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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 901 records · Page 50
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2012

Stiffness and Damping Coefficient Estimation of Compliant Surface Gas Bearings for Oil-Free Turbomachinery

Foil gas bearings are a key technology in many commercial and emerging oilfree turbomachinery systems. These bearings are nonlinear and have been difficult to analytically model in terms of performance characteristics such as load capacity, power loss, stiffness, and damping. Previous investigations led to an empirically derived method to estimate load capacity. This method has been a valuable tool in system development. The current work extends this tool concept to include rules for stiffness and damping coefficient estimation. It is expected that these rules will further accelerate the development and deployment of advanced oil-free machines operating on foil gas bearings.

Della-Corte, Christopher↗
NASA NTRS2012

Air Quality Over the Canadian Oil Sands: A First Assessment Using Satellite Observations

Results from the first assessment of air quality over the Canadian oil sands -- one ofthe largest industrial undertakings in human history -- using satellite remote sensing observations of two pollutants, nitrogen dioxide (N0O) and sulfur dioxide (SO2), are presented. High-resolution maps were created that revealed distinct enhancements in both species over an area (roughly 30 km x 50 km) of intensive surface mining at scales of a few kilometers. The magnitude of these enhancements, quantified in terms of total mass, are comparable to the largest seen in Canada from individual sources. The rate of increase in NO2 between 2005 and 2010 was assessed at 10.4 +/- 3.5%/year and resulted from increases both in local values as well as the spatial extent of the enhancement. This is broadly consistent with both surface-measurement trends and increases in annual bitumen production. An increase in SO2 was also found, but given larger uncertainties, it is not statistically significant.

McLinden, C. A.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Procedure-Authoring Tool Improves Safety on Oil Rigs

Dark, cold, and dangerous environments are plentiful in space and on Earth. To ensure safe operations in difficult surroundings, NASA relies heavily on procedures written well ahead of time. Houston-based TRACLabs Inc. worked with Ames Research Center through the SBIR program to create an electronic procedure authoring tool, now used by NASA and companies in the oil and gas industry.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2018

Risk Management at NASA and Its Applicability to the Oil and Gas Industry

NASA has a world-class capability for quantitatively assessing the risk of highly-complex, isolated engineering structures operated in extremely hostile environments. In particular, the International Space Station (ISS) represents a reasonable risk analog for High Pressure, High Temperature drilling and production operations on deepwater rigs. Through a long-term U.S. Government Interagency Agreement, BSEE has partnered with NASA to modify NASA's Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) capabilities for application to deepwater drilling and production operations. The immediate focus of the activity will be to modify NASA PRA Procedure Guides and Methodology Documents to make them applicable to the Oil &Gas Industry. The next step will be for NASA to produce a PRA for a critical drilling system component, such as a Blowout Preventer (BOP). Subsequent activities will be for NASA and industry partners to jointly develop increasingly complex PRA's that analyze other critical drilling and production system components, including both hardware and human reliability. In the presentation, NASA will provide the objectives, schedule, and current status of its PRA activities for BSEE. Additionally, NASA has a Space Act Agreement with Anadarko Petroleum Corporation to develop a PRA for a generic 20K BOP. NASA will summarize some of the preliminary insights gained to date from that 20K BOP PRA as an example of the distinction between quantitative versus qualitative risk assessment.

PRA↗
NASA NTRS2019

Oil-Free Enabling Technology: Gas Foil Bearings

NASA has developed and commercialized high temperature coatings and bearings for extreme conditions. These technologies are now under consideration by industry for automotive applications such as turbochargers, fuel cell compressors and exhaust gas path mechanism applications. In this presentation, a review of Oil-Free technologies and their current state-of-development is introduced. Key NASA contributions to the field as documented by patents, research papers and technology demonstrations is also presented.

lubrication↗
NASA NTRS2019

Oil Dispersant Corexit 9500 Is Weakly Estrogenic, but Does Not Skew the Sex Ratio in Alligator Mississippiensis

During the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, vast quantities of the chemical dispersant Corexit 9500 were applied in remediation efforts. In addition to the acute toxicity and obesogenicity of Corexit, it is important to further evaluate Corexit with long-term sublethal endocrine endpoints. The American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) exhibits temperature-dependent sex determination, in which egg incubation temperatures during a thermosensitive period (TSP) in embryonic development determine sex of the embryos. Estrogen signals also play critical roles in this process. For example, a single exposure to exogenous estrogen during the TSP overrides the effects of temperature and leads to skewed sex ratios. At a dose of 100 ppm, Corexit significantly induced transcriptional activity of both alligator nuclear estrogen receptors 1 and 2 in vitro using the reporter gene assays. To investigate the estrogenic effects on gonadal development in ovo, alligator eggs were exposed to Corexit at environmentally relevant concentrations (0.25, 2.5, and 25 ppm) prior to the TSP. Significant delays in the hatching and growth were observed in 0.25 and 25 ppm Corexit exposed groups. At one week of age, no significant effects on sex ratios or testicular mRNA abundance were observed as a result of exposure to Corexit at the tested exposure levels, suggesting Corexit does not have strong estrogenic activity in ovo. Further investigations are required using individual components of Corexit to better understand their estrogenic effects on the development and reproductive health of alligators and other coastal aquatic wildlife.

Nicole Mcnabb↗
NASA NTRS2020

Inconsistencies in Sulphur Dioxide Emissions from the Canadian Oil Sands and Potential Implications

Satellite-derived and reported sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from the Canadian oil sands are shown to have been consistent up to 2013. Post-2013, these sources of emissions data diverged, with reported emissions dropping by a factor of two, while satellite-derived emissions for the region remained relatively constant, with the discrepancy (satellite-derived emissions minus reported emissions) peaking at 50 kt(SO2) yr−1 around 2016. The 2013–2014 period corresponds to when new flue-gas desulfurization units came on-line. Previous work has established a high level of consistency between at-stack SO2 emissions observations and satellite estimates, and surface monitoring network SO2 concentrations over the same multi-year period show similar trends as the satellite data, with a slight increase in concentrations post-2013. No clear explanation for this discrepancy currently exists. The implications of the discrepancy towards estimated total sulfur deposition to downwind ecosystems were estimated relative to 2013 emissions levels, with the satellite-derived values leaving the area of regional critical load exceedances of aquatic ecosystems largely unchanged from 2013 values, 335 000 km2, and reported values potentially decreasing this area to 185,000 km2.

Sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions↗
NASA NTRS2018

High‐Resolution Mapping of Nitrogen Dioxide With TROPOMI: First Results and Validation Over the Canadian Oil Sands

TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), on-board the Sentinel-5 Precursersatellite, is a nadir-viewing spectrometer measuring reflected sunlight in the ultraviolet, visible,near-infrared, and shortwave infrared. From these spectra several important air quality and climate-relatedatmospheric constituents are retrieved, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at unprecedented spatialresolution from a satellite platform. We present the first retrievals of TROPOMI NO2over the Canadian OilSands, contrasting them with observations from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument satellite instrument,and demonstrate TROPOMI's ability to resolve individual plumes and highlight its potential for derivingemissions from individual mining facilities. Further, the first TROPOMI NO2validation is presented,consisting of aircraft and surface in situ NO2observations, and ground-based remote-sensingmeasurements between March and May 2018. Our comparisons show that the TROPOMI NO2verticalcolumn densities are highly correlated with the aircraft and surface in situ NO2observations, and theground-based remote-sensing measurements with a low bias (15–30 %); this bias can be reduced byimproved air mass factors. Plain Language Summary: Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a pollutant that is linked to respiratoryhealth issues and has negative environmental impacts such as soil and water acidification. Near thesurface the most significant sources of NO2are fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning. With a recentlylaunched satellite instrument (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument [TROPOMI]), NO2can be measuredwith an unprecedented combination of accuracy, spatial coverage, and resolution. This work presents thefirst TROPOMI NO2measurements near the Canadian Oil Sands and shows that these measurements havean outstanding ability to detect NO2on a very high horizontal resolution that is unprecedented for satelliteNO2observations. Further, these satellite measurements are in excellent agreement with aircraft andground-based measurements.

TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI)↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Skin Friction Measurement on a Swept NACA 0015 Wing Using Oil Film Interferometry

An application of oil film interferometry (OFI) to measure skin friction on the 3D flow over an NACA 0015 airfoil with 30° of sweep is presented. Local flow direction must be known to apply OFI to complex 3D flows such as this. A recently developed surface flow vector extraction method was integrated into the OFI analysis algorithm. Surface flow vectors were used to calculate the surface streamlines and hence provided local flow direction to the OFI analysis. After calibration using photogrammetry, the surface flow vectors also enabled decomposition of the skin friction coefficient into different components (such as chordwise and spanwise). The presented method successfully measured skin friction at locations with different flow characteristics such as high skin friction regions, strong spanwise flow regions, and 3D flow separated regions. In the current OFI analysis, multiple interferogram images acquired at different times were analyzed for the same location. The multiple interferogram analysis enabled averaging, which reduced the scatter the skin friction data. The results presented herein demonstrate the capability of the current approach, thereby extending OFI skin friction measurements to complex 3D flows.

Skin friction measurement↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Skin Friction Measurement on a Swept NACA 0015 Wing Using Oil Film Interferometry

An application of oil film interferometry (OFI) to measure skin friction on the 3D flow over an NACA 0015 airfoil with 30° of sweep is presented. Local flow direction must be known to apply OFI to complex 3D flows such as this. A recently developed surface flow vector extraction method was integrated into the OFI analysis algorithm. Surface flow vectors were used to calculate the surface streamlines and hence provided local flow direction to the OFI analysis. After calibration using photogrammetry, the surface flow vectors also enabled decomposition of the skin friction coefficient into different components (such as chordwise and spanwise). The presented method successfully measured skin friction at locations with different flow characteristics such as high skin friction regions, strong spanwise flow regions, and 3D flow separated regions. In the current OFI analysis, multiple interferogram images acquired at different times were analyzed for the same location. The multiple interferogram analysis enabled averaging, which reduced the scatter the skin friction data. The results presented herein demonstrate the capability of the current approach, thereby extending OFI skin friction measurements to complex 3D flows.

Skin friction measurement↗
NASA NTRS2026

SCOAPE-II: A 2024 Multiplatform Measurement Campaign off the US Gulf Coast to Assess Oil and Gas Emissions on the Outer Continental Shelf

Nine years ago, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the Agency with Air Quality (AQ) jurisdiction over the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the US Gulf Coast west of 87.5° W longitude, asked NASA to determine the feasibility of using satellite data to measure offshore emissions in a region of concentrated oil and natural gas (ONG) operations. To study this issue NASA and BOEM conducted the May 2019 Satellite Coastal and Oceanic Atmospheric Pollution Experiment (SCOAPE) cruise in the Gulf. SCOAPE addressed both technological and scientific issues related to measuring nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 , a common air pollutant), including contrasting near-shore and deepwater regimes. Given the April 2023 launch of the geostationary Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) AQ satellite, a 2024 SCOAPE-II was conducted in the Gulf with both ship and aircraft measurements. We present an overview of the SCOAPE-II campaign, analysis and validation of satellite-observed NO 2 , and evaluate measurements of methane from ship, aircraft, and satellite near ONG platforms. Our SCOAPE-II results are as follows: 1) Satellite NO 2 measurements (∼13:30 local time) from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) are more accurate than TEMPO’s hourly scans (8.6% vs. 23.6% mean absolute bias); a new version of TEMPO data is currently being processed; 2) ship and aircraft measurements captured dozens of NO 2 and methane plumes from ONG operations, showing that they are persistent emitters; 3) satellite measurements of methane failed to replicate ship and aircraft measurements, presenting ongoing challenges for operational emissions monitoring over the Gulf.

satellite validation↗
DOE OSTI2021

Process for generating high purity synthesis gas hydrogen from heavy oil or hydrocarbons

The present invention provides a steam reforming process for heavy oil or hydrocarbons using a circulating fluidized bed reactor, the process having a reforming step and a regeneration step, wherein the reforming step and the regeneration step comprise a fluidized reactor containing a fluidizable nickel-containing reforming catalyst and produce hydrogen as a product of the reforming bed. The invention produces high purity hydrogen in the synthesis gas product stream and avoids irreversible fouling on the catalyst.

Srinivas, Girish↗
DOE OSTI2021

Compositions and methods for engineering oil content in plants

Compositions and methods for producing plants with enhanced oil content and higher seed yield are disclosed. The transgenic plant comprises a polynucleotide encoding a monoacylglycerol O-acyltransferase 1 (MGAT1) operatively linked to a plant-expressible promoter; a polynucleotide encoding a phosphatidylcholine diacylglycerol cholinephosphotransferase 1 (PDCT1) operatively linked to a plant-expressible promoter; a polynucleotide encoding a suppressor of expression of Sugar Dependent 1 (SPD1) operatively linked to a plant-expressible promoter; a polynucleotide encoding a diacylglyerol acyltransferase (DGAT1) operatively linked to a plant-expressible promoter and a polynucleotide encoding a glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPD1) operatively linked to a plant-expressible promoter; or a combination thereof.

Dhankher, Om Parkash↗
DOE OSTI2021

Process for selectively recovering a phenolic compound from feedstock comprising bio-crude and/or bio-oil

A process for selectively recovering a phenolic compound from feedstock comprising bio-crude and/or bio-oil is described. The recovery efficiency of the selected phenolic compound is greater than 70 wt % and the purity of the recovered selected phenolic compound is higher than 80 wt %. The process comprises distilling the feedstock to isolate the selected phenolic compound in a first distillate fraction comprising the selected phenolic compound, concentrating the selected phenolic compound from the first distillate fraction in a concentrated mixture, and purifying the concentrated mixture to recover the selected phenolic compound.

Mante, Ofei D.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Valorization of bio-oils

Methods are disclosed to make coke, graphite, graphene and other materials from biomass derived bio-oil.

Baldwin, Robert Milton↗