Production of Low-Cost Aerogel Insulation by a Continuous Manufacturing Process
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32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
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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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System and process for continuous and controlled production of metal-organic frameworks and metal-organic framework composites
A MOF production system and method of making are detailed for continuous and controlled synthesis of MOFs and MOF composites. The system can provide optimized yields of MOFs and MOF composites greater than or equal to 95%.
Motkuri, Radha Kishan↗
Furthering Advancement to Address Tough Problems Facing the Solar Energy Industry, Spurring the Next Wave of Solar Technology Innovations through Three Progressive Challenges and Cash Incentives (Final Report)
The American-Made Solar Prize is a prize competition from the U.S. Department of Energy that is designed to revitalize U.S. solar manufacturing. The competition aims to support the growth of U.S. solar manufacturing and reenergize American energy innovation by tapping into American's competitive spirit and the nation's unparalleled innovation ecosystem leveraging national labs, incubators, facilities and more. National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) will provide technical and business advisement to the noted Solar Prize finalists. The CRADA Participant is in the process of developing a new continuous process for making silicon wafers for solar cells in a novel approach to horizontal ribbon growth. Under this CRADA, NREL will characterize the chemical, electrical, and crystallographic properties of the as-produced wafers to and work with the CRADA Participant to improve and modify processing conditions.
14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
Refining a Novel Process Monitoring Method to Safeguard Continuously Cycling Designs Using Isotopic Ratios
In advanced reactor (AR) designs, a common feature is continuous chemical processing and circulation of the nuclear material. This work bridges a significant measurement gap in safeguarding reactors with circulating fuel or continuous refueling by leveraging and building on the isotope ratio method first developed by our team under an FY21 Advanced Reactors International Safeguards Engagement (ARISE) project (Uribe et al. 2021). In circulating fuel designs, the radioisotope inventory changes from traditional effects (e.g., radioactive decay, fission) but also includes material transport due to pressure and temperature gradients. Such designs may also require regular or continuous additions or removals during operation, which significantly increases the rate of inventory change compared to traditional pressurized water reactor (PWR)s. Thus, directly tracking the nuclear inventory is ineffective since the isotopes are continuously added and removed. The isotope ratio method instead focuses on detecting changes to the input and output flows of radioisotopes. Previous work showed that for well-chosen pairs of isotopes, the isotopic ratio provides a sensitive and lasting indicator of deviation from normal conditions (e.g., startup, shutdown, diversion). The isotope ratio method is a process monitoring method with potential for application in for forward-looking approaches to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. The original process monitoring method was developed for a specific case—the decay tank of a thorium-fueled molten salt breeder reactor. In this expanded work, we explored other types of reactors and processes with nonstationary (e.g., flowing) nuclear material, which are difficult to safeguard with traditional methods because of the transient nature of the systems. The goal of the present work is to generalize the isotope ratio method for use in processes with continuously flowing nuclear material. All continuous processes have an average time for isotopes to be replaced in the system. The isotope ratio method works by choosing radioisotopes with half-lives both above and below the processing time. The present work seeks to explore which isotopes are suitable for the method by simulating the nuclear inventory, radioisotope emissions, and detector responses for several classes of advanced reactors. While the method can in principle be applied to other processes (e.g., enrichment or reprocessing facilities), the present work limits scope to ARs with continuously flowing fuel. Section 2 details the mathematics supporting the isotope ratio method, and Section 3 introduces the representative ARs selected for this work. Section 4 discusses how each reactor was analyzed, and Section 5 showcases the results for each representative reactor. Finally, Section 6 provides concluding remarks and suggests pathways for further analysis.
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
Coal to Carbon Fiber – A Novel Supercritical CO 2 Solvated Process
This project aims to demonstrate, independently, the three primary processes necessary to produce carbon fiber from coal feedstock material and assess the potential for those independent processes to integrate into a single, continuous process in order to provide significant cost reductions in the most costly steps of carbon fiber processing. The specific objective of the present research is to assess the technical feasibility for generation of quality carbon fiber pre-cursor materials from coal using a supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO 2 ) solvation process.
01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
Cryogenic Carbon Capture™ (CCC) Status Report
The Cryogenic Carbon Capture™ (CCC) process separates CO2 from light gases in essentially any continuous process. CCC cools the gases to the frost or desublimation point of CO2 (-100 to -135 °C), separates and pressurizes the solids, and warms all streams to produce a CO2-depleted stream at ambient pressure and a pure (99+%) pressurized liquid CO2 stream typically to about 150 bar, both at ambient temperature. The process also recovers all gas moisture and most gas impurities less volatile than CO2 (NOx, SOx, Hg, PM, UHC, CCC, etc.) in separable streams. CCC nearly eliminates refrigeration energy for sensible temperature changes through heat integration. CCC does require energy to change the CO2 phase from a mixed vapor to a pressurized fluid, which represents the minimum energy required of any process for this separation. CCC uses additional energy for turbomachinery inefficiencies, heat losses, moisture removal and overall process pressure drop. Aside from these real-world energy demands, CCC operates near the minimum energy required to perform this gas separation by minimizing stream recycling. CCC compresses CO2 as a liquid, which is one of several reasons it costs about about half as much and consumes about half as much energy as an amine process when using flue gases with about 15% CO2. The process also has several major additional advantages, including (a) it is a bolt-on retrofit technology that does not need steam or any modification of existing equipment, (b) it recovers water and nearly all pollutants in addition to CO2 from the flue gas, (c) it enables highly efficient and cost effective energy storage at grid scale and on time scales of minutes, (d) it enables NG storage if the energy storage option is used, and (d) it has a small footprint and is minimally disruptive to existing plants, requiring only electrical power and a gas source to operate. Sustainable Energy Solutions (SES) has scaled this technology through several levels, the largest of which captures nominally 1 tonne of CO2/day and is called the skid system. Skid system field tests include utility-scale power plants, cement plants, heating plants, and other utility or industrial sites that burn natural gas, biomass, coal, shredded tires, municipal waste, and combinations of these fuels. These field tests produced 95-99% CO2 capture with CO2 purities of 99+% and initial CO2 contents that range from 4 to 28%. SES currently seeks to scale the system to merchant scale (10-80 tonnes of CO2 per day). In the process of doing so, SES has demonstrated the potential for CCC to contribute to energy storage and direct air capture in innovative and cost-effective ways. This presentation discusses the overall process and highlights results from field and in-house tests. These include (a) measured CO2 capture rates and operating conditions from in-house and field tests, and (b) predicted utility-scale costs and energy demands. This discussion also includes the application of the CCC technology to energy storage and direct air capture.
20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
Migration-assisted, moisture gradient process for ultrafast, continuous CO 2 capture from dilute sources at ambient conditions
An ultrafast, continuous CO 2 capture process driven by moisture gradient and electric field with low energy consumption to capture and concentrate CO 2 from dilute sources.
Prajapati, Aditya↗
CO2 Capture Strategies via Mineralization with Industrial Waste Brines
Large coal-fired power plants (>500 MW) account for 30% of global CO2 emissions, and long-term management of this CO2 to is urgently needed mitigate global temperature increases. Sequestration of CO2 within stable mineral carbonates (e.g., CaCO3) represents an attractive emission reduction strategy because it offers a leakage-free alternative to geological storage of CO2 in an environmentally friendly form. We have previously described a mineralization process in which divalent cations are sourced from various waste streams (e.g., produced water and brackish water) and alkalinity is induced via regenerable ion-exchange materials (Bustillos et. al. Frontiers in Energy Research. 2020, 8, 352). In our process, aqueous carbonate-bearing streams with pH > 8 are produced by contacting fresh water and carbon dioxide with various ion-exchange materials (e.g., Na form zeolites or ion exchange resins). These streams are mixed with produced water containing varying concentrations (~0.01 – 1.0 M) of Ca2+ leading to the precipitation of solid calcium carbonate (PCC). This process has the advantages of using regenerable solids in a simple and continuous process to increase the pH of water by ion exchange instead of relying on the consumption of costly and unsustainable sources of alkalinity (e.g., sodium hydroxide). While once-through column experiments showed the above benefits, the same were yet to established in a steady-state process with recycle streams. In this work, we set up a process simulation to quantify the energy requirements and CO2 emissions associated with the process and seek optimal produced water compositions and CO2 concentrations (5 – 20 vol%). The process simulation was set up in ASPEN Plus using eRNTL as the thermodynamic property method and sequential modular strategy. Ion exchange alkaline solution was simulated using sodium hydroxide and validated against the experimental data obtained from once-through kinetic experiments. Nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membrane steps were also implemented for the separation of divalent cations and production of fresh water and a regeneration stream following mineralization. Sensitivity analysis was carried out using a range of produced water compositions (0.01 – 1.0 M Ca2+, 0.001 – 0.15 M Mg2+, 0.5 – 3.5 M Na+ and 0.0004 – 0.002 M Fe2+) according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) database. Calcium carbonate yields increased with increasing CO2 concentrations and were maximized using produced water compositions with larger Ca2+ concentrations. Maximum calcium carbonate yields produced at 5 vol%, 12 vol% and 20 vol% CO2 were 2.3 mmol/L, 5.5 mmol/L, and 9.3 mmol/L, respectively, with the formation of brucite (a magnesium hydroxide phase, Mg(OH)2) and goethite (an iron hydroxide phase, FeOOH) as the primary contaminant phases (99% calcite, 0.6% brucite, 0.4% goethite), which agree with phases detected by XRD experimentally. These results indicate high purity calcium carbonate can be precipitated using industrial waste streams. Consequentially, energy consumption and net CO2 emissions were minimized where precipitated calcium carbonate was maximized for all produced water compositions and CO2 concentrations. Minimum energy consumptions were 0.21 kWh/ton CO2 processed, with 98% of the energy input required coming from the membrane filtration steps. Produced water compositions with large Na+ concentrations (> 0.5 M) were effective at reducing energy consumptions due to faster regeneration time of ion exchange materials. Additionally, calculated net CO2 emissions were negative for the process and ranged from -0.02 kg/ton CO2 to -0.15 kg/ton CO2 processed, indicating a low emission process. We will also present techno-economic assessment showing the economic benefits of the current process as an alternative to the addition of stoichiometric bases to induce alkalinity for the precipitation of CaCO3.
Simonetti, Dante↗
A Review of Tank 48H Treatment of Tetraphenylborate with Permanganate
Tank 48H contains roughly 270,000 gallons of radioactive waste material. The waste stored in this tank was to be processed in multiple stages utilizing facilities at the Savannah River Site (SRS) almost 30 years ago. The In-Tank Precipitation Process (ITP) was initiated in Tank 48H, which precipitated highly radioactive cesium-137 using sodium tetraphenylborate (NaTPB). While the process succeeded in precipitating the Cs, Sr, and other actinides, it also generated an unexpectedly large amount of benzene. The evolved benzene created a safety concern and made the waste incompatible with further downstream processing. This halted the ITP, and a new method of treatment was required to continue processing the legacy waste contained in Tank 48H. A myriad of treatment options have been proposed with multiple teams of researchers assembled to work on this highly complex issue over the last few decades. This review investigated one potentially viable treatment option, in-tank oxidation with sodium permanganate. Permanganate has been well known in literature as a strong oxidizing agent for organic compounds, as well as being utilized at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in other processes. A small number of studies have been conducted utilizing waste simulants to evaluate the use of permanganate as an oxidant for tetraphenylborate (TPB). A search of the literature and data from these studies indicates that permanganate could be a viable treatment for destruction of TPB in Tank 48H. While the scoping studies had a small number of individual experiments and nonideal conditions, the permanganate decomposed up to 90% of the TPB. A free hydroxide concentration above 1.0 M is required for tank corrosion control. Simulant studies indicate no decrease in TPB decomposition by permanganate until pH 14. The simulant studies show an increase in TPB decomposition as the temperature of the solution is increased to 40 °C. The post-reaction analysis of previous simulant tests did not look at all of the organic degradation products. Investigations into what these organic products are and in what quantity will help guide determinations as to whether the downstream processing facilities are able to handle the material that will be generated. Study on the time frame for the reaction between permanganate and TPB should be investigated as the literature reports only extend out to two weeks reaction time. The permanganate treatment conditions indicate no corrosion control concerns and a longer timescale reaction may be needed for in-tank treatment. In addition, further study would be useful to identify a lower boundary condition for the ratio of TPB and oxidant. The simulant tests applied large excesses of permanganate, and this may be unnecessary. The size constraint of the tank means that there will be practical limitations on the amount of sodium permanganate that can be added to the tank. The amount of permanganate should be minimized as much as possible while still ensuring decomposition of the TPB to minimize the amount of manganese dioxide solids generated.
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
Quantile regression-enriched event modeling framework for dropout analysis in high-temperature superconductor manufacturing
High-temperature superconductor (HTS) tapes have shown promising characteristics of high critical current, which are prerequisites for applications in high-field magnets. Due to the unstable growth conditions in the HTS manufacturing process, however, the frequent occurrences of dropouts in the critical current impede the consistent performance of HTS tapes. To manufacture HTS tapes with large scale, high yield, and uniform performance, it is essential to develop novel data analysis approaches for modeling the dropouts and identifying the related important process parameters. Conventional methods for modeling recurrent events, such as the point process, require the extraction of events from quality measurements. As the critical current is a continuous process, it may not comprehensively represent the drop patterns by transforming the time-series measurements into a set of events. Here, to solve this issue, we develop a novel quantile regression-enriched event modeling (QREM) framework that integrates the non-homogeneous Poisson process for modeling the occurrence of dropouts and the quantile regression for capturing the drop patterns. By incorporating the feature selection and regularization, the proposed framework identifies a set of significant process parameters that can potentially cause the dropouts of HTS tapes. The proposed method is tested on real HTS tapes produced using an advanced manufacturing process, successfully identifying important parameters that influence dropout events including the substrate temperature and voltage. The results demonstrate that the proposed QREM method outperforms the standard point process in predicting the occurrence of dropouts.
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
Systems and processes for recovery of high-grade rare earth concentrate from acid mine drainage
In one aspect, the disclosure relates to a continuous process for treating acid mine drainage while simultaneously recovering a high-grade rare earth preconcentrate suitable for extraction of commercially valuable rare earth oxides. In a further aspect, the preconcentrate is from about 0.1% to 5% rare earth elements on a dry weight basis. In another aspect, the disclosure relates to a method for processing the preconcentrate to generate a pregnant leach solution that does not form gels or emulsions and is suitable for processing via solvent extraction. In another aspect, the disclosure relates to a system and plant for carrying out the disclosed process. In still another aspect, the disclosure relates to a composition containing rare earth elements produced by the process disclosed herein. This abstract is intended as a scanning tool for purposes of searching in the particular art and is not intended to be limiting of the present disclosure.
Ziemkiewicz, Peter F.↗
ATLAS: a Snakemake workflow for assembly, annotation, and genomic binning of metagenome sequence data
Background: Metagenomics and metatranscriptomics studies provide valuable insight into the composition and function of microbial populations from diverse environments, however the data processing pipelines that rely on mapping reads to gene catalogs or genome databases for cultured strains yield results that underrepresent the genes and functional potential of uncultured microbes. Recent improvements in sequence assembly methods have eased the reliance on genome databases, thereby allowing the recovery of genomes from uncultured microbes. However, configuring these tools, linking them with advanced binning and annotation tools, and maintaining provenance of the processing continues to be challenging for researchers. Results: Here we present ATLAS, a software package for customizable data processing from raw sequence reads to functional and taxonomic annotations using state-of-the-art tools to assemble, annotate, quantify, and bin metagenome and metatranscriptome data. Genome-centric resolution and abundance estimates are provided for each sample in a dataset. ATLAS is written in Python and the workflow implemented in Snakemake; it operates in a Linux environment, and is compatible with Python 3.5+ and Anaconda 3+ versions. The source code for ATLAS is freely available, distributed under a BSD-3 license. Conclusions: ATLAS provides a user-friendly, modular and customizable Snakemake workflow for metagenome and metatranscriptome data processing; it is easily installable with conda and maintained as open-source on GitHub at https://github.com/metagenome-atlas/atlas.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Techno-economic uncertainty analysis of wet waste-to-biocrude via hydrothermal liquefaction
Not Available
Li, Shuyun↗
Multi-operation tool for photovoltaic cell processing
Multi-operation tools for photovoltaic cell processing are described. In an example, a multi-operation tool includes a conveyor system to move a photovoltaic (PV) cell continuously along a conveyor path through a laser scribing station and an adhesive printing station. Furthermore, the PV cell may be aligned to a laser head of the laser scribing station and a printer head of the adhesive printing station in a single alignment operation prior to being laser scribed and printed with an adhesive in a continuous process.
Beckett, Nathan Phillips↗
From lignin to market: a technical and economic perspective of reductive depolymerization approaches
Lignin has grown into one of the main candidates to replace fossil-based resources as it is the largest renewable source of aromatic building blocks. The complex structure of polymeric lignin, however, requires depolymerization to simpler building blocks for the chemical industry. One of the most promising depolymerization approaches is reductive depolymerization of which two process configurations are currently studied in pilot scale installations for upscaling to industrial scale: (i) reductive catalytic fractionation (RCF), and (ii) reductive catalytic depolymerization (RCD). Both technical and techno-economic aspects will be covered within this review, discussing the advantages and challenges of both approaches regarding processing, production costs, product output, and applications. In this regard, RCF benefits from its decreased energy and solvent consumption linked with being a one-step process and delivers a product with a high monomer content (∼25–45 wt%). RCD, on the other hand, has the advantage of continuous processing and reduced catalyst fouling and delivers a product that mainly consists of oligomers (<10 wt% monomers). The complete overview of both processes presented here addresses their potential, and can guide future researchers, policy makers and companies to make thoughtful decisions on lignin valorization.
09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
Selective hydrodeoxygenation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) to 2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF) over carbon supported copper catalysts using isopropyl alcohol as a hydrogen donor
Selective hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural to 2,5-dimethylfuran is of great importance. Here, we reveal a simple pathway for green and efficient HDO using readily available copper with in-situ hydrogen generation. A highly dispersed Cu/PBSAC catalyst consisting of small metallic Cu 0 nanoparticles carries out isopropyl alcohol (IPA) dehydrogenation and subsequent HDO of HMF. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the dehydrogenation of IPA is more favorable on Cu(211) with a lower energy barrier of ~0.6 eV. This facet exists in a higher ratio on nanosized catalysts. Batch reactions using Cu/PBSAC at 190 °C exhibited 91.9% HMF conversion and 71.7% DMF selectivity in 6 hr, and > 96% DMF yield in 10 hr. The mechanical strength of the carbon support is ideal for continuous processing for increased productivity; we demonstrate a > 90% DMF yield at 1/WHSV of 2.4 hr. The process demonstrated here can be integrated with upstream HMF separation utilizing carbon adsorbents.
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NREL's Biochemical Conversion Pilot Plant Capabilities
NREL's biochemical conversion plant is a flexible pilot plant for testing a wide range of bio-based technologies for producing renewable fuels and byproducts. The biochemical conversion pilot plant is housed in the Integrated Biorefinery Research Facility located on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) main campus. The facility provides industry partners the opportunity to test and develop their own biorefining technology using NREL equipment or rental equipment that can be brought into the plant. The pilot plant can process materials up to one dry ton per day in an integrated fashion using a variety of operating modes including batch, fed-batch, and continuous processing.
biochemical↗
Comparison of Generation of Higher-Order Neutron Scattering Cross Sections
The generation of high-order neutron scattering cross sections consistent with high-fidelity simulations remains an area of active research. Popular options include generating cross sections from continuous energy Monte Carlo calculations or generating cross sections from a deterministic neutron transport calculation with high-fidelity tabulated cross sections. Both options present challenges. Monte Carlo simulations can naturally process continuous energy cross section data and allow for the general description of anisotropic neutron scattering given a scattering law. However, Monte Carlo simulations are inherently related to particle weighting and it has been suggested that this may be unacceptable for generating high-order neutron scattering cross sections. Deterministic neutron transport calculations can easily calculate high-order moments of the flux to appropriately calculate higher-order neutron scattering cross sections but are generally limited by discretization of space, energy, and angle. In this work, the trade-offs between generation of high-order neutron scattering cross sections via Monte Carlo and deterministic neutron transport methods are investigated. The methods implemented in the Monte Carlo computer program Serpent and the deterministic fast reactor neutron cross section generator MC2-3 are compared. Cross sections resulting from these methods are used in Rattlesnake, a deterministic neutron transport code developed by Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and results are compared to a reference continuous energy Monte Carlo calculation. Whereas previous work investigating the effects of anisotropic neutron scattering has focused on light water reactor (LWR) simulations, this work focuses on high-order neutron scattering cross sections as they relate to fast reactor simulations. To investigate the consequences of the Serpent and MC2-3 methodologies, a test problem is developed. The test problem is a one-dimensional geometry with fast reactor materials designed to demonstrate deep penetration and exacerbate the effects of high-order neutron scattering. Based on the results of the deep penetration test problem, it is concluded that P3 neutron scattering cross sections are sufficient to describe anisotropic scattering in fast reactor materials. Any neutron scattering of order higher than P3 offers negligible change in the eigenvalue of the test problem. Additionally, it is determined that the methodology as implemented in Serpent is applicable for generating high-order neutron scattering cross sections through at least P3 in fast reactor materials.
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗