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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 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Crossing the Barriers: An Analysis of Land Access Barriers to Geothermal Development and Potential Improvement Scenarios

Developers have identified many non-technical barriers to geothermal power development, including access to land. Activities required for accessing land, such as environmental review and private and public leasing can take a considerable amount of time and can delay or prevent project development. This paper discusses the impacts to available geothermal resources and deployment caused by land access challenges, including tribal and cultural resources, environmentally sensitive areas, biological resources, land ownership, federal and state lease queues, and proximity to military installations. In this analysis, we identified challenges that have the potential to prevent development of identified and undiscovered hydrothermal geothermal resources. We found that an estimated 400 MW of identified geothermal resource potential and 4,000 MW of undiscovered geothermal resource potential were either unallowed for development or contained one or more significant barriers that could prevent development at the site. Potential improvement scenarios that could be employed to overcome these barriers include (1) providing continuous funding to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) for processing geothermal leases and permit applications and (2) the creation of advanced environmental mitigation measures. The model results forecast that continuous funding to the USFS could result in deployment of an additional 80 MW of geothermal capacity by 2030 and 124 MW of geothermal capacity by 2050 when compared to the business-as-usual scenario. The creation of advanced environmental mitigation measures coupled with continuous funding to the USFS could result in deployment of an additional 97 MW of geothermal capacity by 2030 and 152 MW of geothermal capacity by 2050 when compared to the business-as-usual scenario. The small impact on potential deployment in these improvement scenarios suggests that these 4,400 MW have other barriers to development in addition to land access. In other words, simply making more resources available for development does not increase deployment; however, impacts to deployment could increase when coupled with other improvements (e.g., permitting, market and/or technology improvements).

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2018

DRILL Interface Makes Ion Soft Landing Broadly Accessible for Energy Science and Applications

Polyoxometalates (POM) have been deposited onto carbon nanotube (CNT) electrodes using benchtop ion soft landing (SL) enabled by a vortex-confined electrohydrodynamic desolvation process. The device is based on the dry ion localization and locomotion (DRILL) mass spectrometry interface of Fedorov and co-workers. By adding electrospray emitters, heating the desolvation gas, and operating at high gas flow rates, it is possible to obtain stable ion currents up to -15 nA that are ideal for deposition. Coupled with ambient ion optics, this interface enables desolvated ions to be delivered to surfaces while excluding solvent and counterions. Electron microscopy of surfaces prepared using the device reveal discrete POM and no aggregation that degrades electrode performance. Characterization of POM-coated CNT electrodes in a supercapacitor showed an energy storage capacity similar to that achieved with SL in vacuum. For solutions that produce primarily a single ion by electrospray ionization, benchtop SL offers a simpler and less costly approach for surface modification with applications in catalysis, energy storage, and beyond.

Johnson, Grant E.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Global Landing Site Access Using Atmospheric Skip Trajectories

Mars direct entry, without going into orbit, does not provide global access to all landing site latitudes. Latitudes accessible via direct entry trajectories consist of a ring around the backside of the planet, centered about V infinity. Landing sites outside this ring can be achieved using a modified approach trajectory entering the atmosphere over the South Pole "aerocapture fashion" that will skip out to an altitude above the atmosphere and then re-enter the atmosphere a second time and continue to toward the North Pole. The first aerocapture maneuver is aligned to provide an exit orbit that contains the desired landing site with an apoapsis computed to provide proper ranging for the second entry. A powered maneuver is utilized during the exoatmospheric phase to remove altitude and flight path deviations due to uncertainties in the atmosphere occurring during the first entry. Three guidance schemes are required for global landing site access analysis. Aerocapture guidance was used for the first atmospheric entry, Shuttle Powered Explicit Guidance was used for the exoatmospheric maneuver, and Apollo Derived Entry Guidance was used for the second atmospheric entry. An altimeter to update the onboard navigation state after the first atmospheric entry, was required to remove accumulated deadreckoning navigation errors and achieve reasonable range errors at chute deploy.

Bryant, Lee↗
NASA NTRS2019

Hybrid Transportation System Integrated Trajectory Design and Optimization for Mars Landing Site Accessibility

NASA’s Mars Study Capability Team continues the agency’s efforts to study and refine the nation’s plan to field a sustainable human Mars campaign. One of the primary open issues left unanswered during previous analysis cycles was the uncertainty of the impact to the vehicle performance requirement to deliver crew and cargo to the same landing site across multiple mission opportunities. The Mars Study Capability Team has recently developed an integrated trajectory optimization and system closure model to solve the complex interplanetary trajectory optimization using both low-thrust and high-thrust maneuvers. This paper demonstrates the capability of this new integrated trajectory design and optimization method as it applies to the landing site accessibility problem for the Hybrid transportation architecture. The results showed that the current vehicle is capable of reaching up to +20 degree latitude and down to -20 degree latitude in every mission opportunity from 2033 to 2052. However, reaching latitudes beyond +/- 20 required more propellant than the spacecraft is currently designed to carry for many of the mission opportunities.

Chai, Patrick R.↗
DOE OSTI2015

GeoVision - Barriers Taskforce

This submission includes papers, presentations, and data developed during the multi-year GeoVision Barriers Taskforce effort. Developers have identified many non-technical barriers to geothermal power development, including land access, permitting, and market barriers. Included in this submission are three papers submitted to the Geothermal Resources Council (GRC) which detail how land access, permitting, and market barriers delay geothermal project development. Also included is the GeoVision Barriers Analysis Summary report, which projects and quantifies the future electric and nonelectric deployment potentials of geothermal technologies within a range of scenarios in addition to their impacts on U.S. jobs, the economy, and environment.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

GeoRePORT Protocol Volume V: International Socioeconomic Assessment Tool

The GeoRePORT International Socioeconomic Assessment Tool provides guidance on how to complete the GeoRePORT Excel-based input spreadsheet. The GeoRePORT Socioeconomic Assessment Tool is designed to report land access, permitting, market, and transmission favorability for geothermal projects.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS2000

Dam Failure Inundation Map Project

At the end of the first year, we remain on schedule. Property owners were identified and contacted for land access purposes. A prototype software package has been completed and was demonstrated to the Division of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), National Weather Service (NWS) and Pacific Disaster Center (PDC). A field crew gathered data and surveyed the areas surrounding two dams in Waimea. (A field report is included in the annual report.) Data sensitivity analysis was initiated and completed. A user's manual has been completed. Beta testing of the software was initiated, but not completed. The initial TNK and property owner data collection for the additional test sites on Oahu and Kauai have been initiated.

Johnson, Carl↗
DOE OSTI2025

Unlocking nighttime mobility: Land use and accessibility in public transit for night commuters

Night commuters are integral to urban transportation systems. Essential services such as healthcare and manufacturing rely on workers who travel at night, and reliable mobility options are crucial for them. A gap exists in understanding how land use and accessibility influence public transportation use among night commuters. This study addresses this gap by using public data to explore land use and accessibility factors that affect night commuters' public transportation use in New York State. We investigated (1) the demographic characteristics of night commuters; (2) the influence of land use and accessibility on nighttime public transportation use; and (3) potential improvements to increase public transportation use and their impact. We combined data from the National Household Travel Survey with the Smart Location Database to link home locations with land use characteristics. Using logistic regression, we found that although females are generally less likely to be night commuters, they are more likely to use public transportation. Longer commute distances are associated with higher use of public transportation. Increasing job density along fixed-guideway transit routes and improving overall job accessibility via public transportation significantly enhances public transportation use among night commuters. In conclusion, this research provides actionable insights for public transportation agencies and urban planners to support night commuters, improving access and encouraging nighttime employment.

Job accessibility↗
DOE OSTI2021

Oilwell Conversion (Well API 121913310501) to Geothermal Heat Storage Well for Flexible Electricity Storage

Geothermal growth is limited by a lack of geographically dispersed high-temperature thermal resources and high initial upfront investment in characterization and well construction. This project intended to address the challenges of energy supply intermittency and enhance grid resilience, reliability, and energy security by storing energy provided from currently available renewable resources in the subsurface to harvest it a later time during at-peak energy demand. This project intended to improve geothermal adoption, reduce initial project risk, and improve price competitiveness through utilizing existing oil and gas infrastructure such as non-productive wells, non-economic fields, dry holes, and orphaned wells. The project also intended to address the lack of geographically dispersed thermal resources and enhance grid resilience, reliability, and energy security by introducing an economical method for storing energy from currently available renewable resources in the subsurface for usage during at-peak energy demand. During this research, the project furthered the understanding of the feasibility of utilizing abandoned oil and gas wells as geothermal heat storage wells. The project team investigated the heat storage and hydrogeological characteristics of subsurface reservoirs in the Illinois Basin to evaluate their response to heat injection for determining the evolution of temperature profiles and heat losses over time using existing and available data sets. The project team then performed modeling and simulation to evaluate the heat losses of returning fluids during heat extraction. The outputs were used to select an optimal candidate reservoir and location in Southern Illinois. The team designed and performed a small-scale field test in an existing oil well to refine the model and to demonstrate the permitting and regulatory pathways necessary for the conversion of oil and gas assets to geothermal use. The field test also serves as a proof of concept and can guide the procedures for future research and implementation. Additionally, the project team, conducted initial market research and customer discovery to develop a go to market strategy for an Advanced Geothermal Energy Storage (AGES) system. The project team in this research also identified the parameters to be refined in future research, to improve the current go to market strategy economic model. To this end several subject matter experts were also identified to assist in future research with geothermal infrastructure setup, energy storage policy and law, energy storage market demand, potential siting based on demand etc. Future research will involve further sophistication of the site commercial modeling, implementing a larger-scale test, and further refinement of the thermodynamic modeling/simulation process. The output will be lifecycle costs and economics suitable for comparison to alternative approaches from a validated full-scale demonstration for venture capital investment into this technology. The project successfully demonstrated the ability to leverage existing oilfield infrastructure, permits, and land access and leasing agreements, to enable geothermal storage projects to come online faster and cheaper than a greenfield development could. This technology could allow for greater energy independence and security through long-term energy storage solutions. The longer duration allows for greater storage for renewables currently limited by hours-long storage durations of lithium-ion. The AGES system would support the growth of renewable energy farms, and provide greater opportunities for a cleaner energy infrastructure.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Dataset for report: Non-Technical Barriers to Geothermal Development in California and Nevada

In California and Nevada, geothermal projects are subject to non-technical barriers, which may create development delays leading to higher project costs and risks and decreased competitiveness with other electricity generation technologies. These non-technical barriers may include federal and state permits, authorizations, environmental reviews, and other regulatory requirements that are applicable throughout different phases of geothermal project development. The 2022 National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) report, "Non-Technical Barriers to Geothermal Development in California and Nevada" presents findings of a study on non-technical barriers that may influence geothermal project development. The set of data resources relied upon for the report includes: 1) interviews conducted with relevant geothermal stakeholders including regulators and project developers, 2) federal and state environmental review documents developed for specific projects, 3) a techno-economic analysis conducted using the NREL Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) framework, and 4) an analysis of the impacts of site-specific land access and permitting considerations on project development readiness conducted using the Geothermal Resource Portfolio Optimization and Reporting Technique (GeoRePORT) Socioeconomic Assessment Tool (SEAT).

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

GeoRePORT Protocol Volume IV: Socioeconomic Assessment Tool

The GeoRePORT Socioeconomic Assessment Tool provides guidance on how to complete the GeoRePORT Excel-based input spreadsheet. The GeoRePORT Socioeconomic Assessment Tool is designed to report land access, permitting, market, and transmission favorability for geothermal projects.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1976

Technology and politics: The regional airport experience

The findings of a comparative study of the following six regional airports were presented: Dallas/Fort Worth, Kansas City, Washington, D.C., Montreal, Tampa, and St. Louis. Each case was approached as a unique historical entity, in order to investigate common elements such as: the use of predictive models in planning, the role of symbolism to heighten dramatic effects, the roles of community and professional elites, and design flexibility. Some of the factors considered were: site selection, consolidation of airline service, accessibility, land availability and cost, safety, nuisance, and pollution constraints, economic growth, expectation of regional growth, the demand forecasting conundrum, and design decisions. The hypotheses developed include the following: the effect of political, social, and economic conflicts, the stress on large capacity and dramatic, high-technology design, projections of rapid growth to explain the need for large capital outlays.

Starling, J. D.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Deployable Entry Vehicles for Future Science and Exploration Missions

Deployable Entry Vehicle (DEV) technology has made significant advances over the last decade with ground test development campaigns and flight test demonstrations. DEVs offer benefits over traditional rigid entry vehicles including lower volume and mass, while enabling larger payload delivery and greater landing access. A crucial mission benefit is the DEV capability to transform from a compactly stowed configuration within the launch vehicle to a high drag area entry system for delivery of landers, rovers, aerial platforms, and orbiters (via aerocapture). These benefits span the range of mission classes from Small Satellite (smallsat) to human-class exploration systems. This paper will describe DEV technology development status, highlight mission concepts, and recommend future investments.

Alan Cassell↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Deployable Entry Vehicles for Future Science and Exploration Missions

Deployable Entry Vehicle (DEV) technology has made significant advances over the last decade with ground test development campaigns and flight test demonstrations. DEVs offer benefits over traditional rigid entry vehicles including lower volume and mass, while enabling larger payload delivery and greater landing access. A crucial mission benefit is the DEV capability to transform from a compactly stowed launch configuration to a high drag area entry system for delivery of landers, rovers, aerial platforms, and orbiters (via aerocapture). These benefits span the range of mission classes from Small Satellite to human-class exploration systems. This presentation will describe DEV technology development status, highlight mission concepts, and recommend future investments.

Mission Design↗
DOE OSTI2016

Technical Feasibility Aspects of the Geothermal Resource Reporting Methodology (GRRM)

This paper reviews the technical assessment of the Geothermal Research Reporting Methodology (GRRM, http://en.openei.org/wiki/GRRM) being developed for reporting geothermal resources and project progress. The goal of the methodology is to provide the U.S. Department of Energy's Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) with a consistent and comprehensible means of evaluating the impacts of its funding programs. The GRRM is designed to provide uniform assessment criteria for geothermal resource grades and developmental phases of geothermal resource exploration and development. This resource grade system provides information on twelve attributes of geothermal resource locations (e.g., temperature, permeability, land access) to indicate potential for geothermal development. The GTO plans to use these Protocols to help quantitatively identify the greatest barriers to geothermal development, develop measureable program goals that will have the greatest impact to geothermal deployment, objectively evaluate proposals based (in part) on a project's ability to contribute to program goals, monitor project progress, and report on GTO portfolio performance. The GRRM assesses three areas of geothermal potential: geological, socio-economic, and technical. Previous work and publications have discussed the work done on the geological aspects of this methodology (Young et al. 2015c); this paper details the development of the technical assessment of the GRRM. Technical development attributes considered include: reservoir management, drilling, logistics, and power conversion.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Deep Learning for Modeling Enhanced Geothermal Systems

Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) offer a vast potential to expand the use of geothermal energy. Heat is extracted from this engineered system by injecting cold water into a subsurface fractures, which are in contact with the hot dry rock, and pulled through the production wells. Creating EGS requires improving the natural permeability of hot crystalline rocks. To develop economically viable EGS reservoirs, significant technical barriers (e.g., better stimulation technologies without adequate water and/or permeability) and non-technical barriers (e.g., land access and permitting) must be overcome. In this short conference paper, we present a workflow to address a part of this challenge – “How to develop economically viable EGS using existing technologies?”. Our workflow called the GeoThermalCloud (GTC) for EGS, leverages recent advances in machine learning, deep learning, and cloud computing. This GTC framework is open-source and available at https://github.com/SmartTensors/GeoThermalCloud.jl. The GTC framework provides trained deep learning (DL) models to estimate the net present value of a given EGS design scenario. The Geothermal Design Tool (https://github.com/GeoDesignTool/GeoDT.git), a fast and simplified multi-physics solver, is used to develop a database for training DL models. The database consists of EGS design parameters (inputs to DL model) and their net present value (output of DL model) in uncertain geologic systems. The EGS design parameters for constructing this training database are based on Utah FORGE but include the options of more wells and deeper depths. The DL models are trained by ingesting the EGS design parameters and estimating the corresponding net present value. Such an emulation allows us to screen various EGS designs quickly and identify good development strategies by coupling them with optimization techniques. Our preliminary results show promise in DL emulation of net present value. However, a lot more work is needed to improve the predictive capability of DL models (i.e., extensive hyperparameter tuning is necessary). This will be the primary focus of our future work.

artificial neural networks, geothermal↗