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DOE OSTI2024

ORNL Campus Sustainability and Decarbonization using Waste Heat Recovery from the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s High-Performance Computing Data Center

Heat pumps are a clean and efficient technology that can be powered by renewable electricity to transfer heat using a refrigerant from one place to another by different heat sources, making buildings clean and environmentally friendly. With the support of the ORNL Laboratory Modernization Division, this project explored and evaluated an innovative solution that uses water-water cost-effective midtemperature heat pump (MTHP) technology to leverage the low-grade waste heat from ORNL Frontier and the data center to deliver 85°C hot water, which replaces hot steam generated using natural gas combustion boilers for water heating or space heating in the buildings of ORNL campus. Two scenarios were studied. In the first scenario, which considered the 5600-5700-5800 complex only, Carrier’s commercial 1,000 kW MTHP technology achieves more than 6,640 MWh/year energy savings, an emission reduction of 858 TCO2e/year CO2, and a payback time of 4.85 years. In the second scenario, which considered the 5600-5700-5800 complex and Buildings 5100, 5200, and 5300, the CO2 emission reduction is 1,483 TCO2e/year, the operating cost savings are $0.21 million annually, and the payback time is 3.74 years. Additionally, a comprehensive HP ShowCase Tool was developed for evaluating the optimal solution to improve sustainability and decarbonization of the buildings on the ORNL campus. The tool is an Excel-based tool integrated with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) coding. The tool includes collected ORNL campus building information and an MTHP library, which comprises collected commercial and ORNL-defined MTHPs. The tool was used to evaluate the sustainability and decarbonization of the ORNL campus. The tool can be widely used or referenced for heat pump solutions and building decarbonization renovation strategies to modernize ORNL facilities and energy use–intensive equipment to enable efficient, sustainable, and resilient operations in the future.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2020

Advanced Sensors and Instrumentation (ASI) Program Plan. Nuclear Energy Enabling Technologies (NEET)

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) sponsors a crosscutting technology development (CTD) program addressing common instrumentation & controls (I&C) needs in all DOE-NE sponsored programs. In 2012, DOE-NE initiated the Nuclear Energy Enabling Technology (NEET) Program to conduct research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) in crosscutting technologies that directly support and enable the development of existing, new and advanced reactor designs, and fuel cycle technologies. These technologies will advance the state of nuclear technology, improve its competitiveness, and promote continued contribution to meeting our Nation’s energy and environmental challenges. The NEET Program has spurred innovation in the field of sensors and instrumentation, advanced methods for manufacturing, and cyber security. The Advanced Sensors and Instrumentation (ASI) program is one element of the NEET CTD that has spurred innovation in the measurement science field by funding research on sensors, instrumentation and controls, communication, and advanced analytics that measure system parameters, gauge component control input, and provide power plant owners and operators critical awareness so they can plan and safely manage operational evolutions. The NEET ASI Program has carried out research and development (R&D) required to develop and deploy innovative and advanced sensors, and instrumentation and control capabilities for current and future nuclear energy systems, and to enable the advanced technologies essential to NE’s R&D efforts needed to realize mission goals. The concept of technology readiness assessment is helpful for the classification of instrumentation technology as part of the program strategy. A technology readiness assessment evaluates technology maturity using the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale and was pioneered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the 1980s for space technology. It has recently been adopted to advance fuels and materials. The NEET ASI program objective is to mature instruments technology to TRL 6, which is “demonstration of the technology in relevant environment.” While there may be instances in which a different strategy is justified, the aim of the program is to respond to DOE program and stakeholder needs for nuclear instrumentation then hand off the technology after demonstration for integration in a more complex system, for example an irradiation test, experimental loop or a plant component such as the core, primary system or heat exchanger. A mechanism to continue some level of support from NEET ASI during and after the adoption (for example, to maintain fabrication and calibration capabilities) will be defined as the first example of technology hand off comes to fruition. In addition, several paths exist within DOE to complement NEET ASI activities to extend the maturity beyond TRL, for example through GAIN, technology commercialization funding, and small-business programs. Role of NEET ASI CINR projects in the TRL space, and integration with direct funded demonstration.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2020

ASGS - An Innovative Approach for Waste Characterization - From the First Study to Experimental Validation - 20260

For disposal of nuclear waste a clear identification of the nuclear inventory is mandatory. Since this waste is usually filled in drums, nuclear specific characterization methods using HPGe detectors usually require the understanding of the limitations of the method assumptions (such as the homogeneity criteria), and often results in applying high uncertainties to the result in waste that is not well known a priori. There are several methods and approaches such as Far-Field, Segmented Gamma Scans (SGS) or Tomographic Gamma Scans (TGS) available. The SGS allows measuring the waste drum in different segments (or 'layers') which allows getting more detailed information about the activity distribution inside a waste drum. In addition, with the transmission source used in tomographic scans, it is possible to also determine the material (and its homogeneity) composition inside a drum. Mirion Technologies developed in cooperation with Aachen Institute for Nuclear Training (AiNT) an innovative measurement approach which allows more accurate results and therefore applying lower uncertainties. This new measurement approach extends the concept of SGS by partitioning the drum into single drum sectors instead of segments. The goal is to perform measurements with high throughput and an accurate analysis based on the reconstruction of activities for each sector. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

DOE OSTI2023

The evolution of symbiotic innovation, water, and agricultural supply chains

Abstract The water literature has mainly investigated the diversion and distribution of water from the source to the end users or the utilization of water at the farm level in crop production. This paper presents a supply chain perspective that links the innovation supply chain of water delivery and irrigation with the complete water supply chain to the crop and the crop supply chains. These supply chains are symbiotic. Changes in the demand for crops, agronomic technology, and knowledge about water will modify the water infrastructure, irrigation technology, land‐use and crop production patterns, and the pricing of water and related commodities. The parameters that guide investment in water innovation and the design of the water supply chain depend on political, economic, and technological considerations that have coevolved over time with water and crop systems. Evidence from California and elsewhere supports the findings of the paper.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2023

Innovative Strategies for Long-Term Monitoring of Complex Groundwater Plumes at DOE’s Legacy Sites (Workshop Report)

Most remaining Department of Energy (DOE) sites will require extended periods of institutional control, especially at complex groundwater sites where attenuation-based strategies have been implemented to facilitate closure. The current practice of monitoring—obtaining and analyzing contaminant concentration in groundwater samples at numerous wells—will account for a large portion of the projected life-cycle at these DOE sites unless a new approach is adopted. State-of-the-art technologies are being developed, including in situ sensors, geophysics, radiation mapping, numerical modeling and AI/ML. These technologies can optimize monitoring strategies in space and time, provide spatially extensive information at vulnerable regions and/or provide more continuous monitoring at lower cost. As part of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM’s) efforts to advance long-term monitoring systems, an in-person/virtual hybrid workshop was hosted by Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) on January 24 and 25, 2023, in Augusta, Georgia. Because DOE-EM’s complex sites will eventually be transferred to DOE’s Office of Legacy Management (DOE-LM), representatives of DOE-LM were important participants in the workshop. The purpose of the workshop was to identify challenges and opportunities for deploying advanced technologies for long-term monitoring at DOE sites. The key questions during the workshop were: 1) the regulatory acceptance of replacing a process that traditionally has used laboratory sampling and analysis of groundwater samples, and 2) the application of this strategy to the southwestern arid sites that include many of the remaining DOE-EM and DOE-LM complex groundwater plumes. Characteristics common to most arid sites present both limitations and opportunities for advanced technologies. DOE-EM has funded a National Laboratory team from SRNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to establish the overarching framework of long-term monitoring by systematically combining advanced hardware and software technologies. This project is titled “Advanced Long-Term Environmental Monitoring Systems (ALTEMIS)” and is sponsored by the DOE-EM Technology Development Program. The multi-laboratory team is currently developing and testing innovative monitoring strategies, including the use of in situ groundwater sensors, geophysics, drone/satellite-based remote sensing, reactive transport modeling, and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML). The project’s demonstration testbed is at the Savannah River Site (SRS) F-Area Seepage Basins, where a well-characterized complex groundwater plume composed of uranium and other radionuclides is in the latter stages of remediation. The workshop included more than 70 participants, presentations, a field visit to F-Area, breakout working groups, and large group discussion. Participants developed recommendations on five topics: in situ sensors, spatially integrative tools, challenges to regulatory acceptance, AI/ML strategies, and transitioning sites to DOE-LM.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

DOE OSTI2024

SSTDR and FDR Detection of Un-Energized and Energized Cable Anomalies Including Thermal Degradation Using Machine Learning

Historically, cables are initially qualified for nuclear power plant use for 40 years. As plants extend their operating license to 60 and 80 years, continued use of these cables must shift to a performance-based approach since it is cost prohibitive to completely replace cables that are likely still capable of performing their design function. A variety of cable tests are available and are commonly applied during outages when the cables can be taken out of service. Frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) is one of these test methods that is being more broadly accepted and used because it not only detects anomalies along the cable with a low-voltage signal that does not stress the cable insulation, but the technique also locates the anomalies. This supports follow-up local inspection and local repair or partial replacement of a damaged cable segment. Currently, FDR testing is only applied to cables that are taken out of service since the test instrument would be damaged by operational voltages. A related technology that has found some acceptance in the aircraft and rail industry is spread spectrum time domain reflectometry (SSTDR). This technology has been implemented with a custom commercial instrument by LiveWire Innovation that is designed to operate on live cables up to 1000 volts and with a bandwidth of 48 MHz. Initial evaluation by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) of the Live Wire system indicated that a broader bandwidth (BW) SSTDR may be better for many kinds of flaws. This led PNNL to develop an SSTDR laboratory instrument suitable for tests up to 500 MHz bandwidth. Testing on energized cables is also desirable for online monitoring systems so an inductive clamshell coupler was developed that allows energized cables to be tested up to at least 5 kV and likely higher voltage levels. Dielectric spectroscopy and tan delta testing plus various laboratory destructive tests were included in this data acquisition campaign directed to feed a machine learning (ML) study. With these kinds of developments, online energized cable tests may be possible with industrial adoption of such hardware advances but it will be completely impractical to have highly skilled data analysts continually examine these complex signals for indications of damage or compromised conditions. If online testing is to be implemented in new test hardware, it must be accompanied by software that can interpret the signals and alert plant operators of changing or degraded conditions. The thermally aged, shielded cable investigated here was separately treated for ML analysis. Visual analysis of electrical data showed generally increasing peaks where the cable entered and exited the oven. These peaks were not exactly aligned with expected locations, but these differences were attributed to velocity of propagation calibration errors. Only supervised ML was applied to the thermally aged data as this data was only available shortly before the committed publication date of this report. The supervised ML was structured to divide the 0 to 70-day responses as ‘normal’ from 0 to 35 days or ‘anomalous’ from 36 to 70 days, based on cable tensile elongation at break (EAB) insulation characterization. Using 80% of the data for training and 20% for testing, the supervised ML predicted normal versus anomalous was 70% accurate. Important conclusions include: • Accuracy to predict the presence of cable damage is improved from the 2023 effort by more training data. Weighted accuracies for comparisons among the instruments ranged from 67 to 89 % for unsupervised ML and 71 to 99% for supervised ML. • Based on the synthetic data tests, the unsupervised models are more generalizable to unseen anomalies. The Multi-Layer Perceptron classifier (MLP) model reported as high as 99.7% accuracy on the test data, but this dropped to 58.3% when tested on the synthetic data. In contrast, the unsupervised Pointwise model only achieved 89.7% accuracy on the experimental data but reported 78.3% accuracy on the synthetic data. • The best anomaly indicators are higher frequency (400 MHz BW) FDR data. Other tests may be interesting but for this study, this was the best predicter.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2024

Potential applications of microbial genomics in nuclear non-proliferation

As nuclear technology evolves in response to increased demand for diversification and decarbonization of the energy sector, new and innovative approaches are needed to effectively identify and deter the proliferation of nuclear arms, while ensuring safe development of global nuclear energy resources. Preventing the use of nuclear material and technology for unsanctioned development of nuclear weapons has been a long-standing challenge for the International Atomic Energy Agency and signatories of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Environmental swipe sampling has proven to be an effective technique for characterizing clandestine proliferation activities within and around known locations of nuclear facilities and sites. However, limited tools and techniques exist for detecting nuclear proliferation in unknown locations beyond the boundaries of declared nuclear fuel cycle facilities, representing a critical gap in non-proliferation safeguards. Microbiomes, defined as “characteristic communities of microorganisms” found in specific habitats with distinct physical and chemical properties, can provide valuable information about the conditions and activities occurring in the surrounding environment. Microorganisms are known to inhabit radionuclide-contaminated sites, spent nuclear fuel storage pools, and cooling systems of water-cooled nuclear reactors, where they can cause radionuclide migration and corrosion of critical structures. Microbial transformation of radionuclides is a well-established process that has been documented in numerous field and laboratory studies. These studies helped to identify key bacterial taxa and microbially-mediated processes that directly and indirectly control the transformation, mobility, and fate of radionuclides in the environment. Expanding on this work, other studies have used microbial genomics integrated with machine learning models to successfully monitor and predict the occurrence of heavy metals, radionuclides, and other process wastes in the environment, indicating the potential role of nuclear activities in shaping microbial community structure and function. Results of this previous body of work suggest fundamental geochemical-microbial interactions occurring at nuclear fuel cycle facilities could give rise to microbiomes that are characteristic of nuclear activities. These microbiomes could provide valuable information for monitoring nuclear fuel cycle facilities, planning environmental sampling campaigns, and developing biosensor technology for the detection of undisclosed fuel cycle activities and proliferation concerns.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2023

Tackling Grand Challenges in Wind Energy through a Socio-Technical Perspective

Wind power has an important role to play in tackling climate change. Key challenges in wind energy science and innovation must be overcome to increase the penetration and capability of this technology. However, the success of these efforts heavily depends on how society engages with the development of wind power infrastructure. Consequently, grand challenges exist in both technical and social domains, yet little research has made substantial efforts in connecting them. Here we review the social science and humanities literature on wind energy to illustrate the social dimensions of previously identified technical challenges. We suggest that a socio-technical lens enables an interdisciplinary approach to overcome the prevalent tendency of silo thinking in wind energy research and use it to explore socio-technical grand challenges related to the design, planning, development, operational and end-of-life phases of wind energy. Finally, we provide an outlook for research, practice and innovation, including an interdisciplinary and socio-technical research agenda for wind energy science, renewable energy developments and science policy in general.

end-of-life↗

DOE OSTI2026

Mechanical Solution for Existing Conductors

The rapid growth in energy demand, driven by advancements in AI technology, renewable energy integration, and increased industrial activity, highlights the need for innovative solutions to improve the resiliency and efficiency of the power grid. This report details the fire testing of GridWrap’s Composite WiRe Wrap, to evaluate the wrap's ability to enhance conductor performance under wildfire-simulated conditions. Conductors were prepared and tested in a controlled environment at 400°C for 18 minutes, during which sag and temperature data were recorded. The results demonstrated that the unwrapped conductor sagged 3/16ths of an inch, while the WiRe Wrapped conductor sagged only 1/16th of an inch under identical conditions, indicating a significant improvement in mechanical performance. This project, conducted as part of a collaborative effort between BEA (Idaho National Laboratory’s managing contractor) and GridWrap, Inc., demonstrates the potential of grid-enhancing technologies like WiRe Wrap to reduce sag, increase grid resiliency, and support the future energy landscape. By validating the performance of such technologies in real-world scenarios, this work provides critical insights for industry adoption, benefiting both grid operators and U.S. taxpayers through improved reliability, reduced emissions, and enhanced energy delivery.

24 - POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2023

West Gate

West Gate is the fourth U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP), which launched with its first cohort in September 2022. Selected innovators are embedded at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for two years to access its world-class expertise and facilities. West Gate aligns with the LEEP mission to enable the most promising cleantech entrepreneurs to develop game-changing technologies for a clean energy future. With this in mind, West Gate welcomed Cohort 1 innovators working in materials circularity, building electrification, energy storage, and energy generation. Leveraging the power of the LEEP brand and the NREL network, West Gate is a hub for innovations vital to building a clean energy economy. Working with partners at the Colorado School of Mines, LabStart, Rockies Venture Club, and countless leaders in Colorado's energy ecosystem, West Gate provides innovators with support and training as they build their businesses and make an impact in the energy community.

clean energy↗

DOE OSTI2022

Multiscale Electricity Modeling for Evaluating Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies (MEME-CCS)

This effort employs and adapts an existing, rigorous multiscale electricity modeling platform at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to evaluate carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and negative emissions technologies (NET) from the ARPA-E FLECCS program. NREL's modeling platform includes the Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) electric sector capacity expansion model, which projects future electricity generation mixes at sub-state-level resolution that are downscaled to the unit-level to enable hourly, zonal or nodal electricity production cost modeling in the PLEXOS model. The resulting hourly price data from PLEXOS is provided to technology developers under the ARPA-E FLECCS program to enable technology-specific economic analysis. The ReEDS-PLEXOS modeling suite is well-established for examining electric sector futures with high renewable energy penetrations, energy storage, electrification, and distributed generation. The key advancement proposed herein utilizes collaboration with CCS experts at the University of Wyoming and the FLECCS teams to create innovative methods for representing CCS and NET in the ReEDS and PLEXOS models. Expanded technology options, new operational parameterizations, and detailed data defining CO2 capture, transportation, and storage systems are being integrated into these models to allow an unprecedented combination of scope and resolution for exploring the future of CCS and NET. The resulting capabilities will take advantage of high-performance computing resources to permit wide-ranging scenario analysis to assess CCS and NET deployment under alternative CO2 prices, fossil fuel prices, electricity demand growth, and other electric sector characteristics. Final outcomes will include publicly available hourly grid operation and price data for any U.S. region of interest along with open-access capacity expansion tools for evaluating CCS/NET systems. These products will help an emerging CCS/NET industry in the United States by providing economics-driven guidance to technology developers while informing policy and investment decisions in the public and private sectors.

air capture↗

DOE OSTI2021

Modeling Contact Angle vs. Temperature for the Quartz-Water-Decane System

Innovative approaches are needed to improve the efficiency of oil recovery technologies to meet the growing demands of fossil-fuel based energy consumption. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods such as low-salinity waterflooding and chemically tuned waterflooding aim to optimize the reservoir’s wetting properties, detaching oil globules from rock surfaces and allowing easier oil flow through pore throats. This wetting behavior is commonly quantified by contact angle measurements of the rock-oil-brine interface, which have been thoroughly investigated and theorized for many systems at ambient temperatures and pressures. However, few studies exist for extending contact angle theories away from ambient conditions. In this paper, we model the contact angles of a quartz-water-decane system at elevated temperatures using the surface tension component (STC) approach. Temperature-dependent van der Waals [Lifshitz-van der Waals (LW)] interactions and hydrogen-bonding (acid-base) interactions were calculated and are incorporated into the model for the quartz-water-decane interface. Additionally, the Hough and White procedure was used to create temperature-dependent dielectric functions of quartz, water, and normal decane for calculations of Hamaker coefficients. Hamaker coefficients calculated this way are highly linear with temperature and agree well with Israelachvili’s approximation. The acid-base interactions likely contribute the most to system wettability changes. Resulting contact angles of the quartz-water-decane system shift from water-wet (16°) to slightly water-wet (57.4°) as temperature increases. The model was also successfully verified for the quartz-air-water system. Our results can be used in future studies to determine optimal injected water compositions for specific rock-oil-brine and other systems with consideration of reservoir temperature.

02 PETROLEUM↗

DOE OSTI2020

TURBO: Terabits/s Using Reconfigurable Bandwidth Optics (Final Report)

Large scale, big science applications are generating petabytes of data that need to be shared among multiple locations. Moving a petabyte of data at 100 Gb/s takes 22 hours. Reducing this to single digit hours or below is clearly attractive and with future applications anticipating exabyte scale transfers, multi-terabit per second capacities are needed. This scale of capacity is available using optical systems. Core optical systems have aggregate per fiber capacities on the order of 10 Tb/s and more than 100 Tb/s system experiments have been realized in the lab. But large optical capacities are not just reserved for the core as similar system capacities are available in metro networks right up to the enterprise, campus, or data center. In general, the same technology is used today in the metro area as in the long-haul networks—reconfigurable optical add drop multiplexing (ROADM) node-based wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems. Data centers already support massive internal capacities on the scale of 100’s of Tb/s. As new photonic integrated technologies mature, for example through initiatives such as the Integrated Photonics Innovative Manufacturing Institute (IP-IMI), the cost of optical interfaces is expected to decrease, and higher capacity and higher performance interfaces will become more affordable. This set of circumstances creates the potential that Tb/s capacities will be available at the enterprise and campus level to support large scale science network applications.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2020

National Reactor Innovation Center NRC Early Site Permit Roadmap

The National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in Idaho Falls, Idaho, was authorized under the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (Public Law 115–248) to provide private sector technology developers with resources and infrastructure for testing, demonstration, and performance assessment to accelerate deployment of new advanced reactor technology concepts. NRIC’s mission is to enable clean, affordable, reliable energy by supporting U.S. government investments in nuclear energy research, development, demonstration, and commercialization of new nuclear energy systems. It intends to provide existing facilities and other undeveloped and previously developed sites at INL to advanced reactor vendors for prototype technology testing and deployment. Some of these demonstration projects may be subject to DOE authorization, while other projects may require approval by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) prior to construction and operation. NRIC and INL are considering whether to pursue one or more ESPs to help facilitate new reactor deployment at the INL Site. An ESP would allow early investment in licensing infrastructure in advance of a reactor design being ready to deploy. Through the ESPs, NRIC would help reduce the cost and time required to deploy demonstration reactors at the INL Site. This also will allow INL to bring its nuclear and siting experience to the ESP development process allowing for better and more efficient improvements and utilization of the Site. A preapproved ESP at INL will also remove the uncertainty of NRC siting approvals from the demonstration project proponents, who may not be well positioned to complete the analyses in a timely manner. The purpose of this NRIC ESP roadmap is to provide rigor and understanding needed for INL and DOE decision-makers to make data-informed decisions on pursuing NRC ESPs in support of future advanced reactor demonstrations at INL. The roadmap provides a structured method for addressing potential challenges and identifying options for resolution.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

DOE OSTI2021

National Reactor Innovation Center NRC Early Site Permit Roadmap

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Engineered Microorganisms for Enhanced Rare Earth Element Bio-mining and Separations (Final Technical Report)

Rare earth elements (REE) are critical ingredients of sustainable energy technologies, but their extraction from ore and separation from one another pose formidable challenges. To solve the challenge of REE supply, we used advanced genomics, high-throughput screening with synthetic REE minerals, and synthetic biology to engineer two sets of exotic microbes to (1) extract REE from ores, spent cracking catalysts, coal ash and electronic waste with high efficiency and selectivity, and (2) to purify REE into single element batches, all under benign conditions without the need of harsh solvents and high temperatures. This work integrated our expertise in systems and synthetic biology (Buz Barstow); rare-earth geochemistry (Esteban Gazel) and mineral synthesis (Megan Holycross); and microsystems engineering (Mingming Wu) by first elucidating the set of rules that predict an organism’s phenotype and then applying them to solve this critical problem in sustainable energy. These new technologies could help to revitalize the US rare earth industry and provide a new source of these critical elements for future energy technologies. We have already had some big success in tech transfer. Two of our team members (postdoctoral fellow Alexa Schmitz and graduate student Sean Medin) were able to study the supply chain for REE in the United States, and identify an opportunity to commercialize our REE mineral-dissolution technology. Alexa and Sean recently founded REEgen, Inc., an REE biomining company. Dr. Schmitz was recently awarded a fellowship from the Activate Foundation to support the first two years of REEgen. Cornell showed its support for this technology and company, and Dr. Schmitz was awarded the Rising Women Innovator’s award. These two awards unlocked support from Cornell’s Praxis Incubator.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2025

Stable Diacid Coordinated Quaternary Ammonium Polymers for 80-230 °C Fuel Cells

Current automotive fuel cells that use sulfonated polymer-based proton exchange membranes are challenging to operate at > 100 °C without humidification. In this project, we developed polymer electrolyte fuel cells that run at > 100 °C without humidification using a novel class of proton exchange membranes made from thermos-oxidatively stable acid-coordinated quaternary ammonium polymers. These fuel cells remove the external humidifiers/demisters and reduce the size of radiators, thus vastly simplifying fuel cell integration, which increases tolerance to impurities and improves electrode kinetics of catalysts. Operating fuel cells without hydration has a significant benefit on fuel cell cost and economic feasibility was investigated by comparing existing fuel cell systems. This project bridges the scale-up process to manufacture the fuel cell component through the U.S. DOE L’Innovator project sponsored by the U.S. DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO).

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

DOE OSTI2025

Tactical Analysis for Calculating Contextual Risk at Boundaries: Summary of Laboratory Directed Research & Development Effort

The Tactical Analysis for Calculating Contextual Risk at Boundaries (TACCRAB) tool is an innovative digital twin (DT) platform and automated risk algorithm designed to transform operational decision-making in structured screening environments, with an initial focus on Southern Border Land Ports of Entry (POEs). The invention provides integration points for advanced artificial intelligence, predictive modeling, and real-time data analysis to produce a comprehensive risk management tool that enables proactive, data-informed security strategies. The core inventive features of TACCRAB center on its unique risk algorithm, which dynamically calculates contextual risk by synthesizing historical data, near real-time streaming data from the checkpoints themselves, and AI-generated predictions. Unlike traditional risk assessment methods, TACCRAB utilizes a DT to provide comprehensive operational insights, allowing stakeholders to visualize, simulate, and optimize checkpoint configurations with unprecedented speed and contextual awareness. TACCRAB's key innovation lies in its ability to combine multiple complex inputs - including technology detection probabilities, resource availability, screening pathway characteristics, and threat actor behavioral patterns - into a unified risk calculation and update these inputs based on changing operational and environmental conditions. By leveraging a DT that continuously updates and learns from linked data, TACCRAB can suggest adaptive mitigation strategies that minimize risk while maintaining operational efficiency. Particularly novel is the platform's approach to decision support, which goes beyond static risk assessment. The DT provides dynamic metrics such as wait times, resource allocation effectiveness, and potential emerging threat scenarios, enabling users to view sophisticated, relevant what-if simulations and optimize checkpoint operations in near real-time. The system's architecture allows for generalized application across different screening environments, such as secure facilities, ports of entry, and soft targets, making it a versatile tool for security and operational management. The invention distinguishes itself through its comprehensive integration of predictive modeling, AI-driven pattern discovery, and user-friendly interface design. By combining these elements, TACCRAB transforms complex risk data into actionable insights, supporting decision-makers at various organizational levels - from booth agents making split-second screening decisions to checkpoint managers optimizing the day's resource allocation to strategic planners managing long-term investments.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗