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At least 235 records · Page 13

White Paper: Background Information on ARPA-E's Reuse Program

This document provides supplemental information for ARPA-E’s exploratory research program, “Recycle Underutilized Solids to Energy” (REUSE). The goal is to provide additional technical information to prospective Applicants. Further information is available in a blog interview and webinar at https://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=news-item/trash-treasure-reuse-creates-feedstock-plastic-waste. Award information, submission requirements, evaluation criteria, and other applicable information is provided in Funding Opportunity Announcements DE-FOA-0001953 and DE-FOA-0001954 (SBIR/STTR). REUSE-specific requirements are provided in Topic K of those FOAs, and is available at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Default.aspx?Search=0001953&SearchType=#FoaIde8647d89-1cac-4b58-8622-1b04de8958c4. Under the REUSE Topic, ARPA-E seeks to fund the development of technologies to convert high-energy materials currently going to landfills to a high-energy content liquid product capable of displacing energy imports used for fuel or chemical production. The high-energy materials include plastics (#1-7 polymers, rubber, and composites) and paper. As discussed below, we estimate 30-34 MM ton plastic, 2-6 MM ton rubber, 18 MM ton of paper, and up to 0.1 MM ton composites are potentially available annually for this purpose. These numbers may be conservative based on changes in the plastic and paper export markets. ARPA-E anticipates deployment of multiple low-cost, simple, flexible, small-scale (100-500 ton per day) regional facilities using modular plants. This scale is consistent with the sources for high-energy materials, which include ~300 Material Recovery Facilities and industrial waste sources. The assumption is that such facilities can be more economical than the paradigm of large-scale facilities making purity products, due to cost for transporting and aggregating waste and the high operating costs (OPEX) and capital cost (CAPEX) for product purification. This document gives a brief technical review for multiple potential process technologies. The review is not intended to be comprehensive or limiting, only to provide an introduction to potential Applicants.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

The Mu2e Experiment (Final Technical Report)

This is the final technical report for the initial two year funding period to start a new collaboration group at the University of California Davis for the Mu2e Experiment at Fermilab. The goal if the Mu2e Experiment is to search for the conversion to an electron of a muon that has been captured by an aluminum nucleus. While this process is effectively forbidden in the Standard Model, it is a virtually universal feature of models beyond the Standard Model. Mu2e will probe the reaction with a sensitivity that is roughly four orders of magnitude better than the best previous measurement. This range of sensitivity probes most of the parameters space of supersymmetry, and any signal will be unambigious proof of physics beyond the Standard Model. Professor Prebys was one of the founding members and first spokespersons of the Mu2e Experiment during his time af Fermilab. He came to UC Davis in 2017 with the goal of starting a Mu2e collaborating group here, and this grant has funded that effort. Specifically, in addition to summer salary, it has supported a graduate student and a postdoc, both of whom are now permanently stationed at Fermilab. During this time, their work has focused primarily on the understanding to the formation of the proton bunches in Fermilab Recycler, as this is critical to the experiment. This has included both measurements and simulations.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Development and Analysis of Control Strategies for a 1 MW/3.2 MWh Energy Storage System at Avista Utilities

This report documents the work performed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Washington State University (WSU) supporting an effort to develop control strategies for a 1 MW/3.2 MWh energy storage system (ESS) at Avista Utilities (Avista). The ESS project is funded though the Washington Clean Energy Fund (CEF) program administered by the Washington State Department of Commerce (DOC). A tri-party Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), namely the CRADA 360, was created in 2015 to facilitate this work.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

The LLNL Program in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Physics: FY20 Annual Laboratory Continuation Progress Report

The LLNL Heavy-Ion Group has research interests in the features and phenomena of nuclear matter at extreme temperatures and densities. It pursues these interests through participation in two experimental collaborations (ATLAS and sPHENIX) and one joint theory/experiment topical collaboration (JETSCAPE). The group is funded through a combination of LDRD, DOE-SC NP and an award from US ATLAS Software and Computing Operations, which is ultimately funded through HEP. The group's activities in FY20 were oriented around beginning a new LDRD project and fi lling two open postdoc positions while contributing to the ATLAS jet and UPC programs as well as participating in sPHENIX. Both postdoc positions were lled, effectively doubling the side of the LLNL Heavy-Ion Group, by Qipeng Hu (starting 6/20) and Dhanush Hangal (starting 8/20).

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Wood-to-Fuel for California's Transportation Sector using Autothermal Pyrolysis (FRD-17-002 Progress Report)

Both our subcontract with ISU and the one with Frontline have been finalized and the requisitions for the initiation of them have been submitted (this places defined amounts of funding available to the subcontracts, for the first allotment of work to be done, for which we already have funds from the CEC). Once the requisitions are approved, the subcontracts will be fully executed. During the month of August, further work on the Market Report was carried out, and will continue, as this is the most adaptable of the LLNL-main tasks to working remotely, so will not have any delays due to the shelter-in-place orders. Organization of our databases and sources on availability, and potential availability of all woody biomass was continued. Tables and figures for the report were begun as well, and the outline was finalized. Additionally, a parametric study for pyrolysis’ different products was done, with a metric of return on capital investment being chosen. Evaluated parameters include feedstock price, CO2 credit price, CO2 transport cost, and minimum fuel selling price, for drop-in fuels.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

Long Beach Transit Battery Electric Bus Evaluation (Final Report)

Beginning in March 2017, Long Beach Transit began operating a fleet of 10 battery electric buses (BEBs) in its service area in Southern California. These electric buses, produced by BYD, are 40-foot buses that are typically charged overnight. Long Beach Transit is collaborating with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to evaluate the buses in revenue service. NREL evaluated the first year of Long Beach Transit’s BEB fleet under Federal Transit Administration funding and published a report covering results from January 2018 through December 2018. CARB provided funding to cover a second year of evaluation. This report provides an update to the previous reports and is focused on the second year of operation from January 2019 through December 2019. Data are provided on a selection of compressed natural gas (CNG) buses as a baseline comparison.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Fission In R-process Elements - FY2020

The goal of the FIRE topical collaboration in nuclear theory is to determine the astrophysical conditions of the rapid neutron capture process (r-process), which is responsible for the formation of heavy elements. This will be achieved by including in r-process simulations the most advanced models of fission (spontaneous, neutron-induced, β-delayed) that have been developed at LLNL and LANL. The collaboration is composed of LLNL (lead) and LANL for work on nuclear data (ground-state properties, fission, β-decay), BNL for nuclear data management, and the university of Notre Dame and North Carolina State University for r-process simulations. Under DOE/NNSA agreement, both universities receive funds from the DOE Office of Science, while national laboratories receive funds directly from NA221.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Pitch Variation Experiments in Water-Moderated Square-Pitched U(6.90)O 2 Fuel Rod Lattices with Fuel to Water Volume Ratios Spanning 0.08 to 0.67

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy Research Initiative funded the design and construction of the Seven Percent Critical Experiment (7uPCX) at Sandia National Laboratories. The start-up of the experiment facility and the execution of the experiments described here were funded by the DOE Nuclear Criticality Safety Program. The 7uPCX is designed to investigate critical systems with fuel for light water reactors in the enrichment range above 5 % 235 U. The 7uPCX assembly is a water-moderated and -reflected array of aluminum-clad square-pitched U(6.90 %)O 2 fuel rods. Other critical experiments performed in the 7uPCX assembly are documented in LEU-COMP-THERM-078, LEU-COMP-THERM-080, LEU-COMPTHERM- 096, LEU-COMP-THERM-097, and LEU-COMP-THERM-101. The fuel used in these experiments was fabricated using unirradiated 6.90 % enriched UO 2 fuel pellets from fuel elements designed to be used in the internal nuclear superheater section of the Pathfinder boiling water reactor operated in South Dakota by the Northern States Power Company in the 1960s. The fuel elements were obtained from The Pennsylvania State University where they had been stored for many years. The fuel pellets in those fuel elements were removed from the original Incoloy cladding and reclad in 3003 aluminum tubes and end caps for use in the experiments reported here. The purpose of these experiments was to measure the effects of decreasing the fuel-to-water volume ratio on the critical array size. This was accomplished by removing fuel rods from fully fueled configurations, effectively increasing the pitch of the fuel arrays in the assembly. The fuel rod pitch variations provided assembly configurations that ranged from strongly undermoderated to slightly overmoderated.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Fission In R-process Elements (Q4 FY2020 Quarterly Report)

The goal of the FIRE topical collaboration in nuclear theory is to determine the astrophysical conditions of the rapid neutron capture process (r-process), which is responsible for the formation of heavy elements. This will be achieved by including in r-process simulations the most advanced models of fission (spontaneous, neutron-induced, β-delayed) that have been developed at LLNL and LANL. The collaboration is composed of LLNL (lead) and LANL for fission work, BNL for nuclear data management, and the university of Notre Dame and North Carolina State University for r-process simulations. Under DOE/NNSA agreement, both universities receive funds from DOE Office of Science, while national laboratories receive funds directly from NA221.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Readiness Evaluation for Sustained Operations

Readiness evaluation for sustained operations is a continuous function that progresses from overseeing establishment of five key programmatic elements during design and construction phases to monitoring the output of those elements performing during commissioning and operations. Continuously assessing readiness for sustained operations becomes an important business function for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection as competition for federal funds increases with increasing waste treatment operations throughout the Office of Environmental Management complex. The five key programmatic elements are as follows: Risk management – Risks and opportunities should prioritize continuous improvement initiatives and be informed by the design and technical authorities and stakeholder monitors. Continuous improvement – All levels of the project organization should exhibit commitment to continuous improvement and learning. Continuity of design and technical authorities – The authorities are responsible for managing knowledge for its effective use in the other elements. Stakeholder monitoring – Active and deliberate monitoring of stakeholder relationships. Sustained operations integrated business planning – Integrated business planning in a federal environment competitive for congressional funding.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Joint Conference Support (ISPP and ICMP)

Funds are requested to support the attendance of junior scientists at two international conferences: the International Symposium on Phototrophic Prokaryotes (ISPP) and the International Conference on Microbial Photosynthesis (ICMP). Both will be held on the campus of the University of British Colombia in Vancouver in August of 2018. The primary goal of the ISPP is to provide a forum for students and senior investigators to gather in an informal setting to share new scientific findings on all aspects of bacterial phototrophs (both anoxygenic and oxygenic). The ICMP will appeal to those working on photosynthetic processes in these organisms as well as in eukaryotic phototrophs for other reasons (e.g. as major producers in the oceans, as models for marine phytoplankton, as biofuel-producing systems, etc.). The ICMP was designed to follow the ISPP such that students and postdocs could attend two conferences for the travel costs of one. The funds will be used to defray the registration costs of graduate student and postdoctoral attendees to make it even more affordable for junior scientists.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Wyandotte Integrated Renewable Energy Strategy (WIRES 2) (Final Technical Report)

Wyandotte Municipal Services (WMS), a Michigan Municipal Utility offering electric generation, transmission & distribution, water filtration & distribution and Broadband/Video sought to deploy a set of renewable energy projects for their Electric Utility that contributed to reducing the City’s environmental and energy impact, provided examples that would encourage businesses and citizens to adopt cleaner energy practices and help WMS meet the required renewable energy standards of the State of Michigan (10% in 2015, 15% in 2021). WMS generates and delivers roughly 280,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity annually to more than 10,000 homes and 1,000 businesses within the City of Wyandotte. The Wyandotte Integrated Renewable Energy Strategy – WIRES 2 resulted in deployment of a set of community-scale micro-wind turbines, evaluation and installation of energy-efficient and low-maintenance light-emitting diode (LED) street lights and park lights in highly visible locations in the City and expansion of the geothermal heating and cooling district that already included residential geothermal systems, to include larger scale business/institutional systems at the Utility’s largest electric customer and at the City Library. Finally, WMS identified the need for job training in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies to further develop a local skilled workforce in these areas. Partially funded by the grant, the wind turbine project provides a benchmark for WMS, local businesses and residents in the evaluation of utility-scale wind v. micro-wind in an urban environment as a renewable energy strategy. Also partially funded by the grant, the LED project benefited the City of Wyandotte by reducing load on the electric system for the public utility but also reduced City costs for streetlighting, parking lot lighting and park lighting without a compromise in security. The project also resulted in a visual success that has led to additional approvals for non-Grant related LED lighting installations resulting in further reduction in the electric load in the City. Commercial Geothermal installations resulted in the Utility being able to eliminate steam customers who formerly utilized the byproduct of steam from WMS electric production. Due to the reduction in natural gas prices and the overall reduction in market purchased power, it was no longer feasible for WMS to operate its Power Plant as a base load plant and to only operate on a market dispatch philosophy when market prices dictated that WMS could produce electricity cheaper than the market purchase price. This has resulted in fewer operating days for the WMS Power Plant, resulting in less environmental impact. WMS has now completely exited the steam business and the ability to offer a geothermal option to two (2) former steam customers (BASF-Wyandotte and the Bacon Memorial Library) allowed for that. In addition, peak loads have been shaved for these two (2) large customers due to the consistent temperature offered by geothermal heating and cooling, reducing the swings associated with thermostat changes caused by outside temperature changes during extreme high and low temperatures. Finally, energy efficiency and renewable energy college-level classes at Wayne County Community College allowed a group of interested students to pursue studies in those technologies through grant provided tuition, books and course materials. This effort provided a foundation of potential future employees not only for WMS but other energy efficiency/renewable energy employers such as Franklin Energy, a partner with WMS in energy optimization efforts with Wyandotte businesses.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Basic Design Layout of a Modular Pumped Hydro Teaching Unit

This work was originally completed in July 2015 as a proposal to Santa Fe Community College (SFCC) for their engineering program and a follow up to a feasibility study completed for the Community College the year earlier as indicated below. The work was ahead of its time and funding was hard to obtain to implement a project. This work is now being formally released for distribution to a wider audience based on the evolving circumstances in greater society that now favor this approach with funding more readily available. Due to the distribution outside of SFCC, specific architectural drawing sets of the pertinent buildings called out in the design have been removed. No changes to the design have been made. The design layout utilizing a building is not meant to limit the implementation of the design. The elevation difference required may be obtained with a building, a small hill, jacking up the upper tank, or similar means. The design presented is a basic design, identifying major components and how they are connected together. The user may change components under their own liability. All local applicable codes and standards must be followed when building an actual unit, under the authority of a responsible engineer or owner. Appropriate measures must be followed to protect people from hazards such as electricity, water pressure, and general construction. A leak test to verify water tightness of the system should be conducted prior to any operations. The vision of this design is to allow a class of 10 to 15 students to construct the assembly within a month or so time period, and then learn to operate the assembly at their school location under the guidance of their instructor. This will allow the students to learn about the practical concept of storing electricity with water, and gain a hands on experience of the real world challenges faced with full Modular Pumped Hydro Projects.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Discovery and Investigation of Topological Superconductivity

During the period of the grant DOE DESC0014335, the PI worked on a range of material systems from the triplet superconductor UTe 2 to Sr 2 RuO 4 and superconductivity in Weyl semimetals. DOE funding has resulted in a total of nine papers. Papers have been published in the following journals: Nature, Science, PNAS, Nature Physics, Nature Communications, Phys. Rev. B, and npj Quantum materials. No funds are expected to remain at the end of this project. Below is a description of our scientific findings during this period.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Techno-Economic Analysis: Best Practices and Assessment Tools

A team at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) recognized the growing need to maintain and organize the internal community of Techno - Economic Assessment analysts at the lab . To meet this need, an internal core team identified a working group of experienced, new, and future analysts to: 1) document TEA best practices; 2) identify existing resources at Sandia and elsewhere; and 3) identify gaps in our existing capabilities . Sandia has a long history of using techno - economic analyses to evaluate various technologies , including consideration of system resilience . Expanding our TEA capabilities will provide a rigorous basis for evaluating science, engineering and technology - oriented projects, allowing Sandia programs to quantify the impact of targeted research and development (R&D), and improving Sandia's competitiveness for external funding options . Developing this working group reaffirms the successful use of TEA and related techniques when evaluating the impact of R&D investments, proposed work, and internal approaches to leverage deep technical and robust, business - oriented insights . The main findings of this effort demonstrated the high - impact TEA has on future cost, adoption for applications and impact metric forecasting insights via key past exemplar applied techniques in a broad technology application space . Recommendations from this effort include maintaining and growing the best practices approaches when applying TEA, appreciating the tools (and their limits) from other national laboratories and the academic community, and finally a recognition that more proposals and R&D investment decision s locally at Sandia , and more broadly in the research community from funding agencies , require TEA approaches to justify and support well thought - out project planning.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Pitch Variation Experiments in Water-Moderated Square-Pitched U(6.9)O 2 Fuel Rod Lattices with Fuel to Water Volume Ratios Spanning 0.08 to 0.67

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy Research Initiative funded the design and construction of the Seven Percent Critical Experiment (7uPCX) at Sandia National Laboratories. The start-up of the experiment facility and the execution of the experiments described here were funded by the DOE Nuclear Criticality Safety Program. The 7uPCX is designed to investigate critical systems with fuel for light water reactors in the enrichment range above 5% 235 U. The 7uPCX assembly is a water-moderated and -reflected array of aluminum-clad square-pitched U(6.90%)O 2 fuel rods. Other critical experiments performed in the 7uPCX assembly are documented in LEU-COMP-THERM-078, LEU-COMP-THERM-080, LEU-COMPTHERM- 096, LEU-COMP-THERM-097, and LEU-COMP-THERM-101. The twenty-seven critical experiments in this series were performed in 2020 in the SCX at the Sandia Pulsed Reactor Facility. The experiments are grouped by fuel rod pitch. Case 1 is a base case with a pitch of 0.8001 cm and no water holes in the array. Cases 2 through 6 have the same pitch as Case 1 but contain various configurations with water holes, providing slight variations in the fuel-to-water ratio. Similarly, Case 7 is a base case with a pitch of 0.854964 cm and no water holes in the array. Cases 8 through 11 have the same pitch as Case 7 but contain various configurations with water holes. Cases 12 through 15 have a pitch of 1.131512 cm and differ according to the number of water holes in the array, with Case 12 having no water holes. Cases 16 through 19 have a pitch of 1.209102 cm and differ according to number of water holes in the array, with Case 16 having no water holes. Cases 20 through 23 have a pitch of 1.6002 cm and differ according to number of water holes in the array, with Case 20 having no water holes. Cases 24 through 27 have a pitch of 1.709928 cm and differ according to number of water holes in the array, with Case 24 having no water holes. As the experiment case number increases, the fuel-to-water volume ratio decreases.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Fission In R-process Elements (Q1 FY2021)

The goal of the FIRE topical collaboration in nuclear theory is to determine the astrophysical conditions of the rapid neutron capture process (r-process), which is responsible for the formation of heavy elements. This will be achieved by including in r-process simulations the most advanced models of fission (spontaneous, neutron-induced, β-delayed) that have been developed at LLNL and LANL. The collaboration is composed of LLNL (lead) and LANL for fission work, BNL for nuclear data management, and the university of Notre Dame and North Carolina State University for r-process simulations. Under DOE/NNSA agreement, both universities receive funds from DOE Office of Science, while national laboratories receive funds directly from NA221

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗