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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 199 records · Page 11
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Exxon Mobil-NETL Testing of DAC Materials

This joint initiative is aimed at extending our understanding of real DAC testing conditions at the NETL DAC testbed facility. Of particular focus will be: • Small Scale testing of powdered and formulated materials (supplied by ExxonMobil) to evaluate various performance metrics under DAC process cycles • Pilot scale testing of formulated materials at larger scales ExxonMobil will work with NETL to shake down equipment, validate testing methods, and define best practices for data analysis. Three tasks are proposed: 1. Validation of multi-cycle test data on powdered and formulated materials to benchmark various performance metrics of these materials. 2. Steam regeneration of powdered samples at small scale to define baseline performance under commercially relevant conditions. 3. Pilot scale testing of larger formulated materials to test commercially relevant samples under actual process cycles.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Sustainable Tire Production: Catalytic Upgrading of Ethanol into Butadiene (CRADA 636) Abstract

Bridgestone aims to minimize resource depletion and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by using 100% sustainable materials by 2050. As part of this goal Bridgestone is working to develop a first-of-kind end-of-life recycling process for tire material circularity and the decarbonization of new tire production. Used tires can be gasified to produce intermediate syngas (H 2 + CO) that can be further converted into ethanol using mature technology. The ethanol can then be converted into butadiene, a key precursor of new tires, using patented PNNL technology, enabling circularity for end-of-life tires. Indeed, PNNL has developed a new patented thermocatalytic-based technology for the conversion of ethanol into butadiene that allows for high carbon efficiency and improved catalyst longevity compared to World War II baseline catalyst. The objective here is to continue the development of this processing with the goal of commercial deployment. This includes development of engineered catalysts (e.g., extrudates) and their evaluation under industrially relevant conditions for deployment of a pilot scale. If successful, Bridgestone will subsequently utilize this catalyst technology at pilot and then commercialization scale creating jobs in both construction sector and industry sector in a chosen location that promotes greater diversity, equity, and inclusion through key policies, training, and recruiting practices. Taken together, this work will support the U.S. Department of Energy goal for production of renewable chemicals with > 70% GHG emissions reduction relative to petroleum-derived counterparts and supporting > 1 MMT/ yr CO 2 e emissions reduction by 2030.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Description of FY25 Theory and Simulation Performance Target: Development of an integrated modeling framework for fusion reactor design and assessment

The urgency to deliver fusion power is growing now more than ever, with increasing pressure for both public programs and private companies to meet milestones timelines and overcome significant remaining technical challenges to ensure growth of a nascent fusion industry in time to meet rapidly growing clean energy demands. With incredible advancements in computation and years of investment in fusion model development and validation, integrated modeling is poised to fill a key role in accelerating the timeline to a fusion pilot plant (FPP). Future fusion pilot plants will operate in regimes far beyond current experience, and device design will rely on physics-based prediction and extrapolation. Many concepts will also rely on simulation to assess safety (shielding, tritium management, materials activation and lifetimes), economics and scalability before the decision to build. Importantly, integrated simulation can be used to reveal and solve the complexities of system integration that may otherwise not be apparent in physical components or models developed in isolation. New experimental test facilities that produce relevant conditions to validate and resolve key technical challenges for various subsystems (materials, blankets, fuel cycle, etc.) have been repeatedly called for by the fusion community but are not yet realized. Integrated modeling has an important role in identifying realistic load conditions (thermal, electromagnetic, plasma, neutron and photon loads, etc.) and defining the components and experiments for these test facilities in order to ensure meaningful validation that sufficiently reduces modeling uncertainties and technical risk for the full integrated reactor. The Fusion REactor Design and Assessment (FREDA) SciDAC project is building a component-based integrated modeling framework & data structure to enable self-consistent, multi-fidelity, iterative optimization workflows for the fusion reactor design process. FREDA aims to shorten the time to viable designs by providing a set of flexible workflows to support the various stages of the design process using an integrated model hierarchy, ranging from the simple analytic descriptions to the highest fidelity, theory-based plasma and engineering modeling developed by the fusion and fission communities. These tools are expected to be needed for timely support of FPP design in the milestone program and in the FIRE collaboratives. The plasma simulation backbone of FREDA is IPS-FASTRAN with newly developed coupled Core-Edge Pedestal-SOL (CESOL) workflows, which is being extended to the far-SOL region up to the plasma facing components. FREDA incorporates the FERMI engineering modeling suite and will enable self-consistent evaluation of the thermal shields, limiters, blanket, magnets, and other surrounding structures with predictions of temperatures, erosion, dpa, activation, tritium generation and transport, creep, corrosion, material degradation, etc. Parametric generation of 3D CAD enables rapid iteration of component geometry in response to plasma and loading specifications.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Why Tunable? A Look at Schools Using Tunable Lighting

Between 2016-2019, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), documented two early pilot installations of tunable lighting in schools, supported by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solid-State Lighting (SSL) program. These pilot installations were opportunities for the schools to become more familiar with the technology, save energy, and support teachers and students. Tunable lighting continues to be of interest, particularly in classrooms for students with disabilities. This case study looks at tunable lighting systems installed in classrooms at eight school districts across the U.S. since 2015, the earliest known installation.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

Techno Economic Analysis for Production of Renewable Natural Gas and Value-Added Chemicals from Forest Biomass Residues (CRADA Final Report)

West Biofuels - in collaboration with the University of California San Diego, the University of California Davis, the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), the Colorado School of Mines’ Center for Hydrate Research, Placer County Air Pollution Control District, the Sierra Business Council, and the Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas)-will demonstrate an innovative pathway to convert forest biomass to renewable gas (RG). The project, Production of Pipeline Grade Renewable Natural Gas and Value-Added Chemicals from Forest Biomass Residues, will utilize an existing pilot-scale gasification system and data and lessons learned from a lab-scale catalytic reactor design, develop, and demonstrate an integrated pilot-scale RG process with a scaled-up catalytic reactor and hydrate-based gas separation process. This robust and simple process uses a commercial proven gasifier, a commercially available catalyst that can tolerate gas contaminants, and a gas separation process that simplifies the downstream processing. Current testing has shown that the process can yield a large amount of methane rich renewable gas in addition to a mixture of propanol, ethanol and other higher alcohols and the relative amounts can be controlled by shifting the process conditions. This process is novel and groundbreaking because the product mixture of RG and valuable alcohols byproducts makes RG production economically feasible at $\$$12 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) or less using forest biomass from high hazard zones.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Electrifying New York’s Affordable Housing

Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise) joined forces with the Association for Energy Affordability (AEA), with support from the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR). Through this 3-year pilot project, the project partners collaborated to develop tools and processes that efficiently utilize New York State Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) funding to both improve energy efficiency through weatherization and to convert to clean heating systems through electrification. We developed and piloted this approach on five multifamily dwelling buildings, totaling 154 units in New York City, using the energy audit protocol that was developed as part of this project. Our goal was to develop a basis of knowledge for pursuing similar retrofits nationwide.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Drone Fleet Summary: NNLEMS UxS Rolodex entry for Sandia

Sandia’s UAS Aviation Operations Unit (UAOU) was established in 2019 to be the single entity at Sandia conducting UAS Ops in support the labs Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) activities. The UAOU currently consists of >330 FAA Registered UAS with a large variety of primarily Class 1&2 UAS: fixed wing (>90), multi-rotor (>230), hybrids, VTOLs, jets, and balloons. Many of these are threat vehicles presented as targets to Counter-UAS (CUAS) systems as part of performance tests, with the remainder in support of other projects across Sandia often with custom payload needs. The UAOU has ~15 primary pilots and reach back to another ~45 FAA Certified Remote Pilots across Sandia. The team conducts flight and CUAS operations at many test locations, including OCONUS. Sandia was awarded the 2024 DOE Federal Aviation Safety Program Award.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Integrating DOE ASCR Computing into HEPCloud through GlideinWMS

Fermilab's HEPCloud facility expands the laboratory's computing capacity by provisioning resources beyond the local grid, using GlideinWMS to deliver pilots to where experiments such as CMS and DUNE run. The High-Performance Computing (HPC) facilities of the DOE Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) are a growing part of that pool. HEPCloud currently provisions NERSC over SSH, but NERSC is moving away from that path as it adopts multi-factor authentication and directs automated access to its Superfacility API and the DOE Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) APIs. Maintaining and extending access across the ASCR ecosystem now requires provisioning through these interfaces. This work adds new pilot submission paths to GlideinWMS for the NERSC Superfacility API, IRI, and Globus Compute. Each uses the provisioning model GlideinWMS already applies to batch resources, so experiments can run on ASCR computing resources without changes to their existing workflows. This work finally presents a comparison of the paths to guide which interfaces are best suited for different workflows.

Majumder, Meghanto [U. Houston (main)]↗
DOE OSTI2024

Progress of Gas Injection EOR Surveillance in the Bakken Unconventional Play—Technical Review and Machine Learning Study

Although considerable laboratory and modeling activities were performed to investigate the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) mechanisms and potential in unconventional reservoirs, only limited research has been reported to investigate actual EOR implementations and their surveillance in fields. Eleven EOR pilot tests that used CO2, rich gas, surfactant, water, etc., have been conducted in the Bakken unconventional play since 2008. Gas injection was involved in eight of these pilots with huff ‘n’ puff, flooding, and injectivity operations. Surveillance data, including daily production/injection rates, bottomhole injection pressure, gas composition, well logs, and tracer testing, were collected from these tests to generate time-series plots or analytics that can inform operators of downhole conditions. A technical review showed that pressure buildup, conformance issues, and timely gas breakthrough detection were some of the main challenges because of the interconnected fractures between injection and offset wells. The latest operation of co-injecting gas, water, and surfactant through the same injection well showed that these challenges could be mitigated by careful EOR design and continuous reservoir monitoring. Reservoir simulation and machine learning were then conducted for operators to rapidly predict EOR performance and take control actions to improve EOR outcomes in unconventional reservoirs.

Energy & Fuels↗
DOE OSTI2024

Energy Efficiency Analysis for Residents of North Birmingham, Alabama

The community of North Birmingham, Alabama, participated in the Communities LEAP pilot program. As part of this technical assistance pilot, residential buildings, energy efficiency, and electrification were analyzed. This factsheet has a summary of the results.

building envelope↗
DOE OSTI2024

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↗
DOE OSTI2025

R&D with NREL's Davison Circulating Riser System

The Davison circulating riser (DCR) is the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) pilot-scale recirculating riser reactor system. Coupled with an upstream fluid-bed pyrolysis system, it permits evaluation of catalytic cracking of biogenic feedstocks, as well as coprocessing of biogenic and fossil feedstocks in a commercially relevant pilot fluid catalytic cracker.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Rewarding Grid-Friendly Behavior: Estimating the Potential Bill Reduction and Load Shifting Benefits of Dynamic Prices

Shifting electric load from times of peak demand can be a key strategy to slow price growth as reducing peak demand avoids the cost of upgrading generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. Utilities are releasing time-varying prices, such as time of use rates or dynamic prices, to incentivize grid-friendly load shifting. New dynamic price programs provide insight into the true cost of operating electricity grids and the potential economic benefits of load shifting. Program developers and device manufacturers need to understand the economic opportunities in terms of 1) the variation in prices across hours, days, and seasons; 2) the change in utility bills for customers who don’t shift load; and 3) the potential load shifted and economic value of different technologies if manufacturers or aggregators deploy price-responsive controls. This paper estimates possible impacts of dynamic price adoption and load shifting controls if customers paid the dynamic rate from one pilot program. Statistical analysis of historical prices identified annual and seasonal metrics as well as representative price curves for each circuit in the pilot. Simulations for residential technologies with price-responsive controls including unitary heat pump water heaters, central multifamily heat pump water heaters, heating & cooling + storage systems, and pool pumps estimated the potential impacts of highly dynamic prices both with and without load shifting controls. Results showed the potential to reduce electricity costs on representative days by 42-94% and reduce consumption during times of high electricity prices by 63-100% compared to baseline operation for those flex-friendly devices.

Grant, Peter↗
DOE OSTI2026

Lessons learned from the development and implementation of a workforce training curriculum for advanced controls for high performance HVAC systems

Over the past decade, academic research on advanced controls has slowly transitioned into new software platforms, giving rise to various companies developing and deploying these innovative products, including solutions for light commercial HVAC systems. However, the current workforce remains widely unprepared to install, maintain and operate these systems, particularly complex software-based control platforms, as most workforce training programs still focus on traditional building automation for large commercial buildings. This paper presents the development and piloting of curriculum for three key types of professionals: ● Technicians (trade-level): installing and maintaining modern high-performance HVAC systems and controls ● Programmers (undergrad-level): developing and implementing advanced controls ● Engineers and energy professionals (undergrad/grad-level): managing and evaluating system performance We share details of the material developed including training videos, open-source software, instruction manuals. We also present the results of a pilot implementation of the training materials with real students.

Casillas, Armando↗
DOE OSTI2025

Extraction of Pure Plastic Resins From PCR Plastic Waste by Solvent-Targeted Recovery and Precipitation (STRAP)

For this work, we have been developing a solvent‐based plastic recycling technology called STRAP. The technology is based on dissolving a targeted plastic resin in a specific solvent that does not dissolve other resins. We have demonstrated STRAP in thousands of bench scale experiments for a large variety of wastes. Recently we have demonstrated the technology for PCR, using mixed plastic wastes (MPWs), from a wet Material Recovery Facility (MRF). The process includes (1) infrared (IR) characterization to determine the plastic composition for accurate selection of the solvent to be used for the extraction of the pure resins. (2) Shredding to the right size and aspect ratio required for flowable and fast dissolvable process. (3) Mixing the MPW in the first solvent to dissolve the first resin. (4) Filtration of the solution plastic blend, to separate the nondissolved plastic from the solution. (5) Further filtration of the solution to remove micron‐sized particle of pigments and fibers. (6) Cooling for precipitation. (7) Filtration of pure resins. (8) Drying of a pure resin. (9) Extrusion of the resin to pellets. (10) Generating films or other products from the pure resin. Steps 1–10 can be considered as one‐cycle that extracted the first resin. (11) A second resin can be extracted with a respective solvent from the plastic that did not dissolve in the first cycle and following steps 1–10 described above. The process also includes characterization of interim and final products. The effort includes building a pilot system at 25 kg/h throughput. We will present specific results for various PCR.

IR characterization↗
DOE OSTI2025

Demonstration of and future perspective on scaling ultrafast-laser-ablation microstructuring of Li-ion battery electrodes to roll-to-roll production and large-format cells

This work demonstrates integration of an ultrafast laser onto a roll-to-roll machine, the laser structuring of a double-sided, 700 m long roll of graphite battery anode and its subsequent manufacture into 27 Ah prismatic cells. The electrode was ablated with a novel hybrid-microstructure composed of both hexagonally arranged pores for enhanced rate performance and channels for fast electrolyte wetting. Subsequently, this anode and a non-ablated baseline anode are paired with an NMC111 cathode for cell building and electrochemical characterization. Compared to the baseline, laser ablated cells demonstrated a reduction in soaking time of at least 60%, an improvement in fast charge capability with >30% more capacity accepted during 6C charging, and an extension of cycle life of >40% during 0.5C cycling. Further, a perspective is provided on scaling ultrafast laser ablation of battery electrodes to industrial throughputs. Additionally, lessons learned from this pilot-scale demonstration are provided in regards to optical architecture, debris removal, and system control. A techno-economic analysis is used to demonstrate that laser ablation can be integrated into existing electrode manufacturing facilities with only ≈$\$$1.3 per kWh increase (≈2%) in manufacturing cost. Preemptive electrode design for laser ablation is discussed as a further method for enhancing performance. Finally, an analysis of available laser systems and beam-scanning architectures is used to determine design requirements to scale process throughput to a state-of-the-art speed of 50 m min −1 . This analysis demonstrates that laser ablating Li-ion battery electrodes has multiple benefits to manufacturing and battery performance, that the technology already exists to achieve high laser-ablation throughputs, and that integrating ultrafast laser ablation to electrode manufacturing will not create a cost or processing bottleneck.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Characterizing the negative triangularity reactor core operating space with integrated modeling

Negative triangularity (NT) has received renewed interest as a fusion reactor regime due to its beneficial power-handling properties, including low scrape-off layer power and a larger divertor wetted area that facilitates simple divertor integration. NT experiments have also demonstrated core performance on par with positive triangularity (PT) high confinement mode (H-mode) without edge-localized modes (ELMs), encouraging further study of an NT reactor core. In this work, we use integrated modeling to scope the operating space around two NT reactor strategies. The first is the high-field, compact fusion pilot plant concept Modular, Adjustable, NT ARC (MANTA) and the second is a low field, high aspect ratio concept based on work by Medvedev et al. By integrating equilibrium, core transport, and edge ballooning instability models, we establish a range of operating points with less than 50 MW scrape-off layer power and fusion power comparable to PT H-mode reactor concepts. Heating and seeded impurities are leveraged to accomplish the same fusion performance and scrape-off layer exhaust power for various pressure edge boundary conditions. Scans over these pressure edge conditions accommodate any current uncertainty of the properties of the NT edge and show that the performance of an NT reactor will be extremely dependent on the edge pressure. The high-field case is found to enable lower scrape-off layer power because it is capable of reaching high fusion powers at a relatively compact size, which allows increased separatrix density without exceeding the Greenwald density limit. Adjustments in NT shaping exhibit small changes in fusion power, with an increase in fusion power density seen at weaker NT. Infinite-n ballooning instability models indicate that an NT reactor core can reach fusion powers comparable to leading PT H-mode reactor concepts while remaining ballooning-stable. Seeded krypton is leveraged to further lower scrape-off layer power since NT does not have a requirement to remain in H-mode while still maintaining high confinement. We contextualize the NT reactor operating space by comparing to popular PT H-mode reactor concepts, and find that NT exhibits competitive ELM-free performance with these concepts for a variety of edge conditions while maintaining relatively low scrape-off layer power.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗