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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 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

SOFE2023 Presentation: "Tritium Safety and Sensitivity Analysis of Tritium Extraction eXperiment (TEX) PbLi Loop Using MELCOR-TMAP"

The efficient extraction of tritium from the breeder blanket (BB) in a fusion reactor is vital for maintaining the tritium economy for a sustainable and self-sufficient fusion power plant. The vacuum permeator (VP) design is one of several promising technology platforms for extracting tritium from the BB with the advantages of being capable of operating continuously at high temperatures with the aim of achieving high tritium extraction efficiencies. The Tritium Extraction eXperiment (TEX), under construction at the Safety and Tritium Applied Research (STAR) Facility at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), is designed to test the viability of VP technology by introducing atomic hydrogen (H, D, and T) from a source permeator (SP) into a forced convection lead lithium eutectic (PbLi) loop and determining the hydrogen extraction rates from the vanadium VP. Presented here is a computational analysis of the hydrogen inventory and permeation behavior in TEX using the hydrogen transport and accident analysis code MELCOR-TMAP developed at INL. The results of a sensitivity analysis based on MELCOR-TMAP simulations of hydrogen extraction efficiencies from the TEX test section using varying PbLi flow rates, hydrogen source rates from the SP, and material property uncertainties are also reported. Operation scenarios for TEX in consideration of the analyses based on results from MELCOR-TMAP are discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Irradiation Impact on Uranium Recovery Under Direct Extraction Conditions

Reducing the quantity of high-level radioactive waste is essential for minimizing environmental impact and improving efficiency of using natural resources for nuclear power. The current standard, Plutonium Uranium Solvent EXtraction (PUREX), uses tributyl phosphate (TBP) ligands to extract complexes of uranium and plutonium from a nitric acid (HNO3) phase. Although this method is effective, large volumes of HNO3 and the non-incinerable phosphate ligands increase the amount of hazardous waste produced. Alternative extractants and flowsheets have been proposed that allow for more selective extraction of radioactive metals, reduced nitric acid use, and easier incineration by only containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (CHON). One candidate, N,N-di(2-ethylhexyl)-isobutyramide (DEHiBA) exhibits promising properties for direct extraction. A HNO3 pre-equilibrated DEHiBA phase selectively extracts U(VI), leaving plutonium, transuranics, and fission products behind as precipitate and reducing the volume of radioactive HNO3 produced.

38 - RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCL↗
DOE OSTI2023

Going off topics to demix quark and gluon jets in α S extractions

Quantum chromodynamics is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks and gluons; the coupling strength of the interaction, α S , is the least precisely-known of all interactions in nature. An extraction of the strong coupling from the radiation pattern within jets would provide a complementary approach to conventional extractions from jet production rates and hadronic event shapes, and would be a key achievement of jet substructure at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Presently, the relative fraction of quark and gluon jets in a sample is the limiting factor in such extractions, as this fraction is degenerate with the value of αS for the most well-understood observables. To overcome this limitation, we apply recently proposed techniques to statistically demix multiple mixtures of jets and obtain purified quark and gluon distributions based on an operational definiton. We illustrate that studying quark and gluon jet substructure separately can significantly improve the sensitivity of such extractions of the strong coupling. We also discuss how using machine learning techniques or infrared- and collinear-unsafe information can improve the demixing performance without the loss of theoretical control. While theoretical research is required to connect the extract topics with the quark and gluon objects in cross section calculations, our study illustrates the potential of demixing to reduce the dominant uncertainty for the α S extraction from jet substructure at the LHC.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Protic amine/acid mixtures as solvents for the extraction of aqueous zinc salts: A mechanistic study

In this work, mixtures based on trihexylamine and cyclic carboxylic acids (aromatic and non-aromatic) were used as solvents for the extraction of zinc salts from aqueous phases via liquid–liquid extractions. The anions of the zinc salts were chosen to represent a range of kosmo-/chaotropic characters, and their influence on the extractions was observed. The extraction studies were supplemented by investigation of local liquid structure through small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS). The results indicate that extraction is strongly influenced by the Hofmeister effect, but the local liquid structure appears insensitive to anion kosmo-/chaotropic character. In contrast to similar extraction studies, the strength of the Hofmeister effect did not change according to the composition of the mixtures.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Nitrilotriacetamides: Nitric Acid and Water Extraction and Physicochemical Properties

Nitrilotriacetamides are an emerging class of extractants that have been identified as promising candidates for a variety of separation schemes. Systems incorporating these ligands are prone to third-phase formation at high loading, but this can be mitigated by increasing the alkyl chain length or adding a phase modifier (e.g., 1-octanol). In this work, the impacts of these modifications on HNO 3 extraction, H 2 O extraction, and physiochemical properties (interfacial tension, viscosity, and density) are examined. The studies show that ligand alkyl chain length has very little impact on HNO 3 and H 2 O extraction, whereas the addition of 10% octanol significantly increases extraction of both HNO 3 and H 2 O. Viscosity and interfacial ten-sion are impacted by HNO 3 concentration, alkyl chain length, and the presence of phase modifier but remain in a range that should be compatible with commonly used solvent contacting equipment. Additional studies of physiochemical properties at variable ligand concentration suggest that a change in aggregation occurs above approximately 10-50 mM ligand. Thermodynamic modeling of distribution ratios and spectroscopic studies aimed at understanding speciation in the presence of HNO 3 are also reported. Further, these experiments suggest that the first equivalent of extracted HNO 3 interacts with both the central amine and carbonyl groups of the ligand. The spectroscopic changes at higher HNO 3 concentrations are relatively minor, suggesting additional HNO 3 is associated in an outer-sphere manner

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2023

Extraction of Nitric Acid and Uranium with DEHiBA under High Loading Conditions

We report the mechanism by which high concentrations (1.5 M in n-dodecane) of N,N-di-2-ethylhexylisobutyramide (DEHiBA) extracts HNO 3 and UO 2 (NO 3 ) 2 is under examination. Most prior studies have examined the extractant and the mechanism at a concentration of 1.0 M in n-dodecane, however under the higher loading conditions that can be achieved by a higher concentration of extractant this mechanism could change. Increased extraction of both nitric acid and uranium is observed with an increased concentration of DEHiBA. The mechanisms are examined by thermodynamic modeling of distribution ratios, 15 N NMR, and FTIR spectroscopy coupled with Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Speciation diagrams produced through thermodynamic modeling have been qualitatively reproduced through PCA of the FTIR spectra. The predominant extracted species of HNO 3 (DEHiBA), HNO 3 (DEHiBA) 2 , and UO 2 (NO 3 ) 2 (DEHiBA) 2 are in good agreement with prior literature reports for 1.0 M DEHiBA systems. Evidence for an additional species of either UO 2 (NO 3 ) 2 (DEHiBA) or UO 2 (NO 3 ) 2 (DEHiBA) 2 (HNO 3 ) also contributing to the extraction of uranium species is given.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2022

Unleashing the Power of Knowledge Extraction from Scientific Literature in Catalysis

Valuable knowledge of catalysis is often hidden in a large amount of scientific literature. There is an urgent need to extract useful knowledge to facilitate scientific discovery. Here this work takes the first step toward the goal in the field of catalysis. Specifically, we construct the first information extraction benchmark data set that covers the field of catalysis and also develop a general extraction framework that can accurately extract catalysis-related entities from scientific literature with 90% extraction accuracy. We further demonstrate the feasibility of leveraging the extracted knowledge to help users better access relevant information in catalysis through an entity-aware search engine and a correlation analysis system.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Lignin Extraction and Condensation as a Function of Temperature, Residence Time, and Solvent System in Flow-through Reactors

Solvolytic extraction of lignin from biomass is a critical step in lignin-first biorefining, including the reductive catalytic fractionation (RCF) process. Key to optimal RCF processing is the ability to rapidly extract lignin from biomass at high delignification extents and transfer the lignin molecules to a catalyst surface in a time frame that minimizes lignin condensation reactions. Here, we use a flow-through reactor to study the effects of temperature (175-250 °C), residence time (9 to 36 min), and solvent composition (methanol and methanol-water) on lignin extraction and condensation. We evaluated three metrics at each condition: total delignification, delignification rate, and extent of condensation, the latter measured by a decrease in monomer yield for batch hydrogenolysis reactions of solvolysis liquor compared to batch RCF reactions. We observe that delignification is predominantly determined by temperature, while residence time dictates the lignin condensation extent. Moreover, the extent of both extraction and condensation increased in the methanol-water solvent system compared to that in the methanol system. Lignin extracted in methanol is stable up to 18-min residence times at or below 225 °C, while a majority of the lignin extracted in methanol-water is condensed with a 9-min residence time at 200 °C. These results can inform reactor designs and solvent selection for lignin-first biorefining processes that aim to physically separate the biomass and catalyst.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Structured information extraction from scientific text with large language models

Extracting structured knowledge from scientific text remains a challenging task for machine learning models. Here, we present a simple approach to joint named entity recognition and relation extraction and demonstrate how pretrained large language models (GPT-3, Llama-2) can be fine-tuned to extract useful records of complex scientific knowledge. We test three representative tasks in materials chemistry: linking dopants and host materials, cataloging metal-organic frameworks, and general composition/phase/morphology/application information extraction. Records are extracted from single sentences or entire paragraphs, and the output can be returned as simple English sentences or a more structured format such as a list of JSON objects. This approach represents a simple, accessible, and highly flexible route to obtaining large databases of structured specialized scientific knowledge extracted from research papers.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Omics analyses and biochemical study of Phlebiopsis gigantea elucidate its degradation strategy of wood extractives

Wood extractives, solvent-soluble fractions of woody biomass, are considered to be a factor impeding or excluding fungal colonization on the freshly harvested conifers. Among wood decay fungi, the basidiomycete Phlebiopsis gigantea has evolved a unique enzyme system to efficiently transform or degrade conifer extractives but little is known about the mechanism(s). In this study, to clarify the mechanism(s) of softwood degradation, we examined the transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome of P. gigantea when grown on defined media containing microcrystalline cellulose and pine sapwood extractives. Beyond the conventional enzymes often associated with cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin degradation, an array of enzymes implicated in the metabolism of softwood lipophilic extractives such as fatty and resin acids, steroids and glycerides was significantly up-regulated. Among these, a highly expressed and inducible lipase is likely responsible for lipophilic extractive degradation, based on its extracellular location and our characterization of the recombinant enzyme. Our results provide insight into physiological roles of extractives in the interaction between wood and fungi.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Question-answering system extracts information on injection drug use from clinical notes

Background. Injection drug use (IDU) can increase mortality and morbidity. Therefore, identifying IDU early and initiating harm reduction interventions can benefit individuals at risk. However, extracting IDU behaviors from patients’ electronic health records (EHR) is difficult because there is no other structured data available, such as International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes, and IDU is most often documented in unstructured free-text clinical notes. Although natural language processing can efficiently extract this information from unstructured data, there are no validated tools. Methods. Here, to address this gap in clinical information, we design a question-answering (QA) framework to extract information on IDU from clinical notes for use in clinical operations. Our framework involves two main steps: (1) generating a gold-standard QA dataset and (2) developing and testing the QA model. We use 2323 clinical notes of 1145 patients curated from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Corporate Data Warehouse to construct the gold-standard dataset for developing and evaluating the QA model. We also demonstrate the QA model’s ability to extract IDU-related information from temporally out-of-distribution data. Results. Here, we show that for a strict match between gold-standard and predicted answers, the QA model achieves a 51.65% F1 score. For a relaxed match between the gold-standard and predicted answers, the QA model obtains a 78.03% F1 score, along with 85.38% Precision and 79.02% Recall scores. Moreover, the QA model demonstrates consistent performance when subjected to temporally out-of-distribution data. Conclusions. Our study introduces a QA framework designed to extract IDU information from clinical notes, aiming to enhance the accurate and efficient detection of people who inject drugs, extract relevant information, and ultimately facilitate informed patient care.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Relationship between liquid nanoscale structure in solvents and the strength of the Hofmeister effect in extraction experiments

In this study, we used mixtures of carboxylic acids and amines as solvents for the liquid–liquid extraction of copper salts with various anions from aqueous phase, and systematically varied the acid/amine ratio to determine its influence on extraction efficiency. The organic phases resulting from these extraction experiments were studied using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), establishing a connection between the extraction process and the liquid structure. Furthermore, a relationship is found between the extent of extraction for the metal salt, the strength of the Hofmeister effect of the anions of the salt, and the characteristic lengthscale of the observed liquid nanoscale structure before and after extraction.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2022

Evaluation of Protein Extraction Methods for Metaproteomic Analyses of Root-Associated Microbes

Metaproteomics is a powerful tool for the characterization of metabolism, physiology, and functional interactions in microbial communities, including plant-associated microbiota. However, the metaproteomic methods that have been used to study plant-associated microbiota are very laborious and require large amounts of plant tissue, hindering wider application of these methods. We optimized and evaluated different protein extraction methods for metaproteomics of plant-associated microbiota in two different plant species (Arabidopsis and maize). Our main goal was to identify a method that would work with low amounts of input material (40 to 70 mg) and that would maximize the number of identified microbial proteins. We tested eight protocols, each comprising a different combination of physical lysis method, extraction buffer, and cell-enrichment method on roots from plants grown with synthetic microbial communities. We assessed the performance of the extraction protocols by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry–based metaproteomics and found that the optimal extraction method differed between the two species. For Arabidopsis roots, protein extraction by beating whole roots with small beads provided the greatest number of identified microbial proteins and improved the identification of proteins from gram-positive bacteria. For maize, vortexing root pieces in the presence of large glass beads yielded the greatest number of microbial proteins identified. Based on these data, we recommend the use of these two methods for metaproteomics with Arabidopsis and maize. Furthermore, detailed descriptions of the eight tested protocols will enable future optimization of protein extraction for metaproteomics in other dicot and monocot plants.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Third integer resonant extraction transit time simulation studies

In this work, we present the investigation of transit time of particles in the non-linear third-integer resonant extraction process. Transit time is defined as the number of turns a particle takes to get extracted once it is in the unstable region in the phase space, i.e., outside the triangular separatrix in case of third-integer resonance. The study of transit time is important because transit time directly contributes to the beam response time during resonant extraction and thus knowing it apriori would be practically useful in designing of the extraction system. In this work, we shall investigate the analytical derivation of the transit time of particles (to the first order Kobayashi Hamiltonian) in different parts of the phase space distribution and compare against the analytical results. We also compare the simulation result of the transit time of particles (with higher statistics) for the static as well as dynamic extraction conditions cases, particularly in the context of resonant extraction parameters for Mu2e experiment at Fermilab.

Narayanan, Aakaash [Fermilab]↗
DOE OSTI2020

Survey of Current State of the Art Entity-Relation Extraction Tools

In the area of information extraction from text data, there exists a number of tools with the capability of extracting entities, topics, and their relationships with one another from both structured and unstructured text sources. Such information has endless uses in a number of domains, however, the solutions to getting this information are still in early stages and has room for improvement. The topic has been explored from a research perspective by academic institutions, as well as formal tool creation from corporations but has not made much advancement since the early 2000's. Overall, entity extraction, and the related topic of entity linking, is common among these tools, though with varying degrees of accuracy, while relationship extraction is more difficult to find and seems limited to same sentence analysis. In this report, we take a look at the top state of the art tools currently available and identify their capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. We explore the common algorithms in the successful approaches to entity extraction and their ability to efficiently handle both structured and unstructured text data. Finally, we highlight some of the common issues among these tools and summarize the current ability to extract relationship information.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Economic Extraction, Recovery and Upgrading of Rare Earth Elements from Coal-Based Resources (Final Report)

The overall objective of this project is to produce a rare earth elements product with greater than 8% rare earth elements from coal-based resources using an economically viable and environmentally benign processing methodology. The objective of the coal processing work will be to acquire appropriate coal feed and produce a viable clean coal product, a concentrated REE feed stream, and a pyrite stream (where available) that can be used to enhance leaching. The objective of the bio-oxidation portion of the project is to utilize bacteria to oxidize sulfide minerals and ferrous ions to ferric ions to accelerate leaching and remove the sulfides to prevent future acid mine drainage and related liabilities. The objective of the solution conditioning work is to remove iron and control leaching solution conditions to facilitate extraction of REEs without significant thorium extraction. The objective of the column leaching work is to engineer/model and simulate heap leaching to demonstrate low-cost extraction of REEs from coal-based resources. The objective of the solvent extraction work is to selectively extract and recover through controlled stripping of REEs that are solubilized through leaching. The objective of the precipitation portion of the project is to recover the REEs from the solvent extraction stripping solutions and dry them to achieve the final product of rare earth elements that is > 8 % REEs. The objective of the technical, economic, and environmental analysis is to determine the overall viability of the processing approach that is demonstrated in this project

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
DOE OSTI2022

Project 18-15263 X-ray Studies of Interfacial Molecular Complexes in ALSEP Back-Extraction (Research Performance Final Report)

The objective of the project was to use synchrotron X-rays to measure the molecular-scale organization of extractants, complexants, buffers, and metal ions at the organic-aqueous (liquid-liquid) interface during solvent back-extraction under conditions relevant to ALSEP (Actinide-Lanthanide Separation Process). The capability of X-ray fluorescence near total reflection (XFNTR) was extended to explore the distribution of Eu(III) between the liquid-liquid interface and bulk organic and aqueous phases which contained extractants HDEHP (bis(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid) and HEHEHP (2-ethylhexyl phosphonic acid mono-2-ethylhexyl ester), the complexant DTPA (diethylene triamine pentaacetic acid), and citric and nitric acids. Although an Am-compatible sample cell was developed, extending x-ray measurements of flat liquid-liquid interfaces to the actinide Am(III) did not prove to be possible within constraints imposed by the Advanced Photon Source. However, preliminary measurements with a drop cell may eventually provide a path forward to investigate Am(III) at a liquid interface. It was also demonstrated that competitive binding that occurs during back-extraction of lanthanide ions to either a phosphoric acid extractant (DHDP, di-hexadecyl phosphate) at the liquid interface or to complexant DTPA in the bulk aqueous phase could be reversibly tuned by X-ray exposure. Separately, X-ray measurements from the liquid-vapor interface explored the role of the aqueous solubility of HDEHP and HEHEHP and their interactions with a range of lanthanides and transition metal ions. Finally, the capability of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (EXAFS) was extended to probe metal ion coordination in lanthanide ion-extractant complexes at the liquid-vapor interface. Complementary to the specific interfacial systems studied during this project, the development of x-ray techniques expands our ability to understand ion ordering at liquid interfaces.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗