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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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24 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Leveraging Existing Assets for Long Duration Energy Storage

Increased renewables penetration to electrical grid is necessary to reduce overall emissions from the electrical power generation sector. Nonetheless, its integration creates challenges to grid operators who must match the power being generated by intermittent renewables and other traditional energy sources with the demand from consumers, while ensuring the reliability and power quality for the entire system. Energy storage has been proposed as an alternative to natural gas peaking plants and a form to deliver excess renewable energy generation at times of peak demand. For energy storage to provide benefits to end customers (energy consumers), it must be reliable, efficient, and cost effective. The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), one of the surveys that integrate the Prairie Research Institute (PRI), aims to develop a Center for Energy Storage at Existing Assets (CESEA) at UIUC with the participation of Waste Pressure Corp and Ecotek Engineering USA LLC. CESEA will focus on LDES systems that can integrate to existing infrastructure in a manner that reduces the initial capital expenditure and demonstrates the ability to repurpose fossil assets that would otherwise become stranded, to serve the energy transition. CESEA aims to leverage UIUC’s unique facilities to validate LDES systems performance at a relevant operating environment. UIUC’s facilities include a 85-MW combined heat and power (CHP) power plant, two (2) solar PV plants totaling over 18 MWdc of installed capacity, an electrical grid along with a substation at transmission and distribution voltages, a 22-mile gas pipeline network operating at two pressure levels, along with steam and chilled water distribution networks. The new LDES systems will connect to the existing UIUC grid through a new test electrical station, which will have the capacity to accommodate additional connections to test new devices and technologies as part of future CESEA R&D activities. The test electrical station will contain meters, instrumentation, and controls to accurately capture data and allow optimization of control algorithms. CESEA will initially focus on technologies that: i) utilize existing equipment or facilities to perform at least one of the process steps in LDES (charging, storage, or discharging), ii) leverage mature or commercially available components or controls, iii) show potential for cost-leadership in 10+ hour storage at a commercial scale. Initial technologies that were identified to meet these criteria include Compressed Gas Energy Storage (CGES), and TES. CGES stores electricity by raising the pressure of a compressible gas inside a control volume and converting the stored energy to electricity via expansion-generation. CGES is a generalization of CAES that covers any working gas (not just air). A successful CGES demo will help to circumvent many challenges faced by CAES (long development times due to site prospecting, high cost of compression and storage, heat recovery management, etc.) by: 1) utilizing existing infrastructure (compressors, pipelines, underground storage or pressure vessels) used in the transportation and storage of industrial gases for LDES charging and storage; 2) deploying over sites already-developed for industrial applications with minor additional work; 3) leveraging the price structure of commercial industrial gas to cover the costs of electricity used during charging. A previous DOE-sponsored conceptual study (DE-FE-0032018) estimated the levelized cost of energy of a 1.1 MW / 17 MWh CGES system at $0.08/kWh, with a commercial 10x scale system cost estimated at <$0.04/kWh (Giardinella, 2022). The pilot-sized system was estimated to avoid up to 2693 tons of CO2/year.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
NASA NTRS2019

Utilization of Unsupervised Anomalies Detector as a Tool for Managing the TDRS Constellation at GSFC

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) operates a constellation of ten geosynchronous Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS). The mission of the TDRS constellation is to provide relay communications from low-earth orbiting spacecraft to the primary ground station at the White Sands Complex in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Major customers include the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. The NASA Space Network project office at GSFC manages the constellation of spacecraft. The constellation is over 30 years old, and a wide range of technologies and manufacturing techniques are represented on-orbit. Since 1983, the TDRS constellation has recorded thousands of gigabytes of telemetry data. Spacecraft telemetry data has changed throughout the three generations of TDRS spacecraft, however each spacecraft has the same basic functions with some generational enhancements. The constellation includes several spacecraft that have significantly outlived the manufacturer's projected lifetime. This has provided NASA with a significant benefit in terms of return on investment, however it places a burden on efficient management of the assets for maximum life without permitting a TDRS spacecraft to become stranded in its geosynchronous orbital slot. Consequently, the highest level of attention is paid to systems whose failure could strand a TDRS spacecraft in orbit. In this paper, we proposed two stages of analyzing spacecraft anomalies using data mining (DM) to enhance on-going predictions of spacecraft life, subsystem performance, and analysis of subsystem anomalies. The first stage conducts the unsupervised anomaly detector to detect potential anomalies in real-time telemetry data. The second stage introduced telemetry weight (TW) to each telemetry parameter to determine which parameter caused the strongest anomaly. We will present case studies of some of these analyses and how the data can impact decisions on the management of the constellation.

Ma, Kenneth Y.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Assured Crew Return Capability Architecture

The fundamental elements of the spacecraft Assured Crew Return Capability (ACRC) are discussed. These elements are access, response time, crew transfer, and the availability of landing sites. The use of an embedded operations concept identified as an essential element of the ACRC architecture. Several rescue assets are identified and evaluated as primary elements of an overall ACRC architecture. The investigation results lead to the following conclusions: optimum on-orbit rescue capability is provided by a rescue system integral to the operational vehicle; ground based rescue provides the most practical coverage for stranded transportation vehicles; and due to infrequent and unexpected use of ACRC, crew operations must be kept simple.

J W Craig↗
NASA NTRS2013

Characterization of the 2012-044c Briz-M Upper Stage Breakup

On 6 August, 2012, Russia launched two commercial satellites aboard a Proton rocket, and attempted to place them in geosynchronous orbit using a Briz-M upper stage (2012-044C, SSN 38746). Unfortunately, the upper stage failed early in its burn and was left stranded in an elliptical orbit with a perigee in low Earth orbit (LEO). Because the stage failed with much of its fuel on board, it was deemed a significant breakup risk. These fears were confirmed when it broke up 16 October, creating a large cloud of debris with perigees below that of the International Space Station. The debris cloud was tracked by the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN), which can reliably detect and track objects down to about 10 cm in size. Because of the unusual geometry of the breakup, there was an opportunity for NASA Orbital Debris Program Office to request radar assets to characterize the extent of the debris cloud in sizes smaller than the standard debris tracked by the SSN. This paper will describe the observation campaign to measure the small particle distributions of this cloud, and presents the results of the analysis of the data. We shall compare the data to the modelled size distribution, number, and shape of the cloud, and what implications this may have for future breakup debris models. We shall conclude the paper with a discussion how this measurement process can be improved for future breakups.

Matney, M. J.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Characterization of the 2012-044C Briz-M Upper Stage Breakup

On 6 August, 2012, Russia launched two commercial satellites aboard a Proton rocket, and attempted to place them in geosynchronous orbit using a Briz-M upper stage (2012-044C, SSN 38746). Unfortunately, the upper stage failed early in its burn and was left stranded in an elliptical orbit with a perigee in low Earth orbit (LEO). Because the stage failed with much of its fuel on board, it was deemed a significant breakup risk. These fears were confirmed when it broke up 16 October, creating a large cloud of debris with perigees below that of the International Space Station. The debris cloud was tracked by the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN), which can reliably detect and track objects down to about 10 cm in size. Because of the unusual geometry of the breakup, there was an opportunity for NASA Orbital Debris Program Office to use specialized radar assets to characterize the extent of the debris cloud in sizes smaller than the standard debris tracked by the SSN. This paper will describe the observation campaign to measure the small particle distributions of this cloud, and presents the results of the analysis of the data. We shall compare the data to the modelled size distribution, number, and shape of the cloud, and what implications this may have for future breakup debris models. We shall conclude the paper with a discussion how this measurement process can be improved for future breakups.

Matney, M. J.↗
DOE OSTI2026

From Bricks to Clicks: Mapping the White Space in Building Innovation

It is a critical national imperative to transform the buildings sector, yet innovation is impeded by deployment failures that leave promising technologies stranded. Conventional market reports and techno-economic analysis provide an insufficient understanding of markets and resource allocation for emerging building technologies. They omit crucial commercialization factors such as ecosystem maturity and adoption friction, where the coordinated participation of a network of suppliers, contractors, financiers, regulators, and integrators is required to scale solutions. This study addresses these gaps by introducing an evaluation framework grounded in front-line data from six years of the DOE's IMPEL incubator, comprising experience from 300 building-sector innovators and the adjacent, complex ecosystem. Our methodology synthesizes top-down market analysis with bottom-up, practitioner-level data across five megatrends: (M1) Affordable materials and industrialized construction; (M2) Healthy and efficient mechanical systems; (M3) Intelligent building operations; (M4) Buildings as grid assets; and (M5) High-density power and cooling for data centers and therein identify twelve "white space" technology opportunities. Next, we develop a multi-criteria scoring rubric to rank these opportunities based on parameters, i.e., Affordability, Quality of Life, Reliability, and Security, yielding composite ‘Demand’ and ‘Maturity’ indices. Our results indicate that the most significant white spaces may not be incremental products but a new class of ‘Ecosystem Enablers’, such as logistics platforms, orchestration layers, and automated compliance software that solve structural deployment gaps. This paper summarizes this transparent, evidence-based, practitioner-informed evaluation framework for policymakers and investors to re-evaluate policy and resource allocation and unlock scalable market transformation.

Singh, Reshma↗