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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Chapter 2: Thermal Energy Storage for Energy Decarbonization

Thermal energy storage (TES) deployed with concentrating solar power (CSP) has shown value and capabilities in generating dispatchable power. It has attracted significant interest for potential roles in energy storage for various capacities and applications. Energy storage plays an important role in expanding renewable generation and is becoming indispensable in future carbon-free electric power. TES development and deployment provide various possibilities for electric storage and have shown advantages in capacity and flexibility to support renewable integration. In addition, renewable energy integrated with a low-cost TES system can potentially provide a reliable thermal energy supply to displace fossil fuels for broad decarbonization. Varieties of TES technologies and developments breed new areas of growth in TES materials, designs, components, and system configurations, which provide opportunities for substantial cost reduction and performance improvements to meet the technoeconomic challenges in practical applications. This chapter will describe recent progress in thermal energy storage research and development and primarily focus on sensible heat storage and its applications in supplying reliable electricity and industry process heat by integrating with variable renewable energy.

concentrating solar thermal power↗
DOE OSTI2019

Fast counting with tensor networks

We introduce tensor network contraction algorithms for counting satisfying assignments of constraint satisfaction problems (#CSPs). We represent each arbitrary #CSP formula as a tensor network, whose full contraction yields the number of satisfying assignments of that formula, and use graph theoretical methods to determine favorable orders of contraction. We employ our heuristics for the solution of #P-hard counting boolean satisfiability (#SAT) problems, namely monotone #1-in-3SAT and #Cubic-Vertex-Cover, and find that they outperform state-of-the-art solvers by a significant margin.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2012

Western Region Renewable Energy Markets: Implications for the Bureau of Land Management

The purpose of this analysis is to provide the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) with an overview of renewable energy (RE) generation markets, transmission planning efforts, and the ongoing role of the BLM RE projects in the electricity markets of the 11 states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington,and Wyoming) that comprise the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) Region. This analysis focuses on the status of, and projections for, likely development of non-hydroelectric renewable electricity from solar (including photovoltaic [PV] and concentrating solar power [CSP]), wind, biomass and geothermal resources in these states. Absent new policy drivers and without the extension ofthe DOE loan guarantee program and Treasury's 1603 program, state RPS requirements are likely to remain a primary driver for new RE deployment in the western United States. Assuming no additional policy incentives are implemented, projected RE demand for the WECC states by 2020 is 134,000 GWh. Installed capacity to meet that demand will need to be within the range of 28,000-46,000 MW.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2012

Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Concentrating Solar Power (Fact Sheet)

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently led the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Harmonization Project, a study that makes great strides in clarifying inconsistent and conflicting GHG emission estimates in the published literature while providing more precise estimates of GHG emissions from utility-scale CSP systems.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Sensitivity of Utility-Scale Solar Deployment Projections in the SunShot Vision Study to Market and Performance Assumptions

The SunShot Vision Study explored the potential growth of solar markets if solar prices decreased by about 75% from 2010 to 2020. The ReEDS model was used to simulate utility PV and CSP deployment for this present study, based on several market and performance assumptions - electricity demand, natural gas prices, coal retirements, cost and performance of non-solar renewable technologies, PVresource variability, distributed PV deployment, and solar market supply growth - in addition to the SunShot solar price projections. This study finds that utility-scale solar deployment is highly sensitive to solar prices. Other factors can have significant impacts, particularly electricity demand and natural gas prices.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Next Generation Low-Cost Reflector (Phase 1 Final Report)

The overall objective was to improve the optical performance and reduce the unit cost of the reflector assembly in Concentrated Solar Power applications. The specific objective was to identify and demonstrate approaches to reduce the real Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of the power produced in a CSP system to $\$$0.08/kWh. This objective was to be achieved through the cumulative impacts of 1) a durable 1 st surface mirror with a reflectivity of 97% or more and reducing the impact of soiling by 1% or more, 2) reduction in the unit cost of the reflector assembly by 8% or more through material costs reductions of both the mirror and the support structure and 3) improvement in the performance of reflector assembly through changes in the design and geometry of the support structure.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Land-Use Requirements for Solar Power Plants in the United States

This report provides data and analysis of the land use associated with utility-scale ground-mounted solar facilities, defined as installations greater than 1 MW. We begin by discussing standard land-use metrics as established in the life-cycle assessment literature and then discuss their applicability to solar power plants. We present total and direct land-use results for various solar technologies and system configurations, on both a capacity and an electricity-generation basis. The total area corresponds to all land enclosed by the site boundary. The direct area comprises land directly occupied by solar arrays, access roads, substations, service buildings, and other infrastructure. As of the third quarter of 2012, the solar projects we analyze represent 72% of installed and under-construction utility-scale PV and CSP capacity in the United States.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2012

Heat Transfer and Latent Heat Storage in Inorganic Molten Salts for Concentrating Solar Power Plants

A key technological issue facing the success of future Concentrating Solar Thermal Power (CSP) plants is creating an economical Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system. Current TES systems use either sensible heat in fluids such as oil, or molten salts, or use thermal stratification in a dual-media consisting of a solid and a heat-transfer fluid. However, utilizing the heat of fusion in inorganic molten salt mixtures in addition to sensible heat, as in a Phase change material (PCM)-based TES, can significantly increase the energy density of storage requiring less salt and smaller containers. A major issue that is preventing the commercial use of PCM-based TES is that it is difficult to discharge the latent heat stored in the PCM melt. This is because when heat is extracted, the melt solidifies onto the heat exchanger surface decreasing the heat transfer. Even a few millimeters of thickness of solid material on heat transfer surface results in a large drop in heat transfer due to the low thermal conductivity of solid PCM. Thus, to maintain the desired heat rate, the heat exchange area must be large which increases cost. This project demonstrated that the heat transfer coefficient can be increase ten-fold by using forced convection by pumping a hyper-eutectic salt mixture over specially coated heat exchanger tubes. However, only 15% of the latent heat is used against a goal of 40% resulting in a projected cost savings of only 17% against a goal of 30%. Based on the failure mode effect analysis and experience with pumping salt at near freezing point significant care must be used during operation which can increase the operating costs. Therefore, we conclude the savings are marginal to justify using this concept for PCM-TES over a two-tank TES. The report documents the specialty coatings, the composition and morphology of hypereutectic salt mixtures and the results from the experiment conducted with the active heat exchanger along with the lessons learnt during experimentation.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

SAM Technical Review Committee Final Report: Summary and Key Recommendations from the Onsite TRC Meeting Held April 22-23, 2013

The System Advisor Model (SAM) is a broad and robust set of models and frameworks for analyzing both system performance and system financing. It does this across a range of technologies dominated by solar technologies including photovoltaics (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP). The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technology Program requested the SAM development team to review the photovoltaic performance modeling with the development community and specifically, with the independent engineering community. The report summarizes the major effort for this technical review committee (TRC).

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Norwich Technologies' Advanced Low-Cost Receivers for Parabolic Troughs

This report summarizes the successful results of our SunShot project, Advanced Low-Cost Receivers for Parabolic Troughs. With a limited budget of $252K and in only 12 months, we have (1) developed validated optical and thermal models and completed rigorous optimization analysis to identify key performance characteristics as part of developing first-generation laboratory prototype designs, (2) built optical and thermal laboratory prototypes and test systems with associated innovative testing protocols, and (3) performed extensive statistically relevant testing. We have produced fully functioning optical and thermal prototypes and accurate, validated models shown to capture important underlying physical mechanisms. The test results from the first-generation prototype establish performance exceeding the FOA requirement of thermal efficiency >90% for a CSP receiver while delivering an exit fluid temperature of > 650 °C and a cost < $150/kWth. Our vacuum-free SunTrap receiver design provides improvements over conventional vacuum-tube collectors, allowing dramatic reductions in thermal losses at high operating temperature.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Commercialization of High-Temperature Solar Selective Coating: Cooperative Research and Development Final Report, CRADA Number CRD-08-300

The goal for Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technologies is to produce electricity at 15 cents/kilowatt-hour (kWh) with six hours of thermal storage in 2015 (intermediate power) and close to 10 cents/kWh with 12-17 hours of thermal storage in 2020 (baseload power). Cost reductions of up to 50% to the solar concentrator are targeted through technology advances. The overall solar-to-electric efficiency of parabolic-trough solar power plants can be improved and the cost of solar electricity can be reduced by improving the properties of the selective coating on the receiver and increasing the solar-field operating temperature to >450 °C. New, more-efficient selective coatings will be needed that have both high solar absorptance and low thermal emittance at elevated temperatures. Conduction and convection losses from the hot absorber surface are usually negligible for parabolic trough receivers. The objective is to develop new, more-efficient selective coatings with both high solar absorptance (α > 0.95) and low thermal emittance (ε < 0.08 @ 450 °C) that are thermally stable above 450 degrees C, ideally in air, with improved durability and manufacturability, and reduced cost.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Sulfur Based Thermochemical Heat Storage for Baseload Concentrated Solar Power Generation

This project investigates the engineering and economic feasibility of supplying baseload power using a concentrating solar power (CSP) plant integrated with sulfur based thermochemical heat storage. The technology stores high temperature solar heat in the chemical bonds of elemental sulfur. Energy is recovered as high temperature heat upon sulfur combustion. Extensive developmental and design work associated with sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) disproportionation and sulfuric acid (H 2 SO 4 ) decomposition chemical reactions used in this technology had been carried out in the two completed phases of this project. The feasibility and economics of the proposed concept was demonstrated and determined.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Utility-Scale Solar 2013: An empirical analysis of project cost, performance, and pricing trends in the United States

Other than the SEGS I-IX parabolic trough projects built in the 1980s, virtually no large-scale or "utility-scale" solar projects-defined here to include any ground-mounted photovoltaic ("PV"), concentrating photovoltaic ("CPV"), or concentrating solar power ("CSP" or solar thermal) project larger than 5 MW AC -existed in the United States prior to 2007.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Coupled optical/thermal/fluid analysis and design requirements for operation and testing of a supercritical CO 2 solar receiver.

Recent studies have evaluated closed-loop supercritical carbon dioxide (s-CO 2 ) Brayton cycles to be a higher energy-density system in comparison to conventional superheated steam Rankine systems. At turbine inlet conditions of 923K and 25 MPa, high thermal efficiency (~50%) can be achieved. Achieving these high efficiencies will make concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies a competitive alternative to current power generation methods. To incorporate a s-CO 2 Brayton power cycle in a solar power tower system, the development of a solar receiver capable of providing an outlet temperature of 923 K (at 25 MPa) is necessary. To satisfy the temperature requirements of a s-CO 2 Brayton cycle with recuperation and recompression, it is required to heat s-CO 2 by a temperature of ~200 K as it passes through the solar receiver. Our objective was to develop an optical-thermal-fluid model to design and evaluate a tubular receiver that will receive a heat input ~1 MWth from a heliostat field. We also undertook the documentation of design requirements for the development, testing and safe operation of a direct s-CO 2 solar receiver. The main purpose of this document is to serve as a reference and guideline for design and testing requirements, as well as to address the technical challenges and provide initial parameters for the computational models that will be employed for the development of s-CO 2 receivers.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Field Test and Evaluation of Engineered Biomineralization Technology for Sealing Existing Wells

This research project addresses one of the goals of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Carbon Storage Program (CSP) aimed at developing Advanced Wellbore Integrity Technologies to Ensure Permanent Geologic Carbon Storage. The technology field-tested in this research project is referred to as microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP), which utilizes a biologically-based process to precipitate calcium carbonate. If properly controlled MICP can successfully seal fractures, high permeability zones, and compromised wellbore cement in the vicinity of wellbores and in nearby caprock, thereby improving the storage security of geologically-stored carbon dioxide. This report describes an MICP sealing field test performed on a 24.4 cm (9.625 inch) diameter well located on the Gorgas Steam Generation facility near Jasper, Alabama. The research was aimed at (1) developing methods for delivering MICP promoting fluids downhole using conventional oil field technologies and (2) assessing the ability of MICP to seal cement and formation fractures in the near wellbore region in a sandstone formation. Both objectives were accomplished successfully during a field test performed during the period April 1-11, 2014. The test resulted in complete biomineralization sealing of a horizontal fracture located 340.7 m (1118 feet) below ground surface. A total of 24 calcium injections and six microbial inoculation injections were required over a three day period in order to achieve complete sealing. The fractured region was considered completely sealed when it was no longer possible to inject fluids into the formation without exceeding the initial formation fracture pressure. The test was accomplished using conventional oil field technology including an 11.4 L (3.0 gallon) wireline dump bailer for injecting the biomineralization materials downhole. Metrics indicating successful MICP sealing included reduced injectivity during seal formation, reduction in pressure falloff, and demonstration of MICP by-products including calcium carbonate (CaCO 3 ) in treated regions of side wall cores. This project successfully integrated mesoscale laboratory experiments at the Center for Biofilm Engineering (CBE) together with simulation modeling conducted at the University of Stuttgart to develop the protocol for conducting the biomineralization sealing test in the field well.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2012

Technical Assistance for Southwest Solar Technologies Inc. Final Report

Southwest Solar Technologies Inc. is constructing a Solar-Fuel Hybrid Turbine energy system. This innovative energy system combines solar thermal energy with compressed air energy storage and natural gas fuel backup capability to provide firm, non-intermittent power. In addition, the energy system will have very little impact on the environment since, unlike other Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technologies, it requires minimal water. In 2008 Southwest Solar Technologies received a Solar America Showcase award from the Department of Energy for Technical Assistance from Sandia National Laboratories. This report details the work performed as part of the Solar America Showcase award for Southwest Solar Technologies. After many meetings and visits between Sandia National Labs and Southwest Solar Technologies, several tasks were identified as part of the Technical Assistance and the analysis and results for these are included here.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

SERIIUS-MAGEEP Visiting Scholars Program

Recent studies have assessed closed-loop supercritical carbon dioxide (s-CO 2 ) Brayton cycles to be a higher energy-density system in comparison to equivalent superheated steam Rankine systems. At turbine inlet conditions of 700°C and 20 MPa, a cycle thermal efficiency of ~50% can be achieved. Achieving these high efficiencies will help concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies to become a competitive alternative to current power generation methods. To incorporate an s-CO 2 Brayton power cycle in a solar power tower system, the development of a solar receiver capable of providing an outlet temperature of 700°C (at 20 MPa) is necessary. To satisfy the temperature requirements of an s-CO 2 Brayton cycle with recuperation and recompression, the s-CO 2 must undergo a temperature rise of ~200°C as it flows through the solar receiver. The main objective is to develop an optical-thermal-fluid and structural model to validate a tubular receiver that will receive a heat input ~0.33 MWth from the heliostat field at the National Solar Thermal Test Facility (NSTTF), Albuquerque, NM, USA. We also commenced the development of computational models and testing of air receivers being developed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay (IIT-B). The helical tubular receiver is expected to counteract the effect of thermal expansion while using a cavity to reduce the radiative and convective losses. Initially, this receiver will be tested for a temperature range of 100-300°C under 1 MPa of pressurized air. The helical air receiver will be exposed to 10kWth to achieve a temperature rise of ~200°C. Preliminary tests to validate the modeling will be performed before the design and construction of a larger scale receiver. Lastly, I focused on the development of a new computational tool that would allow us to perform a nodal creep-fatigue analysis on the receivers and heat exchangers being developed. This tool was developed using MATLAB and is capable of processing the results obtained from ANSYS Fluent and Structural combined, which was limited when using commercial software. The main advantage of this code is that it can be modified to run in parallel making it more affordable and faster compared to commercial codes available. The code is in the process of validation and is currently being compared to nCode Design Life.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗