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This report details the activities of the Oregon State University Industrial Assessment Center, funded by the US DOE for the period of 2016-2021.
Efficient thermal storage systems, when coupled with renewable energy, enable the decarbonization of numerous industrial processes requiring high temperature steam or air, and provide a path for seasonal building heating, especially for colder climates. Existing thermal storage systems face a significant challenge due to losses inherent to all high temperature systems. A viable route to long-term storage is to use thermochemical reactions to convert concentrated solar energy to a fuel that is shelf-stable and can be stored at room temperature, thus eliminating losses associated with high temperature storage. The Solid-State Solar Thermochemical Fuel (SoFuel) technology developed by Michigan State University, Oregon State University, and Mississippi State University provides reactors and processes with minimal sensible heat losses and allows storing solar energy as a solid-state fuel at room temperature for long duration. The production of SoFuel occurs within a cylindrical cavity reduction chemical reactor that captures concentrated solar radiation from a solar field. Reactive magnesium manganese oxide (Mg-Mn-O) resides within the cylindrical cavity chemical reactor and undergoes thermal reduction as the temperature exceeds 1350°C. The thermally reduced Mg-Mn-O pellets (the SoFuel) are cooled down through a recuperative process and stored within a bin until used. The SoFuel can directly supply up to 1100°C heat to an adjacent power plant for electricity generation or industrial heating. Oxidation of SoFuel pellets occurs in a counter flow reactor and supplies heat to the user for electricity generation or industrial processing, after which the fuel is returned to the concentrating solar field where it is regenerated for re-use. Both reactors can be controlled well using a variety of strategies. With the low cost of the material, its cyclability, and the possibility of using the pelletized with on-sun reactors, or with electricity that would be curtailed, this project offers a viable option of medium- and long-term thermal energy storage.
Efficient thermal storage systems, when coupled with renewable energy, enable the decarbonization of numerous industrial processes requiring high temperature steam or air, and provide a path for seasonal building heating, especially for colder climates. Existing thermal storage systems face a significant challenge due to losses inherent to all high temperature systems. A viable route to long-term storage is to use thermochemical reactions to convert concentrated solar energy to a fuel that is shelf-stable and can be stored at room temperature, thus eliminating losses associated with high temperature storage. The Solid-State Solar Thermochemical Fuel (SoFuel) technology developed by Michigan State University, Oregon State University, and Mississippi State University provides reactors and processes with minimal sensible heat losses and allows storing solar energy as a solid-state fuel at room temperature for long duration. The production of SoFuel occurs within a cylindrical cavity reduction chemical reactor that captures concentrated solar radiation from a solar field. Reactive magnesium manganese oxide (Mg-Mn-O) resides within the cylindrical cavity chemical reactor and undergoes thermal reduction as the temperature exceeds 1350°C. The thermally reduced Mg-Mn-O pellets (the SoFuel) are cooled down through a recuperative process and stored within a bin until used. The SoFuel can directly supply up to 1100C heat to an adjacent power plant for electricity generation or industrial heating. Oxidation of SoFuel pellets occurs in a counter flow reactor and supplies heat to the user for electricity generation or industrial processing, after which the fuel is returned to the concentrating solar field where it is regenerated for re-use. Both reactors can be controlled well using a variety of strategies. With the low cost of the material, its cyclability, and the possibility of using the pelletized with on-sun reactors, or with electricity that would be curtailed, this project offers a viable option of medium- and long-term thermal energy storage.
In this paper, we describe the preparation of actinide targets at Oregon State University. The preparation of the actinide fluorides is done by an aqueous precipitation procedure with yields of greater than 90%. A dual glove box system is used for the preparation of the fluorides of the high specific activity actinides and the subsequent vapor deposition. We compare and contrast targets made by vapor deposition and molecular plating. We discuss some new data on the structure of actinide targets.
Final technical report
The Hydrogen Storage Engineering Center of Excellence (HSECoE) team would like to thank the U.S Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office for the funding to embark on such a large endeavor to develop the material and engineering science related to the use of adsorbents as the storage media for automotive applications. In addition, SRNL would like to thank the many partners of the HSECoE including U.S. automotive manufacturers, GM and Ford, potential component and materials suppliers, United Technologies Research Center, Hexagon Lincoln Composites, and BASF, Universities, Oregon State University, University of Michigan, and the University of Québec, Trois Reveres, along with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Savannah River National Laboratory. Individual specific contributions can be found in individual final reports submitted to DOE. No attempt is made here to attribute contributions to individual people or organizations, illustrating the cooperative arrangement of the team members.
The geochemistry and strontium isotope data for Coal Creek Watershed, Colorado, consists of cation, anion, and 87Sr/87Sr isotope values from samples collected at 8 stream location along Coal Creek, samples from two groundwater springs within the watershed, and a shallow subsurface piezometer. All stream and spring samples were collected between June and October, 2021, and the shallow, near stream piezometer sample was collected in July of 2022. These data were collected to evaluate how groundwater contributions to Coal Creek originating from shallow vs deep flow paths respond seasonal drying. Understanding of groundwater-surface water interactions in montane systems in critical for the future of water availability in the Western US as groundwater contributions are expected to become more important for sustaining summer stream flows. This data package contains: (1) a csv of all cation samples; (2) a csv of all anion samples; (3) a csv of all 87Sr/87Sr isotope samples; and (4) a csv of locations for each sampling site. The dataset additionally includes a file-level metadata (flmd.csv) file that lists each file contained in the dataset with associated metadata; and a data dictionary (dd.csv) file that contains column/row headers used throughout the files along with a definition, units, and data type.
Our research team proposes to advance the state of the ASME section III code (nuclear service) for Compact Heat Exchangers (CHX). This work will improve the technical state of CHXs and lay the foundation necessary for these heat exchangers to be certified for use in nuclear service. During the course of this work, we will advance the understanding of the performance, integrity, and lifetime of the CHXs for use in any industrial application, making their use more attractive and accessible to the industry. We will do this by developing qualification and inspection procedures that utilize Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and advanced in-service inspection techniques, with insight from the industrial utility leader EPRI. We have enlisted colleagues at MPR Associates (MPR), an elite nuclear code consulting firm, who are experts on the ASME section III code and who, with input from members of the ASME section III committee, will direct the testing and help develop a series of documents that define the rules and regulations for use of the CHX. Colleagues at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Oregon State University (OSU) will conduct extensive tensile, creep, and fatigue experiments on diffusion bonded samples (manufactured by US-based Vacuum Process engineering) along with modeling using the elastic perfectly plastic assumptions and comprehensive full inelastic finite element analysis (FEA). This work will allow analysis by design and confidence in the strength of different internal structures. To ensure industry acceptance and long term confidence, team members at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW), University of Michigan (UM), Georgia Tech (GT), and the University of Idaho (UI) will extensively test prototypic heat exchangers manufactured by US-based manufactures CompRex and Vacuum Process Engineering (VPE), a leader in the development of advanced CHX. This testing will include the use of various working fluids (salt, sodium, helium, and sCO2) to evaluate operational issues as well as structural integrity under the most severe conditions. Post-test analysis of the tested CHXs coupled with pre/in-service/post NDE (ultrasonic and radiography) led by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) will be incorporated into the development of the rules and regulations for their use in nuclear service.
This dataset includes a WEC-Sim and MoorDyn model of the Laboratory Upgrade Point Absorber (LUPA). LUPA is an open-source wave energy converter designed and tested by Oregon State University. The files provided here constitute a stable LUPA configuration with three mooring lines. This model is 1/20 scale, optimized for the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Lab at Oregon State University. This model of LUPA adds MoorDyn functionality for more accurate mooring predictions and uses a more stable, updated version of LUPA's current physical configuration. This model is for WEC-Sim Version 6.0. A recent update of WEC-Sim has changed some functionality of MoorDyn such that this model will not work with WEC-Sim Version 6.1.
Marine energy (i.e., energy from waves, tides, currents, and rivers) in the United States is a nascent industry. In particular, permitting processes—an uncertainty for industry advancement that can be costly and time consuming to navigate—have rarely been tested and used for marine energy. The novelty of the marine energy industry and utilization of open ocean permitting processes that were not originally developed for marine energy have led to extensive efforts to gain consensus amongst state and federal regulatory agencies to authorize marine energy projects. In 2021, Oregon State University successfully completed permitting of a wave energy test facility, called PacWave South, off the coast of Oregon, which is designed to advance wave energy research and development. This article documents the multi-year process that Oregon State University used to receive federal and state authorization for a pre-permitted commercial-scale grid connected facility by detailing the development of the test facility, management of uncertainty and challenges, and key decisions. The PacWave South case study provides insights for the larger marine energy community as the industry advances towards commercialization.
To accelerate the energy transition while addressing land use conflicts and community opposition, federal policies and incentives require that new energy infrastructure provide direct benefits to communities, and ensure that these benefits remain in the community. The objective of this study is to develop a framework for collecting demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental data and supporting communities in understanding how such data can support more just and equitable outcomes. Specifically, this study addresses two research questions: (1) How can energy justice be incorporated into ME project life cycle, and (2) what social and economic data are needed to assess how marine energy development supports energy justice? Based on our literature review and the data collection template, a case study of PacWave, a wave energy testing facility located on the central Oregon Coast, is employed to draw more specific implications for how energy justice can be integrated into marine energy. PacWave represents a flagship investment by Oregon State University, the State of Oregon, and the Department of Energy. The facility is situated in Lincoln County, which is home to the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and family-scale fishing enterprises. PacWave has strong community support as a testing site and holds potential to provide valuable lessons for other communities.
The High-Temperature Test Facility (HTTF) is an integral effects thermal hydraulics test facility at Oregon State University designed as a 1/4 length scale model of the Modular High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor 350 MW core (mHTGR-350). In the spring and summer of 2019, several experiments were conducted at HTTF providing a valuable source of gas-cooled reactor thermal hydraulics data. Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Oregon State University, Argonne National Laboratory, and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories have partnered to use this experimental data to develop a gas-cooled reactor thermal hydraulics benchmark led by INL under the auspices of the Advanced Reactor Technologies (ART) program. This report provides some context on the benchmark, HTTF, and previous Reactor Excursions and Leak Analysis Program (RELAP)5-3D modeling of HTTF. It also provides a draft of the benchmark specifications for the Depressurized Conduction Cooldown problem, which is the INL-led benchmark problem.
Accurate modeling and simulation tools for thermal-hydraulics calculations are a key element needed to design and license new advanced reactors including Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and Microreactors. Uncertainties in modeling and simulation can have significant safety and economic implications. The High Temperature Test Facility (HTTF) at Oregon State University (OSU) is a scaled integral effects experiment designed to investigate transient behavior in high-temperature gas-cooled prismatic-block nuclear reactors. High-quality measurement data is available from the HTTF that is suitable for a thermal-hydraulics code validation benchmark for gas-cooled reactor simulations. Here, this paper summarizes individual HTTF modeling efforts to date for tool validation at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Oregon State University (OSU) and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) using system thermal-hydraulics codes, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes and system-CFD code couplings. Also, the paper introduces the ongoing OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) High Temperature Gas Reactor Thermal-Hydraulics (HTGR T/H) benchmark that allows for better comparisons of results between different international modeling teams. The benchmark provides well defined computational problems that include code-to-code comparisons and comparisons to measured data. These problems provide an avenue for quantifying accuracy and identifying sources of uncertainty in thermal-hydraulics calculations, including in measured thermophysical properties, as part of validation for gas-cooled reactor simulation tools.
This report describes the results of PSCAD simulations that were performed in 2020 to assess the impacts of PacWave generation on CLPUD's 12.47-kV distribution and 69-kV subtransmission systems. PacWave South (PacWave) is a wave energy test facility planned by Oregon State University. PacWave shore facilities will be located south of Seal Rock on the Oregon coast. PacWave is expected to be operational in 2022 and will connect up to 10 MW of generation to CLPUD's Seal Rock distribution feeder.
The 2024 IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference is the biennial meeting on genomics, molecular biology, and biotechnology of forest trees, associated with the IUFRO Working Party 2.04.06. This year's meeting was held in Annapolis, MD, USA from August 4th to 8th and was hosted by Yiping Qi (University of Maryland), Edward Eisenstein (University of Maryland), Gary Coleman (University of Maryland), and Heather Coleman (Syracuse University). The conference covered seven topics over the course of five days: 1) Biological and ecological insights from OMICS, 2) Advancing technologies for targeted trait manipulation and acceptability to diverse tree species, 3) Genes, development, and physiology, 4) Translating genomics and biotechnology to practice, 5) Trees in a changing world, 6) Genetic and phenotypic diversity for breeding and genomic selection, and 7) Biotechnology for biomaterials and bioeconomy. In addition to the sessions, there were two plenary sessions, provided by John Ralph (University of Wisconsin) and Tanja Pyrhäjärvi (University of Helsinki). The meeting celebrated the second awardees of the newly created IUFRO WG 2.04.06 Award: Excellence in Forest Molecular Biology and Genomics, which was presented to Chung-Jui (C.J.) Tsai (University of Georgia). Greg Goralogia (Oregon State University) was the recipient of the associated Early Career Award. The scientific presentations at the conference highlighted cutting-edge advancements in many facets of forest biotechnology research, including applications of genomic selection in forest genetics and breeding, the use of genetic editing, tree physiology, stress response, molecular breeding, wood development, "omics" technologies, and the social and economic impacts of genetically modified (GM) trees. Scientific take homes from the meeting include the power of NMR to dissect the composition of lignin, the genomic diversity of forest trees that has enormous potential for tree improvement and the integration of systems biology with climate and geographical data. The conference attracted a mix of students (25), postdoctoral fellows (32), and scientists from academia (66) and industry (18). In all, the conference was attended by 141 registered participants, representing 20 countries that participated in 23 invited lectures (including 6 'early-career' keynotes), 27 voluntary talks and 61 poster presentations. Support for the conference was drawn from a wide variety of Academia, Industry, and Government sources, and included financial support from several tree improvement companies. Overall, the conference was a great success, providing an exceptional mix of science and social activities in a relaxed and collegial atmosphere. More information about the meeting can be found at treebiotech.org. The next meeting will be held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in 2026, hosted jointly by Zander Myburg, Dave Drew (University of Stellenbosch,) and Sanushka Naidoo (University of Pretoria, FABI).
The Laboratory Upgrade Point Absorber (LUPA) is an open-source wave energy converter designed and tested by Oregon State University. The computer-aided design (CAD) files are provided here in two forms: the original SOLIDWORKS (2021) model as "LUPA SOLIDWORKS.zip" and as a STEP file "LUPA-A1000.step". The bill of materials is provided as an Excel file with assemblies (LUPA-Axxx), part numbers (LUPA-Axxx-Pyyy), part descriptions, manufacturers, and manufacturer part numbers. This comprehensive CAD model represents LUPA as it was deployed in Fall 2022 testing at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory. The mass properties including mass, center of gravity, and moments of inertia have been overridden for some parts and assemblies to match the physical device properties as determined from experiments. This appears as "overridden by user" when viewing mass properties in SOLIDWORKS. The LUPA-A1000.SLDASM file from the LUPA SOLIDWORKS.zip folder is the topmost assembly, open this file to see the entire model as one assembly. See "PMEC Page", "OpenEI Wiki Page", and the "Signature Project Page" resources below for more information on LUPA.
Abstract Many industrial separations of chemically‐similar elements are achieved by solvent extraction, exploiting differences in speciation and solubility across aqueous‐organic interfaces. We recently identified [OM 4 (OH) 6 (SCN) 12 ] 4− (OM 4 , M=Zr/Hf IV ) tetrahedral oxoclusters as the main species in industrial processes that produce nuclear‐grade Zr and Hf from crude ore. However, isostructural/isoelectronic OM 4 ‐oxoclusters do not explain selective extraction of Hf into the organic phase. Here we have characterized heterometal Hf−Zr clusters in solution and the solid‐state yielding key information about their fundamentally different chemistry that engenders separation. Clusters prepared with both ammonium (industrial process) and tetramethylammonium counter cations revealed that 1) heterometal clusters (instead of a mixture of homometal clusters) assemble, and 2) Hf‐rich OM 4 selectively precipitates over Zr‐rich OM 4 , providing a separation process that does not require an organic extractant. Mass spectrometry, small‐angle X‐ray scattering, solution‐state 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, and solid‐state 17 O NMR evidence both mixed‐metal speciation and selective Hf‐precipitation. Raman spectroscopy suggests greater Zr‐ligand lability than Hf‐ligand lability, consistent with higher aqueous solubility of Zr‐rich clusters, enabling both extraction and precipitation‐based separation. Fundamentally, we also identify a key difference between these chemically similar elements that has enabled diversification of Zr‐polyoxocation chemistry over the last decade, while Hf‐polyoxocation chemistry lags.
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