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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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pyQuARC: Open Source Library for Earth Observation Metadata Quality Assessment

Metadata quality is essential to effective data discovery and has become increasingly vital as more Earth Science data sets become available. The Common Metadata Repository (CMR) hosts metadata describing NASA’s Earth Observation data products, which are archived across 12 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs). The Analysis and Review of CMR (ARC) Team, located at Marshall Space Flight Center, conducts metadata quality assessments to ensure that these data products are discoverable, accessible, and usable. To achieve these goals, the ARC team has developed a metadata quality assessment framework to evaluate metadata completeness, correctness, and consistency. ARC uses a combination of manual and automated methods to assess these three components and identify areas of improvement; the team then collaborates with the DAACs to resolve any findings. To streamline this process, ARC is currently developing a host of scripts, known as pyQuARC, to automate metadata quality assessments as much as possible. pyQuARC is an open source library for Earth Observation Metadata Quality Assessment, and the tool utilizes ARC’s metadata quality assessment framework to make basic validation checks, pinpoint inconsistencies between dataset-level (i.e. collection) and file-level (i.e. granule) metadata, and identify opportunities for more descriptive and robust information. Since pyQuARC is also customizable, other users can make modifications as needed, and future metadata standards can also be implemented. Once pyQuARC is fully developed, it will support multiple schema types to serve the broader EOSDIS metadata community. This presentation will provide an overview of pyQuARC and its process of development while showcasing the tool’s valuable features and uses.

Jenny Wood↗

Volcanic Field Sites for Artemis Testing and Training

The Artemis Program will reestablish human presence on the Moon and lead to a new era of scientific discovery and exploration. Led by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Artemis Program is a collaboration of space agencies and companies around the world. An integrated effort between various disciplines of science, engineering, and mission operations is currently developing methods, facilities, and analog field locations to train astronauts and test hardware and concepts of operations. These efforts aim to best prepare for the next steps of human exploration on the lunar surface and beyond. Numerous terrestrial volcanic field sites were evaluated and selected for their unique roles in helping to prepare for the lunar surface mission phases. This effort heavily leveraged the comprehensive academic research conducted at these field sites, as well as the tremendous Apollo heritage. The currently selected volcanic field sites include the San Francisco Volcanic Field in Northern Arizona, the Potrillo Volcanic Field in southern New Mexico, the highlands of Iceland, and the Southwestern Nevada Volcanic Field. Within each of these volcanic field sites numerous specific testing and training locations are being further developed utilizing the analogous terrain and unique features in these regions. Recent Artemis testing and training events have been conducted at a number of these volcanic field sites by both a dedicated Artemis Geology Training Team and a Joint Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) Testing Team. This presentation will highlight the selected sites as well as the objectives and accomplishments of some of the recent field-testing events and training courses. Additionally, we continually strive to pursue additional sites, locations, data sets, collaborations, and partnerships in this endeavor and welcome knowledge transfer and community input.

Trevor Graff↗

Imbalanced Multi-layer Cloud Classification with Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and CloudSat/CALIPSO Data

Clouds at different altitudes play different roles in Earth’s climate. Comprehensive understanding of overlapping clouds is important for climate and weather prediction. The East Pacific region is where El Ni˜no and La Ni˜na originate and where multi-layer clouds frequently occur. The overlap of clouds at different altitudes in this region increases the classification complexity for cloud-based climatological studies. Unlike prior work in cloud layer classification that assumes single layer or two-layer of clouds, in this work, we consider multi-layer cloud classification with 8 cloud-level classes (clear-sky, high, middle, low, high+middle, high+low, middle+low, high+middle+low). We develop and analyze machine learning models on features extracted from satellite images from the East Pacific regions collected by GOES Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). These are used to classify CloudSat/CALIPSO observed multi-layer clouds. Due to the imbalanced nature of the data, we investigate the adoption of conventional resampling methods, as well as deep learning methods with data augmentation. In our experiments, we utilize the random forest classifier and Multilayer perceptron classifier with data augmentation methods to reduce the class imbalance during training. With these approaches, we achieve a classification accuracy of 83.6% without exploiting any ancillary information.

machine learning↗

Effects of Multisensory Virtual Reality Nature on Affect, Presence, and Restorativeness

Virtual reality (VR) can provide access to restorative environments and sensory stimulation for individuals in isolated, confined, and extreme environments. We developed a nature-based VR intervention featuring three scenes (Garden, Forest, Beach) and examined the effects of multisensory augmentation with location-based olfactory, wind, and thermal stimuli (VR+OWT). Over a two-week period, fifty-one participants were assigned to a no-intervention control, standard audiovisual VR, or augmented VR (VR+OWT) condition. Data collection included weekly assessments of affect, stress, and cognitive performance; post-VR measures of affect, presence, and perceived restorativeness; and open-ended feedback. Both VR and VR+OWT groups produced immediate and sustained reductions in negative affect with no sustained systematic benefits on cognitive performance. The addition of olfactory, wind, and thermal stimuli enhanced presence for some scenes; however, feedback indicated that sensory mismatches and stimulus intensity occasionally detracted from the experience and may have contributed to lower coherence ratings in the VR+OWT group. In contrast, the perceived restorativeness of the VR environment was driven primarily by scene content (Garden vs Forest vs Beach) rather than the level of sensory stimulation. These findings support the potential of virtual nature to promote well-being and underscore the importance of coherence across sensory modalities for multisensory augmentation.

Virtual Reality Intervention↗

Top Ten Interaction Challenges in Extreme-Scale Visual Analytics

The chapter presents ten selected user interfaces and interaction challenges in extreme-scale visual analytics. The study of visual analytics is often referred to as 'the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces' in the literature. The discussion focuses on the issues of applying visual analytics technologies to extreme-scale scientific and non-scientific data ranging from petabyte to exabyte in sizes. The ten challenges are: in situ interactive analysis, user-driven data reduction, scalability and multi-level hierarchy, representation of evidence and uncertainty, heterogeneous data fusion, data summarization and triage for interactive query, analytics of temporally evolving features, the human bottleneck, design and engineering development, and the Renaissance of conventional wisdom. The discussion addresses concerns that arise from different areas of hardware, software, computation, algorithms, and human factors. The chapter also evaluates the likelihood of success in meeting these challenges in the near future.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Summary of Fermilab's Recycler Electron Cooler Operation and Studies

Fermilab's Recycler ring was used as a storage ring for accumulation and subsequent manipulations of 8 GeV antiprotons destined for the Tevatron collider. To satisfy these missions, a unique electron cooling system was designed, developed and successfully implemented. The most important features that distinguish the Recycler cooler from other existing electron coolers are its relativistic energy, 4.3 MV combined with 0.1-0.5 A DC beam current, a weak continuous longitudinal magnetic field in the cooling section, 100 G, and lumped focusing elsewhere. With the termination of the Tevatron collider operation, so did the cooler. In this article, we summarize the experience of running this unique machine.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

FOCUSing on Innovative Solar Technologies

Many of ARPA-E’s technology programs seek to break down silos and build new technological communities around a specific energy challenge. In this video, ARPA-E’s Deputy Director for Technology Eric Rohlfing, discusses how the Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS) program is bringing together the photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) communities to develop hybrid solar energy systems. This video features interviews with innovators from the FOCUS project team made up by Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, and showcases how the FOCUS program is combining.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

The Hybrid Toolkit

The Hybrid Toolkit facilitates moving research algorithms into a production environment by creating useful abstractions that separate analytics developers from the intricacies of the production data formats, data flows, and result representations. The toolkit also assists developers with activities such as creating analysis feature vectors, converting between data structures, and creating data pipelines.

Davis IV, Warren L↗

Simulation-Based Design and Optimization of Waste Heat Recovery Systems

This fact sheet features an R&D project that will develop a modeling platform that can quantify the value of a district energy system and its potential for waste heat recovery. The new software analysis platform will evaluate and optimize district energy systems to better utilize low-temperature waste heat from nearby commercial and industrial buildings. The platform will help project developers and engineers easily quantify the potential value and cost savings of community energy systems for both producers and consumers of waste heat.

Combined heat and power, CHP, District energy, Was↗

Enhanced Air-Cooling System with Optimized Asynchronously-Cooled Thermal Energy Storage

A transformative dry-cooling system that includes two primary dry-cooling components has been developed in this project. The two main features of this new technology consist of: (a) an ultra-enhanced air-cooled condenser (ACC), with novel swirl-producing and boundary-layer disrupting enhanced surface on the air-side of the condenser that substantially increase the heat transfer coefficients, and (b) a novel daytime peak-load shifting system that reduces the ambient air inlet temperature for air cooling, consisting of a highly compact and enhanced air pre-cooler that transfers the heat load to a unique thermal energy storage (TES), and which is coupled to the ACC in (a).

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗

User Friendly Web-Based Tool to Assess the Energy Efficiency and Durability of Residential Wall Retrofits

According to the U.S. Department of Energy Windows and Building Envelope Research and Development Roadmap for Emerging Technologies, building envelope wall energy loss in the United States accounts for about 5.9 x 1010 kWh or 2 quads of energy annually, costing homeowners and occupants billions of dollars. Enclosure retrofits targeting these losses can save significant energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and save occupants millions of dollars over time. Older homes, built before 1992 when DOE’s Building Energy Codes Program was established, represent approximately 68 percent of the residential building stock in the country, often having significant air leakage and inadequate insulation. Homes with little to no air sealing or insulation have heating and cooling losses that can represent a substantial portion of utility bills.High-performance building envelope retrofit systems are rarely selected for retrofit applications. Current solutions are expensive and/or unfamiliar to many designers, builders, contractors, and code officials and therefore are perceived as risky. The dominant perceived risk is durability specifically related to condensation and moisture accumulation in the building envelope component.The Building Science Advisor (BSA) is a rule-based expert system web-based tool that was originally developed to assist building professionals in designing energy efficient and durable wall systems for new construction. With the present focus being placed on upgrading the existing building stock, a retrofit module has been developed that, based on the location, existing construction, and planned retrofit strategy, provides recommendations on how to address the retrofit in a manner that will perform in accordance with IECC 2018 building code and not create a durability problem. This paper will describe the development of this tool and demonstrate its features and capabilities.

Desjarlais, Andre Omer↗

Probabilistic Performance Assessment for Deep Borehole Disposal of Cs/Sr Capsules - 17143

The US Department of Energy (DOE) performed an assessment of disposal options for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) that recommended the consideration of deep borehole disposal (DBD) of smaller DOE-managed waste forms, such as cesium (Cs) and strontium (Sr) capsules. To further assess the safety and viability of the DBD concept, post-closure performance assessment (PA) analyses were performed for DBD of Cs/Sr capsules. The post-closure PA included a reference design concept for Cs/Sr capsule disposal, feature, event, and process (FEP) analysis, scenario development, and modeling using the PFLOTRAN code. PA simulations were run for both nominal and disturbed scenarios for long-term radionuclide transport away from the deep disposal borehole. The nominal (expected) post-closure release scenario included FEPs for short-duration (a few hundred years) thermally-induced upward fluid flux through the borehole seals and/or disturbed rock zone (DRZ) followed by longer-term slow diffusive transport. Simulations included a baseline deterministic run and a set of probabilistic realizations (using Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) from parameter distributions) to examine the sensitivity and importance of the long-term radionuclide transport to processes and parameters such as: waste package durability; seal porosity and permeability, disturbed rock zone (DRZ) porosity and permeability; and radionuclide sorption in the seal materials, DRZ, and crystalline host rock. The disturbed scenario included a waste package 'stuck' in the crystalline basement above the emplacement zone near a hypothetical borehole-intersecting fracture. Simulations included two deterministic runs to examine the sensitivity to the regional head gradient. The nominal and disturbed scenario PA results suggest that a favorable safety case can be developed for DBD of Cs/Sr capsules and helped to identify key areas of uncertainty, which in turn can inform future DBD research and development (R and D) activities, including a field demonstration project. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Resolution of Technical Issues at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant Pretreatment Facility - 17281

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) Pretreatment (PT) Facility has a number of first-of-a-kind technical challenges that have required additional expert analysis and testing activities to resolve. In 2006, an External Flowsheet Review Team identified 28 technical vulnerabilities with the plant design or future operability. Over a period of three months starting in September 2012, a number of top scientists and engineers conducted a review of the major technical issues associated with the design and operability of the WTP. These experts also provided independent advice on some of the broader challenges associated with completing the Hanford tank waste mission - highlighting the linkage between the physical and chemical properties of the tank waste and the PT Facility technical issues. In 2012 and early 2013, DOE's Office of River Protection (ORP) directed the WTP contractor to suspend production work on the PT Facility until the outstanding technical issues could be resolved and the nuclear safety basis could be updated and brought into alignment with any updates to the facility design and/or process flowsheet. By late 2016, DOE and the WTP contractor resolved three of the eight outstanding technical issues: - (T1) Hydrogen Gas in Vessels; - (T2) Criticality in PT Facility Vessels; - (T3) Hydrogen in Piping and Ancillary Vessels (HPAV). Resolving all three of these issues required a combination of engineering studies and updates to foundational PT Facility safety basis documents to ensure both the design features and safety control strategies were adequately developed and fully supportable. The five remaining unresolved technical issues are Pulse-Jet Mixing (PJM) of Vessels (T4), Erosion and Corrosion in WTP Vessels and Piping (T5), PT Facility Optimization (T6), Black Cell Vessel Structural Integrity (T7), and Facility Ventilation (T8). Specific plans for resolving each of the five remaining technical issues have been developed by the WTP contractor. This paper provides a synopsis of the status of PT Facility technical issue resolution, and how resolution of the issues will enable DOE to make an informed decision to establish a new performance baseline for the PT Facility at a future date. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Integrated Urban Services: Program Impact and Business Plan Summary

The Integrated Urban Services (IUS) program, launched in 2021 and funded by the U.S. State Department under the United States-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (US-ASEAN) Smart Cities Partnership, aimed to bolster resilience in ASEAN cities by addressing challenges across food, energy, and water systems. Led by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) with support from Regenerative Impact Ventures, the program focused on demonstrating the socio-economic benefits of integrated urban planning, educating stakeholders on circular economy principles, providing technical assistance to two ASEAN cities, and attracting private sector involvement. The program facilitated peer learning events, engaging public and private sector participants and leveraging knowledge from a group of global experts to inform approaches and best practices. Technical assistance was provided to two pilot cities, Iskandar Malaysia and Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, resulting in the development of market-driven business plans for resilient, circular, and regenerative energy-water-food system projects. The Iskandar Malaysia pilot focused on development of a state-of-the-art AgriTech Innovation Hub and Modern Farming Complex to enhance agricultural productivity and produce enough renewable energy to power the facilities. The Cagayan de Oro project aimed to enhance urban agricultural productivity and waste management through development of an Urban Precision Agricultural Complex featuring aeroponics, hydroponics, aquaponics, agrivoltaics, and a Black Solider Fly Facility for converting municipal solid waste into commodities. The success of the IUS program sets a precedent for replicating integrated urban service models globally, offering valuable insights for cities aiming to enhance their resilience and sustainability.

ASEAN↗

Caffeine: CoArray Fortran Framework of Efficient Interfaces to Network Environments

This paper provides an introduction to the CoArray Fortran Framework of Efficient Interfaces to Network Environments (Caffeine), a parallel runtime library built atop the GASNet-EX exascale networking library. Caffeine leverages several non-parallel Fortran features to write type- and rank-agnostic interfaces and corresponding procedure definitions that support parallel Fortran 2018 features, including communication, collective operations, and related services. One major goal is to develop a runtime library that can eventually be considered for adoption by LLVM Flang, enabling that compiler to support the parallel features of Fortran. The paper describes the motivations behind Caffeine's design and implementation decisions, details the current state of Caffeine's development, and previews future work. We explain how the design and implementation offer benefits related to software sustainability by lowering the barrier to user contributions, reducing complexity through the use of Fortran 2018 C-interoperability features, and high performance through the use of a lightweight communication substrate.

Rouson, Damian↗

Accurately constituting robust interfaces for high-performance high-energy lithium metal batteries

High-energy lithium metal batteries (LMBs) have received ever-increasing interest. Among them, coupling lithium metal (Li) with nickel-rich material, LiNi x Mn y Co z O 2 (NMCs, x ≥ 0.6, x + y + z = 1), is promising because Li anodes enable an extremely high capacity (∼3860 mA h g −1 ) and the lowest redox potential (−3.04 V vs. standard hydrogen electrode), while NMCs can achieve a much higher capacity of ∼200 mA h g −1 and lower cost than those of LiCoO 2 . However, the resultant Li‖NMC cells have been hindered from commercialization due to a series of challenges related to the interface stability of both Li anodes and NMC cathodes. Specifically, Li anodes suffer from Li dendritic growth and the formation of solid electrolyte interphase (SEI), while NMC cathodes suffer from the formation of cathode electrolyte interphase (CEI) and other interface-related issues, including transition metal dissolution, oxygen release, cracking, and so on. To tackle these issues, recently, two sister techniques, atomic and molecular layer deposition (ALD and MLD), have emerged and exhibit tremendous capabilities to accurately constitute robust interfaces to achieve high-performance Li‖NMC LMBs. They can uniquely develop uniform and conformal films as surface coatings of LMBs in a precisely controllable mode at the atomic/molecular level, while proceeding with film deposition at low temperatures (e.g., ≤250 °C). In this Feature Article, we review the latest research progress in developing novel surface coatings via ALD and MLD for Li‖NMC LMBs and discuss outcomes for pursuing high performance.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

The National Carbon Capture Center at the Power Systems Development Facility

The Power Systems Development Facility (PSDF) is a state-of-the-art test center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and dedicated to the advancement of clean coal technology. In addition to the development of high efficiency coal gasification processes, the PSDF features the National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) to promote new technologies for CO2 capture from coal-derived flue gas and syngas. The NCCC includes multiple, adaptable test skids that allow technology development of CO2 capture concepts using coal-derived flue gas and syngas in industrial settings. Because of the ability to operate under a wide range of flow rates and process conditions, research at the NCCC can effectively evaluate technologies at various levels of maturity and accelerate their development paths to commercialization. During the calendar year 2013 portion of the Budget Period Four reporting period, efforts at the NCCC focused on post-combustion CO2 capture, gasification, and pre-combustion CO2 capture technology testing. Preparations for future testing were on-going as well, and involved facility upgrades and collaboration with numerous technology developers. In the area of post-combustion, testing was conducted on an enzyme-based technology, advanced solvents from two major developers, and a gas separation membrane. During the year, the gasification process was operated for three test runs, supporting development of water-gas shift and COS hydrolysis catalysts, a mercury sorbent, and several gasification support technologies. Syngas produced during gasification operation was also used for pre-combustion capture technologies, including gas separation membranes from three different technology developers, a CO2 sorbent, and CO2 solvents.

None, None↗

Autonomous hybrid optimization of a SiO 2 plasma etching mechanism

Computational modeling of plasma etching processes at the feature scale relevant to the fabrication of nanometer semiconductor devices is critically dependent on the reaction mechanism representing the physical processes occurring between plasma produced reactant fluxes and the surface, reaction probabilities, yields, rate coefficients, and threshold energies that characterize these processes. The increasing complexity of the structures being fabricated, new materials, and novel gas mixtures increase the complexity of the reaction mechanism used in feature scale models and increase the difficulty in developing the fundamental data required for the mechanism. This challenge is further exacerbated by the fact that acquiring these fundamental data through more complex computational models or experiments is often limited by cost, technical complexity, or inadequate models. In this paper, we discuss a method to automate the selection of fundamental data in a reduced reaction mechanism for feature scale plasma etching of SiO 2 using a fluorocarbon gas mixture by matching predictions of etch profiles to experimental data using a gradient descent (GD)/Nelder–Mead (NM) method hybrid optimization scheme. These methods produce a reaction mechanism that replicates the experimental training data as well as experimental data using related but different etch processes.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

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