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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 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

NREL's Capabilities in Analytical Sciences Supporting Research and Development (R&D)

NREL researchers perform biomass characterization in dedicated laboratories working with over $5 million in state-of-the-art analytical equipment. A dedicated team of highly skilled analytical chemists have over 100 cumulative years of experience in characterization. They have three specialized laboratories with dedicated sample processing and advanced analytical equipment. Core capabilities include biomass and biochemical characterization and quantification, publicly available laboratory analytical procedures (LAPs), and near-infrared rapid analysis.

analysis↗
DOE OSTI2025

Framework for Assessing Impact of Wave-Powered Desalination on Resilience of Coastal Communities

Coastal communities face unique challenges in maintaining continuous service from critical infrastructure. This research advances capabilities for evaluating the impact of using wave energy to desalinate water on the resilience of coastal communities. The study focuses on the feasibility of using wave energy conversion to provide drinking water to communities in need and applying resilience metrics to quantify its impact on the community. To assess the feasibility of wave-powered desalination, this research couples the open-source software Wave Energy Converter SIMulator (WEC-Sim) and Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR). This research explores variations in both the wave resource (location, seasonality, and duration) and the ability to maintain drinking water service during a disruption scenario by applying the simulation framework to three case studies, which are based on communities in Puerto Rico. The simulation framework provides a contextualized assessment of the ability of wave-powered desalination to improve the resilience of coastal communities, which can serve as a methodology for future studies seeking the integration of wave-powered desalination with water distribution systems.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2021

DARPA beyond CMOS RFI

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Center for Micro and Nanotechnology (CMNT) is located on the LLNL campus in Livermore, CA. LLNL employs over 7000 employees with a broad range of science and engineering backgrounds with an administrative structure that encourages multidisciplinary teaming, a key ingredient in our ability to address diverse technical problems. Our CMNT facility houses a 6,400 ft 2 class 100 cleanroom (class 10 capable) with an additional 1,000 ft 2 Class 1000 space, and 6000 ft 2 of other laboratories. Most equipment can accommodate 6” wafers, although some is limited to 4”. The CMNT is a multi-user, multi-programmatic facility that offers a broad set of instruments for microfabrication to invent, develop, and apply microscale and nanoscale technologies to support national security missions in Stockpile Stewardship, Homeland Security, Directed Energy, Nonproliferation, biomedical research, and more. The research and capabilities of the Center cover materials, devices, instruments, and systems that require microfabricated components, including microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), electronics, photonics, micro- and nanostructures, bio-implantable devices, and micro- and nanoactuators.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Safety in Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Opportunities for the U.S. National Labs and Beyond

This report discusses the importance of the critical and underexplored topic of artificial intelligence (AI) safety, as highlighted during the “Strategy Alignment on AI Safety” workshop convened at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in April 2024. Through a summary of keynote talks, panel discussions, and breakout sessions, world-leading AI safety experts from academic, industry, national labs, and government agencies clearly agree on the need for and importance of large-scale investments for research and capabilities in AI safety. With the field innovating at unprecedented rates, there is increasing urgency to develop novel evaluation methodologies that allow full considerations of risks/threats of AI technologies in different domains. Quantitative metrics and effective methodologies that can evaluate and audit the “safeness” of how a given AI technology is trained, deployed, or regulated are, at best, nascent for certain scenarios or, more commonly, nonexistent. This maturation gap presents the possibility of serious threats to national security, and further inaction may have serious consequences. Additionally, the gap between the public’s and research community’s perceptions of AI risks/rewards is significant. While numerous voices from the AI community have expressed concern that the risks could be so high that future AI systems could inflict extinction-level damage to humanity if deployed incorrectly, the public largely is aware only of risk in low-impact scenarios. This discrepancy highlights the crucial need for researchers to articulate to governmental bodies what, why, and when various AI risks matter as part of motivating funding requests. Thus, the call to action for this community is to pursue AI safety as a “Big Science” project on a scale comparable to the Manhattan Project. High risks and high payoffs are on the table, but safe AI is a fast-moving target, and large-scale investments are needed to guide development of this technology in a responsible way. We highlight the need for a multilayered solution combining the development of new methods and algorithmic approaches to mitigate threats with an active participation of the government(s) in setting high industry standards and regulations based on state-of-the-art technology. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories have served as leading institutions for scientific innovation in the U.S. for more than 70 years. Drawing on their expertise in the AI community and their history of safeguarding critical and sensitive information, and as we look to the future, national labs are the best choice for evaluating and safeguarding AI technologies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Brain Connectivity Workshop Series Report

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) BRAIN Initiative aims to accelerate development and application of technologies that show how individual brain cells in complex neural circuits interact at the speed of thought and action. Complete wiring diagrams of the mammalian brain will revolutionize the capabilities of researchers to formulate and test models of how activity within brain circuits drives coordinated function and behavior. A top priority for the BRAIN Initiative, motivated by the strategic guidance of the BRAIN 2.0 Working Group report, is to muster the resources and foster the collaborations needed to generate these wiring diagrams at the level of long-range projections (“projectomes”) and synapses (“connectomes”) in whole mammalian brains, including those from rodents, humans, and other large-brained mammals. Achieving the scale and resolution necessary to characterize and use these projectomes and connectomes will not only push the boundaries of current imaging and computational capabilities to generate faster, cheaper, and more scalable technologies, but also drive broad innovation in data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

ADEPT: A Pedagogical Framework for Integrating Agentic AI with Deterministic Scientific Workflows

The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into scientific research promises to accelerate discovery, yet a significant gap remains between the dynamic reasoning of Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents and the static, deterministic nature of canonical scientific workflows. This paper introduces ADEPT (Agentic Discovery and Exploration Platform for Tools), a reference architecture and pedagogical framework explicitly designed to bridge this gap. ADEPT's primary mission is to provide a transparent, "glass-box" environment where researchers and engineers can learn to effectively wrap established scientific software (e.g., BLAST, Nextflow pipelines) and compose it into reliable, agent-driven workflows. We describe its modular, multi-server architecture, which leverages the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for tool serving, LangGraph for robust agentic orchestration, and a secure nsjail-based sandbox for safe code execution. By prioritizing architectural clarity, safety, and modularity, ADEPT serves as an extensible blueprint for building trustworthy AI-augmented systems and fosters the collaborative development necessary to responsibly employ agentic AI for science. We provide practical examples of how to adapt and extend this framework, highlighting its utility in workforce development and AI-readiness capabilities across research and development projects.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Emergency Management of Tomorrow Research – Task 3B Research and Development Community Awareness: Eliciting Emergency Management Stakeholder Input

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is partnering with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to execute the Emergency Management (EM) of Tomorrow Research (EMOTR) program to identify current EM research, elicit capability needs from EM practitioners, and identify where technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), may benefit the future of EM and emergency operations centers. This report details the methodology, analysis, and insights of interviews and focus groups conducted as part of the task to elicit stakeholder input.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Capability Needs for Irradiated and Radioactive Materials Research (Ad hoc Committee Summary Report)

It is essential for the U.S. nuclear energy community to have access to world-leading equipment suitable for conducting research on both nuclear fuels and structural materials, including neutron irradiated–and therefore activated–materials. To address future research infrastructure requirements to support the DOE-NE mission, the Office of Reactor Fleet and Advanced Reactor Deployment established an ad hoc committee to gather information on potential capability gaps for radioactive materials and radiation effects research. This document summarizes the discussions of the committee addressing the high-level challenges in irradiated and radioactive materials research and the capabilities needed to address these challenges. After considering the various needs, the committee agreed on the four top-level targets and priority capability gaps.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Event-modeled Risk Assessment Using Linked Diagrams

Event Modeling Risk Assessment using Linked Diagrams (EMRALD) is a software tool developed at INL for researching the capabilities of dynamic PRA (Probabilistic Risk Assessment). In order to promote the effective use of dynamic PRA by the general community, EMRALD focuses on the following key aspects: Simplifying the modeling process by providing a structure that corresponds to traditional PRA modeling methods Providing a user interface (UI) that makes it easy for the user to model and visualize complex interactions Allowing the user to couple with other analysis applications such as physics based simulations. This includes one-way communication for most applications and two-way loose coupling for customizable applications Providing the sequence and timing of events that lead to the specified outcomes when calculating results Traditional aspects of components with basic events, fault trees, and event trees are all captured in a dynamic framework of state diagrams, which are displayed.

Prescott, SteveR↗
DOE OSTI2023

Near-field imaging and spectroscopy of terahertz resonators and metasurfaces [Invited]

Terahertz (THz) metasurfaces have become a key platform for engineering light-matter interaction at THz frequencies. They have evolved from simple metallic resonator arrays into tunable and programmable devices, displaying ultrafast modulation rates and incorporating emerging quantum materials. The electrodynamics which govern metasurface operation can only be directly revealed at the scale of subwavelength individual metasurface elements, through sampling their evanescent fields. It requires near-field spectroscopy and imaging techniques to overcome the diffraction limit and provide spatial resolution down to the nanoscale. Through a series of case studies, this review provides an in-depth overview of recently developed THz near-field microscopy capabilities for research on metamaterials.

Hale, Lucy L. (ORCID:0000000176544272)↗
DOE OSTI2021

Meeting of the Minds Summary Report: Emergent Cyber R&D Priorities Beyond 2020

On May 26, 2021, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) convened a diverse group of experts spanning private industry, academia, the United States military and federal government, and the national laboratories, and hosted a series of panels to gain their insight on critical emergent research and capability development needs to support national cyber strategy objectives. Two panelists of experts presented their prepared remarks, followed by open discussion from over 250 audience members.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program: Upgrade of EMRALD to a Modern JavaScript-based Framework

Event Modeling Risk Assessment using Linked Diagrams (EMRALD) is a software tool developed at Idaho National Laboratory for researching the capabilities of dynamic probabilistic risk assessment. It provides a simple interface to represent complex interactions often seen when developing dynamic models. EMRALD can also interface with other applications by modifying inputs, running, and using their results within EMRALD for dynamic and integrated assessment. This report goes over the work performed as part of the Risk-Informed Systems Analysis Pathway under the Light Water Reactor Sustainability program to upgrade the EMRALD software.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

The NETL DAC Center: Design and Capabilities

Description of NETL's Direct Air Capture (DAC) Center, including design and capabilities of research units being installed for the evaluation of processes removing carbon dioxide from air.

Hoffman, James↗
DOE OSTI2024

Using Parameter Sweep in WaterTAP to Analyze New Water Treatment Technologies

We describe a powerful and generalized parameter sweep tool in this report that was originally developed to analyze the performance of existing and novel water treatment models being developed in WaterTAP. Since WaterTAP is built upon IDAES and Pyomo, the parameter sweep tool can be used to systematically explore and debug the behavior of most Pyomo and IDAES numerical models. In order to enable meaningful analyses, the parameter sweep tool has been designed with the following features: 1) Model flexibility: The parameter sweep tool does not enforce any restrictions on the types of models that can be used with it. As long as a Pyomo model can be solved and the parameter is active and mutable, the tool only needs functions that describe how to run the model, the sweep parameters, and the output quantities of interest. 2) Flexible sampling: The parameter sweep tool has inbuilt functions to generate samples from a random distribution or a multidimensional Euclidean space. Furthermore, the users have to ability to supply samples generated from a tool of their choice. 3) Multiple sweep types: A user can choose from one of 3 types of parameter sweeps depending on their needs. 4) Detailed outputs: Outputs generated by the parameter sweep tool can be stored in detailed H5 file or user-friendly CSV files for post processing. 5) Parallel computing: The parameter sweep supports shared and distributed memory parallel computing to enable the use of high performance computers (HPC) for large-scale analyses. 6) Modular: The parameter sweep tool is self-contained and can easily be integrated within an outer-loop analysis or as desired by the user. 7) Ease of use: The tool is well documented and a simple sweep can be easily executed by following the online documentation in a few lines of code. We demonstrate the use of the parameter sweep tool on a simple water treatment system from the WaterTAP repository and show its parallel scaling performance on an Apple laptop and NREL's Eagle HPC. The parameter sweep tool is actively being used with models currently being developed within WaterTAP and we expect its use to grow beyond it to other IDAES and Pyomo models.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

EMRALD Technology Advancements for Commercial Grade Dedication Readiness

Event Modeling Risk Assessment using Linked Diagrams (EMRALD) is a software tool developed at Idaho National Laboratory for researching the capabilities of dynamic probabilistic risk assessment. It provides a simple interface to represent complex interactions often seen when developing dynamic models. EMRALD can also interface with other applications by modifying inputs as well as running and using their results within EMRALD for dynamic and integrated assessment. To enable wider industry use cases, collaborative work between Idaho National Laboratory and FPoliSolutions was performed through the technology commercialization fund TCF-20-21448. This report covers the additional features and capabilities developed under this work.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Cybersecurity Certification Requirements for Distributed Energy Resources: A Survey of SunSpec Alliance Standards

This survey paper explores the cybersecurity certification requirements defined by the SunSpec Alliance for Distributed Energy Resource (DER) devices, focusing on aspects such as software updates, device communications, authentication mechanisms, device security, logging, and test procedures. The SunSpec cybersecurity standards mandate support for remote and automated software updates, secure communication protocols, stringent authentication practices, and robust logging mechanisms to ensure operational integrity. Furthermore, the paper discusses the implementation of the SAE J3072 standard using the IEEE 2030.5 protocol, emphasizing the secure interactions between electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) and plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) for functionalities like vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities. This research also examines the SunSpec Modbus standard, which enhances the interoperability among DER system components, facilitating compliance with grid interconnection standards. This paper also analyzes the existing SunSpec Device Information Models, which standardize data exchange formats for DER systems across communication interfaces. Finally, this paper concludes with a detailed discussion of the energy storage cybersecurity specification and the blockchain cybersecurity requirements as proposed by SunSpec Alliance.

Tsikteris, Sean (ORCID:0009000524202250)↗
DOE OSTI2024

Multi-Tiered Estimation for Correlation Spectroscopy in 3D (MTECS3D) v0.1

This innovative software estimates rotational diffusion coefficients of particles from X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) data of monodispersed particle systems. It is the first method capable of extracting rotational diffusion information from three-dimensional particle systems using XPCS. Using the angular-temporal cross-correlation of the XPCS images, this software is able to estimate the rotational diffusion coefficients with only a few percent relative errors while requiring minimal prior knowledge of particle structures. This software enhances XPCS analysis capabilities, allowing researchers to study translational and rotational Brownian dynamics of particles in suspension across various temporal and spatial scales.

Hu, Zixi↗
DOE OSTI2022

ESIF 2021

This annual report highlights research done at the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) in Fiscal Year 2021.

Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems↗