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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 1,657 records · Page 92
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Control Strategies and Validation in the Hybrid Optimization and Performance Platform (HOPP)

The Hybrid Optimization and Performance Platform (HOPP) is a tool that simulates hybrid power plants in various configurations, and also calculates the financial feasibility of these plants. This report outlines an overview of HOPP and the energy storage dispatch strategies available. It then presents three case studies which demonstrate different applications of HOPP. The first case looks at the profitability of hybrid power plants in different locations in the USA. The second case examines the availability of hybrid power plants to provide energy reliability services. The third case presents a plant that produces both hydrogen and electricity, and demonstrates a dispatch strategy that chooses the most profitable energy vector based on price signals. The next section shows the validation of HOPP on operational data, using data from both unit-scale and utility-scale power plants. This validation process demonstrated that HOPP can simulate the power output of both wind and solar PV plants at both scales with comparable fidelity to an existing commercial software tool. Finally, HOPP is applied in a field test which applies an optimal dispatch strategy to a physical battery in a unit-scale hybrid plant at NREL. HOPP's optimal dispatch strategy, applied in a real-world setting, improved this hybrid plant's ability to meet a load signal while minimizing operational costs.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2012

CASL Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Tool, a Unified PM Platform

The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) applies existing modeling and simulation (M&S) capabilities and develops advanced capabilities to create a usable environment for predictive simulation of light water reactors (LWRs). This environment, designated the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA), incorporates science based models, state of the art numerical methods, multi physics integrated solutions, modern computational science and engineering practices, and uncertainty quantification (UQ). Ongoing validation of VERA relies upon data from operating pressurized water reactors (PWRs), single effect experiments, and integral tests. VERA will be designed for implementation on current desktop computers, capacity platforms (e.g., clusters), and the engineering workstations of the future. Selected components will also be capable of executing on current U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) capability and leadership class high performance computer (HPC) systems.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

An Intermediate-Scale Version of the Volturnus + Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Platform Concept in a Real Ocean Environment with an Operating Turbine off the Coast of Maine (Final Scientific/Technical Report)

This project was undertaken to advance the technical readiness and commercial viability of a next-generation, industrialized concrete floating foundation for offshore wind turbines called VolturnUS +. The design objective is to deliver a platform that is lower cost, faster to manufacture, simpler to deploy, and optimized for domestic supply chains and local workforce participation. To enable project financing and commercial adoption, an at-sea demonstration under representative operating conditions was required and therefore this project aimed to deploy a ¼-scale VolturnUS+ prototype offshore the Coast of Maine.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Integrated Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR) – electro assisted fermentation platform for total resource recovery from diverse wastewaters

The overall objective of the project was to demonstrate a successful wastewater resource recovery platform comprising an Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR) to achieve >50% Carbon sequestration efficiency as Volatile Fatty Acids (VFAs) or as methane gas from agricultural (animal feeding operations) wastewater along with the generation of final water exceeding Biological Nutrient Removal (BNR) standards for indirect potable reuse by coupling with constructed wetlands has been successfully accomplished. The AnMBR achieved stable performance over 350 days, removing 80–90% of COD and BOD₅ and recovering methane (0.17±0.07 L CH4/g COD at 66.5±0.03% v/v) at 3-5 LMH flux and 5-9 days HRT with 3-5% w/v total solids. Phosphorus recovery via CaO addition in an 80-L coagulation-flocculation-sedimentation unit ranged from 40.6% to 99.7%, yielding products with 11.4–13.6% P content and citric acid solubility of 32–38.6% P, comparable to rock phosphate mineral. Ammonium adsorption achieved ~94.5% recovery with exchange capacity of 10 – 16 g NH4-N/kg clinoptilolite. The CW polishing step met Kansas discharge standards for BOD5 and TN (<30 and <10 mg /L,) and approached the TP standard (~2.5 – 4 mg P/L). These findings have either already resulted in two peer reviewed publications, two patent applications, and one publication in conference proceedings.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Metamaterials as a Platform for the Development of Novel Materials for Energy Applications

To explore the fundamental properties of metamaterials (MMs) / metasurfaces and their potential for control of energy at the sub‐wavelength scale in support of the mission of the Department of Energy and the office of Basic Energy Sciences. Electromagnetic metamaterials provide a platform for the discovery and design of new materials with novel structures, functions, and properties. The PI proposes to advance the knowledge base of these materials through fundamental investigations of the experimental and theoretical properties of metamaterials for the discovery, prediction and design of new materials with novel structures, functions, and properties. The proposed research activities emphasize a complete basic research program including the conceptual / computational design, fabrication / synthesis of the materials, and the characterization and analysis of their electromagnetic properties. The proposed project explores the fundamental properties of metamaterials / metasurfaces and their potential for energy applications. There are three main topics which will be investigated: 1) Dispersion engineering with metamaterials and metasurfaces, 2) Epsilon near zero metamaterial absorbers and emitters, and 3) All dielectric metamaterials. The program implements a complete basic research program consisting of theory / design, modeling, characterization, and analysis, in order to fully characterize metamaterials and metasurfaces, while at the same time minimizing iterations necessary to achieve the proposal goals.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Feasibility of Multi-Use Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) Platforms

Tropical islands and coastal communities in the United States and internationally suffer from high energy costs, unreliable electrical supplies, poverty, and underemployment, which are all being exacerbated by climate change. Multi-use Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) systems could align with the goals and values of these underserved and remote communities as scalable platforms that can provide baseload power, freshwater, and food, as well as potentially support new industries. The cold, nutrient-rich deep seawater needed for OTEC’s power cycles has many promising byproduct applications such as seawater air conditioning (SWAC) for residential and industrial cooling, enhancing aquaculture farms (e.g., cooling and nutrients for seaweed, shellfish, finfish), producing freshwater through desalination, and generating efuels such as ammonia and hydrogen.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2026

Livewire Data Platform File Standards Version 1.0

This living document describes required and recommended standards for data additions to the Livewire Data Platform (https://livewire.energy.gov/). Adherence to the standards described enables development of automated analysis and discovery tools for Livewire data and will facilitate development of future capabilities for delivering data that can be tailored to meet user needs.

33 - ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2021

HydroSource: A Platform for US Hydropower Data for Basin-Scale Applications

HydroSource: A Platform for US Hydropower Data for Basin-Scale Applications presents a high-level overview of ORNL’s HydroSource data products that can be used in various basin-scale applications across the United States to realistically conceptualize and quantitatively analyze the complex dynamics, effects, and implications of energy-water systems. This product is an ArcGIS Story Map that contains an array of interactive and static maps.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Towards using bacterial microcompartments as a platform for spatial metabolic engineering in the industrially important and metabolically versatile Zymomonas mobilis

Advances in synthetic biology have enabled the incorporation of novel biochemical pathways for the production of high-value products into industrially important bacterial hosts. However, attempts to redirect metabolic fluxes towards desired products often lead to the buildup of toxic or undesirable intermediates or, more generally, unwanted metabolic cross-talk. The use of shells derived from self-assembling protein-based prokaryotic organelles, referred to as bacterial microcompartments (BMCs), as a scaffold for metabolic enzymes represents a sophisticated approach that can both insulate and integrate the incorporation of challenging metabolic pathways into industrially important bacterial hosts. Here we took a synthetic biology approach and introduced the model shell system derived from the myxobacterium Haliangium ochraceum (HO shell) into the industrially relevant organism Zymomonas mobilis with the aim of constructing a BMC-based spatial scaffolding platform. SDS-PAGE, transmission electron microscopy, and dynamic light scattering analyses collectively demonstrated the ability to express and purify empty capped and uncapped HO shells from Z. mobilis . As a proof of concept to internally load or externally decorate the shell surface with enzyme cargo, we have successfully targeted fluorophores to the surfaces of the BMC shells. Overall, our results provide the foundation for incorporating enzymes and constructing BMCs with synthetic biochemical pathways for the future production of high-value products in Z. mobilis .

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

PyZebrascope: An Open-Source Platform for Brain-Wide Neural Activity Imaging in Zebrafish

Understanding how neurons interact across the brain to control animal behaviors is one of the central goals in neuroscience. Recent developments in fluorescent microscopy and genetically-encoded calcium indicators led to the establishment of whole-brain imaging methods in zebrafish, which record neural activity across a brain-wide volume with single-cell resolution. Pioneering studies of whole-brain imaging used custom light-sheet microscopes, and their operation relied on commercially developed and maintained software not available globally. Hence it has been challenging to disseminate and develop the technology in the research community. Here, we present PyZebrascope, an open-source Python platform designed for neural activity imaging in zebrafish using light-sheet microscopy. PyZebrascope has intuitive user interfaces and supports essential features for whole-brain imaging, such as two orthogonal excitation beams and eye damage prevention. Its camera module can handle image data throughput of up to 800 MB/s from camera acquisition to file writing while maintaining stable CPU and memory usage. Its modular architecture allows the inclusion of advanced algorithms for microscope control and image processing. As a proof of concept, we implemented a novel automatic algorithm for maximizing the image resolution in the brain by precisely aligning the excitation beams to the image focal plane. PyZebrascope enables whole-brain neural activity imaging in fish behaving in a virtual reality environment. Thus, PyZebrascope will help disseminate and develop light-sheet microscopy techniques in the neuroscience community and advance our understanding of whole-brain neural dynamics during animal behaviors.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Scalable foundation models for numerical simulations on HPC platforms

In recent years, foundation models (FMs) have begun to reshape numerical simulations on high-performance computing (HPC) platforms. These large, pre-trained AI models enable rapid predictions across a broad range of physical domains, including Earth system modeling, fluid dynamics, materials science, as well as complex multi-modal simulations in aerospace engineering and fusion research. By training on diverse datasets, FMs learn intricate relationships and underlying physical behavior while also enabling the quantification of uncertainty in their predictions. This capability allows simulations that once required days of numerical calculation to be completed in minutes (FM inference), supporting real-time design optimization, uncertainty-aware decision making, and more comprehensive exploration of complex scenarios.

AI↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Utility of Satellites and Autonomous Remote Sensing Platforms for Monitoring Offshore Aquaculture Farms: A Case Study for Canopy Forming Kelps

The emerging sector of offshore kelp aquaculture represents an opportunity to produce biofuel feedstock to help meet growing energy demand. Giant kelp represents an attractive aquaculture crop due to its rapid growth and production, however precision farming over large scales is required to make this crop economically viable. These demands necessitate high frequency monitoring to ensure outplant success, maximum production, and optimum quality of harvested biomass, while the long distance from shore and large necessary scales of production makes in person monitoring impractical. Remote sensing offers a practical monitoring solution and nascent imaging technologies could be leveraged to provide daily products of the kelp canopy and subsurface structures over unprecedented spatial scales. Here, we evaluate the efficacy of remote sensing from satellites and aerial and underwater autonomous vehicles as potential monitoring platforms for offshore kelp aquaculture farms. Decadal-scale analyses of the Southern California Bight showed that high offshore summertime cloud cover restricts the ability of satellite sensors to provide high frequency direct monitoring of these farms. By contrast, daily monitoring of offshore farms using sensors mounted to aerial and underwater drones seems promising. Small Unoccupied Aircraft Systems (sUAS) carrying lightweight optical sensors can provide estimates of canopy area, density, and tissue nitrogen content on the time and space scales necessary for observing changes in this highly dynamic species. Underwater color imagery can be rapidly classified using deep learning models to identify kelp outplants on a longline farm and high acoustic returns of kelp pneumatocysts from side scan sonar imagery signal an ability to monitor the subsurface development of kelp fronds. Current sensing technologies can be used to develop additional machine learning and spectral algorithms to monitor outplant health and canopy macromolecular content, however future developments in vehicle and infrastructure technologies are necessary to reduce costs and transcend operational limitations for continuous deployment in an offshore setting.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Diversifying Isoprenoid Platforms via Atypical Carbon Substrates and Non-model Microorganisms

Isoprenoid compounds are biologically ubiquitous, and their characteristic modularity has afforded products ranging from pharmaceuticals to biofuels. Isoprenoid production has been largely successful in Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae with metabolic engineering of the mevalonate (MVA) and methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathways coupled with the expression of heterologous terpene synthases. Yet conventional microbial chassis pose several major obstacles to successful commercialization including the affordability of sugar substrates at scale, precursor flux limitations, and intermediate feedback-inhibition. Now, recent studies have challenged typical isoprenoid paradigms by expanding the boundaries of terpene biosynthesis and using non-model organisms including those capable of metabolizing atypical C1 substrates. Conversely, investigations of non-model organisms have historically informed optimization in conventional microbes by tuning heterologous gene expression. Here, we review advances in isoprenoid biosynthesis with specific focus on the synergy between model and non-model organisms that may elevate the commercial viability of isoprenoid platforms by addressing the dichotomy between high titer production and inexpensive substrates.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

HtPIP: High-throughput phage isolation platform increases diversity and reduces isolation time using multiple bacteria

Bacteriophages are ubiquitous in nature, but relatively few have been isolated and characterized compared to the number of bacterial strains. Phage biotechnology applications benefit from a diverse library of isolated phages to kill or transfer genetic material to a bacterium of interest. However, scaling up phage discovery for diverse bacterial hosts can be time-consuming and costly. Here, we developed an approach to capture novel phages for multiple bacterial strains in parallel from an environmental sample using commercially available 0.2-μM filter plates. Using this High-throughput Phage Isolation Platform (HtPIP), 12 novel phages were isolated spanning 9 diverse bacterial host genera. Eleven of the isolated phages define new phage species, with nine also defining new genera. The HtPIP was used to discover both DNA and RNA phages, including a Tectiviridae infecting Pseudomonas putida mt-2 and a Leviviricetes infecting a Microbacterium isolate, which represents the first cultured RNA phage infecting a host outside of Proteobacteria. Using a metagenomic approach, we demonstrate that the HtPIP captures a higher proportion of novel phages compared to traditional low-throughput methods.

High-throughput↗
DOE OSTI2019

An Experimental Investigation of Flow Regimes in Imbibition and Drainage Using a Microfluidic Platform

Instabilities in immiscible displacement along fluid−fluid displacement fronts in porous media are undesirable in many natural and engineered displacement processes such as geological carbon sequestration and enhanced oil recovery. In this study, a series of immiscible displacement experiments are conducted using a microfluidic platform across a wide range of capillary numbers and viscosity ratios. The microfluidic device features a water-wet porous medium, which is a two-dimensional representation of a Berea sandstone. Data is captured using a high-resolution camera, enabling visualization of the entire domain, while being able to resolve features as small as 10 µm. The study reports a correlation between fractal dimensions of displacement fronts and displacement front patterns in the medium. Results are mapped on a two-dimensional parameter space of log M and log Ca, and stability diagrams proposed in literature for drainage processes are superimposed for comparison. Compared to recent reports in the literature, the results in this work suggest that transition regimes may constitute a slightly larger portion of the overall flow regime diagram. This two-phase immiscible displacement study helps elucidate macroscopic processes at the continuum scale and provides insights relevant to enhanced oil recovery processes and the design of engineered porous media such as exchange columns and membranes.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Solar+ Optimizer: A Model Predictive Control Optimization Platform for Grid Responsive Building Microgrids

With the falling costs of solar arrays and battery storage and reduced reliability of the grid due to natural disasters, small-scale local generation and storage resources are beginning to proliferate. However, very few software options exist for integrated control of building loads, batteries and other distributed energy resources. The available software solutions on the market can force customers to adopt one particular ecosystem of products, thus limiting consumer choice, and are often incapable of operating independently of the grid during blackouts. In this paper, we present the “Solar+ Optimizer” (SPO), a control platform that provides demand flexibility, resiliency and reduced utility bills, built using open-source software. SPO employs Model Predictive Control (MPC) to produce real time optimal control strategies for the building loads and the distributed energy resources on site. SPO is designed to be vendor-agnostic, protocol-independent and resilient to loss of wide-area network connectivity. The software was evaluated in a real convenience store in northern California with on-site solar generation, battery storage and control of HVAC and commercial refrigeration loads. Preliminary tests showed price responsiveness of the building and cost savings of more than 10% in energy costs alone.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Commercial PV Inverter IEEE 1547.1 Ride-Through Assessments Using an Automated PHIL Test Platform

As more countries seek solutions to their de-carbonization targets using renewable energy (RE) technologies, interconnection standards and national grid codes for distributed energy resources (DER) are being updated to support higher penetrations of RE and improve grid stability. Common grid-code revisions mandate DER devices, such as solar inverters and energy storage systems, ride-through (RT) voltage and frequency disturbances. This is necessary because as the percentage of generation from DER increases, there is a greater risk power system faults will cause many or all DER to trip, triggering a substantial load-generation imbalance and possible cascading blackout. This paper demonstrates for the first time a methodology to verify commercial DER devices are compliant to new voltage, frequency, and rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) RT requirements established in IEEE Std. 1547-2018. The methodology incorporates a software automation tool, called the SunSpec System Validation Platform (SVP), in combination with a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) system to execute the IEEE Std. 1547.1-2020 RT test protocols. In this paper, the approach is validated with two commercial photovoltaic inverters, the test results are analyzed for compliance, and improvements to the test procedure are suggested.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗