yet sufficient for similarly projecting SE fuel cell life expectancy.

Warshay, M.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Air Evaporation closed cycle water recovery technology - Advanced energy saving designs

The Air Evaporation water recovery system is a visible candidate for Space Station application. A four-man Air Evaporation open cycle system has been successfully demonstrated for waste water recovery in manned chamber tests. The design improvements described in this paper greatly enhance the system operation and energy efficiency of the air evaporation process. A state-of-the-art wick feed design which results in reduced logistics requirements is presented. In addition, several design concepts that incorporate regenerative features to minimize the energy input to the system are discussed. These include a recuperative heat exchanger, a heat pump for energy transfer to the air heater, and solar collectors for evaporative heat. The addition of the energy recovery devices will result in an energy reduction of more than 80 percent over the systems used in earlier manned chamber tests.

Morasko, Gwyndolyn↗
DOE OSTI2021

ESIF 2020

This annual report highlights research done at the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) in Fiscal Year 2020.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗
DOE OSTI2023

Coupling SCALE with DAKOTA for Axial Burnup Profiles Assessment in Burnup Credit

This paper presents a computational study that demonstrates the application of the SCALE code system in conjunction with the Design Analysis Kit for Optimization and Terascale Applications (DAKOTA) for the analysis of key factors influencing the evaluation of burnup credit (BUC) in pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The primary objective of this analysis is to characterize the model by utilizing parameterization, uncertainty quantification, and optimization studies. Using this approach, we can comprehensively assess the system and conduct informed predictive studies. This study highlights the effectiveness of the SCALE code system integrated within the DAKOTA framework in terms of efficiency and capability. With the coupling of the burnup code ORIGAMI with the CSAS or TSUNAMI-3D sequence embedded in a DAKOTA analysis, we can characterize the factors that influence the k eff of PWR 17x17 spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in the GBC-32 computational benchmark cask for the assessment of BUC in criticality safety analysis. The coupling methodology used in this study is not exclusive to BUC analysis. However, the choice to apply this methodology to the BUC problem is particularly significant because of the diverse range of aspects it encompasses in nuclear criticality safety analyses. This problem presents a unique opportunity to explore and address multiple facets of such analyses related to BUC and illustrates the capability of the SCALE code system with DAKOTA. This analysis makes use of historical reference data for the axial burnup profile, where the entire space within the bounds is considered. Both SCALE and DAKOTA are currently integrated in the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling Simulation (NEAMS) Workbench code system, which has a user-friendly graphical interface that simplifies the setup of simulations and configuration of input parameters as well as the visualization of simulation results.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Vehicle Technologies Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Report

Research and development at NLR supports the U.S. Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies Office in advancing low-cost, abundant, and secure energy technologies to accelerate a more affordable, reliable, efficient, and globally competitive U.S. transportation system.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

NLR Core Modeling & Decision Support Capabilities: FASTSim, RouteE, T3CO & OpenPATH

This project is part of the program area to develop and improve core capabilities for the Energy-Efficient Mobility Systems (EEMS) program that enable research, development and deployment of advanced mobility solutions and enhance the EEMS Program's ability to address system-level transportation challenges. Advancements to the Future Automotive Systems Technology Simulator (FASTSim), Route Energy Prediction Model (RouteE), Transportation Technology Total Cost of Ownership (T3CO) and Open Platform for Agile Trip Heuristics (OpenPATH) core capabilities under this project supports the overall EEMS Program goals to effectively evaluate energy and mobility impacts of future transportation technologies and services, and to identify the most promising pathways to reduce transportation costs and environmental harms, and to improve mobility access. This presentation was prepared for the 2026 Annual Merit Review of this project.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Single‐Step Recovery of Water from Stable Crude Oil‐Water Emulsion Using Surface Engineered Hybrid Inorganic‐Polymer Membranes

ABSTRACT Separating crude oil from water remains one of the most stubborn challenges in environmental remediation, especially for surfactant‐stabilized emulsions that resist conventional demulsification methods. Here, we report a scalable strategy for achieving near‐zero‐discharge separation of crude oil emulsions using a single superhydrophilic membrane. By applying low‐temperature atomic layer deposition (ALD) of various metal oxides onto activated polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes, we create atomically precise surface‐engineered (SE) membranes that maintain an exceptionally strong hydration layer at the membrane‐feed interface, even at high oil loadings. Among the various metal oxides, TiO 2 ‐modified SE membranes exhibit superior interfacial water stability, enabling sustained dewatering of complex crude oil‐water emulsions with >98% separation efficiency and >97% water recovery, compared to only 24.6% water recovery for the pristine membrane. This separation performance surpasses conventional hydrophilic membranes and is comparable to complex Janus channel membrane systems, demonstrating near‐complete emulsion separation using a single membrane. This low‐temperature membrane surface engineering process with atomic‐level precision and potential for scalability via roll‐to‐roll fabrication is promising for industrial‐scale, energy‐efficient water treatment and oil spill remediation applications.

Sengupta, Bratin [Applied Materials Division Argon↗
DOE OSTI2022

Multimodal Freight Energy Model for Emerging Freight Technology Analysis

While freight movement represents a small portion of the volume in the transportation sector, they are a critical contributor for energy consumed in that sector. To reduce logistics costs, energy consumption and negative environmental impact, emerging technologies, such as digitalization of logistics and alternative powertrain, have been developed and extended applications in freight. These trends are expected to grow and provide opportunities for greater efficiencies in freight movement and corresponding energy use. Still, the complexity of freight systems present challenges in evaluating these benefits, especially in the multimodal inter-city freight. Addressing the research need, this paper develops a multimodal freight energy modeling framework for the analysis of emerging freight technology scenarios. The framework is a bi-level optimization problem: network cost minimization problem (lower-level) and energy minimization problem (upper-level). The lower-level problem is a mode-path assignment problem in multimodal inter-city freight networks, where commodity-specific congestion effects on trans-shipment links are considered. For this model, an inverse modeling approach is applied to infer parameters of the lower-level model. The upper-level problem is designed to search for an optimal scenario that has the lowest energy consumption among different levels of technology applications. The proposed model is empirically tested to analyze truck load-pooling and multimodal load-pooling scenarios through stand-alone and mixed applications using freight shipments originating from or destined to the Chicago region. This framework can be used to explore the impact of emerging freight technologies on mode-path freight flow and energy consumption in the national multimodal freight network.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Foreword: Message From the MTS Journal Editor

Here, it is my pleasure to present this general issue to the MTS community. This general issue features manuscripts on a variety of topics of interest to the MTS community including articles, reviews, and commentaries: technology gaps for monitoring birds and marine mammals at offshore wind facilities; adaptive tracking of the Barents Sea polar front using an autonomous underwater vehicle; advanced simulation and environmental impact assessment of combustion in maritime energy systems; performance of moored real time ocean observations during Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal; recent advances in assessing environmental effects of marine renewable energy; and the new blue economy and future for marine renewable energy.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2022

NNSA Minority Serving Institute Partnership Program (MSIPP)— Advanced Synergistic Program for Indigenous Research in Engineering (ASPIRE) (FY22 Q1 Progress Report)

In 2016, the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) initiated the Minority Serving Institution Partnership Plan (MSIPP) targeting Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) to offer programs that will prepare students for technical careers in NNSA’s laboratories and production plants. The MSIPP consortium’s approach is as follows: 1) align investments at the college and university level to develop a curriculum and workforce needed to support NNSA’s nuclear weapon enterprise mission, and 2) to enhance research and education at under-represented colleges and universities. The first TCU consortium that MSIPP launched was known as the Advanced Manufacturing Network Initiative (AMNI) whose purpose was to develop additive manufacturing (AM) learning opportunities. The AMNI consortium consisted of Bay Mills Community College, Cankdeska Cikana Community College, Navajo Tech University, Salish Kootenai Community College, Turtle Mountain Community College, and United Tribes Technical College. In 2016, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), the AMNI consortium and the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), in collaboration with Sandia National Labs, using a grant by NNSA hosted the first TCU Advanced Manufacturing Technology Summer Institute (TCU AMTSI). The AMNI consortium will officially end Sept. 2022. However, building on the successes of AMNI, in FY22 NNSA’s MSIPP launched three additional consortiums: (1) the Indigenous Mutual Partnership to Advanced Cybersecurity Technology (IMPACT), which focuses on STEM and cybersecurity, (2) the Advanced Synergistic Program for Indigenous Research in Engineering (ASPIRE), which focuses on STEM and the electrical and mechanical engineering skills set needed for renewable and distributed energy systems, and (3) the Partnership for Advanced Manufacturing Education and Research (PAMER), which focuses on developing and maintaining a sustainable pathway for a highly trained, next-generation additive manufacturing workforce and a corresponding community of subject matter experts for NNSA enterprises. The following report summarizes the status update during this quarter for the ASPIRE program.

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS1978

SOLARES - A new hope for solar energy

A system of orbiting reflectors, SOLARES, has been studied as a possible means of reducing the diurnal variation and enhancing the average intensity of sunlight with a space system of minimum mass and complexity. The key impact that such a system makes on the economic viability of solar farming and other solar applications is demonstrated. The system is compatible with incremental implementation and continual expansion to meet the world's power needs. Key technology, environmental, and economic issues and payoffs are identified. SOLARES appears to be economically superior to other advanced, and even competitive with conventional, energy systems and could be scaled to completely abate our fossil fuel usage for power generation. Development of the terrestrial solar conversion technique, optimized for this new artificial source of solar radiation, yet remains.

Billman, K. W.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Cyber threat assessment of machine learning driven autonomous control systems of nuclear power plants

We report advanced cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure and the energy sector are becoming more common. With the invention of autonomous control systems (ACS) within advanced nuclear reactor designs, system designers, reactor operators, and regulators must consider cybersecurity during the design and operational phases. This article provides a cyber threat assessment of machine learning (ML)-based digital twinning (DT) technologies in the context of advanced reactor ACS. A cyber–physical testbed was created to emulate nuclear reactor digital instrumentation and controls (I&C) and act as a basis for the ACS. The ACS was designed as two plant-level DTs predicting reactor malfunctions and determining control actions and two component-level DTs responsible for classifying component states and forecasting component inputs and outputs (I/O). Two duplicate ACS designs– one using a traditional ML framework and one using an automated ML (AutoML) framework– were created and tested against cyber-attacks on training data, real-time process data, and ML model architectures to determine their respective qualitative cyber-risk in terms of likelihood and impact. Both frameworks showed similar cyber-resilience against training, real-time, and ML architecture attacks, proving that neither is inherently more secure. Recommended safeguard and security measures are posed to system designers, reactor operators, and regulators to maintain the cybersecurity of ML-based DT technologies such as ACS, prompting a holistic view of shared responsibility for maintaining cyber-secure ML-based systems.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Peak Load Management in Distribution Systems Using Legacy Utility Equipment and Distributed Energy Resources: Preprint

The ability to perform peak load management in distribution systems has several benefits for utilities, including reduced demand charges and improved reliability, efficiency, and utilization of the network infrastructure. This paper demonstrates the coordinated operation of an advanced distribution management system (ADMS) and a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) to achieve peak load management using a realistic laboratory test bed. A commercial ADMS reduces the peak demand by reducing system voltages using a dynamic voltage regulation (DVR) application. A prototype DERMS—based on real-time optimal power flow—controls distributed battery energy storage systems to further reduce the feeder power. Results from the experiments conducted using a model of a real distribution feeder show that the coordinated operation of the ADMS and DERMS is effective in accomplishing peak load management.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2020

SMART Mobility. Connected and Automated Vehicles Capstone Report

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Systems and Modeling for Accelerated Research in Transportation (SMART) Mobility Consortium is a multiyear, multi-laboratory collaborative, managed by the Energy Efficient Mobility Systems Program of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office, dedicated to further understanding the energy implications and opportunities of advanced mobility technologies and services. The first three-year research phase of SMART Mobility occurred from 2017 through 2019 and included five research pillars: Connected and Automated Vehicles, Mobility Decision Science, Multi-Modal Freight, Urban Science, and Advanced Fueling Infrastructure. A sixth research thrust integrated aspects of all five pillars to develop a SMART Mobility Modeling Workflow to evaluate new transportation technologies and services at scale. This report summarizes the work of the Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) Pillar. This Pillar investigated the energy, technology, and usage implications of vehicle connectivity and automation and identified efficient CAV solutions. For information about the other Pillars and about the SMART Mobility Modeling Workflow, please refer to the relevant Pillar’s Capstone Report.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗