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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 1,189 records · Page 66
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Retrofittable Advanced Combined Cycle Integration for Flexible Decarbonized Generation

This is the final scientific / technical report for Front End Engineering Design (FEED) study “Retrofittable Advanced Combined Cycle Integration for Flexible Decarbonized Generation” funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), Carbon Capture R&D Program under award DE-FE0032131. The prime recipient is General Electric Company working through its Gas Power division (GEGP) with subrecipients Southern Company and Linde Engineering plus subcontractor Kiewit. Southern Company’s Plant Barry, a 2x1 7F.04 CCGT, is the host site. GEGP led the overall integration of the carbon capture system (CCS) with the existing natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) facility. Linde provided the detailed process engineering and equipment costing for the carbon capture island. Kiewit focused on plant layout, constructability, and installation. With the FEED study finished, the engineering is approximately 50% complete towards the detailed design package needed to proceed to procure, install, build, commission, and operate the integrated NGCC+CCS facility. This FEED study focuses on retrofitting a 95% CO 2 capture system with attention on plant integration. The study was particularly challenging due to unique and substantial cost impacts related to global sourcing challenges associated with COVID. Additional incentives, regulatory support, and dispatch certainty are needed to move forward with implementing CCS at this or other sites in the US. This FEED study highlights the value of integrating NGCC+CCS and is a template for future CCS retrofit studies.

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS2023

Information Systems Technology for NASA Earth Systems Digital Twins (ESDT)

The term “Digital Twin” was first used in 2002 for product lifecycle management. Since then, Digital Twin concepts have been proposed in various domains until very recently for Earth Science. For NASA’s Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program, an Earth System Digital Twin (ESDT) is defined as composed of three components: 1. A Digital Replica, i.e., an integrated picture of the past and current states of Earth systems 2. Forecasting capabilities, providing an integrated picture of how Earth systems will evolve in the future from the current state 3. Impact Assessment capabilities, providing an integrated picture of how Earth systems could evolve under different hypothetical what-if scenarios. Developing such a vision will require technologies related to: integrating continuous observations from various disparate sources; developing frameworks that builds on inter-connected models; improving the speed and accuracy of integrated prediction, analysis and visualization capabilities (e.g., by using machine learning); and utilizing causality and uncertainty quantification to improve our understanding of the evolution of Earth Science systems as a function of their interactions with other Earth and human systems. In addition, AIST is also investigating interoperability standards to federate multiple Digital Twins, as well as computational resources required by those systems.

Earth Science Remote Sensing; Information Systems↗
DOE OSTI2022

A System for Standardizing and Combining U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Emissions and Waste Inventory Data

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) provides databases that agglomerate data provided by companies or states reporting emissions, releases, wastes generated, and other activities to meet statutory requirements. These databases, often referred to as inventories, can be used for a wide variety of environmental reporting and modeling purposes to characterize conditions in the United States. Yet, users are often challenged to find, retrieve, and interpret these data due to the unique schemes employed for data management, which could result in erroneous estimations or double-counting of emissions. To address these challenges, a system called Standardized Emission and Waste Inventories (StEWI) has been created. The system consists of four python modules that provide rapid access to USEPA inventory data in standard formats and permit filtering and combination of these inventory data. When accessed through StEWI, reported emissions of carbon dioxide to air and ammonia to water are reduced approximately two- and four-fold, respectively, to avoid duplicate reporting. StEWI will greatly facilitate the use of USEPA inventory data in chemical release and exposure modeling and life cycle assessment tools, among other things. To date, StEWI has been used to build the recent USEEIO model and the baseline electricity life cycle inventory database for the Federal LCA Commons.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS2023

Understanding Workforce Agility at NASA Kennedy Space Center

NASA leads the world in space research and provides other government agencies, educational institutions, and companies opportunities to explore, launch, and conduct research in and around space. NASA has 11 formal locations based around the United States, and each has different goals and objectives to help NASA meet its overall mission. 2004, President George Bush announced a new vision for the Space Exploration program. During his grand announcement, he discussed that the Space Shuttles would retire due to the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident, where the crew and the space vehicle were lost. The Kennedy Space Center (KSC) would no longer manage the day-to-day operations of maintaining the US Space Shuttle fleet. Our NASA teams would continue working to finish the Space Shuttle program's mission to build the International Space Station. Afterward, NASA would transition to develop and test a new spacecraft, the Crew Exploration Vehicle. The third goal was to return to the moon by 2020 as the launching point for missions beyond, to get humans from lower Earth orbit to the moon and Mars. (Secretary, 2004) The KSC engineering workforce had to prepare to transition from Operational support of the Space Shuttle program to the design and development of over 50 subsystems for the future SLS and Orion Launch Systems at the Kennedy Space Center. These subsystems developed at the Kennedy Space Center Engineering Directorate followed a comprehensive design process that required several different product deliverables during various phases for each subsystem. (Schafer et al., 2013) What allowed these systems to be successful? What enabled NASA KSC to complete over 130 Artemis 1 Design Certification and System Acceptance Reviews, closing over 21,656 Requirements to deem the Artemis 1 rocket ready for launch? Little is known about the NASA engineering workforce agility characteristics that enabled the organization to transition from the Space Shuttle program that ended in 2011 and launch the Artemis Program's SLS rocket on November 16, 2022.

Workforce Agility↗
NASA NTRS2010

Project Interface Requirements Process Including Shuttle Lessons Learned

Most failures occur at interfaces between organizations and hardware. Processing interface requirements at the start of a project life cycle will reduce the likelihood of costly interface changes/failures later. This can be done by adding Interface Control Documents (ICDs) to the Project top level drawing tree, providing technical direction to the Projects for interface requirements, and by funding the interface requirements function directly from the Project Manager's office. The interface requirements function within the Project Systems Engineering and Integration (SE&I) Office would work in-line with the project element design engineers early in the life cycle to enhance communications and negotiate technical issues between the elements. This function would work as the technical arm of the Project Manager to help ensure that the Project cost, schedule, and risk objectives can be met during the Life Cycle. Some ICD Lessons Learned during the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) Life Cycle will include the use of hardware interface photos in the ICD, progressive life cycle design certification by analysis, test, & operations experience, assigning interface design engineers to Element Interface (EI) and Project technical panels, and linking interface design drawings with project build drawings

Bauch, Garland T.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Safety Basis Compliant Flexible Operations [Capstone Project]

Compliant nuclear operations must be weighed against the radiological risk to the worker, public, and the environment. This project set out to look at one facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL or the Laboratory) and compare the risk with the operational restrictions associated with the Technical Safety Requirements (TSRs). The hope was to identify controls that could be reduced or simplified while maintaining compliance with 10 CFR 830, Nuclear Safety Management. This would result in increasing facility operational flexibility and efficiency. Controls were identified to be simplified or eliminated based on risk. This identification was initially envisioned from the perspective of reanalysis of the accident and hazard analysis consequences. Additionally, it was envisioned that fire testing could show that the consequences of a fire are not as dramatic as analyzed. Specific facility controls were identified that cause operational inefficiencies. Based on data collection, two controls were identified for further evaluation. The first control was combustible loading within the waste storage buildings, and the second control is related to the seismic power cutoff switch. In evaluating the combustible loading control, the thought is that the fire suppression system (FSS) provides adequate protection and the combustible loading controls do not need elevation to a TSR control. The FSS, along with the Fire Protection Program, would provide protection to prevent a fire from impacting large amounts of stored waste material. The seismic switch was more of a challenge. When reviewing the facility operation, it was determined that the facility does not operate anywhere near the established material-at-risk (MAR – radioactive material) limits. By adjusting these limits, a reduced consequence could be achieved and hence, a significant risk reduction achieved. A new operating mode would be used to achieve this reduction. A reduced MAR limit was successfully used as a test case for snow removal during this project. This project expands on that trial case as related to combustible loading and the seismic power cutoff switch TSRs. This will increase the efficiency of operations with reduced TSR controls while reducing overall facility risk. This is a win-win situation for Triad National Security, LLC (Triad) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Due to schedule and budgetary constraints, not all envisioned work scope was accomplished. However, it is maintained in this report for future efforts.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Gateway Program as Part of NASA’s Plans for Human Exploration Beyond Low Earth Orbit

This paper provides an overview and status of Gateway, humanity’s first space station in lunar orbit as a vital component of the NASA-led Artemis missions to return humans to the Moon as preparation for the first human missions to Mars. Gateway is an aggregation point in deep space for a variety of spacecraft, including the crewed Orion vehicle, the Human Landing System that will ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface, logistics supply craft, and vehicles transiting further into deep space beyond the Earth-Moon system, such as to Mars. NASA is building on decades of partnership with space agencies on three continents and multiple commercial partners to design, build, and launch Gateway’s core elements to near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon, where it will operate for a minimum of 15 years. Gateway is humanity’s next in-space science utilization platform, and its first in deep space, with three science payloads already selected to study solar and cosmic radiation. This paper will provide an overview of the Gateway space station’s major components in various stages of development, including the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), the International Habitation (I-Hab) module, ESPRIT Refueling Module (ERM), the planned airlock, advanced external robotics systems, Deep Space Logistics supply craft, and next-generation autonomous Vehicle System Manager software. It will also provide an overview of how Gateway will be utilized for science, and highlight the space station’s multilateral governance structure and international agreements.

Emma Lehnhardt↗
DOE OSTI2022

The 70th Anniversary of the MANIAC at Los Alamos

March 2022 is the 70th anniversary of the MANIAC, the first fully electronic computer at Los Alamos. The MANIAC was constructed when electronic computing and its associated industry were still in their infancy. Early computer centers like Los Alamos had to build their own systems and invent the methods for using them. This pioneering effort gave Los Alamos and the few places like it an outsized influence on the emerging electronic computing field, shaping the computing technologies and methods we experience today. This report highlights the history of the MANIAC and "recalls the hard work and ingenuity of the people at Los Alamos who helped to invent the modern field of scientific computing, using vacuum tubes and paper tape to build the Lab’s continuing computing legacy."

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Energy impacts of nationwide window upgrades in commercial buildings

This report presents comprehensive estimates of the energy impacts of nationwide commercial building window upgrades in the United States, using a conservative approach. Windows play a substantial role in determining building energy use and occupant experience. Estimates point to commercial building windows impacting loads that represent more than 6 quads (approximately 6%) of annual primary energy use in the U.S. (Harris, 2022). Beyond heating and cooling loads, windows also have effects on lighting and occupant comfort. The fastest route to improving the energy efficiency of windows in U.S. buildings is upgrading or replacing windows in existing buildings. This is due to poor performance of windows in older existing buildings compared to most new construction, low levels of window replacement, and long window service life compared to energy-using building components. Nationwide window upgrades were considered using the following technologies: • Secondary glazing systems • Double pane (clear and tinted) • Triple pane (clear and tinted) • Electrochromic glazing Nationwide upgrades provide on the order of 4%–6% site energy savings in typical buildings, or up to 26% in buildings with the highest savings potential. Electrochromic windows, with their ability to adapt dynamically to environmental conditions, can provide additional benefits, ranging from median savings of 7.2% in buildings with window to wall ratio (WWR) greater than 10% and up to 28% for some buildings. Savings increase substantially for buildings with higher WWR. This study’s approach focused on isolating the direct energy benefits from improvement in window performance, and does not take into account the following additional benefits from window retrofits, which are likely to be substantial: • Managing peak demand and enabling HVAC equipment downsizing. • Energy savings from customizing upgrades to building type and climate. • Energy savings and comfort improvements resulting from post-retrofit reductions in air leakage. • Non-energy benefits, such as occupant comfort and resilience during extreme weather.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRS2022

Planetary Protection Policy and Technology Developments for the Crewed Exploration of Mars

As part of planning for potential future crewed exploration of Mars, NASA is developing its planetary protection policy for crewed missions, building on concepts developed within the international space exploration community. COSPAR (The Committee on Space Research), together with participating space agencies, has over the last several years organized and held interdisciplinary meetings to consider next steps in addressing knowledge gaps for planetary protection for the first human missions to Mars. Beginning with these workshop discussions as a base, NASA has held follow-on planning activities to identify the necessary steps to be accomplished to close those knowledge gaps. Significant overlap was identified between the planetary protection needs, including; microbial monitoring requirements for crew health and medical systems; studies of the microbiome of the built environment; environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) venting and disinfection strategies; waste management, and; planetary surface operations. In many cases, efforts to mature exploration systems for Mars that are occurring in other technology domains can be leveraged with minor changes to address planetary protection gaps as well. In other cases, work planned for testing on ISS as an analog for Mars transit, or on the lunar surface as an analog for Mars surface operations, can be used to close gaps in current planetary protection capabilities. This presentation provides a status update on the findings of the COSPAR Meetings on this topic to date, together with NASA’s responses in terms of agency-level plans and activities.

James N Benardini↗
DOE OSTI2022

1972713

Energy-frontier particle accelerators are among the most exciting, complex, challenging, and expensive research instruments performing high precision measurements confirming the fundamentals of the physics and broadening new research horizons. Currently the highest energy machines (under design or commissioned), from multi-GeV to several TeV, (ILC, FCC, CLIC) capable of searching for the most basic building blocks of matter are either driven by circular or linear accelerators [1-6]. Here (see also [7,8]) we suggest a novel design of circular-linear accelerator based on the merging of the weakly emitting, low-energy storage rings and energy recovery linear accelerators. To enable the operation of such a system and in particular the energy recovery from spent, high-intensity beams the use of the dual-axis asymmetric cavities is suggested. Merging circular and linear systems, and applications of dual axes cavities, aims to resolve both scientific and societal challenges. The merge of the systems will allow: 1) maintain high beam quality, high luminosity, and high energy efficiency; 2) offer a ?flexible? energy management via ?separation? of the collider and storage rings operations; 3) attract private partners via use of the storage rings to drive the next generation of the photon factories. The concept presented can be potentially used to reach ultimate energy frontiers in high-energy physics as well as to drive next generation light sources. We note that the numbers which will be presented are for illustration purpose and can be improved further.

Konoplev, I.↗
DOE OSTI2024

High-Fidelity Accelerated Design of High-performance Electrochemical Systems

Large-scale electrification is vital to addressing the climate crisis, but several scientific and technological challenges remain to fully electrify both the chemical industry and transportation. In both of these areas, new electrochemical materials will be critical, but their development currently relies heavily on human-time-intensive experimental trial and error and computationally expensive first-principles, meso-scale and continuum simulations. To accelerate this process, our team has developed the AutoMat platform. AutoMat can accelerate development of new electrochemical materials along two avenues: first, automated input generation and management of simulations at multiple lengthscales as well as “handoff” of outputs from one lengthscale as inputs to the next; and second, replacement of the most computationally intensive simulation processes with machine-learned surrogate models. The crux of our team’s effort was not “reinventing the wheel” by developing entirely new techniques, but rather building a “superhighway” that allows existing state-of-the-art techniques to run faster and more smoothly than before. AutoMat can utilize tools spanning from first-principles quantum chemistry computations to automated robotic experimentation, and is driven by design space search techniques to reduce the number of iterations through the full simulation loop by rapidly targeting promising regions of design spaces such as single-atom alloy catalysts or blends of liquid electrolytes.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
NASA NTRS1997

Providing the Persistent Data Storage in a Software Engineering Environment Using Java/COBRA and a DBMS

An investigation was undertaken to build the software foundation for the WHERE (Web-based Hyper-text Environment for Requirements Engineering) project. The TCM (Toolkit for Conceptual Modeling) was chosen as the foundation software for the WHERE project which aims to provide an environment for facilitating collaboration among geographically distributed people involved in the Requirements Engineering process. The TCM is a collection of diagram and table editors and has been implemented in the C++ programming language. The C++ implementation of the TCM was translated into Java in order to allow the editors to be used for building various functionality of the WHERE project; the WHERE project intends to use the Web as its communication back- bone. One of the limitations of the translated software (TcmJava), which militated against its use in the WHERE project, was persistent data management mechanisms which it inherited from the original TCM; it was designed to be used in standalone applications. Before TcmJava editors could be used as a part of the multi-user, geographically distributed applications of the WHERE project, a persistent storage mechanism must be built which would allow data communication over the Internet, using the capabilities of the Web. An approach involving features of Java, CORBA (Common Object Request Broker), the Web, a middle-ware (Java Relational Binding (JRB)), and a database server was used to build the persistent data management infrastructure for the WHERE project. The developed infrastructure allows a TcmJava editor to be downloaded and run from a network host by using a JDK 1.1 (Java Developer's Kit) compatible Web-browser. The aforementioned editor establishes connection with a server by using the ORB (Object Request Broker) software and stores/retrieves data in/from the server. The server consists of a CORBA object or objects depending upon whether the data is to be made persistent on a single server or multiple servers. The CORBA object providing the persistent data server is implemented using the Java progranu-ning language. It uses the JRB to store/retrieve data in/from a relational database server. The persistent data management system provides transaction and user management facilities which allow multi-user, distributed access to the stored data in a secure manner.

Dhaliwal, Swarn S.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Cybersecurity Framework Profile for Electric Vehicle Extreme Fast Charging Infrastructure

This document is the Cybersecurity Framework Profile (Profile) developed for the Electric Vehicle Extreme Fast Charging (EV/XFC) ecosystem, including the four domains that relies on the ecosystem (i) Electric Vehicles (EV); (ii) Extreme Fast Charging (XFC); (iii) XFC Cloud or Third-Party Operations; and (iv) Utility and Building Networks. This Profile utilizes the NIST Cybersecurity Framework Version 1.1 and provides voluntary guidance to help relevant parties develop Profiles specific to their organization to understand, assess, and communicate their cybersecurity posture as a part of their risk management process. The Profile is intended to supplement, not replace, an existing risk management program or cybersecurity standards, regulations, and industry guidelines that are in current use by the EV/XFC industry.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Climate change and its influence on water systems increases the cost of electricity system decarbonization

The electric sector simultaneously faces two challenges: decarbonization to mitigate, and adaptation to manage, the impacts of climate change. In many regions, these challenges are compounded by an interdependence of electricity and water systems, with water needed for hydropower generation and electricity for water provision. Here, we couple detailed water and electricity system models to evaluate how the Western Interconnection grid can both adapt to climate change and develop carbon-free generation by 2050, while accounting for interactions and climate vulnerabilities of the water sector. We find that by 2050, due to climate change, annual regional electricity use could grow by up to 2% from cooling and water-related electricity demand, while total annual hydropower generation could decrease by up to 23%. To adapt, we show that the region may need to build up to 139 GW of additional generating capacity between 2030 and 2050, equivalent to nearly thrice California's peak demand, and could incur up to $\$$150 billion (+7%) in extra costs.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS2015

Towards Real-Time, On-Board, Hardware-Supported Sensor and Software Health Management for Unmanned Aerial Systems

For unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to be successfully deployed and integrated within the national airspace, it is imperative that they possess the capability to effectively complete their missions without compromising the safety of other aircraft, as well as persons and property on the ground. This necessity creates a natural requirement for UAS that can respond to uncertain environmental conditions and emergent failures in real-time, with robustness and resilience close enough to those of manned systems. We introduce a system that meets this requirement with the design of a real-time onboard system health management (SHM) capability to continuously monitor sensors, software, and hardware components. This system can detect and diagnose failures and violations of safety or performance rules during the flight of a UAS. Our approach to SHM is three-pronged, providing: (1) real-time monitoring of sensor and software signals; (2) signal analysis, preprocessing, and advanced on-the-fly temporal and Bayesian probabilistic fault diagnosis; and (3) an unobtrusive, lightweight, read-only, low-power realization using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) that avoids overburdening limited computing resources or costly re-certification of flight software. We call this approach rt-R2U2, a name derived from its requirements. Our implementation provides a novel approach of combining modular building blocks, integrating responsive runtime monitoring of temporal logic system safety requirements with model-based diagnosis and Bayesian network-based probabilistic analysis. We demonstrate this approach using actual flight data from the NASA Swift UAS.

Unmanned Aerial System↗
DOE OSTI2022

Development and assessment of a reactor system prognosis model with physics-guided machine learning

Autonomous control systems provide recommendations to help operators in decision-making during plant operations ranging from normal operation to accident management. An important step of autonomous control is prognosis. In nuclear engineering domain, prognosis is the process of predicting future conditions of a system or equipment based on present signs and symptoms of a fault. The prognosis model allows predicting future reactor states for possible candidate control strategies so that the outcomes can be evaluated to determine the best control strategy. The prognosis model requires representing direct relationships between the symptoms and the predictions. In nuclear engineering, computational simulations are approximate representations of the operation of the real system. However, prognosis with computational simulations requires high computation power and time due to possible large number of scenarios. Necessary computation resources can be reduced with machine learning (ML) approach for fast predictions by building a surrogate function using the simulation data. A critical issue is, ML models are ignorant of physical knowledge, and these models approximate statistical relationships between the system variables. This ignorance can produce results that are inconsistent with physical laws, even if an optimal result is achieved from a mathematical point of view. Physics-guided machine learning (PGML) is an approach to tackle this issue. Here, this work formulates and illustrates a framework to guide development and assessment of the ML-based prognosis model for autonomous control systems. The development of the prognosis model considers the training of a ML model which consists of optimizing many aspects of the ML approach. The assessment of the prognosis model considers training data limitations and uncertainties of the ML approach. Prognosis models with standalone ML and PGML are developed and assessed on the loss-of-flow scenario of Experimental Breeder Reactor II. The results indicate that PGML based prognosis model has the best performance compared to other prognosis models.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Data Reliability in BIM and Performance Analytics: A Survey of Contemporary AECO Practice

As awareness around building energy consumption increases, practitioners are encouraged to consider performance aspects regarding the built environment more closely and find ways to improve its efficiency. Improvements in building information modeling (BIM) and building performance simulation (BPS) tools present opportunities to facilitate information communication with a wider range of stakeholders. The building sector can benefit from the integration of performance informatics; however, there has been limited success in utilizing available technologies that promote data integration and management in favor of enriching our knowledge and understanding of buildings as artifacts of information. This phenomenon was investigated by conducting a survey, together with a review of relevant literature, to depict the relevant challenges and opportunities for the architecture, engineering, construction, and owner-operated (AECO) industry, as it undergoes digital transformation, as well as the working practices that have formed around them. It is argued that the current tools available to practitioners do not support effective data serialization between design and analytics processes, affecting the collaboration between team members. Lastly, a series of functional goals are proposed to support a higher level of reliability in the ways information is mobilized, by rethinking the technologies and methods for organizing information systems.

42 ENGINEERING↗