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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 433 records · Page 24
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Strategies for microgrid operation under real-world conditions

Microgrids are an increasingly relevant technology for integrating renewable energy sources into electricity systems. Based on a microgrid implementation in California, in this study we investigate microgrid operation under real-world conditions. These conditions have not yet been considered in combination and encompass energy charges, demand charges, export limits, as well as uncertainty about future electricity demand and generation in the microgrid. Under these conditions, we evaluate the performance of two frequently applied groups of strategies for microgrid operation. The first group is composed of proactive strategies that optimize decisions based on forecasts of future electricity generation and demand. The second group includes reactive strategies that make operational decisions based exclusively on the current state of the microgrid. We evaluate the performance of the strategies under varying operational parameters, forecast accuracies, and microgrid configurations—well beyond our Californian showcase. Our results confirm the expectation that proactive strategies outperform reactive ones in the majority of settings. Yet, reactive strategies can perform better under short control intervals or under moderate prediction errors of PV generation or demand. Furthermore, the interplay between real-world conditions and operational strategies reveals several additional insights for research on microgrid operation. First, we find that demand charges and export limits decisively affect microgrid performance. Second, the impact of forecast errors is highly non-linear and non-monotonous. Third, escalating negative interactions between forecast errors and demand charges make proactive strategies benefit from longer control intervals. This result is contrary to existing best practice, which promotes short control intervals to minimize the impact of uncertainty.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2013

Microgrid Reliability Modeling and Battery Scheduling Using Stochastic Linear Programming

This paper describes the introduction of stochastic linear programming into Operations DER-CAM, a tool used to obtain optimal operating schedules for a given microgrid under local economic and environmental conditions. This application follows previous work on optimal scheduling of a lithium-iron-phosphate battery given the output uncertainty of a 1 MW molten carbonate fuel cell. Both are in the Santa Rita Jail microgrid, located in Dublin, California. This fuel cell has proven unreliable, partially justifying the consideration of storage options. Several stochastic DER-CAM runs are executed to compare different scenarios to values obtained by a deterministic approach. Results indicate that using a stochastic approach provides a conservative yet more lucrative battery schedule. Lower expected energy bills result, given fuel cell outages, in potential savings exceeding 6percent.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Representing Global Soil Erosion and Sediment Flux in Earth System Models

Abstract Soil erosion produces enormous amounts of sediment, carbon, and nutrient fluxes from land to rivers, thus playing crucial roles in global biogeochemical cycles and food security. To predict soil erosion in the context of climate and land use changes, we explicitly parameterize cropland management actions (i.e., irrigation, conserved agriculture, and crop residue management) and geological factors (i.e., lithology and glacier) in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) soil erosion module. The erosion model is calibrated using a global‐scale regionalized parameter calibration method. The spatial variabilities of the modeled and the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) based benchmark soil erosion are consistent across vegetation, climate and soil properties. Compared with independent data, our model shows a bias reduction in 59% of the observations relative to the RUSLE‐based soil erosion, with 53% of the bias reduction exceeding 50%. This improvement is mainly due to a better representation of the topographic effect on soil erosion. Our results indicate that conserved agriculture practices have effectively reduced soil erosion in cropland by over 25% in the United States and Argentina. In contrast, irrigation has increased soil erosion in many Asian countries. For upland sediment flux, our model is consistent with the WBMsed benchmark data in inter‐basin variability but could be more skillful in simulating intra‐basin variability because it couples soil erosion and sediment flux explicitly. The developed model provides useful skills for more realistic predictions of soil erosion and river sediment dynamics under environmental changes.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

De novo design of modular protein hydrogels with programmable intra- and extracellular viscoelasticity

Relating the macroscopic properties of protein-based materials to their underlying component microstructure is an outstanding challenge. Here, we exploit computational design to specify the size, flexibility, and valency of de novo protein building blocks, as well as the interaction dynamics between them, to investigate how molecular parameters govern the macroscopic viscoelasticity of the resultant protein hydrogels. We construct gel systems from pairs of symmetric protein homo-oligomers, each comprising 2, 5, 24, or 120 individual protein components, that are crosslinked either physically or covalently into idealized step-growth biopolymer networks. Through rheological assessment, we find that the covalent linkage of multifunctional precursors yields hydrogels whose viscoelasticity depends on the crosslink length between the constituent building blocks. In contrast, reversibly crosslinking the homo-oligomeric components with a computationally designed heterodimer results in viscoelastic biomaterials exhibiting fluid-like properties under rest and low shear, but solid-like behavior at higher frequencies. Exploiting the unique genetic encodability of these materials, we demonstrate the assembly of protein networks within living mammalian cells and show via fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) that mechanical properties can be tuned intracellularly in a manner similar to formulations formed extracellularly. We anticipate that the ability to modularly construct and systematically program the viscoelastic properties of designer protein-based materials could have broad utility in biomedicine, with applications in tissue engineering, therapeutic delivery, and synthetic biology.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2011

OBSERVATIONS OF DETAILED STRUCTURE IN THE SOLAR WIND AT 1 AU WITH STEREO/HI-2

We present images of solar wind electron density structures at distances of 1 AU, extracted from the STEREO/HI-2 data. Collecting the images requires separating the Thomson-scattered signal from the other background/foreground sources that are 10{sup 3} times brighter. Using a combination of techniques, we are able to generate calibrated imaging data of the solar wind with sensitivity of a few x 10{sup -17} B{sub sun}, compared to the background signal of a few x 10{sup -13} B{sub sun}, using only the STEREO/HI-2 Level 1 data as input. These images reveal detailed spatial structure in coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and the solar wind at projected solar distances in excess of 1 AU, at the instrumental motion-blur resolution limit of 1{sup 0}-3{sup 0}. CME features visible in the newly reprocessed data from 2008 December include leading-edge pileup, interior voids, filamentary structure, and rear cusps. 'Quiet' solar wind features include V-shaped structures centered on the heliospheric current sheet, plasmoids, and 'puffs' that correspond to the density fluctuations observed in situ. We compare many of these structures with in situ features detected near 1 AU. The reprocessed data demonstrate that it is possible to perform detailed structural analyses of heliospheric features with visible light imagery, at distances from the Sun of at least 1 AU.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

DISCONNECTING OPEN SOLAR MAGNETIC FLUX

Disconnection of open magnetic flux by reconnection is required to balance the injection of open flux by coronal mass ejections and other eruptive events. Making use of recent advances in heliospheric background subtraction, we have imaged many abrupt disconnection events. These events produce dense plasma clouds whose distinctive shape can now be traced from the corona across the inner solar system via heliospheric imaging. The morphology of each initial event is characteristic of magnetic reconnection across a current sheet, and the newly disconnected flux takes the form of a 'U-'shaped loop that moves outward, accreting coronal and solar wind material. We analyzed one such event on 2008 December 18 as it formed and accelerated at 20 m s{sup -2} to 320 km s{sup -1}, thereafter expanding self-similarly until it exited our field of view 1.2 AU from the Sun. From acceleration and photometric mass estimates we derive the coronal magnetic field strength to be 8 {mu}T, 6 R{sub Sun} above the photosphere, and the entrained flux to be 1.6 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 11} Wb (1.6 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 19} Mx). We model the feature's propagation by balancing inferred magnetic tension force against accretion drag. This model is consistent with the feature's behavior and accepted solar wind parameters. By counting events over a 36 day window, we estimate a global event rate of 1 day{sup -1} and a global solar minimum unsigned flux disconnection rate of 6 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 13} Wb yr{sup -1} (6 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 21} Mx yr{sup -1}) by this mechanism. That rate corresponds to {approx} - 0.2 nT yr{sup -1} change in the radial heliospheric field at 1 AU, indicating that the mechanism is important to the heliospheric flux balance.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

INNER HELIOSPHERIC FLUX ROPE EVOLUTION VIA IMAGING OF CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS

Understanding the evolution of flux ropes in coronal mass ejections (CMEs) is of importance both to the scientific and technological communities. Scientifically their presence is critical to models describing CME launch and they likely play a role in CME evolution. Technologically they are the major contributor to severe geomagnetic storms. Using a new processing technique on the STEREO/SECCHI heliospheric imaging data, we have tracked a magnetic flux rope observed by the Wind spacecraft in December 2008 to its origins observed by coronagraphs. We thereby establish that the cavity in the classic three-part coronagraph CME is the feature that becomes the magnetic cloud. This implies that the bright material ahead of the cavity is piled-up coronal or solar wind material. We track the evolution of the cavity en-route and find that its structure transforms from concave inward (curving away from the Sun) to concave outward (toward the Sun) around 0.065 AU from the Sun. The pileup was tracked and its leading edge remained concave inward throughout its journey. Two other CMEs in January 2009 are also inspected and a similar cavity is observed in each, suggesting that they too each contained a flux rope. The results presented here are the first direct observation, through continuous tracking, associating a particular flux rope observed in situ with the same flux rope before ejection from the corona. We speculate that detailed heliospheric imagery of CMEs may lead to a means by which flux ropes can be identified remotely in the heliosphere.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

WHITE-LIGHT OBSERVATIONS OF SOLAR WIND TRANSIENTS AND COMPARISON WITH AUXILIARY DATA SETS

This paper presents results utilizing a new data processing pipeline for STEREO/SECCHI. The pipeline is used to identify and track 24 large- and small-scale solar wind transients from the Sun out to 1 AU. This comparison was performed during a few weeks around the minimum at the end of Solar Cycle 23 and the start of Cycle 24 (2008 December to 2009 January). We use coronagraph data to identify features near the Sun, track them through HI-2A, and identify their signatures with in situ data at the Earth and STEREO-B. We provide measurements and preliminary analysis of the in situ signatures of these features near 1 AU. Along with the demonstration of the utility of heliospheric imagers for tracking even small-scale structures, we identify and discuss an important limitation in using geometric triangulation for determining three-dimensional properties.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

THE THOMSON SURFACE. II. POLARIZATION

The solar corona and heliosphere are visible via sunlight that is Thomson-scattered off free electrons, yielding a radiance against the celestial sphere. In this second part of a three-article series, we discuss linear polarization of this scattered light parallel and perpendicular to the plane of scatter in the context of heliospheric imaging far from the Sun. The difference between these two radiances (pB) varies quite differently with scattering angle, compared to the sum that would be detected in unpolarized light (B). The difference between these two quantities has long been used in a coronagraphic context for background subtraction and to extract some three-dimensional information about the corona; we explore how these effects differ in the wider-field heliospheric imaging case where small-angle approximations do not apply. We develop an appropriately simplified theory of polarized Thomson scattering in the heliosphere, discuss signal-to-noise considerations, invert the scattering equations analytically to solve the three-dimensional object location problem for small objects, discuss exploiting polarization for background subtraction, and generate simple forward models of several classes of heliospheric feature. We conclude that pB measurements of heliospheric material are much more localized to the Thomson surface than are B measurements, that the ratio pB/B can be used to track solar wind features in three dimensions for scientific and space weather applications better in the heliosphere than corona, and that,as an independent measurement of background signal, pB measurements may be used to reduce the effect of background radiances including the stably polarized zodiacal light.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

THE THOMSON SURFACE. III. TRACKING FEATURES IN 3D

In this, the final installment in a three-part series on the Thomson surface, we present simulated observations of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) observed by a hypothetical polarizing white light heliospheric imager. Thomson scattering yields a polarization signal that can be exploited to locate observed features in three dimensions relative to the Thomson surface. We consider how the appearance of the CME changes with the direction of trajectory, using simulations of a simple geometrical shape and also of a more realistic CME generated using the ENLIL model. We compare the appearance in both unpolarized B and polarized pB light, and show that there is a quantifiable difference in the measured brightness of a CME between unpolarized and polarized observations. We demonstrate a technique for using this difference to extract the three-dimensional (3D) trajectory of large objects such as CMEs. We conclude with a discussion on how a polarizing heliospheric imager could be used to extract 3D trajectory information about CMEs or other observed features.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

POINT-SPREAD FUNCTIONS FOR THE EXTREME-ULTRAVIOLET CHANNELS OF SDO/AIA TELESCOPES

We present the stray-light point-spread functions (PSFs) and their inverses we characterized for the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) EUV telescopes on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. The inverse kernels are approximate inverses under convolution. Convolving the original Level 1 images with them produces images with improved stray-light characteristics. We demonstrate the usefulness of these PSFs by applying them to two specific cases: photometry and differential emission measure (DEM) analysis. The PSFs consist of a narrow Gaussian core, a diffraction component, and a diffuse component represented by the sum of a Gaussian-truncated Lorentzian and a shoulder Gaussian. We determined the diffraction term using the measured geometry of the diffraction pattern identified in flare images and the theoretically computed intensities of the principal maxima of the first few diffraction orders. To determine the diffuse component, we fitted its parameterized model using iterative forward-modeling of the lunar interior in the SDO/AIA images from the 2011 March 4 lunar transit. We find that deconvolution significantly improves the contrast in dark features such as miniature coronal holes, though the effect was marginal in bright features. On a percentage-scattering basis, the PSFs for SDO/AIA are better by a factor of two than that of the EUV telescope on board the Transition Region And Coronal Explorer mission. A preliminary analysis suggests that deconvolution alone does not affect DEM analysis of small coronal loop segments with suitable background subtraction. We include the derived PSFs and their inverses as supplementary digital materials.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

TRACKING CORONAL FEATURES FROM THE LOW CORONA TO EARTH: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE 2008 DECEMBER 12 CORONAL MASS EJECTION

We have tracked a slow magnetic cloud associated coronal mass ejection (CME) continuously from its origin as a flux rope structure in the low solar corona over a four-day passage to impact with spacecraft located near Earth. Combining measurements from the STEREO, ACE, and Wind space missions, we are able to follow major elements with enough specificity to relate pre-CME coronal structure in the low corona to the corresponding elements seen in the near-Earth in situ data. Combining extreme ultraviolet imaging, quantitative Thomson scattering data throughout the flight of the CME, and ''ground-truth'' in situ measurements, we: (1) identify the plasma observed by ACE and Wind with specific features in the solar corona (a segment of a long flux rope); (2) determine the onset mechanism of the CME (destabilization of a filament channel following flare reconnection, coupled with the mass draining instability) and demonstrate that it is consistent with the in situ measurements; (3) identify the origin of different layers of the sheath material around the central magnetic cloud (closed field lifted from the base of the corona, closed field entrained during passage through the corona, and solar wind entrained by the front of the CME); (4) measure mass accretion of the system via snowplow effects in the solar wind as the CME crossed the solar system; and (5) quantify the kinetic energy budget of the system in interplanetary space, and determine that it is consistent with no long-term driving force on the CME.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

DETECTING NANOFLARE HEATING EVENTS IN SUBARCSECOND INTER-MOSS LOOPS USING Hi-C

The High-resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) flew aboard a NASA sounding rocket on 2012 July 11 and captured roughly 345 s of high-spatial and temporal resolution images of the solar corona in a narrowband 193 A channel. In this paper, we analyze a set of rapidly evolving loops that appear in an inter-moss region. We select six loops that both appear in and fade out of the Hi-C images during the short flight. From the Hi-C data, we determine the size and lifetimes of the loops and characterize whether these loops appear simultaneously along their length or first appear at one footpoint before appearing at the other. Using co-aligned, co-temporal data from multiple channels of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on the Solar Dynamics Observatory, we determine the temperature and density of the loops. We find the loops consist of cool ({approx}10{sup 5} K), dense ({approx}10{sup 10} cm{sup -3}) plasma. Their required thermal energy and their observed evolution suggest they result from impulsive heating similar in magnitude to nanoflares. Comparisons with advanced numerical simulations indicate that such dense, cold and short-lived loops are a natural consequence of impulsive magnetic energy release by reconnection of braided magnetic field at low heights in the solar atmosphere.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2013

SOLAR MAGNETIC TRACKING. IV. THE DEATH OF MAGNETIC FEATURES

The removal of magnetic flux from the quiet-Sun photosphere is important for maintaining the statistical steady state of the magnetic field there, for determining the magnetic flux budget of the Sun, and for estimating the rate of energy injected into the upper solar atmosphere. Magnetic feature death is a measurable proxy for the removal of detectable flux, either by cancellation (submerging or rising loops, or reconnection in the photosphere) or by dispersal of flux. We used the SWAMIS feature tracking code to understand how nearly 2 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 4} magnetic features die in an hour-long sequence of Hinode/SOT/NFI magnetograms of a region of the quiet Sun. Of the feature deaths that remove visible magnetic flux from the photosphere, the vast majority do so by a process that merely disperses the previously detected flux so that it is too small and too weak to be detected, rather than completely eliminating it. The behavior of the ensemble average of these dispersals is not consistent with a model of simple planar diffusion, suggesting that the dispersal is constrained by the evolving photospheric velocity field. We introduce the concept of the partial lifetime of magnetic features, and show that the partial lifetime due to Cancellation of magnetic flux, 22 hr, is three times slower than previous measurements of the flux turnover time. This indicates that prior feature-based estimates of the flux replacement time may be too short, in contrast with the tendency for this quantity to decrease as resolution and instrumentation have improved. This suggests that dispersal of flux to smaller scales is more important for the replacement of magnetic fields in the quiet Sun than observed bipolar cancellation. We conclude that processes on spatial scales smaller than those visible to Hinode dominate the processes of flux emergence and cancellation, and therefore also the quantity of magnetic flux that threads the photosphere.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Sparkling extreme-ultraviolet bright dots observed with Hi-C

Observing the Sun at high time and spatial scales is a step toward understanding the finest and fundamental scales of heating events in the solar corona. The high-resolution coronal (Hi-C) instrument has provided the highest spatial and temporal resolution images of the solar corona in the EUV wavelength range to date. Hi-C observed an active region on 2012 July 11 that exhibits several interesting features in the EUV line at 193 Å. One of them is the existence of short, small brightenings 'sparkling' at the edge of the active region; we call these EUV bright dots (EBDs). Individual EBDs have a characteristic duration of 25 s with a characteristic length of 680 km. These brightenings are not fully resolved by the SDO/AIA instrument at the same wavelength; however, they can be identified with respect to the Hi-C location of the EBDs. In addition, EBDs are seen in other chromospheric/coronal channels of SDO/AIA, which suggests a temperature between 0.5 and 1.5 MK. Based on their frequency in the Hi-C time series, we define four different categories of EBDs: single peak, double peak, long duration, and bursty. Based on a potential field extrapolation from an SDO/HMI magnetogram, the EBDs appear at the footpoints of large-scale, trans-equatorial coronal loops. The Hi-C observations provide the first evidence of small-scale EUV heating events at the base of these coronal loops, which have a free magnetic energy of the order of 10{sup 26} erg.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Inbound waves in the solar corona: A direct indicator of Alfvén surface location

The tenuous supersonic solar wind that streams from the top of the corona passes through a natural boundary—the Alfvén surface—that marks the causal disconnection of individual packets of plasma and magnetic flux from the Sun itself. The Alfvén surface is the locus where the radial motion of the accelerating solar wind passes the radial Alfvén speed, and therefore any displacement of material cannot carry information back down into the corona. It is thus the natural outer boundary of the solar corona and the inner boundary of interplanetary space. Using a new and unique motion analysis to separate inbound and outbound motions in synoptic visible-light image sequences from the COR2 coronagraph on board the STEREO-A spacecraft, we have identified inbound wave motion in the outer corona beyond 6 solar radii for the first time and used it to determine that the Alfvén surface is at least 12 solar radii from the Sun over the polar coronal holes and 15 solar radii in the streamer belt, well beyond the distance planned for NASA's upcoming Solar Probe Plus mission. To our knowledge, this is the first measurement of inbound waves in the outer solar corona and the first direct measurement of lower bounds for the Alfvén surface.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

CHROMOSPHERIC RAPID BLUESHIFTED EXCURSIONS OBSERVED WITH IBIS AND THEIR ASSOCIATION WITH PHOTOSPHERIC MAGNETIC FIELD EVOLUTION

Chromospheric rapid blueshifted excursions (RBEs) are suggested to be the disk counterparts of type II spicules at the limb and believed to contribute to the coronal heating process. Previous identification of RBEs was mainly based on feature detection using Dopplergrams. In this paper, we study RBEs on 2011 October 21 in a very quiet region at the disk center, which were observed with the high-cadence imaging spectroscopy of the Ca II 8542 Å line from the Interferometric Bidimensional Spectrometer (IBIS). By using an automatic spectral analysis algorithm, a total of 98 RBEs are identified during an 11 minute period. Most of these RBEs have either a round or elongated shape, with an average area of 1.2 arcsec{sup 2}. The detailed temporal evolution of spectra from IBIS makes possible a quantitative determination of the velocity (∼16 km s{sup –1}) and acceleration (∼400 m s{sup –2}) of Ca II 8542 RBEs, and reveals an additional deceleration (∼–160 m s{sup –2}) phase that usually follows the initial acceleration. In addition, we also investigate the association of RBEs with the concomitant photospheric magnetic field evolution, using coordinated high-resolution and high-sensitivity magnetograms made by Hinode. Clear examples are found where RBEs appear to be associated with the preceding magnetic flux emergence and/or the subsequent flux cancellation. However, further analysis with the aid of the Southwest Automatic Magnetic Identification Suite does not yield a significant statistical association between these RBEs and magnetic field evolution. We discuss the implications of our results in the context of understanding the driving mechanism of RBEs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗