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At least 271 records · Page 15

Substation-Level Grid Topology Optimization Using Bus Splitting: Preprint

Operations of substation circuit breakers are of high significance for performing system maintenance and topology optimization. Bus splitting is one type of topology changes where the two bus-bars at a substation become electrically disconnected after certain actions of circuit breakers. As these events involve detailed substation modeling, they are not typically considered in power system routine operation and control. In this paper, an improved substation-level topology optimization is developed by expanding traditional line switching with breaker-level bus splitting, which can further reduce grid congestion and generation costs. A tight McCormick relaxation is proposed to reformulate the bi-linear terms in the resultant topology optimization model. Thus, a tractable mixed-integer linear program formulation is presented which can be efficiently solved for real-time control. Numerical studies on the IEEE 14-bus and 118-bus systems demonstrate the performance and economic benefits of the proposed topology optimization approach.

bus split↗

HydroGEN Overview: A Consortium on Advanced Water Splitting Materials

HydroGEN is a multi-lab consortium focused on early-stage R&D in H2 production, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO). The consortium advances research and development (R&D) of innovative materials for advanced water splitting (AWS) technologies to enable clean, sustainable and low-cost ($1/kg H2) hydrogen production and fosters cross-cutting innovation using theory-guided applied materials R&D to advance all emerging water-splitting pathways for hydrogen production.

advanced water splitting technologies↗

GANISP: A GAN-Assisted Importance Splitting Probability Estimator

Designing manufacturing processes with high yield and strong reliability relies on effective methods for rare event estimation. Genealogical importance splitting reduces the variance of rare event probability estimators by iteratively selecting and replicating realizations that are headed towards a rare event. The replication step is difficult when applied to deterministic systems where the initial conditions of the offspring realizations need to be modified. Typically, a random perturbation is applied to the offspring to differentiate their trajectory from the parent realization. However, this random perturbation strategy may be effective for some systems while failing for others, preventing variance reduction in the probability estimate. This work seeks to address this limitation using a generative model such as a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to generate perturbations that are consistent with the attractor of the dynamical system. The proposed GAN-assisted Importance SPlitting method (GANISP) improves the variance reduction for the system targeted. An implementation of the method is available in a companion repository (https://github.com/NREL/GANISP).

generative adversarial network↗

GANISP: A GAN-Assisted Importance Splitting Probability Estimator: Preprint

To reduce the variance of rare event probability estimator, genealogical importance splitting marches towards a rare event by iteratively selecting and replicating realizations that are headed towards a rare event. The replication step is made difficult when applied to deterministic systems as the initial conditions of the offspring realizations need to be modified. Typically, a random perturbation is applied to the offspring to differentiate their trajectory from the parent realization. It is shown that a random perturbation strategy may be effective for some systems but may also fail for others, thereby preventing variance reduction in the probability estimate. To address this limitation, it is proposed to use a generative model such as a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to generate perturbations that are consistent with the attractor of the dynamical system. The GAN-assisted Importance SPlitting method (GANISP) improves the variance reduction for the system targeted. An implementation of the method is available in a companion repository (https://github.com/NREL/GANISP).

generative adversarial network↗

HydroGEN Overview: A Consortium on Advanced Water Splitting Materials

HydroGEN (https://www.h2awsm.org/) Energy Materials Network (EMN) is an U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) EERE Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO)-funded consortium that aims to accelerate the discovery and development of advanced water splitting materials (AWSM) for clean, low-cost hydrogen production. This is in line with the H2@Scale initiative (https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/h2-scale), with the goal to meet U.S. DOE's Hydrogen Shot production cost target of $1/kg H2 within 1 decade. Materials innovations are key to enhancing performance, durability, and cost of hydrogen generation technologies. Large scale, low cost hydrogen from diverse domestic resources can enable an economically competitive and environmentally beneficial future energy system across multiple sectors. HydroGEN is focused on low technology readiness level AWS technologies, including low- (alkaline exchanged membrane electrolysis) and high-temperature electrolysis (proton-conducting solid oxide electrolysis), photoelectrochecmical (PEC) and solar thermochemical (STCH) water splitting. This presentation will provide an overview of the HydroGEN EMN and technical highlights of a few lab-led and FOA-awarded R&D projects. HydroGEN continues to grow its community of industry, university, and national laboratories, forming a national innovation ecosystem focused on renewable hydrogen production.

clean hydrogen↗

Materials Design Directions for Solar Thermochemical Water Splitting

The sustainable, economical production of molecular hydrogen is a crucial component of a net zero-greenhouse-gas-emissions future. Solar thermochemical water splitting (STWS) offers a renewable route to hydrogen with the potential to help decarbonize several industries, including transportation, manufacturing, mining, metals processing, and electricity generation, as well as provide sustainable hydrogen as a chemical feedstock. STWS uses high temperatures generated from concentrated sunlight or other sustainable means for high-temperature heat to produce hydrogen and oxygen from steam. For example, in its simplest form of a two-step thermochemical cycle, a redox-active metal oxide is heated to ≈1700-2000 K, driving off molecular oxygen while producing oxygen vacancies in the material. The reduced metal oxide then cools (ideally with the extracted heat recuperated for re-use) and, in a separate step, comes into contact with steam, which reacts with oxygen vacancies to produce molecular hydrogen while recovering the original state of the metal oxide. Despite its promising use of the entire solar spectrum to split water thermochemically, the current estimated cost of hydrogen produced via STWS is ≈4-6× the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen Shot target value of $1/kg. One contributing approach to bridging this cost gap is the design of new materials with improved thermodynamic properties to enable higher efficiencies. The state-of-the-art (SOA) redox-active metal oxide for STWS is ceria (CeO 2 ), due to its close to optimal, although too high, oxygen vacancy formation enthalpy and large configurational and electronic entropy of reduction. However, ceria requires high operating temperatures and its efficiency is insufficient. Therefore, efforts to increase the efficiency of STWS cycles have focused on further optimizing oxygen vacancy formation enthalpies and augmenting the reduction entropy via substitution or doping and materials discovery schemes. Examples of the latter include the perovskites BaCe 0.25 Mn 0.75 O 3 and (Ca,Ce)(Ti,Mn)O 3 . These efforts and others have revealed intuitive chemical principles for the efficient and systematic design of more effective materials, such as the strong correlation between the enthalpies of crystal bond dissociation and solid-state cation reduction with the enthalpy of oxygen vacancy formation, as well as configurational entropy augmentation via the coexistence of two or more redox-active cation sublattices. The purpose of this chapter is to prepare the reader with an up-to-date account of STWS redox-active materials, both the SOA and promising newcomers, as well as to provide chemically intuitive strategies for improving their cycle efficiencies through materials design – in conjunction with ongoing efforts in reactor engineering and gas separations – to reach the cost points for commercial viability. First, we will introduce the thermodynamics of STWS using a two-step, metal-oxide, thermochemical cycle with economics in mind. We also will compare the pros and cons of processes that do or do not involve phase changes. Second, we will describe the qualities that make ceria the SOA STWS redox-active material, as well as its limitations. Third, we will survey some of the most promising candidates to date in the search for materials to supplant ceria, emphasizing the post-ternary, metal-oxide-perovskite alloys. Lastly, we will enumerate and discuss the following materials design directions for STWS redox-active materials: crystal reduction potentials as a proxy for oxygen vacancy formation enthalpies, engineering the electronic and configurational entropy of reduction via f-shells and simultaneous redox, and vetting materials stability via temperature-dependent phase diagrams and melting-point prediction.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Unraveling the Cooperative Activity of Hydrophilicity, Conductivity, and Interfacial Active Sites in Alginate‐CNT‐Cuo Self‐Standing Electrodes with Benchmark‐Close Activity for Alkaline Water Splitting

Designing electrocatalysts that excel in hydrogen and oxygen electrochemistry is crucial for sustainable hydrogen generation through electrochemical water splitting. This study presents a novel tricomponent catalyst composed of an alginate hydrogel (AL) infused with single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles. The catalyst exhibits benchmark-close bifunctional activity toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) under alkaline conditions. The aerophobic nature of the AL-gel facilitates superior bubble release from the electrode, while the inclusion of CNTs mitigates charge transfer resistance. Moreover, heterojunctions of CuO and CNTs create unique interfacial active sites, culminating in high electrocatalytic water-splitting activity. The structural rigidity of the composite permits its use as self-standing electrodes (SSE) without using substrates or binders, enabling a direct evaluation of its activity. The composite electrode demonstrates exceptional electrocatalytic HER activity in an alkaline solution, with onset potentials of 93 mV and moderate OER activity with an onset of 155 mV. Furthermore, a water electrolysis cell featuring the bifunctional SSE exhibits an open circuit voltage of 1.85 V at 100 mA.cm −2 , and only 8% efficiency loss after 100 h marking this a significant stride in developing self-standing nonprecious electrocatalysts with impressive catalytic performance.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Strategies for Semiconductor/Electrocatalyst Coupling toward Solar‐Driven Water Splitting

Abstract Hydrogen (H 2 ) has a significant potential to enable the global energy transition from the current fossil‐dominant system to a clean, sustainable, and low‐carbon energy system. While presently global H 2 production is predominated by fossil‐fuel feedstocks, for future widespread utilization it is of paramount importance to produce H 2 in a decarbonized manner. To this end, photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting has been proposed to be a highly desirable approach with minimal negative impact on the environment. Both semiconductor light‐absorbers and hydrogen/oxygen evolution reaction (HER/OER) catalysts are essential components of an efficient PEC cell. It is well documented that loading electrocatalysts on semiconductor photoelectrodes plays significant roles in accelerating the HER/OER kinetics, suppressing surface recombination, reducing overpotentials needed to accomplish HER/OER, and extending the operational lifetime of semiconductors. Herein, how electrocatalyst coupling influences the PEC performance of semiconductor photoelectrodes is outlined. The focus is then placed on the major strategies developed so far for semiconductor/electrocatalyst coupling, including a variety of dry processes and wet chemical approaches. This Review provides a comprehensive account of advanced methodologies adopted for semiconductor/electrocatalyst coupling and can serve as a guideline for the design of efficient and stable semiconductor photoelectrodes for use in water splitting.

Thalluri, Sitaramanjaneya Mouli↗

Observation of Quadratic (Charge-2) Weyl Point Splitting in Near-Infrared Photonic Crystals

Weyl points are point degeneracies that occur in momentum space of 3D periodic materials and are associated with a quantized topological charge. Here, the splitting of a quadratic (charge-2) Weyl point into two linear (charge-1) Weyl points in a 3D micro-printed photonic crystal is observed experimentally via Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Using a theoretical analysis rooted in symmetry arguments, it is shown that this splitting occurs along high-symmetry directions in the Brillouin zone. This micro-scale observation and control of Weyl points is important for realizing robust topological devices in the near-infrared.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Effects of Anionic Polymer Modification of Dye‐Sensitized Niobate Photocatalysts on Solar‐Driven Z‐Scheme Overall Water Splitting

Pt‐intercalated calcium niobate nanosheets (Pt/HCa 2 Nb 3 O 10 ) sensitized by a Ru(II) complex dye are good photocatalysts for producing H 2 from aqueous solutions containing I − as a reversible electron donor. These materials are applicable to Z‐scheme overall water splitting in combination with a WO 3 ‐based O 2 ‐evolving photocatalyst under simulated sunlight. In this work, the effects of anionic polymer modification of the dye‐sensitized nanosheets are examined by adsorbing sodium poly(styrenesulfonate) (PSS), sodium polyacrylate, sodium polymethacrylate (PMA), or sodium poly(4‐styrenesulfonic‐ co ‐maleic acid) onto the dye‐sensitized nanosheet surface. For half‐cell H 2 ‐evolution reaction in the presence of NaI, all of the polymers have a positive impact on the activity under visible light at lower light intensity, whereas only PMA is effective under high light‐intensity condition. For Z‐scheme overall water splitting with PtO x /H‐Cs‐WO 3 , PSS and PMA give almost the same solar‐to‐hydrogen energy conversion efficiencies (0.12% ± 0.01%) under optimized conditions. However, PMA operates better than PSS at relatively low and high NaI concentrations, which are in general disadvantageous for the H 2 ‐ and O 2 ‐evolving components of the Z‐scheme, respectively.

Energy & Fuels↗

Improved opacity expansion for medium-induced parton splitting

We present a new expansion scheme to compute the rate for parton splittings in dense and finite QCD media. In contrast to the standard opacity expansion, our expansion is performed around the harmonic oscillator whose characteristic frequency depends on the typical transverse momentum scale generated in the splitting. The first two orders account for the high frequency regime that is dominated by single hard scatterings together with the regime of multiple soft scatterings at low frequency. This work generalizes the findings of Ref. [1] beyond the leading logarithmic approximation allowing to account also for the Bethe-Heitler regime and compare to the full numerical results from [2]. We investigate the sensitivity of our results to varying the separation scale that defines the leading order. Finally, the application to Monte Carlo event generators is discussed.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Search for direct pair production of sleptons and charginos decaying to two leptons and neutralinos with mass splittings near the $W$-boson mass in $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the electroweak production of pairs of charged sleptons or charginos decaying into two-lepton final states with missing transverse momentum is presented. Two simplified models of R-parity-conserving supersymmetry are considered: direct pair-production of sleptons ($\sim\atop{\ell}$$\sim\atop{\ell}$), with each decaying into a charged lepton and a $\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{0}_{1}$ neutralino, and direct pair-production of the lightest charginos ($\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{±}_{1}$ $\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{∓}_{1}$), with each decaying into a W-boson and a $\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{0}_{1}$. The lightest neutralino ($\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{0}_{1}$) is assumed to be the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). The analyses target the experimentally challenging mass regions where $m$($\sim\atop{\ell}$) - $m$($\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{0}_{1}$) and ($m$$\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{±}_{1}$) – )$m$$\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{0}_{1}$) are close to the W-boson mass (‘moderately compressed’ regions). The search uses 139 fb –1 of $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV proton-proton collisions recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No significant excesses over the expected background are observed. Exclusion limits on the simplified models under study are reported in the ($\sim\atop{\ell}$, $\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{0}_{1}$) and ($\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{±}_{1}$, $\sim\atop{\chi}$ $^{0}_{1}$) mass planes at 95% confidence level (CL). Sleptons with masses up to 150 GeV are excluded at 95% CL for the case of a mass-splitting between sleptons and the LSP of 50 GeV. Chargino masses up to 140 GeV are excluded at 95% CL for the case of a mass-splitting between the chargino and the LSP down to about 100 GeV.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Role of electron pathway in dimensionally increasing water splitting reaction sites in liquid electrolytes

Hydrogen from water splitting is one of the most promising alternatives for fossil fuels in solving the global energy crisis, while its electrochemical reaction mechanism, especially in liquid electrolytes, remains unclear. Herein, how the electrode conductivity affects the reaction sites of oxygen evolution reactions (OERs) in acidic and alkaline solutions was investigated by employing visualization system and electrochemical testing. Inserting Au nanolayers greatly increased electrode conductivities, improved OER kinetics and reduced cell ohmic resistance, leading to excellent water splitting performances in both acidic and alkaline electrolytes. Furthermore, the in-situ visualization results showed more reaction sites and higher catalyst utilizations were achieved by augmenting the electrode conductivity, and reaction sites increased from 1-dimension to 2-dimension. Additionally, it was discovered that electrical conductivities of acidic and alkaline solutions are insufficient to overcome the sharp drop of potential in the electrical double layer for activating OER uniformly on low-conductivity catalysts, indicating the importance of electrical conductivity of the electrode in acidic and alkaline water electrolyzers. This study provided a guidance on how to develop efficient and compact electrodes for acidic and alkaline water electrolyzer stacks and other electrochemical devices, such as fuel cell, N2 reduction, CO 2 conversion, etc.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Stable low diffusion flux splitting schemes on unstructured meshes

Shock instabilities are shown to manifest in modern low-diffusion flux-vector splitting (FVS) schemes when used on unstructured meshes, or situations where shocks do not align with the mesh lines. These instabilities occur irrespective of the Mach number of the shock. Three types of dissipative mechanisms that suppress these instabilities are presented. These mechanisms are carefully designed in order to affect only problematic regions of the flux-splittings. The AUSM + and LDFSS schemes are stabilized using the proposed modifications. It is shown that the added dissipation improves the shock behavior of AUSM and LDFSS on unstructured meshes. It is also shown that the AUSM + -up scheme is prone to the “carbuncle” instability, a specific type of shock instability, when used on unstructured meshes. The modifications proposed in this work do not lead to carbuncle instabilities for the problems considered here. Furthermore, the modified schemes are shown to satisfy certain properties that are crucial for accurate shear layer computations, such as stationary contact preservation. Using benchmark problems, it is demonstrated that despite the diffusion added for stabilization, these schemes are not overly diffusive. Furthermore, due to these advantages, the modified FVS schemes presented here are promising candidates for high-speed compressible flow computations on unstructured meshes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Electric-charge-dependent directed flow splitting of produced quarks in Au+Au collisions

We report directed flow (v 1 ) of multistrange baryons ($Ξ$ and Ω) and improved v 1 data for K – ,$\overline{p}$, $\overline{Λ}$, and ϕ in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 27 and 200 GeV from the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). We focus on particles whose constituent quarks are not transported from the incoming nuclei but instead are produced in the collisions. At intermediate impact parameters, we examine quark coalescence behavior for particle combinations with identical quark content, and search for any departure from this behavior (“splitting”) for combinations having non-identical quark content. Under the assumption of quark coalescence for produced quarks, the splitting strength appears to increase with the electric charge difference of the constituent quarks in the combinations, consistent with electromagnetic effect expectations.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Facile Solvent-Free Synthesis of Manganese Nickel-Layered Double Hydroxide for Sustainable Water-Splitting Applications

The quest for efficient and sustainable water-splitting electrocatalysts has led to the development of a novel bifunctional material, manganese nickel-layered double hydroxide (MnNi-LDH), which demonstrates promising performance for both the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Although manganese-based materials are less explored than other transition metals, they offer significant potential owing to their widespread availability, affordability, and customizable electronic characteristics. MnNi-LDH exhibits a nanosheet morphology and a layered structure, which collectively provide numerous accessible active sites and facilitate efficient charge transfer and mass transport. Characterization using X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy reveals the structural and compositional properties of MnNi-LDH. The oxidation states of Mn and Ni, as determined by XPS, play a crucial role in improving the catalytic activity. Notably, MnNi-LDH demonstrates low overpotentials of 187 mV for OER and 225 mV for HER at 10 mA/cm 2 current density comparable to conventional catalysts. Long-term stability tests show minimal degradation in cell performance over 50 h, with a current density drop of only 0.6153% per hour for the OER and 0.37% per hour for the HER. Further, these findings highlight the potential of MnNi-LDH as a promising and environmentally friendly bifunctional electrocatalyst for water splitting, contributing to the advancement of renewable energy sources.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

How Beneficial Is Pretraining on a Narrow Domain-Specific Corpus for Information Extraction about Photocatalytic Water Splitting?

Language models trained on domain-specific corpora have been employed to increase the performance in specialized tasks. However, little previous work has been reported on how specific a “domain-specific” corpus should be. Here, we test a number of language models trained on varyingly specific corpora by employing them in the task of extracting information from photocatalytic water splitting. We find that more specific corpora can benefit performance on downstream tasks. Furthermore, PhotocatalysisBERT, a pretrained model from scratch on scientific papers on photocatalytic water splitting, demonstrates improved performance over previous work in associating the correct photocatalyst with the correct photocatalytic activity during information extraction, achieving a precision of 60.8(+11.5)% and a recall of 37.2(+4.5)%.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

LaMnO 3 Dopants for Efficient Thermochemical Water Splitting Identified by Density Functional Theory Calculations

While ceria is the standard material for two-step water splitting, perovskites are emerging as viable alternatives. In this work, based on the orthorhombic LaMnO 3 supercell, we substitute Li Na K Rb Mg Ca Sr Ba on the A-sites (La sites) and Al Ga In Mg Zn on the B-sites (Mn sites) at a concentration of 37.5%. The range of temperature and oxygen partial pressure at which each composition is stable is predicted. For compositions that are stable in relevant temperature and pressure ranges, the oxygen vacancy formation energies are determined for all of the oxygen vacancy site positions available in the computational supercell. Mg, Ca, Sr, and Ba A-site-substituted LaMnO 3 and Al and In B-site-substituted LaMnO 3 meet these two criteria for candidates in solar-thermal water splitting applications. Finally, oxygen vacancy formation energy can also be controlled by adjusting the doping strategy.

08 HYDROGEN↗