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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 1,441 records · Page 80
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

RAVIS: Resource Forecast and Ramp Visualization for Situational Awareness of Variable Renewable Generation: Preprint

The Resource Forecast and Ramp Visualization for Situational Awareness (RAVIS) is an innovative, open-source tool for visualizing variable renewable resource forecasts and alerts for significant up- and down-ramps in renewable generation and the consequent system net load. The modular dashboard of RAVIS contains configurable panes for viewing probabilistic time-series forecasts, ramp event alerts on the look-ahead timeline, and spatially resolved resource sites, and forecasts. For comprehensive situational awareness, the tool can add additional data layers from simulation and independent system operator (ISO) market clearing data—including electric line utilization, nodal price, and available generation flexibility—in response to continuously updated renewable forecasts. This paper introduces the RAVIS technology suite employed to provide optimum visualization and flexible design characteristics. The paper also illustrates some use cases of the tool using site-specific solar power forecast data obtained from the IBM Watt-Sun forecasting platform for the California ISO and Midcontinent ISO footprints. The source code for RAVIS is public (https://github.com/ravis-nrel/ravis), and the intended users are forecasters, utility planners, ISO operators, and researchers.

41 EE - Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S)↗
DOE OSTI2021

Sub-sized specimen testing and its relationship with Gen IV Materials Qualification

Renewed interest in advanced reactor technologies which can produce inherently safe, reliable, low carbon, low cost energy requires the development of new materials which can operate in the extreme environments proposed by Gen IV reactor designs. The primary focus of the Nuclear Materials Discovery and Qualification Initiative (NMDQi) is to accelerate the process by which new materials can make their way into commercial use, enabling new technologies and innovations within the nuclear sector. Due to limitations in the production of neutron irradiated material for testing and qualification, the use of specimens far smaller than those traditionally called for in regulatory codes becomes a necessity. While the use of these sub-sized specimens is necessary to achieve materials qualification on a realistic timeline and budget, literature showing the efficacy of these samples as an appropriate surrogate for ASME/ASTM defined samples is limited. This poster will detail historical efforts to compare the mechanical behavior of small geometry samples with bulk material behavior and the potential of sub-sized specimen testing at INL for future materials qualification efforts.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Working With Your Utility Series: Interconnection Basics

This training provided information on interconnection basics for federal agencies developing distributed energy projects. Considerations covered included: Understanding interconnection processes and timelines, interconnection siting considerations, technology-specific interconnection issues, and interconnect agreements. This webinar is the first in a multi-part series on working with electric utilities to develop distributed energy projects on federal sites.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

Semantic Interoperability to Enable Smart, Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings

Achieving a widespread transition to grid-interactive, efficient buildings (GEBs) depends critically on there being sufficient interoperability among connected building systems. While many critical elements already exist at the technical interoperability level (TCP/IP, BACnet, etc.), a lack of interoperability in the semantic level hinders streamlined integration of interdependent applications. Semantics refers to expressing information about “things” in a way that can be consistently understood by applications. Key components of formalized semantics include identifying what a “thing” is (its “type”), defining general information about that “thing” (its characteristics or properties), and defining the appropriate relationships of that “thing” to other “things” (its function or role in a larger system). Although this might seem initially trivial, the success of smart building applications is highly dependent on maintaining consistent self-descriptive notions of the “things”. Without semantic interoperability, it is technically difficult, labor-intensive, and cost-prohibitive to enable three key objectives of GEBs: optimizing performance, automatically identifying and diagnosing faults, and delivering grid services. Industry, academia, and standards bodies have invested effort in developing information models to facilitate semantic interoperability, however, they have not been widely adopted across the U.S. commercial building portfolio. This paper will present a pathway to drive semantic interoperability through a three-pronged approach to be led by the DOE Building Technologies Office in partnership with NIST and multiple national laboratories comprising: 1) industry engagement and coordination across existing efforts; 2) a semantic interoperability standard that empowers building owners to identify and require interoperable attributes when procuring equipment and applications; 3) tools to assist in implementation and a test framework to verify compliance of products with semantic interoperability specifications. This approach is designed to accelerate the timeline for adoption of semantic interoperability specifications. The intent is to reduce soft costs associated with implementing advanced controls, fault detection and diagnostics, and other smart building technologies and use cases as a necessary step in achieving an energy efficient smart grid future.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Learning from the Pandemic: the Future of Meetings in HEP and Beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic has by-and-large prevented in-person meetings since March 2020. While the increasing deployment of effective vaccines around the world is a very positive development, the timeline and pathway to "normality" is uncertain and the "new normal" we will settle into is anyone's guess. Particle physics, like many other scientific fields, has more than a year of experience in holding virtual meetings, workshops, and conferences. A great deal of experimentation and innovation to explore how to execute these meetings effectively has occurred. Therefore, it is an appropriate time to take stock of what we as a community learned from running virtual meetings and discuss possible strategies for the future. Continuing to develop effective strategies for meetings with a virtual component is likely to be important for reducing the carbon footprint of our research activities, while also enabling greater diversity and inclusion for participation. This report summarizes a virtual two-day workshop on Virtual Meetings held May 5-6, 2021 which brought together experts from both inside and outside of high-energy physics to share their experiences and practices with organizing and executing virtual workshops, and to develop possible strategies for future meetings as we begin to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. This report outlines some of the practices and tools that have worked well which we hope will serve as a valuable resource for future virtual meeting organizers in all scientific fields.

Neubauer, Mark S.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Design Considerations for the Field Use of International Nuclear Safeguards Technology

The process of developing and deploying safeguards technology should be carried out in such a way that it supports the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) international safeguards verification mission, while also being efficient in terms of both cost and time. This process, however, may be hindered by a general lack of nuclear facility operating experience among the scientists or engineers designing safeguards technology, or the inability to interact with the IAEA inspector end user. As a result, equipment designers may have difficulty understanding inspector needs and the limitations of using safeguards technology in the field, often leading to inefficiencies (in the form of increased cost and time spent) in the safeguards technology design process. Here, to mitigate this knowledge gap, the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, has developed design considerations that should be incorporated into safeguards technologies, focusing on non-destructive assay equipment. Timelines for integration of these considerations into the design process are also discussed.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2021

Data Driven Analysis for Modernization Program Management

NNSA is responsible for managing national nuclear security missions: ensuring a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear deterrent; supplying nuclear fuel to the Navy; and supporting the nation’s nuclear nonproliferation efforts. However, over half of NNSA’s facilities are more than 40 years old, and roughly one-third date back to the Manhattan Project. To execute its critical nuclear security missions, NNSA is making large investments to modernize its nuclear production capabilities. This ramp up represents NNSA’s largest modernization effort since the Cold War. Given the scale of these efforts, NNSA’s Office of Secondary Stage Production Modernization has implemented data driven techniques to prioritize investments and inform strategic decision making. NNSA, with support from its site managing contractors, has developed and implemented an integrated schedule and risk management system to address the issues and limitations with the traditional approach. The multi-year integrated schedules are key to identifying program linkages and managing large portfolios comprised of many different projects and efforts. In conjunction with the integrated schedule, a new program risk management system has also been developed and implemented, which manages program risks and opportunities, along with specific mitigation strategies to reduce or eliminate the risks per timelines that are tracked in the integrated schedule. This paper is supplemented with a follow-on presentation on effective management of program material and throughput modeling.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2020

Semantic Interoperability to Enable Smart, Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings

Achieving a widespread transition to grid-interactive, efficient buildings (GEBs) depends critically on there being sufficient interoperability among connected building systems. While many critical elements already exist at the technical interoperability level (TCP/IP, BACnet, etc.), a lack of interoperability in the semantic level hinders streamlined integration of interdependent applications. Semantics refers to expressing information about “things” in a way that can be consistently understood by applications. Key components of formalized semantics include identifying what a “thing” is (its “type”), defining general information about that “thing” (its characteristics or properties), and defining the appropriate relationships of that “thing” to other “things” (its function or role in a larger system). Although this might seem initially trivial, the success of smart building applications is highly dependent on maintaining consistent notions of the “things” being self-descriptive. Without semantic interoperability, it is technically difficult, labor-intensive, and cost-prohibitive to enable three key objectives of GEBs: optimizing performance, identifying faults, and delivering grid services. Industry, academia, and standards bodies have invested effort in developing information models to facilitate semantic interoperability, however, they have not been widely adopted across the U.S. commercial building portfolio. This paper will present a pathway to drive semantic interoperability through a three-pronged approach to be led by the DOE Building Technologies Office in partnership with NIST and multiple national laboratories comprising: 1) industry engagement and coordination across existing efforts; 2) a semantic interoperability standard that empowers building owners to identify and require interoperable attributes when procuring equipment and applications; 3) tools to assist in implementation and a test framework that can verify compliance of products with semantic interoperability specifications. This strategic approach is designed to accelerate the timeline for adoption of semantic interoperability standards. The intent is to reduce soft costs associated with implementing advanced controls, fault detection and diagnostics, and other smart building technologies as a necessary step in achieving an energy efficient smart grid future.

semantic interoperability, Semantic modeling, inte↗
DOE OSTI2022

Accelerating Materials Discovery: Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable, High-Performance Polymers

PolyID enables the discovery of polymers with advanced performance and greater sustainability while reducing material development timelines. The material design space is immense and cannot be reasonably probed using an Edisionian approach. High-throughput property prediction, enabled by artificial intelligence provides a hypothesis driven approach for down selection of candidate polymers to pursue experimentally. To aid experimentalists in the down selection of material targets this high-throughput, machine learning-based tool is capable of predicting polymer properties simply from molecular structures. Currently, transport, thermal, and mechanical properties across 7 polymer class (polyamides, polyesters, polycarbonates, polyimides, polyolefins, polyacrylates, and polyurethanes) can be predicted, and the PolyID platform has been flexibly designed so new materials and properties can be added.

artificial intelligence↗
DOE OSTI2022

Subcomponent Validation of Composite Joints for Marine Energy Structures

The Marine Energy Advanced Materials project addresses the barriers and uncertainties facing marine renewable energy developers in using composite materials for load-bearing structures. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Water Power Technologies Office, the multiyear project comprises of collaborators from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Sandia National Laboratories, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Montana State University (MSU), Florida Atlantic University (FAU), and industry stakeholders. As part of the Marine Energy Advanced Materials project, marine renewable energy industry surveys and assessments were conducted to identify key materials and knowledge gaps that hinder the adoption of composite materials in marine renewable energy structures. Specific knowledge gaps highlighted for composite materials were environmental effects, fatigue strengths, and bonded and bolted interconnects (composite/composite and composite/metal). It was concluded that many of these gaps could be addressed through subcomponent validation; consequently, a program was developed at NREL with the goals of developing subcomponent validation methods for appropriate marine energy materials, which would improve the understanding of design allowables for full-scale structural components and joints. Ultimately, the aim is to reduce timelines and costs associated with full-scale structural validation efforts while also providing near-net-scale static and fatigue data of composite/metal subcomponents for marine renewable energy systems. To approach these goals, a testing program was developed at NREL to investigate a variety of materials and structural design details at the subcomponent scale to understand (a) the effects of harsh and corrosive marine energy environments and (b) the static and fatigue strengths of the complex geometries. The recent study from this testing program is perhaps the largest that has ever been conducted with respect to specimen scale and geographic diversity of underwater environmental conditions that the specimens were subjected to. A variety of specimen geometries were designed by NREL to highlight key features of multimaterial (composite/composite or metal/composite) interconnects that may be used in marine renewable energy structural designs. The designs used several different composite matrices, adhesives, and marine-grade steels, which were highlighted in the surveys as being the most appropriate for harsh marine environments. Composite panels were then manufactured at MSU, and were subsequently manufactured into test specimens by NREL. The specimens were shipped to FAU and PNNL for conditioning in ocean water tanks at various temperatures for an extended period. The specimens were then returned to NREL for structural validation. This presentation will provide an overview of recent advances within the testing program in terms of specimen design and test methods, and will discuss results and key findings of the subcomponent testing program to date at NREL.

adhesives↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Strong-QCD Regime Measurement of the Proton’s Spin Structure

The theory of the strong force, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) remains one of the most important ways to understand the fundamental properties of ordinary matter. However, at low momentum transfer Q 2 , in the regime where the strong force becomes extremely strong, our understanding of QCD for ordinary nucleons becomes hazy. Several cutting edge theories such as Chiral Perturbation Theory (χPT) and Lattice QCD have provided valuable predictions in this regime, but Lattice QCD has not yet extended predictions of many important quantities to this kinematic region, and Chiral Perturbation Theory has faced several important disagreements with experimental data for the neutron over the last several decades. It is therefore of extreme importance to have a benchmark of experimental data in the low energy regime for the proton’s behavior, as a test of leading theories for the behavior of QCD in this regime. The E08-027 (g2p) experiment ran at Jefferson Lab in 2012 with the goal of collecting this valuable data, and though I was still completing my undergraduate studies at the time, I became involved in the analysis in 2015 and built on the previous work to complete it and analyze the exciting results. This experiment achieved a high precision measurement of the spin structure functions g1 and g2 for the proton, quantities which describe the internal spin structure of the proton. These measurements were taken in the valuable low Q 2 region described above, and used to extract several moments of these spin structure functions which can be directly compared to the cutting-edge predictions of Chiral Perturbation Theory. Though the experiment’s timeline was such that I didn’t have a chance to work directly on the experimental setup, I had the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience working on a polarized target at UNH which is very similar to the crucial polarized target used in the g2p experiment. Full details of the g2p experiment and my experimental work at the University of New Hampshire are presented in this thesis, as well as a detailed description of the analysis process and the exciting benchmark results, which serve as a direct test of all current and future theories of QCD in the low-Q 2 regime.

Ruth, David↗
DOE OSTI2023

I Know I'm Right, But Does My Phone?

Transportation is the largest source of green-house gas emissions in the United States. Reducing transportation emissions depends on human travel behavior, which relies on local land use and planning. Travel diaries, consisting of sequences of trips between places for a particular individual, are typically used to instrument human travel behavior. However, these diaries are only as accurate as the underlying methods used to construct them. Travel diary algorithms have been a popular research topic since the advent of GPS tracking surveys. Mode inference algorithms in particular have been well represented in literature. However, these algorithms have typically been validated using prompted recall of pre-segmented trips, which doesn't account for segmentation error, thus disregarding the continuity of mode inference. Furthermore, phone operating systems and applications have adopted battery-conserving techniques, but we are not aware of prior work that has characterized the resulting data collection errors or evaluated procedures to mitigate them. We introduce a framework to evaluate accuracy of trip length computations and mode inference. We develop a temporal alignment procedure in analyzing continuous mode-segmented trajectories for groups of trips. We then apply our framework to evaluate an example set of travel diary algorithms from the open-source OpenPATH travel diary platform against MobilityNet, a public dataset containing information from three artificial timelines that cover 15 different travel modes. Our results show that inference based on an integration with map features results in weighted F_1 scores of 0.60 (iOS) and 0.74 (android). We also show that OpenPATH tends to under count trip length, with mean of signed relative error of -0.0438 on android and -0.0704 on iOS. We hope that other travel diary algorithms will be evaluated using this standardized process, and that the results used to understand and improve the state-of-the-art in this field.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,ENERGY PLANNING, POLIC↗
DOE OSTI2023

Pathways to Overcome Geothermal Deployment Barriers

Geothermal resources represent a vast domestic energy supply that can provide a fexible and reliable source of electricity as well as contribute to clean energy goals. In the United States, geothermal exploration and development are subject to numerous permits, authorizations, and other regulatory requirements at the federal, state, and local level. These are necessary to address potential environmental and resource impacts at geothermal project sites, but may act as barriers to geothermal deployment, slowing timelines and raising costs. The 2022 NREL report, Non-Technical Barriers to Geothermal Development in California and Nevada, presents fndings of a study on non-technical barriers that may infuence geothermal project development.

geothermal↗
DOE OSTI2023

IER 501: Pulsed Neutron Die-Away Experiments at LLNL [Slides]

This presentation notes the purpose of Pulsed Neutron Die Away (PNDA) for Thermal Neutron Scattering Law (TSL) validation. PNDA for TSL validation does not require fissile material. It consists of simple target shapes and compositions and is only sensitive to absorption and scattering of target medium. Well conducted experiments have uncertainties of 0.1% - 0.5%. This presentation also covers Pulsed Neutron Die Away Experiments, while noting previous experiments such as the FY22 PNDA Experiments. The presentation concludes with FY23 benchmarking efforts and a timeline to FY24.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

Evaluation of Physical Security Risk for Potential Implementation of FLEX using Dynamic Simulation Methods

The requirements for United States nuclear power plants to maintain a large onsite physical security force contribute to their large operational costs. The cost of maintaining the current physical security posture is approximately 10% of the overall operation and maintenance budget for commercial nuclear power plants. The goal of the Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Physical Security Pathway is to develop tools, methods, and technologies and provide the technical basis for an optimized physical security posture. This pathway will analyze and minimize the conservatisms built into current security postures in order to reduce security costs while still ensuring adequate security and operational safety. The research performed at Idaho National Laboratory within this pathway has successfully developed a dynamic force-on-force (FOF) modeling framework using various computer simulation tools and integrated them with the dynamic assessment Event Modeling Risk Assessment using Linked Diagrams (EMRALD) tool. This document provides an overview of lessons learned in applying a dynamic computational framework that links results from a commercially available FOF simulation tool, a commercially available thermal-hydraulic tool, and EMRALD to an operating commercial nuclear power plant. This process of including plant procedures and multiple analysis results is being called Modeling and Analysis for Safety Security using Dynamic EMRALD Framework. Previous reports described how a user could integrate their plant-specific FOF models with the dynamic simulation tool EMRALD, model operator actions, integrate with probabilistic risk assessment tools, such as Computer Aided Fault Tree Analysis System or Systems Analysis Programs for Hands-on Integrated Reliability Evaluations, and with thermal-hydraulic tools, such as RELAP-5. Previous reports applied various combinations of available simulations codes with EMRALD using generic plant models to demonstrate how to perform the analysis. This report documents the results of applying the dynamic computational framework to an actual nuclear facility using their security scenarios and timelines. The purpose of this study was to verify that results achieved using generic models are similar to actual plant results and to refine our guidance of the use of the framework. Such an assessment enables further analysis, such as what-if scenarios and staff-reduction evaluation, thereby optimizing physical security at plants. NOTE: The work performed in this report is based on a generic EMRALD model with actual plant data used for the analysis. However, only the generic model and general results of the analysis are in the report. No plant’s sensitive information is discussed in this report. The discussion shows examples of insights that can be obtained from the MASS-DEF methodology.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

An Update on the Colossus mK platform at Fermilab

As part of the efforts of the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems National Quantum Center at Fermilab, we will construct a large millikelvin refrigeration platform known as Colossus. The Colossus platform will be used for quantum computing applications, along with physics and sensing experiments. At the preceding CEC/ICMC meeting in 2021, we reported on the conceptual design of the platform. In the intervening time, the design of the system has been completed and passed through review, with construction now underway. This paper provides an update on the overall design of the system, and the status of and timeline for construction.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗