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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 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Critical review of lithium recovery from geothermal brines with implications for Smackover Formation, USA

The rapidly growing demand for lithium, a critical element for energy storage and national security technologies, has intensified concerns over the long-term availability and environmental impact of conventional lithium sources, such as hard-rock mining. To meet future demand, it is vital to explore unconventional resources that can provide sustainable domestic supplies. Geothermal brines, produced as a byproduct of geothermal energy generation, offer a promising alternative for lithium recovery by leveraging existing infrastructure and renewable energy production. In particular, the Smackover Formation, an extensive reservoir of high-salinity brines spanning Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in the U.S. Gulf Coast, holds significant untapped lithium reserves. Co-producing geothermal energy and lithium from these brines aligns with sustainable extraction objectives while addressing resource scarcity. This review synthesizes current knowledge of lithium occurrence in the Smackover Formation and geothermal resources in the region, while also exploring how emerging tools such as machine learning can enhance resource targeting and co-production efficiency. Finally, we discuss key technical challenges and outline future research directions needed to advance lithium extraction from geothermal brines and secure a resilient domestic supply chain.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Multitarget Rydberg gates via spatial blockade engineering

Multi-target gates offer the potential to reduce gate depth in syndrome extraction for quantum error correction. Although neutral-atom quantum computers have demonstrated native multi-qubit gates, existing approaches that avoid additional control or multiple atomic species have been limited to single-target gates. We propose single-control-multi-target CZ^n gates on a single-species neutral-atom platform that require no extra control and have gate durations comparable to standard CZ gates. Our approach leverages tailored interatomic distances to create an asymmetric blockade between the control and target atoms. Using a GPU-accelerated pulse synthesis protocol, we design smooth control pulses for CZZ and CZZZ gates, achieving fidelities of up to 99.55% and $99.24\%$, respectively, even in the presence of simulated atom placement errors and Rydberg-state decay. Our approach is most effective for N=2 (CZZ) and N=3 targets (CZZZ); for larger N, increasing spatial crowding of the targets introduces significant challenges for maintaining the required blockade asymmetry. This work presents a practical path to implementing low-overhead multi-target gates in single-species neutral-atom systems, significantly reducing the resource overhead for syndrome extraction. To motivate the impact of these gates, we apply a greedy scheduling algorithm and we demonstrate that our proposed gates can reduce the number of atom reconfiguration costs by up to 50% for color code syndrome extraction of code distances greater than 5.

Stein, Samuel A.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Harnessing dimethyl ether with ultra-low-grade heat for scaling-resistant brine concentration and fractional crystallization

Solvent-driven separations may enable scalable concentration of hypersaline brines, supporting a circular resource economy from the extraction of lithium and rare earth elements from spent battery and magnet leachates. This work analyses a novel solvent-driven water extraction (SDWE) system employing dimethyl ether (DME) and ultra-low-grade heat for brine concentration and fractional crystallization. SDWE exploits DME’s unique properties: (1) a low dielectric constant that promotes water solubility over charged solutes by a factor of 10 3 , and (2) a high volatility that facilitate efficient DME reconcentration with ultra-low-grade heat. The techno-economic viability of SDWE is assessed with a computational framework that encompasses a liquid–liquid separator and a solvent concentrator. We integrate the extended universal quasichemical model with the virial equation of state to predict the compositions of the complex three-phase DME-water mixture at vapor–liquid and liquid–liquid equilibrium. Subsequently, we optimize the thermodynamic and economic performance of SDWE, by controlling the interstage flash pressure, heat source temperature, and the number of concentrating stages. DME-based SDWE concentrates an input saline feed to 5.5 M and regenerates over 99 % of the DME using ultra-low-grade heat below 50 °C, with a DME/water selectivity ratio of 125. Here our calculations reveal that optimal performance is achieved at interstage flash pressures of 0.4 – 0.5 bar for heat source temperatures between 323–373 K, with improved exergetic efficiencies at lower temperatures. At a heat source temperature of 323 K and an interstage pressure of 0.489 bar, DME-driven SDWE achieves an optimal thermodynamic efficiency of 20.5 % and a projected specific cost of US$ 1.93 m -3 . These specific costs suggest that SDWE is competitive with commercialized thermal distillation technologies, while mitigating the traditional risks associated with scaling in heat and mass exchangers with hypersaline brines.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Tuning the Selectivity of Carboxylic Acid–Based Eutectic Solvents for the Dissolution and Electrochemical Separation of Metal Oxides

Extracting metals from natural resources and recovering from waste materials with less-hazardous solvents is essential for sustainable technological advancements. The commonly employed method utilizes harsh chemicals for metal dissolution and the ensuing separation. Here, in this study, we examined the potential of eutectic solvents (types III and IV) as alternative media for the selective dissolution of metals and metal oxides and their subsequent electrochemical separation. Notably, type III eutectics composed of betaine:acetic acid and triazole:lactic acid exhibited excellent solubility for cobalt oxide (24.1 g·L –1 ) and copper oxide (30.5 g·L –1 ), respectively. In comparison, the type IV eutectic mixture of Ca(NO 3 ) 2 ·4H 2 O:acetic acid demonstrated the highest conductivity and lowest viscosity with solubility for both copper oxide (6.1 g·L –1 ) and metallic copper (5.4 g·L –1 from a used electronic circuit). Using a Ca(NO 3 ) 2 ·4H 2 O:acetic acid mixture, copper was selectively dissolved from a waste printed circuit board and subsequently electrodeposited onto a nickel electrode. These findings highlight the tunability of DESs for the selective recovery of metals from electronic waste, offering a promising approach for sustainable metal recycling and resource recovery.

electrodeposition↗
DOE OSTI2024

Advancing community-engaged research for offshore wind on the West Coast

The Biden Administration has called for 30 GW of offshore wind (OSW) to be implemented by 2030 and 15 GW of floating OSW by 2035. Because floating OSW is a novel technology for the West Coast, the United States, and the world, there is limited information about the implications of floating OSW for coastal communities. Floating OSW faces a complex regulatory landscape and a wide set of interested parties that stand to gain or lose based on the development process and outcomes. Key agencies are often siloed in their mission space, with little attention or resources for innovation in planning. Furthermore, many communities along the West Coast of the U.S. have experienced the boom-and-bust cycles of large, extractive industries that use coastal resources to benefit consumers in other locations, while leaving behind few long-lasting benefits at the local level. These siloes in government and civic society, and the lack of trust born out of past failures, make it difficult for communities, government agencies, scientists, and industry to plan for OSW based on community values and concerns. There is a need to develop projects that more equitably distribute benefits while safeguarding the ocean ecosystems upon which coastal populations depend.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Technoeconomic and life cycle energy analysis of carbon fiber manufactured from coal via a novel solvent extraction process

Coal is a versatile energy resource and was a driver of the industrial revolution that transformed the economies of Europe and North America and the trajectory of civilization. In this work, a technoeconomic analysis was performed for a coal-to-carbon-fiber manufacture process developed at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Applied Energy Research. According to this process, coal, with decant oil as the solvent, was converted to mesophase pitch via solvent extraction, and the mesophase pitch was subsequently converted to carbon fiber. The total cost to produce carbon fibers from coal and decant oil via the solvent extraction process was estimated to be $\$$11.50/kg for 50,000-tow pitch carbon fiber with a production volume of 3750 MT/year. The estimated carbon fiber cost was significantly lower than the current commercially available PAN-based carbon fiber price ($\$$20–$\$$30/kg). With decant oil recycling rates of 50% and 70% in the solvent extraction process, the manufacturing cost of carbon fiber was estimated to be $\$$9.90/kg and $\$$9.50/kg of carbon fiber, respectively. A cradle-to-gate energy assessment revealed that carbon fiber derived from coal exhibited an embodied energy of 510 MJ/kg, significantly lower than that of conventionally produced carbon fiber from PAN. This notable difference is primarily attributed to the substantially higher conversion rate of coal-based mesophase pitch fibers into carbon fiber, surpassing PAN fibers by 1.6 times. These findings indicate that using coal for carbon fiber production through solvent extraction methods could offer a more energy-efficient and cost-competitive alternative to the traditional PAN based approach.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
DOE OSTI2026

Final Scientific/Technical Report: Simultaneous Lithium Extraction and Thin-Film Deposition of Lithium Metal for Low-Cost, High-Energy Anodes from Brine Resources

This report describes the scale-up and pilot validation of Alpha-En's Reductive Lithium Extraction (RLE) process, which directly converts lithium ions from aqueous brine-derived feedstocks into thin-film lithium metal anodes, demonstrating greater than 50% extraction efficiency, battery performance matching or exceeding commercial lithium metal controls in coin and pouch cells, and continuous roll-to-roll production of a meter-scale lithium metal anode strip.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Seismic monitoring of EGS fracture stimulations at Utah FORGE (Part 1): Time-lapse variations of b-values and Shear-wave Splitting Rates of induced microearthquakes

Characterizing geologic formations near geothermal wells is crucial for efficient extraction of subsurface geothermal energy resources. To monitor effective fracture stimulation of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), we analyze a catalog of induced microearthquakes to characterize seismicity induced by Phase 2C fracture stimulations of the Utah FORGE project and derive the b-values for 424 induced microearthquakes in three stages of fracture stimulation. Here, we find the time-lapse variations of these b-values. We apply eigenvector rotation and waveform correlation to 3C geophone data to separate fast S 1 and slow S 2 waves, determine their directions, measure their lag time, and calculate the S-wave splitting rate (SSR) for six induced microearthquakes in Stage 1 and 21 in Stage 3. Both SSR values and b-values increase with time. The increase in these values may be related to heavily fractured zones created by fracture stimulations during Stage 2 injections. Large and highly variable SSR values in Stage 3 may reflect heterogeneities in the fracture zones. Time-lapse variations of SSR values and b-values may be one of the most useful approaches to monitoring and characterizing the effectiveness and efficiency of various types of fracture stimulations.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

The Natural Products Magnetic Resonance Database (NP-MRD) for 2025

The Natural Products Magnetic Resonance Database or NP-MRD (https://np-mrd.org) is a comprehensive, freely accessible, web-based resource for the deposition, distribution, extraction and retrieval of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data on natural products. The NP-MRD was initially established to support compound de-replication and data dissemination for the natural products community. However, that community has now grown to include many users from the metabolomics, microbiomics, foodomics and nutrition science fields. Indeed, since its launch in 2021, the NP-MRD has expanded enormously in size, scope and popularity. The current version of NP-MRD now contains nearly 7X more compounds (281,859 vs. 40,908) and 7X more NMR spectra (5.1 million vs. 817,000) than the first release. More specifically, an additional 4.6 million predicted spectra and another 11,000 spectra simulated from experimental chemical shifts were deposited into the database. Likewise, the number of NMR raw spectral data depositions has grown from a 165 spectra per year to more than 10,000 per year. As a result of this expansion, the number of monthly webpage views has grown from 55 to 20,000 and the number of monthly visitors has increased from 7 to 2500. To address this growth and to better support the expanding needs of its diverse community of users, many additional improvements to the NP-MRD have been made. These include significant enhancements to the data submission process, important improvements to the visualization and display of NMR spectra, notable updates to the database’s spectral search utilities and useful additions to support better NMR spectral analysis/prediction. Significant efforts have also been undertaken to remediate and update many of NP-MRD’s database entries. This manuscript describes these database improvements and expansion efforts, along with how they have been implemented and what future upgrades to the NP-MRD are planned.

Artifical Intelligence↗
DOE OSTI2025

Investigation of Reaction Pathways and Temperature Inhibition in Methane DBD Plasmas at the Princeton Collaborative Research Facility (PCRF)

The overarching goal of this research is to advance the fundamental understanding of plasma-driven chemical conversion of light hydrocarbons using dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs). Using methane (CH 4 ) as a model system, the primary focus is to elucidate the influence of DBD plasma properties and environmental temperature on CH 4 plasma chemistry by studying decomposition products of the gas effluent across a broad range of conditions using experimental instrumentation at the Princeton Collaborative Research Facility (PCRF) located at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). The insights obtained from this study are expected to form the mechanistic foundation for the design and optimization of plasma-catalytic reactions of light hydrocarbons for practical applications such as the recycling of production flare gas by transforming the uncaptured waste into value-added resources at the source of extraction, presenting a sustainable solution to a longstanding environmental challenge.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Novel Zwitterionic Chromatography to Separate Lithium from Unconventional Resources

Since lithium (Li) is a key element for clean energy technologies, the global lithium demand is anticipated to increase rapidly. As a result, efficient lithium extraction technologies that allow the exploitation of unconventional lithium resources, such as geothermal brines and inland brine streams, are essentially needed to meet the Li demand and keep supply chains stable. However, because of low Li concentration, low ratio of Li/Mg or Li/Ca, and complex feed compositions in these feedstocks, using conventional hydrometallurgy or current Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) processes are often chemical-intensive, requiring substantial amounts of reagent chemicals to recover Li at scale, resulting in large chemical footprints. Therefore, we developed a novel Zwitterionic Chromatography (ZIC) process to separate Li from these resources. Because Li can be partitioned from divalent salts on ZIC under water elution without using chemicals, exploiting the unconventional resources via a ZIC approach can be environmentally benign and sustainable. In this work, we will present the development of the ZIC process for DLE applications. Simulation studies for the Li separation mechanism in ZIC and the demonstration of a continuous ZIC process to separate Li from domestic inland brine and mining wastewater will be presented. Finally, the chemical and energy footprints of ZIC in comparison to other DLE processes will be discussed.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

A Novel Zwitterionic Chromatography Approach to Separate Lithium from Unconventional Resources

Lithium (Li) is a key element for clean energy technologies, and, accordingly, the global lithium demand has been increasing rapidly. Therefore, to meet the Li demand and maintain supply chain stability, it is critical to develop efficient lithium extraction technologies that allow exploitation of unconventional lithium resources, such as geothermal brines and inland brine streams. However, the recovery of Li from these resources is challenging due to low Li concentration, low ratios of Li/Na, Li/Mg, or Li/Ca, and complex feed compositions. To address this, we introduced a new Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) process using Zwitterionic Chromatography (ZIC) to separate Li from other salts. Since salts are partitioned on ZIC under water elution, no reagent chemicals are needed, and the Li separation is not limited by the adsorption capacity. We prepared 13 different zwitterionic (ZI) resins to investigate the salt retention on various ZI groups and then screened out promising sorbents for efficient Li separation. It was found that salt retention was synergistically affected by the pore size and ZI configurations. Using carboxybetaine (QAC3CA) sorbents, multicomponent separations showed that Li can be partitioned from divalent salts or Na with selectivities of 1.8 or 1.9, respectively. Although the selectivity is relatively low, in real brine tests, Li was separated from Ca and Mg with 79.2 % yield, showing the potential for a continuous process to achieve high productivity and high yield. Simulation studies suggest the salt elution mechanism is related to the hydration reaction energy and the effective hydrated radius of cations.

critical minerals↗
DOE OSTI2025

Discovering Ni/Cu Single-Atom Alloy as a Highly Active and Selective Catalyst for Direct Methane Conversion to Ethylene: A First-Principles Kinetic Study

Direct methane conversion to liquid fuels or value-added chemicals is a promising technology to utilize natural resources without resorting to further petroleum extraction. However, discovering efficient catalysts for this reaction is challenging due to either coke formation or unfavorable C-H bond activation. Herein, we design single-atom alloy (SAA) catalysts to simultaneously eliminate the above two bottlenecks based on mechanism-guided strategies: (1) the active single atom enables favorable C-H bond breaking and (2) the less reactive host metal facilitates C-C coupling and thus avoids strong binding of carbonaceous species. Employing electronic structure theory calculations, we screened the stability of multiple SAAs with 3d-5d transition metals atomically dispersed on a copper surface in terms of avoiding dopant aggregation and segregation. We then evaluated reactivities of the stable SAAs as catalysts for direct methane conversion to C2 products, including methane dehydrogenation and C-C coupling mechanisms. Combining selectivity analysis with kinetic modeling, we predicted that nickel dispersed on copper, i.e., Ni/Cu SAA, is a highly active and selective catalyst that can efficiently transform methane to ethylene. This work designs efficient SAA catalysts for direct methane activation and provides chemical insights into engineering compositions of SAAs to tune their catalytic performances.

Kothakonda, Manish↗
DOE OSTI2026

Irradiation Impact on Uranium Recovery Under Direct Extraction Conditions

Reducing the quantity of high-level radioactive waste is essential for minimizing environmental impact and improving efficiency of using natural resources for nuclear power. The current standard, Plutonium Uranium Solvent EXtraction (PUREX), uses tributyl phosphate (TBP) ligands to extract complexes of uranium and plutonium from a nitric acid (HNO3) phase. Although this method is effective, large volumes of HNO3 and the non-incinerable phosphate ligands increase the amount of hazardous waste produced. Alternative extractants and flowsheets have been proposed that allow for more selective extraction of radioactive metals, reduced nitric acid use, and easier incineration by only containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (CHON). One candidate, N,N-di(2-ethylhexyl)-isobutyramide (DEHiBA) exhibits promising properties for direct extraction. A HNO3 pre-equilibrated DEHiBA phase selectively extracts U(VI), leaving plutonium, transuranics, and fission products behind as precipitate and reducing the volume of radioactive HNO3 produced.

38 - RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCL↗
DOE OSTI2024

Electrically Powered High-Salinity Brine Separation Using Dimethyl Ether

Dewatering highly saline aqueous streams, from mining and geothermal leachates to industrial wastewater, is essential for effective resource recovery and safe disposal. Membraneless water extraction (MWE) uses a low-polarity solvent to separate water from concentrated aqueous solutions. In this study, we design a new MWE that uses dimethyl ether (DME) to selectively extract water from high-salinity brines, leveraging the volatility of DME to achieve rapid solvent recovery. By separating water and dissolved salts at a liquid–liquid interface, MWE minimizes the deleterious effects of scaling on vulnerable membrane and heat exchanger surfaces, reducing the need for extensive pretreatment and expensive materials. We begin by developing a computational framework for a multistage counterflow liquid–liquid contactor, which extracts water into DME, coupled with a multistage solvent regenerator that uses vapor compression to efficiently separate the desalinated water from the DME extractant. Excess Gibbs free energy and equation of state frameworks are used to model fluid phase equilibria in water–DME–sodium chloride (NaCl) mixtures, with interaction parameters estimated from experimental data. Incorporating equilibrium calculations into a system-scale computational model, we examine the performance of MWE using DME for the first time. Our analysis demonstrates that MWE can concentrate seawater desalination brine (>1.0 mol NaCl kg –1 ) to zero-liquid discharge salinities, with an energy consumption of under 50 kW h per m 3 of water extracted with a solvent recovery ratio greater than 99.9%. We highlight the importance of staging the vapor compression process to simultaneously minimize energy consumption while enabling brine concentration and product water solvent contamination. Finally, the thermodynamic framework developed here allows for the robust evaluation of new MWE solvents and systems for critical brine concentration and fractional precipitation applications.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hydropower Fish Passage Webmap

The National Fish Passage Webmap application provides an environment that allows users to visualize information information on fish passage facility existence, type, and direction at hydropower developments across the conterminous United States. It was developed through collaborative partnerships with fish passage engineers and biologists at both the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and hydropower experts at the Low Impact Hydropower Institute (LIHI). Data on fish passage facilities at hydropower features were compiled from numerous sources including published and non-published datasets, published reports, email communications with federal and state resource managers and hydropower operators, and by extracting information from regulatory documents within the FERC eLibrary. The number of sources for a given feature varied, which occasionally resulted in conflicting information regarding the existence of fish passage facilities or in the type or sub-type of passage technologies. Such discrepancies were reviewed and resolved individually, based on the weight of evidence or, when available, on direct observations from information providers or aerial imagery.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

AEPF: Attention-Enabled Point Fusion for 3D Object Detection

Current state-of-the-art (SOTA) LiDAR-only detectors perform well for 3D object detection tasks, but point cloud data are typically sparse and lacks semantic information. Detailed semantic information obtained from camera images can be added with existing LiDAR-based detectors to create a robust 3D detection pipeline. With two different data types, a major challenge in developing multi-modal sensor fusion networks is to achieve effective data fusion while managing computational resources. With separate 2D and 3D feature extraction backbones, feature fusion can become more challenging as these modes generate different gradients, leading to gradient conflicts and suboptimal convergence during network optimization. To this end, we propose a 3D object detection method, Attention-Enabled Point Fusion (AEPF). AEPF uses images and voxelized point cloud data as inputs and estimates the 3D bounding boxes of object locations as outputs. An attention mechanism is introduced to an existing feature fusion strategy to improve 3D detection accuracy and two variants are proposed. These two variants, AEPF-Small and AEPF-Large, address different needs. AEPF-Small, with a lightweight attention module and fewer parameters, offers fast inference. AEPF-Large, with a more complex attention module and increased parameters, provides higher accuracy than baseline models. Experimental results on the KITTI validation set show that AEPF-Small maintains SOTA 3D detection accuracy while inferencing at higher speeds. AEPF-Large achieves mean average precision scores of 91.13, 79.06, and 76.15 for the car class’s easy, medium, and hard targets, respectively, in the KITTI validation set. Results from ablation experiments are also presented to support the choice of model architecture.

Chemistry↗
DOE OSTI2024

Linking Threat Agents to Targeted Organizations: A Pipeline for Enhanced Cybersecurity Risk Metrics

In this study, we present a methodology leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to transform Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence (CTI) narratives into actionable insights for individual organizations. Our approach automates the extraction of machine-readable adversary SKRAM (Skills, Knowledge, Resources, Authorities, and Motivation) attributes from open-source reports, extending LLM utility beyond typical interactions. This innovation enables precise, automated assessments of cybersecurity risks posed by various adversaries. Using a chain-of-thought and multi-shot prompting strategy, our methodology advances the automation of cybersecurity feature extraction for new machine-learning models that predict the risk of adversary targeting. This approach is refined using a substantial dataset of over 150 analyst-validated threat reports and synthetic organizational data from 900 companies. Here, by bootstrapping the training data with a rule-based heuristic over synthetic data, we have developed a high-accuracy machine-learning model that allows entities to dynamically prioritize threats and defensive actions.

Cyber Threat Intelligence↗