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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 685 records · Page 38
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1977

Solar power satellite status report

The development of a solar power satellite program is considered. It is suggested that the solar power satellite is an engineering rather than a science program - that is, that no scientific breakthroughs are required before initiating the project. Available technology is examined, and several key questions are discussed: how efficient is microwave transfer of energy; how feasible is construction in space; and will the advantages of continuous insolation compensate for the costs of building a solar power plant in synchronous orbit 23,000 miles above the earth.

Davis, H. P.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Design of a power management and distribution system for a thermionic-diode powered spacecraft

The Electrical Systems Development Branch of the Power Technology Division at the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio is designing a Power Management and Distribution (PMAD) System for the Air Force's Integrated Solar Upper Stage (ISUS) Engine Ground Test Demonstration (EGD). The ISUS program uses solar-thermal propulsion to perform orbit transfers from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) and from LEO to Molnya. The ISUS uses the same energy conversion receiver to perform the LEO to High Earth Orbit (HEO) transfer and to generate on-orbit electric power for the payloads. On-orbit power generation is accomplished via two solar concentrators heating a dual-cavity graphite-core which has Thermionic Diodes (TMD's) encircling each cavity. The graphite core and concentrators together are called the Receiver and Concentrator (RAC). The TDM-emitters reach peak temperatures of approximately 2200K, and the TID-collectors are run at approximately 1000K. Because of the high Specific Impulse (I(sup sp)) of solar thermal propulsion relative to chemical propulsion, and because a common bus is used for communications, GN&C, power, etc., a substantial increase in payload weight is possible. This potentially allows for a stepdown in the required launch vehicle size or class for similar payload weight using conventional chemical propulsion and a separate spacecraft bus. The ISUS power system is to provide 1000W(sub e) at 28+/-6V(sub dc) to the payload/spacecraft from a maximum TID generation capability of 1070W(sub e) at 2200K. Producing power with this quality, protecting the spacecraft from electrical faults and accommodating operational constraints of the TID's are the responsibilities of the PMAD system. The design strategy and system options examined along with the proposed designs for the Flight and EGD configurations are discussed herein.

Kimnach, Greg L.↗
NASA NTRS2019

An Exploration of Mission Concepts That Could Utilize Small RPS

The NASA Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) Program Mission Analysis Team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) requested a JPL Innovation Foundry Architecture Team (A-Team) study to assess mission pull for small RPS (1 mWe - 40 We) in order to inform the RPS Program Office on what future power system developments should be focused on. The A-Team is JPL’s concurrent engineering design team for science definition and early mission concept development, targeting concept maturation levels of 1 through 3. The requested small RPS study was tasked to identify the architecture space of potential small RPS missions, and suggest power levels that could enable or enhance potential future small spacecraft missions. This paper describes the collaborative engineering processes that the A-Team and Mission Analysis Team used to reach results quickly and the findings to inform the RPS Program about mission concept power requirements on RPS for small missions.

Bairstow, Brian K.↗
DOE OSTI2023

A New Offering for the Seaman Status Labyrinth - Seaman Status for Nuclear Reactor Operators on Floating Nuclear Power Plants

Floating nuclear power plants present a unique operating environment for land-based nuclear reactor operators. Traditionally located in the control room of a nuclear power plant on land, development of floating nuclear power plants exposes the traditional land-based employees to the marine environment. With the extension of nuclear power generation facilities into the maritime domain, do nuclear reactor operators working on a floating nuclear power plant qualify as seaman under maritime law? Applying existing maritime law, the answer is no, a nuclear reactor operator who operates the nuclear reactor on a floating nuclear power plant does not qualify as a seaman because their work is not in support of the mission of the vessel and the reactor is not connected to a vessel because a floating nuclear power plant is not a vessel. Applying the analysis developed by the Supreme Court in Chandris v. Latsis and the recent Sanchez v. Smart Fabricators of Texas, L.L.C. en banc decision by the Fifth Circuit, a nuclear reactor operator on a floating nuclear power plant does not qualify for seaman status under the Jones Act because their function supports the operation of the reactor and the structure on which the reactor resides does not meet the reasonable person standard established in Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach. Further, existing case law highlights that rendering a structure practically impossible to move eliminates the structure from consideration as a vessel. Because a floating nuclear power plant may be anchored at a seaport or anchored offshore but connected via transmission cables and protected by physical protection barriers, a floating nuclear power plant, with no current means of propulsion is rendered a power plant on water, which is its true function. Recognizing that technological change may alter the conclusion presented in this Article, current designs and structures that exist illustrate the intersection between nuclear and maritime law and the ever-evolving concepts that underpin seamen status in maritime law.

Fialkoff, Marc↗
DOE OSTI2020

Learning Optimal Solutions for Extremely Fast AC Optimal Power Flow

We develop, in this paper, a machine learning approach to optimize the real-time operation of electric power grids. In particular, we learn feasible solutions to the AC optimal power flow (OPF) problem with negligible optimality gaps. The AC OPF problem aims at identifying optimal operational conditions of the power grids that minimize power losses and/or generation costs. Due to the computational challenges with solving this nonconvex problem, many efforts have focused on linearizing or approximating the problem in order to solve the AC OPF on faster timescales. However, many of these approximations can be fairly poor representations of the actual system state and still require solving an optimization problem, which can be time consuming for large networks. In this work, we learn a mapping between the system loading and optimal generation values, enabling us to find near-optimal and feasible AC OPF solutions. This allows us to bypass solving the traditionally nonconvex AC OPF problem, resulting in a significant decrease in computational burden for grid operators.

machine learning↗
DOE OSTI2021

Impact of Connected Communities

Buildings account for 35% of CO 2 emissions and almost 40% of the United States’ energy use. High-performance homes and neighborhoods play an important role in supporting efforts to decarbonize the US power system by 2035. Significant reductions in CO 2 emissions within the residential sector can be realized through electrification of loads paired with the flexibility created by leveraging smart Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to shift energy use based on grid signals, thus improving generation/distribution efficiency and maximizing the use of renewable generation capacity. All of this can be achieved while allowing smart home appliances and equipment to meet homeowner needs – including reducing power bills - while optimizing operation in conjunction with the grid using novel control techniques. The Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings Roadmap by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Building Technologies Office (BTO) notes that implementing grid-interactive efficient building (GEB) technology has the potential to reduce CO 2 emissions by 80 million tons/year—roughly equivalent to 17 million cars. To achieve this vision, the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)—in collaboration with Southern Company Research & Development, Alabama Power, Georgia Power, BTO and the US DOE’s Office of Electricity (OE) —is developing and demonstrating novel connected communities at two locations. Southern Company in turn engaged with industry partners, including design firms, residential developers, and residential HVAC and appliance manufacturers because their participation would be critical to the success of the initial research project, as well as the future scaling to the Southern Company service territory and beyond. Impacts of the Connected Communities projects in Alabama and Georgia are outlined including: energy, grid services and data management learnings; homeowner feedback; vendor engagement; adoption by utilities; technical, policy and business model challenges.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Wind and Solar Hybrid Power Plants for Energy Resilience

Wind-solar-storage hybrid power plants represent a significant and growing share of new proposed projects in the United States (U.S.). Their uptake is supported by increasing renewable energy market share, technical abilities for dispatch and control, and decreasing wind, solar, and battery storage costs. Simultaneously, generation and storage resources are increasingly used in distributed power systems. While concerns around the reliability of the aging, transforming U.S. electric grid are growing, diversifying energy resources through hybridization or spatial distribution provides an opportunity to enhance power system resilience compared to single-source generation. Understanding where to build hybrids for resilience value, rather than bulk power supply, has not been fully explored in previous studies. Therefore, in this study, we complete a national complementarity analysis to identify areas in the U.S. that are particularly suited for wind-solar hybrid power plant development. We show the importance of seasonal and diurnal patterns in assessing complementarity, and identify that regions in the Great Plains, Midwest, and Southeast are particularly suited for hybrid power plants. We demonstrate the resilience value of hybridization for a reference system based near Memphis, Tennessee, and show optimal sizing of wind, solar, and storage assets given 1.0 and 0.9 critical load factors. Results indicate that pairing wind and solar assets better meet constant load demand and reduce storage requirements compared to solar alone. These results enable future work integrating complementarity metrics in resilience frameworks and indicate a need for more finer resolution of local resource, demand, and hazard data.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Investigation of radiated-power for low aspect ratio fusion plasmas

Investigating radiated power in fusion plasmas is of utmost importance to understand the effect of undesired impurities, such as metals, in present devices, or also desired impurities, such as noble gasses, to purposefully radiate a large fraction of power in future devices. These studies are especially important for high Z impurities which will play a crucial role in future generation fusion pilot plants. In this work, we have developed a power radiation analysis module, which is used to investigate 2D distributions of impurity densities and radiated power asymmetries caused due to both plasma rotation and the cooling rate dependence on temperature profile for the cases of experimental NSTX plasmas and designed scenarios for the spherical tokamak advanced reactor (STAR), both being low aspect ratio tokamaks. Two different atomic databases have been tested during this work to study their impact on the radiated power distribution, especially for high Z impurities. Also in PRAM, self-consistent calculations of two-dimensional electron, main ion, and impurity ion densities are carried out using one-dimensional input density, temperature, and rotation profiles. In the case of NSTX, discharges with high rotation of ∼ 170 km s, measured with charge exchange recombination spectroscopy, have been investigated. Rotation-induced charge separation, leading to an electrostatic potential, is calculated iteratively to a self-consistent solution while testing high Z impurities to observe any 2D asymmetry in the core radiated power due to centrifugal forces. The STAR design, being much larger (R = 4 m), is projected to have a much lower rotation, and is shown to have low rotation-induced asymmetries, on the order of ten percent or less, between the low field and high field sides. However, another effect not due to rotation but to the dependence of impurity cooling rates on temperature can lead to radiation peaking off-axis, near the plasma edge. This effect is noticeable for argon in NSTX, for example, but can also be enhanced for certain impurities at much higher temperatures projected for STAR (T e0 ~ 32 keV), for example for undesired tungsten or possibly desired xenon.

NSTX↗
NASA NTRS1978

Next steps in space transportation and operations

Design of a 25-kW power or utilities module, capable of extending the effective duration of Spacelab missions, is discussed. The power module, planned for availability in 1984, could also support a Spacelab modified to be a free-flyer by providing attitude control and power. In addition, development of a 250-kW power module to support a Shuttle-tended space platform or a Shuttle-tended space construction base is projected. A free-flying teleoperator capable of deboosting Skylab, systems to construct large planar arrays in space, and a habitable module providing crew quarters for continuously manned operations are also described.

Disher, J. H.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Multimegawatt potassium Rankine power for nuclear electric power

A cermet fueled potassium rankine power system concept has been developed for various power ranges and operating lifetimes. This concept utilizes a single primary lithium loop to transport thermal energy from the reactor to the boiler. Multiple, independent potassium loops are employed to achieve the required reliability of 99 percent. The potassium loops are two phase systems which expand heated potassium vapor through multistage turboalternators to produce a 10-kV dc electrical output. Condensation occurs by-way-of a shear-flow condenser, producing a 100 percent liquid potassium stream which is pumped back to the boiler. Waste heat is rejected by an advanced carbon-carbon radiator at approximately 1000 K. Overall system efficiencies of 19.3 percent to 20.5 percent were calculated depending on mission life and power level.

Rovang, Richard D.↗
NASA NTRS2007

Development of High Fidelity, Fuel-Like Thermal Simulators for Non-Nuclear Testing

This viewgraph presentation reviews the development of a simulator for non-nuclear tests for the development of a space nuclear power system. The development of the Instrumented Thermal Simulator is to assist in developing an understanding of individual components and integrated system operation without the cost, time, safety concerns associated with nuclear testing. The presentation shows the design, the electrical integration, the hardware, and the assembly of the simulators. There are slides that show the test plan, the analysis, and the initial results.

Bragg-Sitton, Shannon↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Battery and Power Systems Designed by NASA

The engineering team in the Propulsion and Power Division designs, develops, tests and evaluates electric power and safe battery system solutions.

Martin Martinez↗
DOE OSTI2023

Developing a Disaster-Ready Power Grid Agent Through Geophysically-Informed Fault Event Scenarios

Management of the nation’s power grid over the coming decades will need to factor multiple climate-driven threats to the power system that can be stressful or even detrimental to its operations. During disasters, grid operators suffer from cognitive overload where the electric grid is severely impacted by the weather, yet grid operators have limited awareness of these factors. Meanwhile, the electric grid is facing an explosion of data coming from a variety of sources which can enable the operator to evaluate the risks and develop mitigation strategies against hazardous events. In this work, we processed heterogeneous environmental and power grid data to learn and model grid behavior caused by extreme weather events. In this study, we focused on two weather-driven hazards, hurricanes and wildfires, which were analysed for the electric grid of Texas. We the used this data to train a Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent by analysing and predicting future behaviour of the grid during those hazard events. All these parts are incorporated in one framework to have a geophysically informed power simulators that can be used to train RL agents.

electic grid, reinforcement learning, climate adap↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Benefit and Critical Factors for the Performance of the Boundary Layer Ingesting Propulsion

The benefit of the boundary layer ingestion (BLI) is described in the perspective of the propulsion and engine development. A power saving map of the BLI engines is derived based on the correlation of the shape factor of the ingested boundary layer and the propulsive efficiency. The ratio of the mass flow rate between BLI and non-BLI propulsors is introduced to quantify the power saving of the BLI engine relative to a corresponding clean inlet flow engine that generates the same amount of net thrust. The wake recovery factor from the jet flow is applied to find the optimum sizing of the engine for the given design requirement. The effects of the fan pressure ratio of the propulsor toward the power saving are also investigated to seek out the feasible range of the BLI propulsor design. The derived correlation is validated with CFD analyses. Simulation models using variously sized engines relative to an influencing body are developed so that a numerical experiment is carried out with the various shape factors. The effect of the propulsion airframe integration toward the aerodynamic forces on the fuselage and nacelle is investigated via parametric study of the engine sizing and fan pressure ratio for the wake ingestion models. The propulsor efficiency is quantified toward the saving in the actual shaft power and correlated with the efficiency penalty of the BLI propulsor. The correlation is also validated via comparison of the turbo-machinery CFD results for BLI2DTF and conventional transonic fan stages.

Boundary Layer Ingestion↗
DOE OSTI2023

Advancements in Development and Testing of Thermal Power Dispatch Simulators

Flexible plant operations and generation (FPOG) offer nuclear power plants (NPPs) the chance to leverage alternative, non-electric revenue streams while ensuring their continued role as reliable, clean, and constant sources of baseload electrical power. The excess thermal energy generated from NPPs during periods of low electricity demand can be channeled as raw materials to numerous industrial processes via a thermal power dispatch (TPD) system. Hydrogen production via high-temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE) is an optimal use case based on technical and economic feasibility. Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) have conducted previous works that developed and implemented TPD system models within the GSE Solutions Generic Pressurized Water Reactor (GPWR) simulator to support human-in-the-loop (HITL) scenario-based evaluations. The first part of this report documents modifications made to the GPWR TPD model and HMI from the previous iteration in line with a new Sargent and Lundy (S&L) TPD design with an automatic control system. The was done in collaboration with Westinghouse using their three-loop pressurizer water reactor (W3LPWR) simulator which contains an industrial grade automatic control system for the TPD. This was installed in the Human Systems Simulation Laboratory (HSSL) at INL. The second part of the report documents findings from an all-hands-on-deck integration and verification workshop that was conducted in the HSSL over several days. The research team comprised INL human factors and TPD experts, a nuclear engineer from GSE Solutions who implemented the revised TPD model for GPWR, the human-machine interface (HMI) prototyping and human factors team from the University of Idaho, and personnel with operations experience with pressurized water reactors. The workshop provided time and expertise to conduct the final activities to bring the operations, HMI, and simulator into a functional state. The goals of the integration and verification workshop were: 1. to install the revised GPWR TPD model into the HSSL 2. verify the TPD HMI prototype was functional 3. integrate the HTSE Simulink model to GPWR. 3. Issues were identified for resolution, but overall the workshop accomplished its goal to integrated and verify the majority of the intended functional. Future work will resolve the identified issues and use the integrated simulation to support an evaluation and demonstration in the next fiscal year.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Achieving American Leadership in the Nuclear Energy Supply Chain Factsheet

The United States is committed to achieving a 50 to 52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030, creating a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035, and achieving net zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050. Nuclear energy is essential to meeting those goals. That includes the existing fleet and advanced reactors that are moving forward for deployment and under development. Nuclear power plants produce 20 percent of the total electricity supply in the United States today and are the largest source of carbon-free energy. However, we have an opportunity to expand significantly nuclear energy’s percentage of electricity generated in the United States. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) report - developed in response to President Biden’s Executive Order “America’s Supply Chains” signed in 2021 - describes the nuclear supply chain and investigates challenges for continued operation of today’s 93 reactors and construction of advanced reactors. The supply chain is critical for successfully enabling the continued operation of the existing domestic fleet of light-water reactors as well as supporting deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2016

Aircraft Electric/Hybrid-Electric Power and Propulsion Workshop Perspective of the V/STOL Aircraft Systems Tech Committee

This presentation will be given at the AIAA Electric Hybrid-Electric Power Propulsion Workshop on July 29, 2016. The workshop is being held so the AIAA can determine how it can support the introduction of electric aircraft into the aerospace industry. This presentation will address the needs of the community within the industry that advocates the use of powered-lift as important new technologies for future aircraft and air transportation systems. As the current chairman of the VSTOL Aircraft Systems Technical Committee, I will be presenting generalized descriptions of the past research in developing powered-lift and generalized observations on how electric and hybrid-electric propulsion may provide advances in the powered-lift field.

V/STOL↗
NASA NTRS1987

High-Frequency ac Power-Distribution System

Loads managed automatically under cycle-by-cycle control. 440-V rms, 20-kHz ac power system developed. System flexible, versatile, and "transparent" to user equipment, while maintaining high efficiency and low weight. Electrical source, from dc to 2,200-Hz ac converted to 440-V rms, 20-kHz, single-phase ac. Power distributed through low-inductance cables. Output power either dc or variable ac. Energy transferred per cycle reduced by factor of 50. Number of parts reduced by factor of about 5 and power loss reduced by two-thirds. Factors result in increased reliability and reduced costs. Used in any power-distribution system requiring high efficiency, high reliability, low weight, and flexibility to handle variety of sources and loads.

Hansen, Irving G.↗