SEARCH · Search NASA
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.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Chemical characteristics of KREEP basalts from the Apollo 12 site are discussed. It is indicated that nonmare basalts are chemically distinct from mare basalts, primarily in FeO and Al2O3 concentrations and their ratios, and that the spectra of the former are closely related to the degree of partial melting. It is also noted that the chemical compositions of KREEP basalts from Apollo 12, 13, and 14 show very little chemical variation.
The effects of temperature and water vapor concentration on the ratio of the rate constant of the reaction HO2 + O3 yields OH + 2(O2) to the square root of the rate constant for the reaction HO2 + HO2 yields H2O2 + O2 are determined. Photolysis of H2-O2-O3 mixtures at 253.7 nm was carried out with H2O pressures in the range 0 to 15 torr at a temperature range of -42.5 to 61 C along with 184.9 nm photolysis of H2O-O2-O3 mixtures. It is shown that the rate of O3 photolysis is suppressed by the addition of water vapor and it is suggested that this effect is realized in the HO2 + HO2 yields H2O2 + O2 reaction. The calculated expression for the temperature dependence of the rate constant ratio is found to be in good agreement with that calculated from separate rate constants. Rate constants determined for the reaction OH + HO2 yields H2O + O2 are found to be higher than those previously determined, presumably due to increased pressure, indicating that atmospheric models should take into account the possible pressure dependences of the reactions considered.
In a front-contact grid pattern for a solar cell there is a trade-off necessary between shadowing loss and excessive power loss due to voltage drop in the metalization itself. If the metalization is too little there may be excessive contact resistance to the underlying semiconductor and insufficient coverage to control losses in the thin front-surface layer of the solar cell. Optimization of grid pattern area and geometry is considered analytically to minimize total losses. Worthwhile performance advantages are shown to be possible, particularly in concentrator systems, if multi-layer grid patterns are used. The current carrying fingers should be approximately square in metal cross section and the main current feedout bars should not only be wider but also thicker than the primary collecting fingers. This is termed multi-level metalization. Effective use of multi-level grid metalization allows much greater concentration-to-loss ratio for a cell of large area and permits good performance from cells of high front-layer sheet resistance.
The mixing-reaction in series model developed by Ghodsizadem (1978) is successfully applied to the study of NO oxidation in the near-source portion of the Potomac Electric Company's Morgantown, Maryland power plant plume. The model employs a single parameter. With initial conditions consistent with the plume data measured by Davis et al. (1974) and utilizing the mixing parameter estimated from the study by Shu et al. (1978), the predicted temporal profiles of the ratio of the concentration of NO2 to NO, of NO2 to NO plus NO2, in-plume concentrations of NO and O3, and fraction of NO remaining are consistent with field study data. In addition, the model predicts large deviations from the photostationary state in the near-source portion of the plume, also consistent with field study data. In the far field region of this plume (t greater than approximately 20 min), the mixing processes are essentially complete over much of the plume cross-section.
A model of the time-dependent chemistry of dense interstellar clouds is formulated to study the dominant chemical processes in carbon and oxygen isotope fractionation, the formation of nitrogen-containing molecules, and the evolution of product molecules as a function of cloud density and temperature. The abundances of the dominant isotopes of the carbon- and oxygen-bearing molecules are calculated. The chemical abundances are found to be quite sensitive to electron concentration since the electron concentration determines the ratio of H3(+) to He(+), and the electron density is strongly influenced by the metals abundance. For typical metal abundances and for H2 cloud density not less than 10,000 molecules/cu cm, nearly all carbon exists as CO at late cloud ages. At high cloud density, many aspects of the chemistry are strongly time dependent. Finally, model calculations agree well with abundances deduced from observations of molecular line emission in cold dense clouds.
Measurements made by the NASA-JSC ozone instrument during the ozone intercomparison campaign from Gap, France during June 1981 are reported. Two flights were made on board the large balloon platform with other instruments using different techniques. The NASA-JSC instrument employs UV absorption photometry to obtain in situ results. Concentration and mixing ratio profiles are given for altitudes from 16 km to float altitudes of 32 and 39 km, respectively, for the two flights. A measure of the total column content of ozone was obtained by integrating the NASA-JSC results from 16 km to float altitude and combining them with results from other techniques below 16 km and above float altitudes.
Measurements were made of the elemental composition of particulate matter collected in flights in the Arctic in spring 1983 as part of the Arctic Gas and Aerosol Sampling Program (AGASP). Ten samples of size-selected particles were analyzed by four nondestructive techniques at Davis. Concentrations were determined for H, C, N, and O by Forward Alpha Scattering Techniques (FAST) and for elements heavier than fluorine by Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE). Total mass was measured gravimetrically, and optical absorption was measured using the Laser Integrating Plate Method (LIPM). Results of the analyses show dramatic differences in concentrations and elemental ratios from the Alaskan Arctic to the Norwegian Arctic, with indications of wood smoke and sulfuric acid in the arctic atmosphere.
The effect of concentrator field layout on the technical-economic performance of a point-focusing distributed receiver (PFDR) solar thermal power plant is presented. The plant design is based on the small community prototype system currently under development for JPL/DOE; parabolic dish concentrators are employed, and small heat engines are used to generate electricity at each dish. The effect of field size, array proportions, dish-to-dish spacing and packing fraction (concentrator-land area ratio) are presented for typical PFDR layouts. Economic analyses are carried out to determine optimum packing fraction as a function of site cost.
Various metals and metallic glass systems have bene processed into hollow spheres with sizes ranging from 3 mm to 440 microns in diameter. The technique for the formation of the large hollow spheres, in general, is based on the fluid-dynamic instability of a hollow annular jet. A refined technique has also been developed for microshell formation, in which discrete bubbles are injected into the stream of the molten material and individually 'flushed' out at a frequency related to the Rayleigh jet instability. The surfaces of those spheres of all sizes exhibit a range of contrasting solidification behaviors and characteristics. Metal shells of varying materials, sizes, aspect ratios, sphericity and concentricity have many useful and novel applications.
Recent advances in semiconductor laser technology have produced a reliable lightweight device ideally suited for a spacecraft high resolution molecular spectrometer. Lead-salt tunable diode lasers (TDL) emit in several spectral modes, each with a very narrow linewidth of -0.0003/cm. This spectral resolution is much narrower than typical Doppler broadened molecular linewidths in the mid-IR range. Thus it is possible to detect individual rotational lines within the vibrational band and measure their intensity, which can be used to determine gas concentration. The narrow spectral lines of any impurity gas tend to lie between the narrow lines of the gas of interest. This represents a major advantage over the accepted gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (GCMS) technique for measuring gas concentrations and isotope ratios. The careful and extensive gas purification procedures required to remove impurities for reliable GCMS measurements will not be required for an IR laser gas analysis. The infrared laser gas analysis technique is being developed to measure stable isotopic ratios of gases such as CO2, CH4, N2O, and NH3. This will eventually lead to development of instruments capable of in situ istopic measurements on planets such as Mars. The carbon (C-12, C-13) isotope ratio is indicative of the type of carbon fixation mechanisms (e.g., photosynthesis, respiration) in operation on a planet, while the nitrogen (N-14, N-15) isotope ratio can probably be used to date nitrogen-bearing Martian samples. The absorbance ratio of two adjacent lines of CO2 in the 2300/cm (4.3 micron) region of the spectrum was measured. The precision of the measurement is presently better than 1 percent and significant improvement is anticipated as rapid sweep-integration techniques and computer controlled data acquistion capabilities are incorporated.
A theory of Ostwald ripening has been developed for a solid-liquid mixture cosisting of a low volume fraction array of spherical solid particles in a liquid wherein the coarsening process proceeds via the transport of both heat and mass. It is found that the simultaneous transport of heat and mass during ripening does not alter the exponents of the temporal power laws governing the ripening process from their classical values but does alter the amplitudes of these power laws. The growth rate of the cube of the average particle radius, the rate constant, is found to depend both on the alloy solute concentration and the ratio of the thermal to solutal diffusivities. In most metallic systems, a large decrease in the rate constant can be expected with small additions of solute to a pure metal. Possible extensions of this theory to the analogous problem of ripening in isothermal ternary alloys are also discussed.
From the central Wisconsin IFO field at Wausau, the Mobile Polarization Lidar and a surface radiation station from the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory observed two very tenuous cirrus clouds on 21 October 1986. The clouds were present just below the height of the tropopause, between -60 to -70 C. The first cloud was not detected visually, and is classified as subvisual cirrus. The second, a relatively narrow cloud band that was probably the remnants of an aircraft contrail, can be termed zenith-subvisual since, although it was invisible in the zenith direction, it could be discerned when viewed at lower elevation angles and also due to strong solar forward-scattering and corona effects. The observations provide an opportunity to assess the threshold cloud optical thickness associated with cirrus cloud visibility. Ruby lidar backscattered signals were converted to isotropic volume backscatter coefficients by applying the pure-molecular scattering assumption just below the cloud base. The backscattering coefficient due to the cloud is then obtained and expressed in relation to the molecular backscattering coefficient in terms of the scattering ratio R. The linear depolarization ratio for the cloud is computed after removing the essentially parallel-polarized scattering contribution from air molecules. The values are also applied to determine the cloud optical thickness through the use of backscatter-to-extinction ratio, and the concentration of cloud particles using the backscattering gain, and the effective diameter of the particles obtained from the analysis of solar corona photographs. The sizes of the particles generating the corona are related to the angular separations between the centers of the red bands and the sun, yielding diameters of approximately 25 microns. The direct and diffuse components of shortwave radiation fluxes, measured by full hemispheric pyranometers, were used to compute the nadir optical thickness of the total atmosphere.
The trace element concentrations and isotopic ratios in the magma erupted on mid-ocean ridges may differ from those in the source material due to physical effects such as porous flow dispersion, exchange of trace elements between the fluid and solid phases during magma migration, and convective mixing in magma chambers. These differences are in addition to those produced by better known processes such as fractional crystallization and partial melting. The effects of the three former processes are described. It is predicted that magma typically reaches the subridge magma chambers with a spatial heterogeneity only slightly reduced from that of the source material, but with a subdued variation in time. Convective mixing then further reduces the spatial heterogeneity. Application of the results for convective mixing to a recent Fourier analysis of Sr-87/Sr-86 variations along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge suggests that the falloff in amplitude of variation observed with decreasing wavelength in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge data cannot be explained by convective mixing in magma chambers. Instead, it is postulated that this falloff is due to the mechanics of the production and/or the solid-state convective mixing of chemical and isotopic heterogeneities in the solid mantle.
This paper addresses the mixing of air jets into the hot, fuel-rich products of a gas turbine primary zone. The mixing, as a result, occurs in a reacting environment with chemical conversion and substantial heat release. The geometry is a crossflow confined in a cylindrical duct with side-wall injection of jets issuing from round orifices. A specially designed reactor, operating on propane, presents a uniform mixture without swirl to mixing modules consisting of 8, 9, 10, and 12 holes at a momentum-flux ratio of 57 and a jet-to-mainstream mass-flow ratio of 2.5. Concentrations of O2, CO2, CO, and HC are obtained upstream, downstream, and within the orifice plane. O2 profiles indicate jet penetration while CO2, CO, and HC profiles depict the extent of reaction. Jet penetration is observed to be a function of the number of orifices and is found to affect the mixing in the reacting system. The results demonstrate that one module (the 12-hole) produces near-optimal penetration defined here as a jet penetration closest to the module half-radius, and hence the best uniform mixture at a plane one duct radius from the orifice leading edge.
Trace element concentrations and isotopic ratios are frequently used to study the behavior of high-temperature fluids in both metamorphic and igneous systems. Many theoretical formulations of the effects of fluid migration on trace elements have assumed instantaneous reequilibration between the migrating fluid and the solid material through which it is passing. This paper investigates the additional effects which arise when equilibration is not instantaneous due to a limited rate of diffusion in the solid, using an analytical steady state solution to a set of partial differential equations describing the exchange of trace elements between the fluid and the solid during the migration of the fluid.
The relative rate technique has been used to investigate the kinetics of the reaction of Cl atoms with carbon disulfide, CS2, at 700 Torr total pressure of air at 298 K. The decay rate of CS2 was measured relative to CH4, CH3Cl and CHF2CL. For experiments using CH4 and CH3Cl references, the decay rate of CS2 was dependent on the ratio of the concentration of the reference to that of CS2. We ascribe this behavior to the generation of OH radicals in the system leading to complicated secondary chemistry. From experiments using CHF2Cl we are able to assign an upper limit of 4 x 10(exp -15) cu cm/(molecule s) for the overall reaction, Cl + CS2 yields products.
The kinetics of the bulk thermal polymerization of phenyl glycidyl ether induced by trimethoxyboroxine were investigated. Infrared absorption spectroscopy and gel permeation chromatography were used to follow the course of polymerization, while proton and boron-2 NMR spectroscopy were used to support the kinetic model developed. The postulated mechanism involves a fast-initiated, non-stationary cationic polymerization with five elementary steps, including spontaneous and monomer transfer as well as a termination reaction. The trimethoxyboroxine was found to be incorporated into the structure of the cured polymer. Tile polymerization was followed at several temperatures and with several ratios of initial concentrations of trimethoxyboroxine to phenyl glycidyl ether.
The BOREAS AFM-2 team used the University of Wyoming King Air aircraft during IFCs 1, 2, and 3 in 1994 to collected pass-by-pass fluxes (and many other statistics) for the large number of level (constant altitude), straight-line passes used in a variety of flight patterns over the SSA and NSA and areas along the transect between these study areas. The data described here form a second set, namely soundings that were incorporated into nearly every research flight by the King Air in 1994. These soundings generally went from near the surface to above the inversion layer. Most were flown immediately after takeoff or immediately after finishing the last flux pattern of that particular day's flights. The parameters that were measured include wind direction, wind speed, west wind component (u), south wind component (v), static pressure, air dry bulb temperature, potential temperature, dewpoint, temperature, water vapor mixing ratio, and CO2 concentration. Data on the aircraft's location, attitude, and altitude during data collection are also provided. These data are stored in tabular ASCH files. The data files are available on a CD-ROM (see document number 20010000884) or from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC).