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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 343 records · Page 19
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Numerical simulation of asteroid geometry variance on airburst threat

For an atmospheric airburst the primary source of concern when assessing uncertainty is the size and velocity. Determining these properties provides the basis for threat assessment, as the total energy of the asteroid may then be estimated, and the threat investigated thoroughly. Even with clarity as to how much energy an asteroid may deposit, a great deal of uncertainty still exists for the actual energy deposition process. One such source of uncertainty is the geometry of the incoming asteroid. The geometry of an asteroid will alter the stress distribution during entry, which adds uncertainty to when fracture will occur. Here, in this study, we use Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics to model the atmospheric airburst of Tunguska-scale asteroids with varying geometric profiles, including a sphere, ellipsoid, binary and superellipsoid. Each asteroid is modeled as a homogenous structure with strength. We assess uncertainty through a series of planar 2D simulation cases for each geometry, comparing the source of stochasticity across geometries. A single 3D airburst simulation for each geometry is also analyzed. Additionally, the 3D cases are compared to the highly uncertain Tunguska event, predicting variance in burst height across geometries, but all bounded by theoretical burst heights proposed for Tunguska.

Airburst↗
DOE OSTI2025

Probing quantum phenomena through photoproduction in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Photoproduction in ultra-peripheral relativistic heavy-ion collisions displays many unique features, often involving quantum mechanical coherence and two-source interference between photon emission from the two ions. We review the recent experimental results from RHIC and the LHC and theoretical studies of coherent vector meson photoproduction, emphasizing the quantum mechanical aspects of the interactions and the entanglement between the final state particles. These studies enrich our understanding of non-local realism, underscore the critical role of the polarization of the photon source, quantum interference and nuclear effect on the gluon distribution. It paves a way for quantitatively probing the quantum nature of these high-energy nuclear collisions.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Flux balance analysis of the ammonia-oxidizing bacterium Nitrosomonas europaea ATCC19718 unravels specific metabolic activities while degrading toxic compounds

The ammonia-oxidizing bacterium Nitrosomonas europaea has been widely recognized as an important player in the nitrogen cycle as well as one of the most abundant members in microbial communities for the treatment of industrial or sewage wastewater. Its natural metabolic versatility and extraordinary ability to degrade environmental pollutants (e.g., aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene and toluene) enable it to thrive under various harsh environmental conditions. Constraint-based metabolic models constructed from genome sequences enable quantitative insight into the central and specialized metabolism within a target organism. These genome-scale models have been utilized to understand, optimize, and design new strategies for improved bioprocesses. Reduced modeling approaches have been used to elucidate Nitrosomonas europaea metabolism at a pathway level. However, genome-scale knowledge about the simultaneous oxidation of ammonia and pollutant metabolism of N . europaea remains limited. Here, we describe the reconstruction, manual curation, and validation of the genome-scale metabolic model for N . europaea , i GC535. This reconstruction is the most accurate metabolic model for a nitrifying organism to date, reaching an average prediction accuracy of over 90% under several growth conditions. The manually curated model can predict phenotypes under chemolithotrophic and chemolithoorganotrophic conditions while oxidating methane and wastewater pollutants. Calculated flux distributions under different trophic conditions show that several key pathways are affected by the type of carbon source available, including central carbon metabolism and energy production.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

High-Energy X-ray Diffraction Microscopy for Nuclear Forensics FY2022 Project Report

Morphological information on nuclear material has been identified using visible light and scanning electron microscopy. These identify qualitative differences in particle morphology. Three-dimensional imaging of materials through alternating scanning electron microscopy imaging and focused ion beam milling has also been used. Unfortunately, these techniques are time- and labor-intensive, with significant sample preparation required and lengthy analysis times. Further, the resulting 3D images are qualitative, require manual identification, and do not capture statistically-representative populations. High energy X-ray 3D imaging using a direct-beam or diffracted-beam (High-Energy Diffraction Microscopy) have been developed at the Advanced Photon Source and can produce quantitative information on grains (phase, location, etc.) and pores (size distribution, sphericity) in a material. These techniques require only minutes to characterize a sample volume and are non-destructive, thus suitable for a wide range of existing samples and for confirmatory analyses to be carried out using conventional microscopy techniques. In this first year of the project, all uranium oxide samples were synthesized and characterized using conventional analyses by the analytical chemistry laboratory. Conventional analysis methods included powder x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, impurity analysis via inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, and infrared spectroscopy. Impurity analysis shows a drop in boron content from UO 3 to the lowest U 3 O 8 calcination temperature, but otherwise no appreciable difference in any sample. Analysis of diffraction data shows a flip of peaks from UO 3 dominated for the 600 °C calcined sample to U 3 O 8 dominated at 700 °C and 800 °C. Analysis of scanning electron microscopy images shows that with increased calcination temperature the size distribution of particles seems to increase and broaden. Both of these last findings are in line with previously published data, though this work used significantly fewer particles to simply show similar trends instead of getting truly quantitative particle analysis. Infrared analysis similarly shows ingrowth of U 3 O 8 as calcination temperature is increased, along with depression of peaks associated with UO 3 and water. Samples were prepared for analysis at the Advanced Photon Source at beamline 1-ID. It is anticipated that analysis will occur in November of 2022. AI/ML techniques to de-noise data coming out of 1-ID during the analyses was also developed during this time using previously gathered data. Preliminary results using a self-supervision technique called Noise2Selfshow good de-noising of data. Once the uranium oxide samples are analyzed, real data will be used to test the de-noising and other AI/ML techniques that may be developed in the second year of the project.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2023

High-Energy X-ray Diffraction Microscopy for Nuclear Forensics (FY23 Project Report)

Morphological information on nuclear material has been identified using visible light and scanning electron microscopy. These identify qualitative differences in particle morphology. Three-dimensional imaging of materials through alternating scanning electron microscopy imaging and focused ion beam milling has also been used. Unfortunately, these techniques are time- and labor-intensive, with significant sample preparation required and lengthy analysis times. Further, the resulting 3D images are qualitative, require manual identification, and do not capture statistically-representative populations. High energy X-ray 3D imaging using a direct-beam or diffracted-beam (High-Energy Diffraction Microscopy) have been developed at the Advanced Photon Source and can produce quantitative information on grains (phase, location, etc.) and pores (size distribution, sphericity) in a material. These techniques require only minutes to characterize a sample volume and are non-destructive, thus suitable for a wide range of existing samples and for confirmatory analyses to be carried out using conventional microscopy techniques.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

First Temperature Profile of a Stellar Flare Using Differential Chromatic Refraction

We present the first derivation of a stellar flare temperature profile from single-band photometry. Stellar flare DWF 030225.574−545707.45129 was detected in 2015 by the Dark Energy Camera as part of the Deeper, Wider, Faster program. The brightness (Δm g = −6.12) of this flare, combined with the high air mass (1.45 ≲ X ≲ 1.75) and blue filter (DES g, 398–548 nm) in which it was observed, provided ideal conditions to measure the zenithward apparent motion of the source due to differential chromatic refraction (DCR) and, from that, infer the effective temperature of the event. We model the flare’s spectral energy distribution as a blackbody to produce the constraints on flare temperature and geometric properties derived from single-band photometry. We additionally demonstrate how simplistic assumptions on the flaring spectrum, as well as on the evolution of flare geometry, can result in solutions that overestimate the effective temperature. Exploiting DCR enables studying chromatic phenomena with ground-based astrophysical surveys, and stellar flares on M dwarfs are a particularly enticing target for such studies due to their ubiquity across the sky and the heightened color contrast between their red quiescent photospheres and the blue flare emission. Our novel method will enable similar temperature constraints for a large sample of objects in upcoming photometric surveys like the Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

Clarke, Riley W. [University of Delaware, Newark, ↗
DOE OSTI2022

DERMS Online: A New Voltage Sensitivity-Enabled Feedback Optimization Framework

This paper proposes a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) solution by developing a new voltage sensitivity-enabled feedback optimization framework. The key idea is to adopt a measurement feedback scheme to reformulate the original nonlinear optimization into a linear programming (LP) problem via perturb-and-observe-based voltage sensitivity analysis. The proposed solution eliminates the dependence on load knowledge and can be implemented online thanks to an efficient open-source solver for LP problems. Comparison results with other control methods on a real distribution feeder in Southern California highlight the feasibility as well as benefits for the proposed framework.

distributed energy resource management↗
DOE OSTI2023

Joint Resource Modeling and Assessment for Hybrid Distributed Solar and Wind Systems

The inherent variability and uncertainty in distributed energy resources can presents myriad challenges to the planning and operations of power systems. These risks are poised to become larger as the penetration of renewable energy sources rises in the power generation mix. Hybrid solar-wind energy systems are able to mitigate some of these risks by their complementary resource availability. Surface solar and wind fields are coupled and correlated in both space and time. Appropriately estimating the hybrid solar wind energy system requires simulating the spatio-temporal structure of these fields that can be produced for each time horizon. We introduce a novel joint spatio-temporal stochastic differential equation (SPDE) approach that captures the spatio-temporal dynamics of solar and wind fields and their joint dependency over a domain for each time step. In the case study on Colorado, we consider nonstationary three-level hierarchical spatio temporal models for both hourly solar irradiance data and wind speed data in Colorado. Dependence between the solar irradiance data and wind speed data is captured by a shared spatio-temporal random effect. Our approach performs well in terms of the prediction score criterion.

joint modeling↗
DOE OSTI2026

Use of Hardware-in-the-Loop to De-Risk Field Deployment of Hydrogen Assets

Grid-forming assets are required in microgrids to act as voltage-frequency masters. These grid-forming assets can operate in two modes of operation: grid-following mode and grid-forming mode. In grid-following mode of operation, these assets will follow real power and reactive power setpoints and in grid-forming mode of operation these assets will follow voltage and frequency setpoints. Traditionally, diesel generators or natural gas-based generators are widely used to act as a voltage-frequency master. However, many utilities are aiming to replace generators with grid forming-inverters supplied by solar photovoltaics (PV), batteries or fuel cells. Since grid-forming assets need a long-term reliable energy source, fuel cells are a reasonable and viable choice to supply the grid-forming inverters, but some of the challenges facing the wide deployment of grid-forming fuel cell inverters need to be addressed. Specifically, in our proposed work, we aim to focus on the interconnection and interoperability requirements of grid-forming fuel cell inverters. Currently, state-of-the-art fuel cell inverters follow the general interconnection requirements of distributed energy resources (DERs) and general interoperability requirements of DERs, but these requirements were built with PV and battery systems in mind. Fuel cells have different operational requirements, and therefore these requirements need to be appropriately modified for the grid operators to use. These additional steps add to the investment and operational cost to the grid operators. Through the ARIES platform, this proposed project aims to bridge this gap and use power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) and controller hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) experiments to inform the creation of open-source interconnection and interoperability information that can aid in faster and cheaper installation and operation of grid-forming fuel cell inverters.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2022

Co-simulation Framework for Community-scale Building-grid Integration [SWR-21-75]

Distributed energy resources (DERs), including rooftop solar, energy storage, and flexible loads, are gaining popularity as costs decline and as building owners and utilities realize their benefits. DERs can improve distribution system efficiency, help prevent the need for expensive grid upgrades, and increase the resilience of local communities. However, they can also cause difficulties in grid operations and can require controls to achieve their benefits. To address this challenge, NREL researchers have developed a community-scale solution that assesses the impacts of DERs and their control strategies on a distribution system. The framework has been shown to reduce solar photovoltaic (PV) curtailment to 0%, mitigate the adverse impact of solar variability on the distribution voltage, and provide up to 5-day critical load support during emergency events. Utilizing 5 different modules representing the feeder, buildings, home energy management systems, an aggregator, and a utility controller, NREL expects this simulation technology to play a critical role in the continued integration of DERs. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), solar curtailments accounted for 94% of the total energy curtailed in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) in 2020. By enabling Independent System Operators (ISOs) and utility operators to bring solar curtailments to 0%, the electrical grid can become less dependent on fossil-fueled power generation sources. NREL's co-simulation framework contains five major components: Distribution Feeder Model: describes the distribution feeder topology using OpenDSS, including the locations of all DERs. Residential Building Model: simulates a large number of buildings at a high resolution using OCHRETM. The model is equipped to control equipment based on signals from an external module. The model includes major household appliances such as HVAC and a water heater, non-dispatchable load models, a distributed PV system, and a home battery system. Home Energy Management System: optimizes the controls for the devices in a home using foreseeTM. The control can adjust based on the user preferences including cost, comfort, and convenience. In hierarchical control scenarios, where the houses follow signals from an aggregator, the home energy management system provides a flexibility band with a range of power and follows the dispatch signals received from aggregator. Community-Level Aggregator: solves for optimal energy dispatch based on the flexibility bands received from each home and the grid service signal received from the utility controller. Utility-Level Controller: provides grid signals for voltage control using Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), such as solar systems, in the community.

Balamurugan, Sivasathya Pradha↗
DOE OSTI2022

Small Hydropower Interconnections: Analysis of Interconnection Processes

Small hydropower projects have faced the challenge of navigating the process to interconnect their generation source to electricity distribution and transmission grids. Small hydropower developers have found interconnection procedures to be opaque and ultimately result in unexpected cost surprises and long timelines. Noting these challenges, the U.S. Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office enlisted Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to investigate the small hydropower interconnection landscape across the United States. After reviewing the status of small hydropower (“Small Hydropower Interconnections: Small Hydropower in the United States”) and the interconnection procedures across the United States (“Small Hydropower Interconnections: State Interconnection Processes”) in the first two white papers of this series, this paper uses recent data from small hydropower interconnection applications to benchmark the efficacy of the process. Using data from interconnection queues hosted by utilities, balancing authorities, independent system operators (ISOs), and regional transmission organizations (RTOs), this paper provides context for the costs, timelines, and types of upgrades required for small hydropower projects. Interconnection applications and study reports for small hydropower projects were analyzed to collect key pieces of information about the interconnection process, timeline, costs, and type of upgrades required for interconnection. Information sourced from the reports was entered into an Interconnection Benchmarking database (IBdb), which may be found in Appendix A.1. Information from this database was used to evaluate the performance and challenges associated with interconnecting small hydropower projects. This white paper presents a description of the sources contained in the interconnection database (Section 2.0), an analysis of the interconnection timeline (Section 3.0), an evaluation the cost of interconnection upgrades (Section 4.0), and a description of the types of infrastructure upgrades (Section 5.0). The final paper in this series (“Small Hydropower Interconnections: Best Practices”) will use the analysis described here to outline best practices for interconnection processes that will help overcome barriers to future small hydropower development.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Constraints on neutrino emission from nearby galaxies using the 2MASS redshift survey and IceCube

The distribution of galaxies within the local universe is characterized by anisotropic features. Observatories searching for the production sites of astrophysical neutrinos can take advantage of these features to establish directional correlations between a neutrino dataset and overdensities in the galaxy distribution in the sky. The results of two correlation searches between a seven-year time-integrated neutrino dataset from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, and the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) catalog are presented here. The first analysis searches for neutrinos produced via interactions between diffuse intergalactic Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) and the matter contained within galaxies. The second analysis searches for low-luminosity sources within the local universe, which would produce subthreshold multiplets in the IceCube dataset that directionally correlate with galaxy distribution. No significant correlations were observed in either analyses. Herein, constraints are presented on the flux of neutrinos originating within the local universe through diffuse intergalactic UHECR interactions, as well as on the density of standard candle sources of neutrinos at low luminosities.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Carbon source–driven metabolic and regulatory remodeling defines phenomic states in Lipomyces starkeyi

Lipomyces is a genus of oleaginous yeasts with potential for contributing to reliable biomanufacturing supply chains. However, progress in advanced strain designs and engineering efforts are still constrained by a lack of understanding of the underlying molecular drivers of Lipomyces phenotypes. To address this gap, we collected a suite of multi-omic data to dissect how carbon source availability reshapes the metabolic network, lipid allocation, and regulatory architecture of Lipomyces starkeyi. We observed that glucose promotes biosynthetic and proliferative processes supported by abundant energy and carbon intermediates, xylose enhances redox-balancing mechanisms centered on the pentose phosphate pathway, and glycerol activates respiratory metabolism, ß-oxidation, and the glyoxylate cycle. Lipid species distributions remained consistent in both nitrogen replete and depleted conditions across the carbon sources, indicating robust production mechanisms. Regulatory protein identification and network analysis revealed glycerol-driven respiratory growth favors regulatory programs integrating stress tolerance, redox balance, and lipid-associated metabolism, whereas xylose growth activates compensatory transcriptional responses aimed at maintaining mitochondrial function. Nitrogen limitation modulates the strength of these responses but does not fundamentally alter their direction, reinforcing carbon source as the dominant driver of regulatory architecture. Taken together, this data enhances the understanding of Lipomyces molecular rearrangements and provides a foundation for further development of predictive phenotypic tools in this genus.

Biotechnology↗
DOE OSTI2022

SIW21-95: Hybridizing Synchronous Condensers with Grid-Forming Battery Energy Storage Systems

One of the main challenges associated with deployment of high shares of inverter-based resources (IBRs) in power grid is not only reduced system inertia but also degrading system strength that may cause severe stability impacts. A minimum level of system strength is needed for the power system to remain stable under normal conditions and to return to a steady state condition following a system disturbance. Significant system strength reduction is expected in almost all planned areas for solar and wind generation deployment. Synchronous condensers (SC) have been considered as one main technology to address the system strength issues for the areas with high levels of IBRs. SCs can help improving reliability and resiliency of power system but they do not provide the full range of services needed by power systems for reliable and economic integration of high shares of inverter-coupled variable generation such as PV generation. Services related to active power controls cannot be provided by SCs due to lack of prime mover. Even for provision of reactive power SCs have certain constraints based on their thermal and stability limits. NREL has been conducting research on a hybridized concept that combines SCs with grid forming (GFM) battery energy storage systems (BESS). This super flexible AC transmission system (SuperFACTS) that combines these two technologies in a single plant under the same controller offers a unique scalable set of services to the power system at all levels (transmission, sub-transmission, distribution, islands and isolated microgrids). Depending on use cases, SuperFACTS can be controlled to provide fully dispatchable and flexible operation using energy storage component, provide a full range of existing and future ancillary and reliability services to the grid (similar or better than conventional sources), maintain adequate levels of grid strength and inertia, and provide fault current for proper operation of protection systems. Therefore, this economic and easy to commercialize solution has potential for significant impacts on certain segments of global energy sector. All types of gird services (market based, reliability and resiliency) can be provided by SuperFACTS plants. GFM BESS can act as a self-black start source for each SuperFACTS module, which in turn can act a black start resource for co-located PV and wind power plants, segments of transmission and distribution networks, for conventional power plants, etc. The issue of in-rush currents during black start is addressed by overcurrent capability of SCs. In this paper we describe the results of modeling for SuperFACTS concept.

grid forming↗
DOE OSTI2025

ElectricityLCI

The ElectricityLCI is a Python package for creating regionalized life cycle inventory models of U.S. electricity generation, consumption, and distribution using standardized facility and generation data for use with open-source LCA software.

Electricity; LCA; LCI; Python; life cycle analysis↗
DOE OSTI2025

Status of the MARS code

This report describes major features of the most recent version of the MARS code as well as ongoing developments. The list of features includes various options for geometry models, a beam line builder based on MADX code, import of geometry models in GDML format, use of structured and unstructured meshes for scoring purposes, an update to the recent TENDL library for a number of projectiles at low energies (up to 250 MeV), and a recently implemented method to calculate spatial distribution of residual dose in a single computer run without an intermediate source. Examples of the code application to various projects are presented as well.

Rakhno, Igor [Fermilab] (ORCID:0000000265828058)↗
DOE OSTI2026

OpenSAMPL: An Open Source Library for Timing and Synchronization Measurements and Analytics

Today's power grid operators are implementing timing and synchronization solutions that provide resilience to Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) vulnerabilities. These vendor-specific solutions often come with additional software applications that are designed to monitor that vendor's synchronization performance data. However, resilient timing architectures often resulting in multi-vendor solutions, including approaches that blend terrestrial clocks with space-based subscription services. In such an environment, collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data from a variety of sources within a single platform was heretofore not possible. To address this need, the US Department of Energy's Center for Alternative Synchronization and Timing (CAST) developed OpenSAMPL, the Open Synchronized Analytics and Monitoring Platform, an open-source Python framework for processing, loading, and observing clock measurement data from distributed devices. OpenSAMPL enables the ingestion of diverse clock-probe sources into a scalable time-series database and applies robust analytics. OpenSAMPL currently supports two vendor data pipelines, and will be extended to more in the near future, enabling seamless monitoring of a variety of timing and synchronization devices in a common environment.

Grant, Josh [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000163475060)↗
DOE OSTI2023

Collision-energy dependence of the Breit-Wheeler process in heavy-ion collisions and its application to nuclear charge radius measurements

The collision energy dependence of the cross section and the transverse momentum distribution of dielectrons from the Breit-Wheeler process in heavy-ion collisions are computed in the lowest-order QED and found to be sensitive to the nuclear charge distribution and the infrared divergence of the ultra-Lorentz-boosted Coulomb field. Within a given experimental kinematic acceptance, the cross section is found to increase while the pair transverse momentum ($\sqrt{\langle{p^2_T}\rangle}$) decreases with increasing beam energy. We demonstrate that the transverse-momentum component of Weizsäcker-Williams photons is due to the finite extent of the charge source and electric field component in the longitudinal direction. We further clarify the connection between the nuclear charge distribution and the kinematics of produced e + e - from the Breit-Wheeler process, and propose a criterion for the validity of the Breit-Wheeler process in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Following this approach we demonstrate that the experimental measurements of the Breit-Wheeler process in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions can be used to quantitatively constrain the nuclear charge radius. The extracted parameters show sensitivity to the impact parameter dependence, and can be used to study the initial-state and final-state effects in hadronic interactions.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗