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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Hydrogen and Solid Carbon Products from Natural Gas: A Review of Process Requirements, Current Technologies, Market Analysis, and Preliminary Techno Economic Assessment

In this paper, we review relevant technologies—primarily thermochemical and plasma conversion processes—that use natural gas to produce solid carbon and hydrogen, and recent research progress and commercial activities. Technical challenges include the high energetic requirements necessary for methane activation and, for some catalytic processes, the separation of solid carbon product from the spent catalyst. We assess current and new carbon product markets that could be served given technological advances, and we discuss technical barriers and potential areas of research to address these needs. We provide preliminary economic analysis where it was concluded that the cost of pyrolytically produced CO2-free hydrogen can be potentially reduced to <$4/kg target levels with the co-production and sale of sufficiently high-value carbon products.

Dagle, Robert A.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Identification of Crew-Systems Interactions and Decision Related Trends

NASA Vehicle System Safety Technology (VSST) project management uses systems analysis to identify key issues and maintain a portfolio of research leading to potential solutions to its three identified technical challenges. Statistical data and published safety priority lists from academic, industry and other government agencies were reviewed and analyzed by NASA Aviation Safety Program (AvSP) systems analysis personnel to identify issues and future research needs related to one of VSST's technical challenges, Crew Decision Making (CDM). The data examined in the study were obtained from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Aviation Accident and Incident Data System, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Accident/Incident Data System and the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). In addition, this report contains the results of a review of safety priority lists, information databases and other documented references pertaining to aviation crew systems issues and future research needs. The specific sources examined were: Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) Safety Enhancements Reserved for Future Implementation (SERFIs), Flight Deck Automation Issues (FDAI) and NTSB Most Wanted List and Open Recommendations. Various automation issues taxonomies and priority lists pertaining to human factors, automation and flight design were combined to create a list of automation issues related to CDM.

Jones, Sharon Monica↗
NASA NTRS2004

A CAD Approach to Integrating NDE With Finite Element

Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) is one of several technologies applied at NASA Glenn Research Center to determine atypical deformities, cracks, and other anomalies experienced by structural components. NDE consists of applying high-quality imaging techniques (such as x-ray imaging and computed tomography (CT)) to discover hidden manufactured flaws in a structure. Efforts are in progress to integrate NDE with the finite element (FE) computational method to perform detailed structural analysis of a given component. This report presents the core outlines for an in-house technical procedure that incorporates this combined NDE-FE interrelation. An example is presented to demonstrate the applicability of this analytical procedure. FE analysis of a test specimen is performed, and the resulting von Mises stresses and the stress concentrations near the anomalies are observed, which indicates the fidelity of the procedure. Additional information elaborating on the steps needed to perform such an analysis is clearly presented in the form of mini step-by-step guidelines.

Abdul-Aziz, Ali↗
DOE OSTI2022

Magnetic Gears: The Key to Robust, Cost-Effective Hydropower Drivetrains

Based on previous demonstrated success at fabricating 5 and 10 kW scale magnetic gearbox (MGB) prototypes, Emrgy and its partners (the project team) proposed to design and construct a 100 kW scale MGB with a 30:1 gear ratio for the low-head hydro applications. The Statement of Project Objectives included tasks covering: 1) Market Applicability; 2) Technical Metrics; 3) Design (initial); 4) Electromagnetic (EM) Load and Structural Analysis; 5) Modal Analysis; 6) Sealing Design and 7) Final Design during Budget Period 1. Budget Period 2 included tasks covering: 1) Materials Procurement and Test Plan Development; 2) Assembly; and 3) Testing. The Market Applicability study (Task 1) led to a clear conclusion and recommendation toward “Low Head” technologies for maximum market share of both New Stream Reach development as well as powering Non-Powered Dams. The findings of this study also identified the opportunity for a larger scale magnetic gearbox-based drive train as a function of increased torque, as opposed to increased speed. The Technical Metrics Study (Task 2) concluded a horizontal orientation was preferred, examined potential loss mechanisms, concluded that a Halbach Array magnetic design was preferred, established a 30:1 gear ratio as optimal, and established a power rating of 100 kW as optimal. The subsequent initial and final detailed design process included electro-magnetic (EM) load and structural analysis (Task 4), a Modal analysis (for vibration) (Task 5), and a sealing design (Task 6) to assure water impermeability. The final design package (Task 7) included 729 individual parts, 117 unique part numbers, and 15 assemblies. In order to facilitate procurement, the full bill of materials was broken down into several sub-components: 1) custom magnetic parts; 2) custom machined parts; 3) custom casted parts; and 4) commercial off the shelf (COTS) parts. The casted parts were fabricated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) via a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Emrgy and funded by the Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO). The procurement effort (Task 8) ultimately covered three time periods based on challenges encountered in meeting the budgeted cost for the prototype. Following the first effort in the early stages of Budget Period 2 in 2017, a no-cost time extension was granted to seek alternative fabrication and procurement options. The project was re-booted in 2020 based on the new ORNL CRADA that would focus on five (5) of the more difficult and expensive parts using their advanced manufacturing expertise. Procurement efforts for the other custom machined parts resulted in quotations that still exceeded the budget by more than $\$$100k. This was, in part, also due to the concurrent COVID-19 pandemic that caused both supply chain disruptions and labor shortages. As the project continued, pricing and availability degraded further. In Q2 FY’22, it was decided to not proceed with the fabrication of the prototype (Task 9) based on budgetary limitations. Outcomes included a full and detailed design of a 100 kW magnetic gearbox and associated indented bill of materials (BOM) and CAD drawings, a full assembly instruction manual with an associated BOM for materials necessary to support assembly, the fabrication of the double Halbach magnetic array for the rotor/stator system, fabrication of five (5) sand-casted/machined parts (via CRADA with ORNL) and an initial draft of a comprehensive testing plan. The most significant non-outcome was the actual fabrication and testing of the prototype gearbox based on budget limitations. Lessons learned included the need for an Application / Design / Cost trade analysis to better elucidate the cost potential of the MGB in the projected volumes anticipated for future demand. This would better establish the efficacy of the original cost target ($\$$0.80/Watt) and/or the need for reconsideration of designs and applications. Likewise, additional consideration of the prototype nature of the gearbox – single use, short lifetime, etc. - either as a separate exercise or in place of the design process completed, to reduce the cost of the demonstration prototype device. Additionally, project continuity was cited as a significant risk based on the loss of the primary design engineering firm after Budget Period 1. A design analysis exercise was conducted at the conclusion of the project to identify potential areas for cost reduction. One concept considered was the removal of the inner ring of magnets (with associated changes in the outer ring magnets) to enable a horizontal collapse of the design. It was estimated this could reduce cost by 10-25% without impacting performance.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Improving and Automating Building Model Data Exchange

There are many instances throughout a project’s lifecycle where there arises a need for quick and accurate risk assessment of building designs. For example, an unexpected design change during construction may necessitate structural engineers to perform a seismic risk assessment on analytical models of the updated building design using high fidelity structural analysis software, such as ANSYS or Abaqus. However, the efficiency of such workflows often depends upon the interoperability of architectural design software and structural analysis software. When the quality of this interoperability is lacking or even non-existent, the efficiency of virtual engineering workflows is hampered, which increases project costs. A McGraw Hill industry survey of professional users of Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies found that there is high demand for BIM interoperability for structural analysis, but that the value/difficulty ratio is currently too low for practical use. There have been efforts by the academic community to facilitate model data exchange between the architectural design and structural analysis domains, but such solutions have not been widely adopted by industry, face technical challenges, and oftentimes are limited in applicability for users of various BIM software. Therefore, INL is developing capabilities to improve, automate, and generalize model data exchange between architectural BIM software (e.g., Revit) and structural analysis software (e.g., SAP2000, ANSYS). The goal is to help expedite and automate as much of the pre-processing step for creating analytical models in finite element analysis software as reasonably as possible. Such a "BIM-to-FEA" conversion tool should provide direct benefit to end-users through accuracy, automation, quick turn-around, and wide applicability. To generalize the application of this BIM-to-FEA conversion tool and increase its useability among the many different commercial BIM software currently used by industry, the program is being developed with the concept of openBIM. OpenBIM is the application of non-proprietary, open data standards that allow for BIM model data exchange in a format that is accessible, retainable, and useable for all users. The most widely used open, non-proprietary data exchange format for BIM is the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema. IFC is developed by buildingSMART international and is ISO certified (ISO 16739-1:2018). The BIM-to-FEA conversion tool is being developed for compatibility with typical commercial building designs of steel framed structures. The tool is currently capable of importing architectural BIM data of framed building structures, recognizing and extracting the aspects of the model that are required for structural analysis, adjusting the connectivity of frame members, and finally exporting to an analytical model stored in the IFC format. The exported IFC analytical model can then be imported into various openBIM compliant software, such as SAP2000. Such capabilities have already been tested on commercial software, as shown above, and continue to be improved. Work is underway to test the conversion on various commercial BIM software, develop a user-friendly interface, incorporate the program into the broader DeepLynx data warehouse project being developed by INL, and to eventually open-source the tool for the benefit of the community. Future development of the tool envisions the ability for efficient iterative risk assessment of generative building designs, all within a workflow utilizing open-source tools. One such open-source tool will be MOOSE, an advanced finite element analysis tool developed at INL. The conversion tool will also branch out from typical commercial building designs and will aim to incorporate nuclear construction. The aim will be to convert both structural and non-structural components of nuclear facilities, such as curved concrete containment structures and piping systems, respectively.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2012

SPS-ALPHA: The First Practical Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large Phased Array

The vision of delivering solar power to Earth from platforms in space has been known for decades. However, early architectures to accomplish this vision were technically complex and unlikely to prove economically viable. Some of the issues with these earlier solar power satellite (SPS) concepts – particularly involving technical feasibility – were addressed by NASA’s space solar power (SSP) studies and technology research in the mid-to-late 1990s. Despite that progress, ten years ago a number of key technical and economic uncertainties remained. A new SPS concept has been proposed that resolves many, if not all, of those uncertainties: “SPSALPHA” (Solar Power Satellite by means of Arbitrarily Large Phased Array). During 2011-2012 the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program supported a Phase 1 “SPS-ALPHA” project, the goal of which was to establish the technical and economic viability of the SPS-ALPHA concept to an early TRL 3 – analytical proof-of-concept – and provide a framework for further study and technology development. The objectives of this project were to: (1) conduct an initial end-to-end systems analysis of the SPS-ALPHA concept in order to determine its technical feasibility; (2) identify and assess in greater detail the key technology challenges inherent in the architecture (including figures of merit for each critical technology area); (3) conduct an initial evaluation of the economic viability of the concept (as a function of key performance parameters); and, (4) define a preliminary roadmap for the further development of the SPS-ALPHA concept.

Mankins, John↗
NASA NTRS2013

Structural Analysis Peer Review for the Static Display of the Orbiter Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center

Mr. Christopher Miller with the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) NASA Safety & Mission Assurance (S&MA) office requested the NASA Engineering and Safety Center's (NESC) technical support on March 15, 2012, to review and make recommendations on the structural analysis being performed for the Orbiter Atlantis static display at the KSC Visitor Center. The principal focus of the assessment was to review the engineering firm's structural analysis for lifting and aligning the orbiter and its static display configuration

Minute, Stephen A.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Modern Modal Testing: A Cautionary Tale IMAC XXVII

Over the past 50 years, great advances have been achieved in both analytical modal analysis (i.e. finite element models and analysis) and experimental modal analysis (i.e. modal testing) in aerospace and other fields. With the advent of more powerful computers, higher performance instrumentation and data acquisition systems, and powerful linear modal extraction tools, analysts and test engineers have a breadth and depth of technical resources only dreamed of by our predecessors. However, some observed recent trends indicate that hard lessons learned are being forgotten or ignored, and possibly fundamental concepts are not being understood. These trends have the potential of leading to the degradation of the quality of and confidence in both analytical and test results. These trends are a making of our own doing, and directly related to having ever more powerful computers, programmatic budgetary pressures to limit analysis and testing, and technical capital loss due to the retirement of the senior component of a bimodal workforce. This paper endeavors to highlight some of the most important lessons learned, common pitfalls to hopefully avoid, and potential steps that may be taken to help reverse this trend.

bimodal workforce↗
NASA NTRS1986

The integrated manual and automatic control of complex flight systems

The topics of research in this program include pilot/vehicle analysis techniques, identification of pilot dynamics, and control and display synthesis techniques for optimizing aircraft handling qualities. The project activities are discussed. The current technical activity is directed at extending and validating the active display synthesis procedure, and the pilot/vehicle analysis of the NLR rate-command flight configurations in the landing task. Two papers published by the researchers are attached as appendices.

Schmidt, D. K.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Modern Modal Testing: A Cautionary Tale

Over the past 50 years, great advances have been achieved in both analytical modal analysis (i.e. finite element models and analysis) and experimental modal analysis (i.e. modal testing) in aerospace and other fields. With the advent of more powerful computers, higher performance instrumentation and data acquisition systems, and powerful linear modal extraction tools, analysts and test engineers have a breadth and depth of technical resources only dreamed of by our predecessors. However, some observed recent trends indicate that hard lessons learned are being forgotten or ignored, and possibly fundamental concepts are not being understood. These trends have the potential of leading to the degradation of the quality of and confidence in both analytical and test results. These trends are a making of our own doing, and directly related to having ever more powerful computers, programmatic budgetary pressures to limit analysis and testing, and technical capital loss due to the retirement of the senior component of a bimodal workforce. This paper endeavors to highlight some of the most important lessons learned, common pitfalls to hopefully avoid, and potential steps that may be taken to help reverse this trend.

bimodal workforce↗
DOE OSTI2026

Techno-Economic Analysis of Distributed Energy Generation in Crow Creek, Alaska

Through the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy to Communities (E2C) program, NLR, other national laboratory experts, and select organizations provide Expert Match - free, short-term technical assistance to address near-term energy challenges and questions. Expert Match is for community stakeholders who have decision-making power or influence in their community but need access to additional energy expertise to inform key upcoming decisions. This Expert Match request supported Crow Creek in Girdwood, AK with a feasibility analysis for a microgrid to provide year-round power across the community.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Development of Integrated Safety and Security Models for Comprehensive Reliability and Resiliency Evaluation

The security of the electric grid and supporting energy systems is crucial to national security. One of the complexities in analyzing the security of energy systems is the safety consequences that may result from accidents. For energy systems, the goal is to ensure that they operate as intended and that any consequences are mitigated or prevented. The integration of safety and security is paramount to protecting these systems from attacks and ensuring that large consequences are prevented. This report describes an integrated safety and security methodology to evaluate cybersecurity events that can lead to large consequences. This novel approach first describes how Systems-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) provides a digital causal analysis for Bayesian Networks (BNs). The use of STPA causal analysis provides a systematic approach to constructing BNs that adequately model cyber scenarios that result in consequences. When combined with the technical principles described in Risk-Informed Management of Enterprise Systems (RIMES), a comprehensive risk-informed cybersecurity analysis results that allows decision-makers to prioritize systems that most impact risk.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2024

HERO CarbonSAFE Phase 2 Project in the Columbia River Basalt Group

The Hermiston, Oregon Basalt CarbonSAFE Phase II project (HERO CarbonSAFE) seeks to accelerate the deployment of commercial carbon dioxide (CO2) storage projects in basaltic rocks. Basalt CO2 storage has several advantages to conventional saline storage reservoirs including 1. The potential for rapid mineralization of CO2, 2. Associated decreases in pressure and CO2 migration risks, 3. Reduced long-term monitoring requirements with respect to plume tracking, 4. Widespread geographic distribution and, 5. Large storage potential due to thickness, porosity, and CO2 interactions with basalt. And for locations such as the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, Iceland, India and Japan, basalts may offer the only economically feasible option for local CO2 storage. However, there are limited field-scale assessments of CO2 storage in basalt, and current carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) permitting and regulatory frameworks were developed for conventional saline reservoirs. HERO CarbonSAFE is designed to address research gaps and uncertainties associated with basalt storage. Specifically, the project will assess the feasibility of CO2 injection in the deep layered basalts, long-term storage (mineralization), practical approaches for large-scale implementation (50+ million metric tons of CO2 over 30 years), lithology-specific risks, and the technoeconomic potential for CO2 storage in basalts. The HERO CarbonSAFE project will assess feasibility of developing a commercial-scale (50+ million metric tons of CO2) geological storage complex within the Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG), a layered continental flood basalt complex that underlies Calpine’s natural gas-fired Hermiston Power Project (HPP) in Hermiston, OR (Figure 1). Under this 2-year CarbonSAFE Phase II project, the HERO team will conduct a data acquisition campaign that includes drilling a stratigraphic well to a total depth of ~1,500 m into the thick layered basalts proximal to HPP. A comprehensive well logging and hydrologic testing program will be augmented with new core collected from flow zones and sealing units, and comprehensive laboratory testing to help refine the kinetic rates of mineralization. The newly acquired information will be integrated with existing data from regional wells to correlate basalt injection zone properties to develop storage hub/commercial-scale models. Using these models, the project team will evaluate injection scenarios to define the technical and economic potential for storing a minimum of 50 million metric tons of CO2 over a 30-year period, along with a robust sensitivity analysis on key parameters governing reservoir viability for sustainable injection over a commercial project lifetime. Specific technical objectives of HERO are: (1) assessing the reservoir response of a series of stacked layered reservoir flowtop sequences occurring in this area of the CRBG to commercial-scale injection volumes; (2) extending prior efforts by the project team to characterize the deep layered basalts encountered in regional studies, to leverage prior investments by U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Carbon Storage program; (3) leveraging DOE’s mineralization characterization efforts to advance model parametrization for commercial scale injection of CO2 in basalts; (4) conducting risk assessments associated with scaling up to commercial storage hub injection goals, while validating DOE’s National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP) tools, to identify potential constraints that would prevent the CRBG from serving as a commercial-scale storage complex; (5) developing mitigation plans to address identified risks; (6) developing a commercial-scale injection and monitoring, verification and accounting (MVA) strategy; (7) utilizing computational models to define and minimize, if possible, the Area of Review (AoR) under Class VI regulations; and (8) developing a robust CO2 management strategy for CRBG that also considers a regional source/sink approach that is responsive to stakeholder needs and industrial demand. Specific institutional objectives are: (1) identifying and developing plans to mitigate the nontechnical challenges associated with the build-out of a commercial-scale storage complex within the CRBG with integrated CO2 sources; (2) implementing the community outreach plan; (3) conducting regulatory research, including a survey of issues related to pore space ownership, MVA and long-term assurance of mineralization-based storage, to support an eventual application for a UIC Class VI permit; (4) advancing the project’s plan for CO2 liability management; and (5) continuing to refine and update the project’s economic model. The final objective is the preparation of a comprehensive Site Characterization Plan that draws upon the technical and institutional feasibility assessments to prepare the project for future commercialization efforts.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1988

Description of MSFC engineering photographic analysis

Utilizing a background that includes development of basic launch and test photographic coverage and analysis procedures, the MSFC Photographic Evaluation Group has built a body of experience that enables it to effectively satisfy MSFC's engineering photographic analysis needs. Combining the basic soundness of reliable, proven techniques of the past with the newer technical advances of computers and computer-related devices, the MSFC Photo Evaluation Group is in a position to continue to provide photo and video analysis service center-wide and NASA-wide to supply an improving photo analysis product to meet the photo evaluation needs of the future; and to provide new standards in the state-of-the-art of photo analysis of dynamic events.

Earle, Jim↗
NASA NTRS2001

A Scalable Analysis Toolkit

The Scalable Analysis Toolkit (SAT) project aimed to demonstrate that it is feasible and useful to statically detect software bugs in very large systems. The technical focus of the project was on a relatively new class of constraint-based techniques for analysis software, where the desired facts about programs (e.g., the presence of a particular bug) are phrased as constraint problems to be solved. At the beginning of this project, the most successful forms of formal software analysis were limited forms of automatic theorem proving (as exemplified by the analyses used in language type systems and optimizing compilers), semi-automatic theorem proving for full verification, and model checking. With a few notable exceptions these approaches had not been demonstrated to scale to software systems of even 50,000 lines of code. Realistic approaches to large-scale software analysis cannot hope to make every conceivable formal method scale. Thus, the SAT approach is to mix different methods in one application by using coarse and fast but still adequate methods at the largest scales, and reserving the use of more precise but also more expensive methods at smaller scales for critical aspects (that is, aspects critical to the analysis problem under consideration) of a software system. The principled method proposed for combining a heterogeneous collection of formal systems with different scalability characteristics is mixed constraints. This idea had been used previously in small-scale applications with encouraging results: using mostly coarse methods and narrowly targeted precise methods, useful information (meaning the discovery of bugs in real programs) was obtained with excellent scalability.

Aiken, Alexander↗
DOE OSTI2020

Applicability of the ARCON96 Code to the Radiological Consequence Analysis of Releases from the Radioassay and Non-Destructive Testing (RANT) Facility

Establish technical justification to demonstrate that the horizontal diffusion parameter (σy) and vertical diffusion parameter (σz) that are embedded in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Atmospheric Relative CONcentrations (ARCON96) code are representative of the meteorological conditions at LANL. Compare the ARCON96 atmospheric diffusion factor ( X /Q) to the MACCS2-calculated X /Q for the determination of radiological consequences of ground releases from the Radioassay and Non-Destructive Testing (RANT) facility on the key receptors, the colocated worker (CW) and Maximally-Effected Offsite Individual (MEOI).

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗
DOE OSTI2022

Feedstock Carbon Intensity Calculator (FD-CIC): Users’ Manual and Technical Documentation

The carbon intensities (CIs) of biofuels are determined with the life cycle analysis (LCA) technique, which accounts for the energy/material uses and emissions during the complete supply chain of biofuel including feedstock production and fuel conversion stages. Regulatory agencies such as California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopts LCA to calculate biofuel CIs. The Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program developed by CARB allows individual biofuel conversion facilities to submit their own biofuel CIs with their facility input data and incentivizes the reduction in the CI specific to that particular facility compared to a reference fuel’s CI (Liu et al 2020). Such an incentive program has driven innovations in biorefineries to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by linking their revenue directly to its CI score through LCFS credit trading. Besides the biofuel conversion stage, different farming practices for feedstock growth can result in significant CI variations for feedstocks, thus for biofuels. To provide evidence-based research findings, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) has supported the Systems Assessment Center of the Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis Division at Argonne National Laboratory to examine CI variations of different farming practices to grow agricultural crops for biofuel production. Meanwhile, the ARPA-E has launched the Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management (SMARTFARM) program to develop technologies and data platforms that enable an accurate measurement of key farming parameters that can help robust accounting of the GHG benefits of sustainable, low-carbon agronomic practices at farm level.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗