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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 325 records · Page 18
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Bridging Scales in Bioenergy and Catalysis: A Review of Mesoscale Modeling Applications, Methods, and Future Directions

Between the molecular and reactor scales, which are familiar to the chemical engineering community, lies an intermediate regime, here termed the “mesoscale,” where transport phenomena and reaction kinetics compete on similar time scales. Bioenergy and catalytic processes offer particularly important examples of mesoscale phenomena owing to their multiphase nature and the complex, highly variable porosity characteristic of biomass and many structured catalysts. In this review, we overview applications and methods central to mesoscale modeling as they apply to reaction engineering of biomass conversion and catalytic processing. A brief historical perspective is offered to put recent advances in context. Applications of mesoscale modeling are described, and several specific examples from biomass pyrolysis and catalytic upgrading of bioderived intermediates are highlighted. Methods including reduced order modeling, finite element and finite volume approaches, geometry construction and import, and visualization of simulation results are described; in each category, recent advances, current limitations, and areas for future development are presented. Owing to improved access to high-performance computational resources, advances in algorithm development, and sustained interest in reaction engineering to sustainably meet societal needs, we conclude that a significant upsurge in mesoscale modeling capabilities is on the horizon that will accelerate design, deployment, and optimization of new bioenergy and catalytic technologies.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS2018

Using Remote Sensing to Assess of Growth and Distribution for Floating Invasive Plants and Growth Response Times to Altered Environments

Management of aquatic weeds in complex watersheds and river systems present many challenges to assessment, planning and implementation of management practices for aquatic invasive plants. The Delta Region Areawide Aquatic Weed Project (DRAAWP), a USDA (U. S. Dept. of Agriculture)-sponsored area-wide project, is working to enhance planning, decision-making and operational efficiency of invasive plant management in the California Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Satellite and airborne remote sensing are used to map area of plant coverage and estimate biomass density to aid operations and assess management impacts on plant communities. Modeling at local and watershed scales using the SWAT (Soil Water Assessment Tool) modeling tool provides insight into land-use effects on water quality. Environmental variability in the Delta occurs across a range of time scales from long-term climate and seasonal trends to short-term water flow mediated variations. Controlled environment growth studies have been conducted to quantify the growth response of invasive aquatic plants to water quality and other environmental factors. Response time for invasive species response are examined at time scales of weeks, day, and hours using a combination of study duration and growth assessment techniques to assess water quality, temperature (air and water), and light effects. These provide response parameters for plant growth models in response to environmental variation and interact with management and economic models associated with aquatic weed management. Plant growth models are to be informed by remote sensing and applied spatially across the Delta to balance location and type of aquatic plant, growth response to altered environments and phenology. Initial utilization of remote sensing tools developed for mapping of aquatic invasive plants improved operational efficiency in management practices. These assessment methods provide a comprehensive and quantitative view of aquatic invasive plant communities in the California Delta.

Floating↗
DOE OSTI2020

Program Verification for Extreme-Scale Applications (Final Scientific/Technical Report)

The project seeks to develop tools and techniques to help software developers verify the correctness and accuracy of their code. The target domain is scientific software of the kind widely used and developed in the Department of Energy research community, with a particular focus on "extreme scale" programs - those that are expected to involve possibly millions of parallel threads of execution. The report covers the University of Delaware contribution to the collaborative project. The project had a number of successful outcomes, especially regarding the development and extension of the CIVL software verification framework. CIVL is a verification tool for C or Fortran programs that use MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, and/or Pthreads for parallelization. CIVL went through vast improvements and extensions, and was successfully applied to a number of challenging codes. It found a subtle bug in the Devito PDE framework. It was able to verify the functional correctness of a conjugate gradient solver using a novel probabilistic technique with vanishingly small chance of error. CIVL was used very successfully in verification competitions, and the CIVL solutions to the competition challenges were presented and published. CIVL was also used successfully by other researchers on a computational chemistry kernel.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Scaffolding civic infrastructures: Examining the role of civic technoscience in public engagements with oil and gas pipelines

Oil and gas pipelines bring attention to the importance of public participation in the management of large-scale infrastructure projects. Participation transforms how communities understand benefits and risks, and can result in safer and more resilient projects. However, participation can be hindered by procedural injustices in planning processes and lack of industry transparency. Based on a survey of 103 civil society groups conducted in 2021, this paper investigates how groups mobilize technical projects and expert knowledge to overcome these. We frame these mobilizations as expressions of civic technoscience, and argue their pivotal role in building capacity for effective engagements with pipelines. To this extent, we furthermore suggest that civic technoscience is fundamental to building civic infrastructures for reforming participatory governance gaps. We conclude with recommendations for how civic technoscience can better support the intentions of civic infrastructuring by coordinating activities across coalitions, as well as by shifting the scales at which groups engage with the governance of pipelines.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Energy Justice Framework for Marine Energy: Considerations from PacWave

To accelerate the energy transition while addressing land use conflicts and community opposition, federal policies and incentives require that new energy infrastructure provide direct benefits to communities, and ensure that these benefits remain in the community. The objective of this study is to develop a framework for collecting demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental data and supporting communities in understanding how such data can support more just and equitable outcomes. Specifically, this study addresses two research questions: (1) How can energy justice be incorporated into ME project life cycle, and (2) what social and economic data are needed to assess how marine energy development supports energy justice? Based on our literature review and the data collection template, a case study of PacWave, a wave energy testing facility located on the central Oregon Coast, is employed to draw more specific implications for how energy justice can be integrated into marine energy. PacWave represents a flagship investment by Oregon State University, the State of Oregon, and the Department of Energy. The facility is situated in Lincoln County, which is home to the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and family-scale fishing enterprises. PacWave has strong community support as a testing site and holds potential to provide valuable lessons for other communities.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
NASA NTRS2020

Environmental factors driving spatial heterogeneity in desert halophile microbial communities

Spatial heterogeneity in microbial communities is observed in all-natural ecosystems and can stem from both adaptations to local environmental conditions as well as stochastic processes. Extremophile microbial communities inhabiting evaporitic halite nodules (salt rocks) in the Atacama Desert, Chile, are a good model ecosystem for investigating factors leading to microbiome heterogeneity, due to their diverse taxonomic composition and the spatial segregation of individual nodules. We investigated the abiotic factors governing microbiome composition across different spatial scales, allowing for insight into the factors that govern halite colonization from regional desert-wide scales to micro-scales within individual nodules. We found that water availability and community drift account for microbiome assembly differently at different distance scales, with higher rates of cell dispersion at the smaller scales resulting in a more homogenous composition. This trend likely applies to other endoliths, and to non desert communities, where dispersion between communities is limited. At the intra-nodule scales, a light availability gradient was most important in determining the distribution of microbial taxa despite intermixing by water displacement via capillary action.

microbiome extremophile, desert, heterogeneity, Me↗
DOE OSTI2021

Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) Science Plan

Mountains are the natural water towers of the world, effectively turning water vapor into readily available fresh water through precipitation, snowpack, and runoff. Unfortunately, Earth system models (ESMs) have persistently been unable to predict the timing and availability of water resources from mountains because the source(s) of model error are difficult to isolate in complex terrain with limited atmospheric or land-surface observations. Further complications arise from the gross scale mismatch between ESM grid box sizes and the relevant scales of mountainous hydrological processes. The mountain hydrometeorology community has repeatedly called for integrated atmospheric and land observations of water and energy budgets in complex terrain that span these scales to establish benchmarks against which scale-dependent models can be further developed.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2010

Projecting the Local Impacts of Climate Change on a Central American Montane Avian Community

Significant changes in the climates of Central America are expected over the next century. Lowland rainforests harbor high alpha diversity on local scales (<1 km2), yet montane landscapes often support higher beta diversity on 10-100 km2 scales. Climate change will likely disrupt the altitudinal zonation of montane communities that produces such landscape diversity. Projections of biotic response to climate change have often used broad-scale modelling of geographical ranges, but understanding likely impacts on population viability is also necessary for anticipating local and global extinctions. We model species abundances and estimate range shifts for birds in the Tilaran Mountains of Costa Rica, asking whether projected changes in temperature and rainfall could be sufficient to imperil high-elevation endemics and whether these variables will likely impact communities similarly. We find that nearly half of 77 forest bird species can be expected to decline in the next century. Almost half of species projected to decline are endemic to Central America, and seven of eight species projected to become locally extinct are endemic to the highlands of Costa Rica and Panam . Logistic-regression modelling of distributions and similarity in projections produced by temperature and rainfall models suggest that changes in both variables will be important. Although these projections are probably conservative because they do not explicitly incorporate biological or climate variable interactions, they provide a starting point for incorporating more realistic biological complexity into community-change models. Prudent conservation planning for tropical mountains should focus on regions with room for altitudinal reorganization of communities comprised of ecological specialists.

Gasner, Matthew R.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Simulation of hydropower at subcontinental to global scales: a state-of-the-art review

Abstract Hydroelectric power is playing a new and often expanded role in the world’s major power grids, offering low carbon generating capacity in industrializing, dam-building economies while providing reserve and flexibility to co-manage fledgling wind and solar resources in high income countries. Driven by river flows, conventional hydropower is exposed to the vagaries of weather and climate, motivating drought and climate change hydropower impact studies at large spatial scales. Here we review methods of climate-driven hydropower simulation at large spatial scales, specifically multi-basin regions to global. We identify four types of approach based on complexity of tools and richness of data applied to the problem. Since the earliest attempts to model climate-driven hydropower at continental scale almost two decades ago, the field has transitioned from one of scientific curiosity to practical application, with studies increasingly motivated by the need to inform power grid expansion planning and operation. As the hydrological and water management models used in large-scale hydropower studies become more sophisticated, new opportunities will emerge to study the impacts of changing hydropower on power system reliability and performance at large power grid scale. To grasp these opportunities, the water resources community must continue to enhance data and models for representing river flows and anthropogenic water use and management at subcontinental to global scales.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Opportunities to Expand Building Efficiency Programming at Community Colleges

According to the most recent U.S. Energy and Employment Report, more than 2.3 million workers in the United States are involved in activities that reduce energy usage in buildings. This workforce supports energy efficiency from the design of buildings and their systems through the manufacturing and trade of components and supplies involved in these systems to the installation, repair, and maintenance of these systems. Less than 10% of the workers in key building efficiency occupations have a bachelor’s or higher degree, compared to ~40% of the general workforce. Thus, the community college system is a key stakeholder in training and educating a large portion of the building efficiency workforce. Despite this, the literature review conducted for this report found almost no research focused on better understanding and supporting the role of community colleges as they train this workforce at scale. This report seeks to understand how and to what extent building efficiency and advanced building technology concepts are being addressed in community colleges as well as potential pathways for schools to consider to better prepare students to enter the building efficiency industry. The first section presents information from a literature review and data analysis to provide background on the building efficiency workforce, the types of building efficiency training and education available from community colleges, and the barriers and challenges that exist in the workforce. The second section offers a series of case studies that illustrate the various ways that building efficiency content can be addressed at community colleges. The final section provides an overview of the opportunities available to community colleges as well as considerations for schools that want to increase building efficiency programming.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

pnnl-predictive-phenomics/csc052-gem

Genome-Scale Metabolic Model Continuous Validation with Memote for CarbStor Community Member Bacillus These repositories contain the continuous validation environment for an organism-specific genome-scale metabolic model (GEM) using Memote. Memote is a software tool that provides a suite of tests to ensure the quality and consistency of metabolic models. By integrating Memote into a continuous integration (CI) workflow, we can automatically validate updates to the GEM, ensuring that model modifications improve or maintain the model's integrity.

Torres, Victor E.↗
DOE OSTI2024

pnnl-predictive-phenomics/csc040-gem

Genome-Scale Metabolic Model Continuous Validation with Memote for CarbStor Community Member Rhodococcus These repositories contain the continuous validation environment for an organism-specific genome-scale metabolic model (GEM) using Memote. Memote is a software tool that provides a suite of tests to ensure the quality and consistency of metabolic models. By integrating Memote into a continuous integration (CI) workflow, we can automatically validate updates to the GEM, ensuring that model modifications improve or maintain the model's integrity.

McNaughton, Andrew [@PNNL]↗
DOE OSTI2024

pnnl-predictive-phenomics/csc043-gem

Genome-Scale Metabolic Model Continuous Validation with Memote for CarbStor Community Member Paenibacillus These repositories contain the continuous validation environment for an organism-specific genome-scale metabolic model (GEM) using Memote. Memote is a software tool that provides a suite of tests to ensure the quality and consistency of metabolic models. By integrating Memote into a continuous integration (CI) workflow, we can automatically validate updates to the GEM, ensuring that model modifications improve or maintain the model's integrity.

Zucker, Jeremy [Pacific Northwest National Laborat↗
DOE OSTI2022

GROWdb US River Systems - Samples

GROW Overview We developed the Genome Resolved Open Watersheds database (GROWdb), which aims to increase genomic sampling and understanding of global river microbiomes. An emphasis of GROWdb is to create a publicly available and ever-expanding microbial genome database that is focused on rivers while being interoperable with databases from other ecosystems. GROWdb is based on a network-of-networks approach to move beyond a small collection of well-studied rivers, towards a spatially distributed, global network of systematic observations. GROWdb represents the first microbial, river-focused resource parsed at various scales from genes to MAGs to community level including expression and potential based measurements that will be of interest to microbiologists, ecologists, geochemists, hydrologists, and modelers. Dataset Acknowledgement GROWdb contains data from various research campaigns, please acknowledge the following data generators, as appropriate: WHONDRS derived genomes or samples - include this statement in your acknowledgements: “This study used data from the Worldwide Hydrobiogeochemistry Observation Network for Dynamic River Systems (WHONDRS) under the River Corridor Science Focus Area (SFA) at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) that was generated at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute User Facility. PNNL is operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC05-76RL01830. The SFA is supported by the U.S. DOE, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), Environmental System Science (ESS) Program.” Total Samples loaded onto this Narrative: 178 Note: Not all GROW samples may be loaded into KBase Data Availability The data underlying GROWdb are accessible across various platforms to ensure all levels of data structure are widely available. First, all reads and MAGs are publicly hosted on National Center for Biotechnology (NCBI) under Bioproject PRJNA946291. Second, all data related data presented here including MAG annotations, extended data tables, phylogenetic tree files, antibiotic resistance gene database files, and MAG abundance tables are available in Zenodo (link). Beyond the flat database files listed above, our aim for GROWdb was to maximize data use by making the data available in searchable and interactive platforms including the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) data portal, the Department of Energy’s Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase), and a GROW specific user interface released here, GROWdb Explorer. Each platform provides different ways to interact with GROWdb: NMDC GROWdb formed a pilot project for the NMDC. Specifically, individual GROWdb datasets (metagenomes, metatranscriptomes, etc) are easily accessible and searchable through the NMDC data portal, where they are systematically connected to each other and to a rich suite of sample information and standard analysis results, following Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data practices. KBase GROWdb is publicly available within KBase, including samples (this Narrative), MAGs, and corresponding genome scale metabolic models. Access within KBase allows for immediate access and reuse of data, including comparison to private data using KBase’s 500+ analysis tools. Other linked narratives in KBase: GROW Metagenome Assembled Genomes (MAGs) GROW Metabolic Models GROWdb Explorer GROWdb data is also explorable through a graphical user interface built through the Colorado State University Geospatial Centroid (https://geocentroid.shinyapps.io/GROWdatabase/), allowing users to search and graph microbial and spatial data simultaneously. In summary, this microbial genome resource represents the first publicly available genome collection from rivers and offers data that can be leveraged across microbiome studies. GROWdb is an expanding repository to incorporate and unify global river multi-omic data for the future.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2022

Potential impacts of climate change on agriculture and fisheries production in 72 tropical coastal communities

Climate change is expected to profoundly affect key food production sectors, including fisheries and agriculture. However, the potential impacts of climate change on these sectors are rarely considered jointly, especially below national scales, which can mask substantial variability in how communities will be affected. Here, we combine socioeconomic surveys of 3,008 households and intersectoral multi-model simulation outputs to conduct a sub-national analysis of the potential impacts of climate change on fisheries and agriculture in 72 coastal communities across five Indo-Pacific countries (Indonesia, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, and Tanzania). Our study reveals three key findings: First, overall potential losses to fisheries are higher than potential losses to agriculture. Second, while most locations (> 2/3) will experience potential losses to both fisheries and agriculture simultaneously, climate change mitigation could reduce the proportion of places facing that double burden. Third, potential impacts are more likely in communities with lower socioeconomic status.

Climate change↗
NASA NTRS2012

Satellite-Based Evidence for Shrub and Graminoid Tundra Expansion in Northern Quebec from 1986-2010

Global vegetation models predict rapid poleward migration of tundra and boreal forest vegetation in response to climate warming. Local plot and air-photo studies have documented recent changes in high-latitude vegetation composition and structure, consistent with warming trends. To bridge these two scales of inference, we analyzed a 24-year (1986-2010) Landsat time series in a latitudinal transect across the boreal forest-tundra biome boundary in northern Quebec province, Canada. This region has experienced rapid warming during both winter and summer months during the last forty years. Using a per-pixel (30 m) trend analysis, 30% of the observable (cloud-free) land area experienced a significant (p < 0.05) positive trend in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). However, greening trends were not evenly split among cover types. Low shrub and graminoid tundra contributed preferentially to the greening trend, while forested areas were less likely to show significant trends in NDVI. These trends reflect increasing leaf area, rather than an increase in growing season length, because Landsat data were restricted to peak-summer conditions. The average NDVI trend (0.007/yr) corresponds to a leaf-area index (LAI) increase of ~0.6 based on the regional relationship between LAI and NDVI from the Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS). Across the entire transect, the area-averaged LAI increase was ~0.2 during 1986-2010. A higher area-averaged LAI change (~0.3) within the shrub-tundra portion of the transect represents a 20-60% relative increase in LAI during the last two decades. Our Landsat-based analysis subdivides the overall high-latitude greening trend into changes in peak-summer greenness by cover type. Different responses within and among shrub, graminoid, and tree-dominated cover types in this study indicate important fine-scale heterogeneity in vegetation growth. Although our findings are consistent with community shifts in low-biomass vegetation types over multi-decadal time scales, the response in tundra and forest ecosystems to recent warming was not uniform.

McManus, K. M.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Changes in Precipitation From North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones Under RCP Scenarios in the Variable-Resolution Community Atmosphere Model

Decreasing climate models' grid spacing improves the representation of tropical cyclones at decadal time scales. In this study, a variable-resolution (VR) version of the Community Atmosphere Model 5 (CAM5-VR) is utilized to study North Atlantic tropical cyclone climatology in ensemble historical climate simulations and under two Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) projections (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Basin-wide tropical cyclone counts decrease in the RCP simulations, although landfalling storm counts do not show as straightforward of a pattern, especially when focusing on regional changes. Lifetime maximum intensity metrics suggest that tropical cyclones increase in strength in the RCP ensembles. However, despite increases in tropical cyclone-related precipitation rates and the amount of precipitation produced per storm with warming, the annual average Rx5day from tropical cyclones over the eastern United States decreases due to less landfalling storms. This work is part of a continued effort to quantify how tropical cyclone-induced hazards may change in future climates.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗