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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 829 records · Page 46
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2013

A Retrofit Tool for Improving Energy Efficiency of Commercial Buildings

Existing buildings will dominate energy use in commercial buildings in the United States for three decades or longer and even in China for the about two decades. Retrofitting these buildings to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy use is thus critical to achieving the target of reducing energy use in the buildings sector. However there are few evaluation tools that can quickly identify and evaluate energy savings and cost effectiveness of energy conservation measures (ECMs) for retrofits, especially for buildings in China. This paper discusses methods used to develop such a tool and demonstrates an application of the tool for a retrofit analysis. The tool builds on a building performance database with pre-calculated energy consumption of ECMs for selected commercial prototype buildings using the EnergyPlus program. The tool allows users to evaluate individual ECMs or a package of ECMs. It covers building envelope, lighting and daylighting, HVAC, plug loads, service hot water, and renewable energy. The prototype building can be customized to represent an actual building with some limitations. Energy consumption from utility bills can be entered into the tool to compare and calibrate the energy use of the prototype building. The tool currently can evaluate energy savings and payback of ECMs for shopping malls in China. We have used the tool to assess energy and cost savings for retrofit of the prototype shopping mall in Shanghai. Future work on the tool will simplify its use and expand it to cover other commercial building types and other countries.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Mobility Energy Productivity and Equity: E-Bike Impacts for Low-Income Essential Workers in Denver

New mobility technologies such as electrified and shared mobility, combined with polices and incentive programs, are emerging to help address sustainability and equity issues in transportation planning. However, it can be difficult to understand the impacts of novel mobility trends and emerging modes on energy-efficient access. This is owing to a lack of (1) open-source tools enabling rapid data collection, and (2) open-source metrics that consider multimodal, multiactivity access and mobility within the contexts of sustainability and equity. Here, this paper addresses the topic of improving evaluation of transportation modes and incentive programs by integrating an open-source platform for tracking human travel data—the Open Platform for Agile Trip Heuristics (OpenPATH)—with a mobility metric that quantifies the efficiency of a region’s transportation system: Mobility Energy Productivity (MEP). Integration is demonstrated in the context of pilot programs in Colorado, where low-income essential workers were provided with electric bikes (e-bikes). OpenPATH-informed MEP calculations showed that several locations in downtown Denver provided comparable time-, cost-, and energy-efficient access to opportunities using e-bikes compared with driving. Additionally, providing e-bikes to low-income essential workers was found to be meaningful, as they utilized e-bikes the most to commute, despite driving still being their most utilized mode and the mode with highest MEP scores in Denver. We show how data collected from open-source tools coupled with robust metrics such as MEP can help evaluate the impacts of emerging mobility options. This could support developing policies to incentivize novel modes to achieve greater levels of sustainable, equitable, and efficient access.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2016

RAVEN Theory Manual

RAVEN is a software framework able to perform parametric and stochastic analysis based on the response of complex system codes. The initial development was aimed at providing dynamic risk analysis capabilities to the thermohydraulic code RELAP-7, currently under development at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Although the initial goal has been fully accomplished, RAVEN is now a multi-purpose stochastic and uncertainty quantification platform, capable of communicating with any system code. In fact, the provided Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow RAVEN to interact with any code as long as all the parameters that need to be perturbed are accessible by input files or via python interfaces. RAVEN is capable of investigating system response and explore input space using various sampling schemes such as Monte Carlo, grid, or Latin hypercube. However, RAVEN strength lies in its system feature discovery capabilities such as: constructing limit surfaces, separating regions of the input space leading to system failure, and using dynamic supervised learning techniques. The development of RAVEN started in 2012 when, within the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program, the need to provide a modern risk evaluation framework arose. RAVEN’s principal assignment is to provide the necessary software and algorithms in order to employ the concepts developed by the Risk Informed Safety Margin Characterization (RISMC) program. RISMC is one of the pathways defined within the Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program. In the RISMC approach, the goal is not just to identify the frequency of an event potentially leading to a system failure, but the proximity (or lack thereof) to key safety-related events. Hence, the approach is interested in identifying and increasing the safety margins related to those events. A safety margin is a numerical value quantifying the probability that a safety metric (e.g. peak pressure in a pipe) is exceeded under certain conditions. Most of the capabilities, implemented having RELAP-7 as a principal focus, are easily deployable to other system codes. For this reason, several side activates have been employed (e.g. RELAP5-3D, any MOOSE-based App, etc.) or are currently ongoing for coupling RAVEN with several different software. The aim of this document is to provide a set of commented examples that can help the user to become familiar with the RAVEN code usage.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Vapor Extraction Well Performance and Recommendations for Future Soil Vapor Extraction Activities at the A-014 Outfall

The vadose zone near the A-014 Outfall contains residual volatile organic compounds that serve as a potential source for groundwater contamination. Since 1995 active soil vapor extraction has been an integral part of the corrective actions at this facility. Currently two separate soil vapor extraction systems are being used to remove contamination in the vapor phase from the subsurface. The 782-3M soil vapor extraction unit was deployed in April of 1995 and the A-014 Mobile #3 unit was deployed in January of 2009. The objective of this investigation is to evaluate the performance of individual wells associated with these systems and provide recommendations on possible optimizations to these systems. Options that are considered include continuation of active extraction, transition to a low-energy soil vapor extraction treatment, or abandon nonperforming wells. The scope of the investigation examined the eighteen (18) vadose zone wells that are associated with the ongoing Resource Conservation and Recovery Act corrective action program within A/M Area. During the evaluation process, individual wells were isolated and purged for a standard period using the existing soil vapor extraction system. Following the purge period, vapor samples were collected intermittently over the following 24–72-hour period. The objective of the sampling activity was to collect sufficient data to estimate the mass flow rate of contaminants from the individual extraction wells. Subsequent analysis then evaluated and ranked extraction performance to provide recommendations on the viability, operational scheme, and applicability of low energy soil vapor extraction.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2022

Evaluating the effectiveness of a camera-based detection system to support informed curtailment and minimize eagle fatalities at wind energy facilities

The American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI – now Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute, REWI) – was appointed prime awardee of DOE award number DE-EE0007880 to lead a team of scientists, wind developers, and technology manufacturers in a collaborative evaluation of the effectiveness of a technology intended to help reduce eagle collisions with wind turbines. IdentiFlight, developed by Renewable Energy Systems (RES) in collaboration with Boulder Imaging, is an autonomous aerial monitoring and detection system. REWI partnered with ecological consultants, Western Ecosystems Technology, Inc. (WEST), to independently evaluate the performance of IdentiFlight reducing eagle collision risk under a suite of environmental conditions relative to the performance of a Biomonitor (human observer-based) Program. The project objectives were to 1) evaluate how IdentiFlight compared to biomonitors in detecting and identifying eagles under a suite of environmental conditions and 2) use the observation data to model how IdentiFlight and biomonitors reduced the eagle fatality prediction through informed curtailment. Field testing was to take place at two geographically distinct wind farms over two field seasons at each wind farm with a study design appropriate for meta-analyses across sites and years.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Performance Portability Evaluation of Fluid-Structure Interaction Simulations on Heterogeneous Platforms

The rapid proliferation of heterogeneous programming languages and multi-vendor hardware has underscored the critical need to evaluate the performance portability of scientific applications. In this work, we present the systematic porting and optimization of a massively parallel fluid-structure interaction code across multiple heterogeneous programming frameworks for deployment on leadership-class supercomputers from major vendors. Our analysis focuses on at-scale performance for simulations involving hundreds of millions of deformable cells, executed on a combination of CPUs and GPUs spanning thousands of nodes on exascale machines. We benchmark the performance of each implementation, highlighting the trade-offs inherent in adopting diverse programming models. Key insights regarding the portability of CUDA on multi-vendor platforms, the superior multi-core CPU performance from SYCL, and architectural considerations on performance optimization are distilled from our experience, offering guidance to other users of high performance computing based on our findings.

Martin, Aristotle [Duke University]↗
DOE OSTI2020

DOE/NNSA Nuclear Criticality Safety Program – Brief Overview [Slides]

This presentation discusses nuclear data measurements and evaluation work for the NCSP. The objective of the NCSP is to provide measured and evaluated thermal, resonance, unresolved resonance, and fast region cross section data to address the priority NCSP nuclear data needs. It also discusses its vision which is to address multiple Nuclear Data 5- and 10-year goals and attributes identified in the NCSP. The intended final product is for rigorous ENDF/B evaluations to be produced from cross section measurements and analyses. It also discusses NCSP integral experiments and differential experiments in addition to NCSP support of SCALE in the future.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Operator Performance Metrics for Control Room Modernization: A Practical Guide for Early Design Evaluation

As control rooms are modernized with new digital systems at nuclear power plants, it is necessary to evaluate the operator performance using these systems as part of a verification and validation process. There are no standard, predefined metrics available for assessing what is satisfactory operator interaction with new systems, especially during the early design stages of a new system. This report identifies the process and metrics for evaluating human system interfaces as part of control room modernization. The report includes background information on design and evaluation, a thorough discussion of human performance measures, and a practical example of how the process and metrics have been used as part of a turbine control system upgrade during the formative stages of design. The process and metrics are geared toward generalizability to other applications and serve as a template for utilities undertaking their own control room modernization activities.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2014

EnergyFit Nevada (formerly known as the Nevada Retrofit Initiative) final report and technical evaluation

The EnergyFit Nevada (EFN) Better Buildings Neighborhood Program (BBNP, and referred to in this document as the EFN program) currently encourages Nevada residents to make whole-house energy-efficient improvements by providing rebates, financing, and access to a network of qualified home improvement contractors. The BBNP funding, consisting of 34 Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grants (EECBG) and seven State Energy Program (SEP) grants, was awarded for a three-year period to the State of Nevada in 2010 and used for initial program design and implementation. By the end of first quarter in 2014, the program had achieved upgrades in 553 homes, with an average energy reduction of 32% per home. Other achievements included: Completed 893 residential energy audits and installed upgrades in 0.05% of all Nevada single-family homes1 Achieved an overall conversation rate of 38.1%2 7,089,089 kWh of modeled energy savings3 Total annual homeowner energy savings of approximately $525,7523 Efficiency upgrades completed on 1,100,484 square feet of homes3 $139,992 granted in loans to homeowners for energy-efficiency upgrades 29,285 hours of labor and $3,864,272 worth of work conducted by Nevada auditors and contractors4 40 contractors trained in Nevada 37 contractors with Building Performance Institute (BPI) certification in Nevada 19 contractors actively participating in the EFN program in Nevada 1 Calculated using 2012 U.S. Census data reporting 1,182,870 homes in Nevada. 2 Conversion rate through March 31, 2014, for all Nevada Retrofit Initiative (NRI)-funded projects, calculated using the EFN tracking database. 3 OptiMiser energy modeling, based on current utility rates. 4 This is the sum of $3,596,561 in retrofit invoice value and $247,711 in audit invoice value.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2016

Analysis to evaluate predictors of fiberboard aging to guide surveillance sampling for the 9975 life extension program

During surveillance of the 9975 shipping package at the Savannah River Site K-Area Complex, several package dimensions are recorded. The analysis described in this report shows that, based on the current data analysis, two of these measurements, Upper Assembly Outer Diameter (UAOD) and Upper Assembly Inside Height (UAIH), do not have statistically significant aging trends regardless of wattage levels. In contrast, this analysis indicates that the measurement of Air Shield Gap (ASGap) does show a significant increase with age. It appears that the increase is greater for high wattage containers, but this result is dominated by two measurements from high-wattage containers. For all three indicators, additional high-wattage, older containers need to be examined before any definitive conclusions can be reached. In addition, the current analysis indicates that ASGap measurements for low and medium wattage containers are increasing slowly over time. To reduce uncertainties and better capture the aging trend for these containers, additional low and medium wattage older containers should also be examined. Based on this analysis, surveillance guidance is to augment surveillance containers resulting from 3013 surveillance with 9975-focused sampling that targets older, high wattage containers and also includes some older, low and medium wattage containers. This focused sampling began in 2015 and will continue in 2016. The UAOD, UAIH and ASGap data are highly variable. It is possible that additional factors such as seasonal variation and packaging site location might reduce variability and be useful for focusing surveillance and predicting aging.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2018

Safeguards Technology Development Program 1st Quarter FY 2018 Report

LLNL will evaluate the performance of a stilbene-based scintillation detector array for IAEA neutron multiplicity counting (NMC) applications. This effort will combine newly developed modeling methodologies and recently acquired high-efficiency stilbene detector units to quantitatively compare the prototype system performance with the conventional He-3 counters and liquid scintillator alternatives.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2018

Analysis to Evaluate Predictors of Fiberboard Aging to Guide Surveillance Sampling for the 9975 Life Extension Program (Data Through 2017)

The analysis described in this report shows that the measurements of Upper Assembly Outer Diameter (UAOD) and Upper Assembly Inside Height (UAIH) do not have statistically significant aging trends regardless of wattage levels. In contrast, the analysis indicates that the measurement of Air Shield Gap (ASGap) shows an increasing trend with age for high-wattage containers. However, there is considerable variability in the data. Additional older high-wattage containers need to be examined before definitive conclusions can be reached. Based on these results, future 9975 surveillance will target older high-wattage containers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Safeguards Technology Development Program 3rd Quarter FY 2018 Report

LLNL will evaluate the performance of a stilbene-based scintillation detector array for IAEA neutron multiplicity counting (NMC) applications. This effort will combine newly developed modeling methodologies and recently acquired high-efficiency stilbene detector units to quantitatively compare the prototype system performance with the conventional He-3 counters and liquid scintillator alternatives.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Convolution Correction Factor Adjustments on Static PRA Models for Event Assessment

Current probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) models will contain cut sets that have time-constrained basic events such as switched components, recovery of failed components, and failures in time. For these cut sets that have multiple time-constrained events that interact (e.g., offsite power recover at the same time as multiple diesel generators fail to run), there is the possibility that the minimal cut set quantified result is too large. Since current PRA models typically assume that the accident scenario starts at “time zero,” the fails-to-run basic events use this starting time as the basis for their respective reliability models. Over time, the standard practice was to recognize this issue and accept it as part of the conservatism built into the event tree/fault tree PRA models. However, now that these same PRA models are being used in a regulatory forum, this conservatism needs to be addressed. Further, this issue exists not only for the baseline PRA results, but for deficiencies that have been observed or those that have the potential of occurrence, whether the deficiency is complete failure or just a degraded condition. We have found that this conservatism becomes very important when evaluating scenarios such as station blackout sequences and other loss of offsite power sequences. This paper will address the theory and implemented process used by the Systems Analysis Programs for Hands-on Integrated Reliability Evaluations (SAPHIRE) PRA software. Starting with SAPHIRE version 8, the process that was developed is to calculate a “convolution correction factor” based on three distinct calculations. The first calculation is the cut set based frequency calculated via the standard event tree/fault tree PRA model (assuming all run failures start at time equal to zero). The second calculation is to perform the exact time-constrained calculation by integrating the component failure models over the time period of interest (e.g., time to recover, a mission time). For example, this exact calculation for the case of the diesel generators is to convolve their failure models with the offsite power recovery model to obtain the exact frequency. The third calculation is to produce the convolution correction factor by dividing the exact frequency calculation by the standard cut set frequency. This convolution correction factor is then applied to the PRA cut sets in order to remove the time-constrained conservatism. The process used to obtain the convolution correction factor for the baseline PRA is important; however, in this paper we also describe what happens when there is degradation of a component or a potential deficiency. These issues become very important in order to ensure that the convolution correction factor is re-calculated correctly. If the correction factor does not get re-calculated and the same baseline convolution correction factor is used, the final analysis result could be over conservative or under conservative. This paper will discuss how these issues are addressed and provide examples on how SAPHIRE automatically makes the necessary adjustments. MathCad verification results can be computed using the provided equations and input data.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Los Alamos National Laboratory SAVY-4000 Field Surveillance Plan Update for 2020

The Packaging Surveillance Program section of the Department of Energy (DOE) Manual 441.1-1, Nuclear Material Packaging Manual (DOE 2008), requires DOE contractors to “ensure that a surveillance program is established and implemented to ensure the nuclear material storage package continues to meet its design criteria.” The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) SAVY-4000 Field Surveillance Plan was first issued in fiscal year (FY) 2013. The surveillance plan is reviewed annually and updated as necessary based on SAVY-4000 surveillance findings, as well as results of the lifetime extension studies. Five surveillance plan updates have been issued, one in 2014, one in 2016, one in 2017, one in 2018, and one in 2019. This 2020 update documents what was actually done in 2019 and what is planned for 2020. Deviations from the 2019 surveillance plan were necessary because some of the planned surveillance containers were not available for examination. The goal of the surveillance program is to provide data to: evaluate container component performance over time against the initial baseline qualification; validate the current SAVY container design life; provide data for future design life extensions of components as indicated; identify indications of container degradation early and identify similar containers and/or contents that may need remediation; maintain and continuously improve the surveillance information system that documents the complete life cycle of the containers including the initial production baseline, usage history, surveillance, and disposition; identify container issues related to wear and tear that could indicate the need for a maintenance program for in-service containers prior to the end of the design life.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2022

Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF)

Contains recommended nuclear structure and decay data for all the known nuclides, which are obtained following a critical review of all available experimental data, supplemented with systematic trend studies and theoretical models. ENSDF data include (i) nuclear level properties, such as observation source, energy, half-life, decay modes, spin and parity; (ii) gamma ray energies, intensities, multipolarities, mixing ratios and conversion coefficients; (iii) nuclear radiation energy and intensity as well as radiation-specific data for different radiation types, such as such as gammas, alphas, betas and neutrons. Data for about 220 nuclides are fully evaluated each year; additionally, many datasets are partially updated each year. Nearly all the evaluation work is supported by the US Nuclear Data Program. The National Nuclear Data Center at Brookhaven National Laboratory is responsible for coordinating the evaluation effort as well as its web and journal dissemination.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

CNG and Fleets: Building Your Business Case

Two online resources help fleets evaluate the economic soundness of a compressed natural gas program. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Vehicle Infrastructure and Cash-Flow Evaluation (VICE 2.0) model and the accompanying report, Building a Business Case for Compressed Natural Gas in Fleet Applications, are uniquely designed for fleet managers considering an investment in CNG and can help ensure wise investment decisions about CNG vehicles and infrastructure.

03 NATURAL GAS↗