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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 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Review of Marine Renewable Energy in Integrated Resource Plans

As part of a literature review of reference material for grid applications of marine hydrokinetic energy capture technologies, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) surveyed U.S. electric utility integrated resource plans for the mention or treatment of marine renewable energy technologies, principally wave energy, tidal energy, and offshore wind energy. This review offers a window into utility decision-making and data utilization with regard to these generating technologies. The report also offers perspectives on the relationship between traditional and emerging resource planning paradigms and metrics.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2024

Direct Air Capture Recovery of Energy for CCUS Partnership (DAC RECO 2 UP) Final Technical Report

The “Direct Air Capture Recovery of Energy for CCUS Partnership (DAC RECO 2 UP)” project employs a team approach and supports the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management’s (DOE-FECM) goal to decrease the cost of capture through the testing of existing direct air capture (DAC) materials in integrated field units that produce a concentrated carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) stream of at least 95% purity. Solid-amine CO 2 adsorption-desorption contactor technology, proven in the laboratory, is undergoing high-fidelity design/validation. Recoverable energy is readily available from a large number of commercial locations where DAC can be deployed; therefore, advancing the fidelity of energy recovery to directly reduce the cost of DAC is a key project objective. In addition, many commercial facilities have low-concentration CO 2 vents that are uneconomical to treat alone but could provide more efficient mass and thermal transport to DAC systems with integrated energy recovery and flexible CO 2 treatment capabilities. Technology scale-up leverages past research and occurs in a commercially relevant environment at the National Carbon Capture Center. Prescreening techno-economic analysis, risk assessments, and life cycle analysis are being performed by experienced team members. Results of the project will address critical technical barriers that, when solved, will improve the capital and operating costs of DAC while validating commercial relevance of cost and product quality/need.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Incorporating energy justice and equity objectives in power system models

Ensuring an equitable energy transition requires models and tools that can account for equity and energy justice goals. Power system models (PSMs) are widely used throughout industry, government, and academia to simulate or optimize the operations and planning of current and future electricity systems under different scenarios, parameter assumptions and policy frameworks. These models are important tools that allow users to understand how the power system may evolve under different future conditions, but importantly, they are also used to inform policy implementation and investment decisions across all aspects of the power system. However, existing models seldom include energy justice considerations and therefore energy justice priorities are not reflected in the policies and other decision-making processes that are informed by these models. The purpose of this review is to provide a framework that energy modelers can draw upon to integrate energy justice and equity goals into PSMs. To this end, 99 papers that examine the intersection of energy justice and power system models are summarized and ten core aspects of the power system that can impact energy justice outcomes, and therefore require new modeling approaches, are identified. This review then establishes key current practices, challenges, and opportunities associated with capturing energy justice considerations in power system models across these ten aspects. This review concludes by proposing four key research directions that should be pursued to improve the representation of energy justice and equity in power system modeling. Finally, this review also addresses challenges raised by United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7, which aims to ensure affordable energy access to everyone and Sustainable Development Goal 13, which aims to take urgent action to address climate change.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Prototype and Codesign of Nascent Flexible Wave Energy Converter Concepts

Prevailing mainstream ocean wave energy converter (WEC) archetypes are often relatively large monolithic rigid bodies with singular means of power take-off (e.g., relative motion between rigid bodies) and solo prime mover mechanisms (e.g. a rotary generator, a hydraulic piston). These mainstream WEC archetypes have existed for decades with some having histories spanning more than a century of significant investments and interests. As an alternative to the domain of mainstream WEC archetypes is the domain of distributed embedded energy converter technologies (also known as DEEC-Tec). Use of DEEC-Tec to create WECs - often called flexWECs - is a nascent domain of research and development that centers itself upon the interconnection of many relatively small energy converters - very small energy transducers - that interconnect and combine to create a much larger, overall, energy converting structure. The DEEC-Tec domain enables promising possibilities such as: direct in situ ocean wave energy harvesting and conversion throughout the volume of an entire flexWEC; inherent broad-banded ocean wave energy capture and conversion arising from near semi-continuous structural degrees of freedom; an innate absence of focusing and concentrating of ocean wave energy into a single prime mover and/or transmission system; and built-in implicit redundancy. As such, the DEEC-Tec domain could revolutionize how we conceptualize ocean wave energy conversion - both in terms of ocean wave energy converter design and what we view as viable environments and circumstances for ocean wave energy conversion. The research and development opportunities for the DEEC-Tec domain, therefore, are vast compared to the prevailing mainstream ocean wave energy converter domain. Correspondingly, there are ample opportunities to invest time and money into the DEEC-Tec domain with an aim to enable a paradigm shift in how ocean waves can be utilized as a more viable form of renewable energy. To that end, two seedling efforts have been enacted providing a very cursory investigation into the DEEC-Tec domain: (1) a preliminary simple fabrication/prototyping effort and (2) a preliminary co-design effort. The prototype seedling centers upon the design of a fabrication and evaluation rig for individual DEEC-Tec transducers; e.g., dielectric elastomer generators. The co-design seedling centers upon the analysis of those methods suitable for DEEC-Tec, ocean wave energy conversion, and fluid-structure interaction co-design efforts.

50 EE - Wind and Water Power Program - Water (EE-4↗
DOE OSTI2025

Dynamic separation of gases using microsieves

Separation of light weight molecules, such as nitrogen, argon, and oxygen, from heavier compounds can have significant impacts on energy capture, environmental monitoring, or isotopic applications. Large-scale gas separation techniques, like gas centrifugation and membrane mitigation, can be problematic as they impart tremendous energy and induce high mechanical stress onto the instrumentation. Microsieves, also known as micronozzles or microfunnels, are developed to create physical barriers to separate specific isotopes and gases. Separation is achieved using a converging and diverging micronozzle to impose supersonic gas flow around a curved wall, and it has been used for the separation of heavy actinide isotopes in low weight gas as well as separation of low weight gas compositions of nitrogen and argon back in 1900s. However, systematic reviews of this unique technology are lacking. The application of the Laval style nozzle, which has a converging/diverging entrance fundamental to the micronozzle, is included in this review due to its importance in industrial applications in uranium (U) isotope refinement. Using advanced computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations, the extent of gas separation can be modelled. Herein, we first examine the literature and survey recent advances on fabrication techniques for creating curved micronozzles, methods and separation principles used to design devices. Furthermore, we then follow with highlights of CFD simulations applied to evaluate the separation effects using microsieves. Finally, identification of the gap and recommendation for future development and applications are suggested for using intrinsic molecular features and fluidic dynamics in formulating separation strategies.

30 Microfluidics↗
DOE OSTI2023

Modeling Ring Current Proton Fluxes Using Artificial Neural Network and Van Allen Probe Measurements

Abstract Terrestrial ring current dynamics are a critical part of the near‐space environment, in that they directly drive geomagnetic field variations that control particle drifts, and define geomagnetic storms. The present study aims to specify a global and time‐varying distribution of ring current proton using geomagnetic indices and solar wind parameters with their history as input. We train an artificial neural network (ANN) model to reproduce proton fluxes measured by the Radiation Belt Storm Probes Ion Composition Experiment instrument onboard Van Allen Probes. By choosing optimal feature parameters and their history length, the model results show a high correlation and a small error between model specifications and satellite measurements. The modeled results well capture energy‐dependent proton dynamics in association with geomagnetic storms, including inward radial diffusion, acceleration and decay. Our ANN model produces proton fluxes with their corresponding 3D spatiotemporal variations, capturing the latitudinal distribution and local time asymmetry that are consistent with observations and that can further inform theory.

Li, Jinxing↗
DOE OSTI2021

Atomic layer deposition of sodium fluoride thin films

The need for advanced energy conversion and storage devices remains a critical challenge amid the growing worldwide demand for renewable energy. Metal fluoride thin films are of great interest for applications in lithium-ion and emerging rechargeable battery technologies, particularly for enhancing the stability of the electrode-electrolyte interface and thereby extending battery cyclability and lifetime. Reported within, sodium fluoride (NaF) thin films were synthesized via atomic layer deposition. NaF growth experiments were carried out at reactor temperatures between 175 and 250 °C using sodium tert-butoxide and HF-pyridine solution. Here, the optimal deposition temperature range was 175–200 °C, and the resulting NaF films exhibited low roughness (R q ≈ 1.6 nm for films of ~8.5 nm), nearly stoichiometric composition (Na:F = 1:1.05) and a growth per cycle value of 0.85 Å/cycle on SiO 2 substrates. These results are encouraging for future applications of NaF thin films in the development of improved energy capture and storage technologies.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Temporal performance indicators for an integrated pilot-scale membrane distillation-concentrated solar power/photovoltaic system

Management of concentrate streams in inland applications has uncertain long-term environmental impacts. This study investigates an intensified solar-energy capture desalination system that integrates membrane distillation (MD) with a hybrid concentrated solar power (CSP)/photovoltaic (PV) collector to realize self-sustained zero-waste discharge for effective management of concentrate streams in inland and off-grid applications. The demonstration-scale CSP/PV system can produce up to 178 kWh of thermal energy and 4 kWh of electrical energy per day. The thermal and electrical energy from the CSP/PV system is directly supplied to the air gap MD (AGMD) pilot-scale system producing up to 288 L of distilled water per day. Experiments were performed on the hybrid AGMD-CSP/PV system to evaluate system performance under various operating conditions including AGMD and CSP flow rates, CSP system pre-heating, and AGMD vacuum pressure. Experimental results indicate that doubling the AGMD flow rate results in a 119% increase in thermal energy utilization and a 71% increase in distillate production. Compared to the winter months, operating the system in summer months when direct normal irradiance (DNI) is highest results in nearly double the distillate production (88 L in winter and 168 L in summer) and nearly three times the amount of thermal energy consumption (15 kWh in winter and 43 kWh in summer). Operating with vacuum resulted in a 34% increase in distillate production and allowing the thermal storage reservoir to preheat in the winter resulted in a 61% increase in distillate production. Altogether, experimental results highlight the tradeoff between distillate production and thermal and electrical energy production and consumption under various environmental conditions and the potential for AGMD-CSP/PV to be a stand-alone desalination system.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Unlocking America's Abundant Marine Energy Resources

NREL Marine Energy One-Pager: A resource designed for use during NREL campus visits - especially with high-profile guests - as well as at events in Washington, D.C., when engaging with the new administration, and for displays at WPTO or lab booths. The U.S. holds vast untapped marine energy resources - wave, tidal, river, and ocean currents - that can strengthen grid resilience, support coastal communities, and advance energy independence. NREL leads innovation in this space through advanced modeling tools, patented technologies, and world-class testing facilities. NREL's simulation platforms, like OpenFAST and SAM, help reduce development time and risk. Patented devices such as PKelp and FlexWEC demonstrate flexible, resilient approaches to energy capture. At Flatirons Campus, NREL offers motion simulation, structural testing, wave tanks, and megawatt-scale microgrid emulation via the ARIES platform. These capabilities help developers refine and validate devices before in-water trials. With upcoming open-water testing at PacWave and strong partnerships, NREL is accelerating the path to commercialization - positioning the U.S. as a global leader in marine energy innovation.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Wind Turbine Gust Load Alleviation with Active Flow Control

Large wind turbine rotors are becoming more common in utility-scale wind power, especially for offshore wind plants. However, the trend toward large rotors can be limited by their ability to manage dynamic and extreme loads. To provide a safety margin for the rotor design and avoid catastrophic events such as tower strikes, extreme loads need to be controlled. The objective of this study is to develop and evaluate a feedback control system to alleviate extreme loads and reduce blade deflections under gust events using active flow control devices. We also propose a modification in the turbine controller to achieve further reduction in extreme loads. The extreme load reductions are evaluated under gust wind conditions with direction changes according to the IEC standard. The effects of the gust alleviation controller on turbine performance and fatigue loads are investigated as well. With the deployment of the gust alleviation controller and modified turbine baseline controller, the extreme loads and deflections reduce by up to 23%. The energy captured by the turbine is not affected by the proposed gust alleviation controller. The fatigue loads of various wind turbine components are either reduced or remain unchanged.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

2.2.5.401 - Ocean Observing Prize

The Powering the Blue Economy: Ocean Observing Prize is a $2.4M contest that challenges innovators to develop solutions that integrate marine renewable energy with ocean observation platforms to revolutionize our ability to monitor, manage, and understand the ocean. Competitors are challenged to design, build, and test novel, wave-powered, self-charging autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) systems that could be suitable for a 6-month deployment in the Atlantic Ocean to monitor hurricane formation. Through engagement with the end user ocean observing community, the team identified challenges in a lack of data on storm intensity, endangering coastal communities. This challenge could be addressed by collecting data before, during, and after a hurricane develops and strengthens at sea. Amassing this data, however, requires an ocean observing system that can be deployed at sea for long periods, waiting for approaching storms. To help solve this problem, competitors are working to integrate wave energy capture with AUV systems to collect this data, helping to better protect coastal communities from oncoming storms. Solutions developed through this prize aim to enable long-term collection of data before, during, and after a hurricane that will help better forecast storm intensity. The prize mechanism provides an environment to accelerate technology development for innovators and helps to improve awareness of marine energy and its ability to provide power to blue economy applications.

coastal communities↗
DOE OSTI2024

Conceptual Design of a Tension Leg Platform With 22.3 MW Vertical Axis Turbine

Here, this paper presents the conceptual design of a tension leg platform (TLP) for the ARCUS “towerless” vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT). VAWTs are ideal for floating offshore sites and have several advantages over horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWT) including reduced top mass, lower center of gravity, increased energy capture, and in turn lower cost. The towerless ARCUS VAWT drives these advantages further through increased structural efficiency and by enabling more optimized TLP designs with simplified installation procedures. For hull sizing, we have studied three turbine sizes with corresponding power ratings of 5.1 MW, 10.4 MW and 22.3 MW. The largest turbine was identified as having the greatest potential to reduce the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and is the reference size used for the further detailed design process. The conceptual design of the VAWT TLP has been awarded with an ABS Approval in Principle Certificate. This paper contains brief analysis results and design findings for a TLP designed to house a VAWT, including the following topics: • Applicable Design Codes • Metocean Conditions • ARCUS Turbine Loads • Design Load Cases and Requirements - Pre-service TLP Stability - In-place TLP Global Performance • Platform Configurations, Hull Structure Scantling Design, Weight and CG Estimation, and General Arrangement Drawings • Hull Ballast Plan for both Pre-service and In-place Conditions • Pre-service Quayside Integration, Transportation and Wet Tow Stability Analysis • Global Performance Analysis for Motions and Tendon tensions • Summary of cost components and system levelized cost of energy

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Feasibility study to use neutron capture for an ultralow energy nuclear-recoil calibration in liquid xenon

The feasibility of an ultra-low energy nuclear-recoil measurement in liquid xenon using neutron capture is investigated for a small (sub-kilogram) liquid xenon detector that is optimized for a high scintillation gain, and a pulsed neutron source. Further, the measurement uses the recoil energies imparted to xenon nuclei during the de-excitation process following neutron capture, where promptly emitted γ cascades can provide the nuclei with up to 0.3 keV nr of recoil energy due to conservation of momentum. A successful calibration of scintillation photon and ionization electron yields below this energy will contribute to a greater sensitivity for liquid xenon experiments in searches for light WIMPs.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Derivation of A Representative Elementary Volume (REV) for Upscaled Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media

Relative permeability plays an important role in the upscaling of multiphase flow in porous media from the pore scale to the Darcy scale. The entire concept of relative permeability is contingent on the existence of a representative elementary volume (REV). As we move to smaller samples to measure relative permeability, such as with digital core analysis, the concept of a classical REV has become increasingly unlikely when using the conventional approach to defining a representative volume. The “‘conventional”’ understanding of an REV is that a large enough volume must be considered such that spatial variability averages out. In digital rock methods, such as pore-scale simulations based on micro-computed tomography (CT) images, the domain size is typically 2 to 4 mm. This is approximately the length scale of a single-phase flow REV using the classic REV approach. However, the single-phase perspective does not consider the complex dynamics and fluctuations often observed in multiphase flow systems, even at centimeter-scale experiments and/or simulations. A fundamental question is, therefore, whether the domain size commonly used in digital rock simulations can provide a consistent energy budget such that the concept of relative permeability exists. Based on first principles, relative permeability accounts for the rate of energy dissipated in a stationary process. If the dynamics are fluctuating, the energy dissipated can vary but will average out over a long enough timescale. The key to determining the validity of the relative permeability is the timescale of the measurement, not the spatial scale. The conventional REV theory assumes that spatial, temporal, and ensemble averages are equivalent in an ergodic system, but it does not provide a way to test this assumption. We provide a formal way to identify the timescale where the relative permeability accurately captures energy dissipation as a way to validate relative permeability measurements and quantitatively assess their accuracy. This result will be tested for a practical SCAL test, determining how long a flow experiment needs to be run to accurately characterize the rate of energy dissipation by the flow. The outcome will be a best practice guide for the determination of relative permeability from core-scale experiments and/or digital core simulations that ensure the energy budget is fully accounted for in the relative permeability coefficient.

Mcclure, James [Virginia Tech, Blacksburg]↗
DOE OSTI2023

Grand challenges in the design, manufacture, and operation of future wind turbine systems

Abstract. Wind energy is foundational for achieving 100 % renewable electricity production, and significant innovation is required as the grid expands and accommodates hybrid plant systems, energy-intensive products such as fuels, and a transitioning transportation sector. The sizable investments required for wind power plant development and integration make the financial and operational risks of change very high in all applications but especially offshore. Dependence on a high level of modeling and simulation accuracy to mitigate risk and ensure operational performance is essential. Therefore, the modeling chain from the large-scale inflow down to the material microstructure, and all the steps in between, needs to predict how the wind turbine system will respond and perform to allow innovative solutions to enter commercial application. Critical unknowns in the design, manufacturing, and operability of future turbine and plant systems are articulated, and recommendations for research action are laid out. This article focuses on the many unknowns that affect the ability to push the frontiers in the design of turbine and plant systems. Modern turbine rotors operate through the entire atmospheric boundary layer, outside the bounds of historic design assumptions, which requires reassessing design processes and approaches. Traditional aerodynamics and aeroelastic modeling approaches are pressing against the limits of applicability for the size and flexibility of future architectures and flow physics fundamentals. Offshore wind turbines have additional motion and hydrodynamic load drivers that are formidable modeling challenges. Uncertainty in turbine wakes complicates structural loading and energy production estimates, both around a single plant and for downstream plants, which requires innovation in plant operations and flow control to achieve full energy capture and load alleviation potential. Opportunities in co-design can bring controls upstream into design optimization if captured in design-level models of the physical phenomena. It is a research challenge to integrate improved materials into the manufacture of ever-larger components while maintaining quality and reducing cost. High-performance computing used in high-fidelity, physics-resolving simulations offer opportunities to improve design tools through artificial intelligence and machine learning, but even the high-fidelity tools are yet to be fully validated. Finally, key actions needed to continue the progress of wind energy technology toward even lower cost and greater functionality are recommended.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Exploiting Machine Learning to Efficiently Predict Multidimensional Optical Spectra in Complex Environments

The excited-state dynamics of chromophores in complex environments determine a range of vital biological and energy capture processes. Time-resolved, multidimensional optical spectroscopies provide a key tool to investigate these processes. Although theory has the potential to decode these spectra in terms of the electronic and atomistic dynamics, the need for large numbers of excited-state electronic structure calculations severely limits first-principles predictions of multidimensional optical spectra for chromophores in the condensed phase. In this work, we leverage the locality of chromophore excitations to develop machine learning models to predict the excited-state energy gap of chromophores in complex environments for efficiently constructing linear and multidimensional optical spectra. By analyzing the performance of these models, which span a hierarchy of physical approximations, across a range of chromophore–environment interaction strengths, we provide strategies for the construction of machine learning models that greatly accelerate the calculation of multidimensional optical spectra from first principles.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS2004

Imaging Beyond What Man Can See

Three lightweight, portable hyperspectral sensor systems have been built that capture energy from 200 to 1700 nanometers (ultravio1et to shortwave infrared). The sensors incorporate a line scanning technique that requires no relative movement between the target and the sensor. This unique capability, combined with portability, opens up new uses of hyperspectral imaging for laboratory and field environments. Each system has a GUI-based software package that allows the user to communicate with the imaging device for setting spatial resolution, spectral bands and other parameters. NASA's Space Partnership Development has sponsored these innovative developments and their application to human problems on Earth and in space. Hyperspectral datasets have been captured and analyzed in numerous areas including precision agriculture, food safety, biomedical imaging, and forensics. Discussion on research results will include realtime detection of food contaminants, molds and toxin research on corn, identifying counterfeit documents, non-invasive wound monitoring and aircraft applications. Future research will include development of a thermal infrared hyperspectral sensor that will support natural resource applications on Earth and thermal analyses during long duration space flight. This paper incorporates a variety of disciplines and imaging technologies that have been linked together to allow the expansion of remote sensing across both traditional and non-traditional boundaries.

May, George↗