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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

ESSENCE- A rapid, shear-enhanced, flow-through, capacitive electrochemical platform for rapid detection of biomolecules

The rapid, sensitive, and selective detection of target analytes using electrochemical sensors are challenging. ESSENCE, a new Electrochemical Sensor that uses a Shear-Enhanced, flowthrough Nanoporous Capacitive Electrode, overcomes current electrochemical sensors' response limitations, selectivity, and sensitivity limitations. ESSENCE is a microfluidic channel packed with transducer material sandwiched by a top and bottom microelectrode. The room-temperature instrument less integration process allows the switch of the transducer materials to make up the porous electrode without modifying the electrode architecture or device protocol. ESSENCE can be used to detect both biomolecules and small molecules by simply changing the packed transducer material. Electron microscopy results confirm the high porosity. In conjunction with the non-planar interdigitated electrode, the packed transducer material results in a flow-through porous electrode. Electron microscopy results confirm the high porosity. The enhanced shear forces and increased convective fluxes disrupt the electric double layer's (EDL) diffusive process in ESSENCE. This disruption migrates the EDL to high MHz frequency allowing the capture signal to be measured at around 100 kHz, significantly improving device timing (rapid detection) with a low signal-to-noise ratio. The device’s unique architecture allows us multiple configuration modes for measuring the impedance signal. This allows us to use highly conductive materials like carbon nanotubes. We show that by combining single-walled carbon nanotubes as transducer material with appropriate capture probes, NP-µIDE has high selectivity and sensitivity for DNA (fM sensitivity, selective against non-target DNA), breast cancer biomarker proteins (p53, pg/L sensitivity, selective against non-target HER2).

Cheng, Yu-Hsuan↗
DOE OSTI2025

Upstream considerations for gas fermentation processes

Gas fermentation enables the production of fuels, chemicals, and foods from gaseous carbon sources and could serve as a technology for valorizing carbon that may otherwise be emitted to the atmosphere. In this review, we focus on upstream feedstock considerations: the supply of carbon and the supply of electrical power. Electrical power serves a dual role, providing both process energy and biochemical redox potential (via hydrogen or reduced intermediates). We define gas fermentation as bioprocesses involving gaseous feedstocks metabolized by microbes, distinct from microbial electrosynthesis. Trends in CO 2 point sources and low-carbon electricity systems are analyzed, highlighting opportunities and challenges for future deployment. This review synthesizes current knowledge and identifies key R&D priorities for process integration at industrial scale.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Bioenergy crops as alternative feedstocks for recovery of anthocyanins: A review

Anthocyanins are plant-based pigments known for their wide range of industrial applications. Berries, grapes, purple yam, purple corn, and black rice are among the chief dietary sources of anthocyanins. However, these sources have a well-established market in the food sector and cannot be diverted completely for the extraction of anthocyanins. Hence, there is a need to identify alternative sources of these natural colorants. In this review, color-bearing bioenergy crops with high productivity such as miscanthus, sorghum, and sugarcane have been proposed as potential feedstocks for the recovery of anthocyanins as co-products. The role of genetic modification in the biosynthesis of anthocyanins in these crops has been discussed. A consolidated bioprocessing approach has been proposed for the recovery of anthocyanins from bioenergy crops along with the production of bioethanol and lignin-based chemicals. Such an integrated process could make the overall process for the production of biofuels cost-effective.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Production of low-oxygen bio-oil via ex situ catalytic fast pyrolysis and hydrotreating

Catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) bio-oils with different organic oxygen contents (4-18 wt%) were prepared in a bench-scale dual fluidized bed reactor system by ex situ CFP of southern pine over HZSM-5, and the oils were subsequently hydrotreated over a sulfided CoMo catalyst at 170 bar. The goal was to determine the impact of the CFP oil oxygen content on hydrotreating requirements. The CFP oils with higher oxygen contents included a variety of oxygenates (phenols, methoxyphenols, carbonyls, anhydrosugars) whereas oxygenates in the 4 wt% oxygen oil were almost exclusively phenols. Phenols were the most recalcitrant oxygenates during hydrotreating as well, and the hydrotreated oils consisted mainly of aromatic and partially saturated ring hydrocarbons. The temperature required to produce oil with <1% oxygen was approximately 350 °C for the CFP oil with the lowest oxygen content whereas temperatures around 400 °C were required for the other CFP oils. The carbon efficiency during hydrotreating slightly decreased as the CFP oil oxygen content increased but remained above 90% in all cases, and the carbon efficiency for the integrated process was dominated by the efficiency of the CFP process. In conclusion, a preliminary technoeconomic evaluation suggested that with the current zeolite-based CFP catalysts, it is economically beneficial to preserve carbon during CFP, at the expense of higher oxygen contents in the CFP oil.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Pilot testing of a heat integrated 0.7 MWe CO 2 capture system with two-stage air-stripping: Emission

The University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research (UKy-CAER) designed, constructed and tested an advanced 0.7 MWe post-combustion CO 2 capture system on a coal-fired power plant using a heat integration process combined with two-stage stripping to enhance the CO 2 absorber performance and lower the cost of CO 2 capture. Evaluation of emissions from the solvent and degradation products was performed to determine the impact on the amine solvent of coal combustion flue gas contaminants and oxygen exposure due to incorporation of the secondary air stripper into the conventional amine absorber/stripper system. The overall amine, ammonia and aldehyde emission levels observed during the baseline 30% monoethanolamine (MEA) solvent testing campaign were generally comparable to previously published reports tested at similar flue gas conditions and system operating hours. Ammonia emissions were correlated to high levels of iron and copper in the solvent, likely as a result of material corrosion.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Direct synthesis of branched hydrocarbons from CO 2 over composite catalysts in a single reactor

The thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO 2 to hydrocarbons using a composite catalyst system in a single reactor under mild reaction conditions was investigated, by combining methanol synthesis, methanol dehydration and dimethyl ether homologation catalysts. High selectivity to isoparaffins, which are versatile precursors to sustainable aviation fuels, was achieved. The use of Cu/BEA significantly improved both the conversion of oxygenates and the hydrocarbon yield compared to HBEA by facilitating H-incorporation in the C-chain growth during the homologation reaction. A study of catalyst composition and reaction conditions revealed that nearly complete conversion of oxygenates was achieved using a stacked-bed configuration, providing high C-selectivity to C 4+ hydrocarbons (34.1% among all products and 95.5% in products excluding CO). The ability to completely convert oxygenates to hydrocarbons and achieve high CO-free selectivity to desired hydrocarbon products is unprecedented in CO 2 -to-hydrocarbon reports, and advantageous for downstream separation, as CO can be easily separated and recycled to improve overall hydrocarbon production in an integrated process.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Spinning the digital thread with hybrid manufacturing

Integrated process monitoring and feedback capabilities for hybrid manufacturing have shown potential as a test platform for the development and implementation of the digital thread. Additionally, hybrid manufacturing alleviates the implementation of the digital thread as fewer systems are involved for a broader base of manufacturing operations. Researchers have developed coordinated process monitoring architectures to capture and leverage various existing data streams in the hybrid manufacturing process and improve the quality of manufactured components. This work is fundamentally different because it shows how common communication structures that exist on any commercial CNC can be used to enhance CNC based manufacturing processes.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

A biosorption-based approach for selective extraction of rare earth elements from coal byproducts

Coal byproducts could be a promising feedstock to alleviate the supply risk of critical rare earth elements (REEs) due to their abundance and REE content. Herein, we investigated the economic and environmental potential of producing REEs from coal fly ash and lignite through an integrated process of leaching, biosorption, and oxalic precipitation based on experimental data and modeling results. Two microbe immobilization systems (PEGDA) microbe beads and Si sol-gels) were examined for their efficiency in immobilizing Arthrobacter nicotianae to selectively recover REEs. Techno-economic analysis revealed that North Dakota lignite could be a profitable feedstock when Si sol-gel is used due to its high cell loading and REE adsorption capacity. Life cycle analysis revealed that Si sol-gel based biosorption could be more environmental friendly than the prevailing REE production in China due to use of less toxic chemicals. However, fly ash sourced from Powder River Basin coals was neither profitable or environmentally sustainable, primarily due to low solublity of high-value scandium at an economical pulp density (100 ash/L). To further improve the proposed biotechnology, future research could focus on scandium recovery, leaching efficiency, and microbe carriers.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Insights into substrate coordination and glycosyl transfer of poplar cellulose synthase-8

Cellulose is an abundant cell wall component of land plants. It is synthesized from UDP-activated glucose molecules by cellulose synthase, a membrane-integrated processive glycosyltransferase. Cellulose synthase couples the elongation of the cellulose polymer with its translocation across the plasma membrane. Here, we present substrate- and product-bound cryogenic electron microscopy structures of the homotrimeric cellulose synthase isoform-8 (CesA8) from hybrid aspen (poplar). UDP-glucose binds to a conserved catalytic pocket adjacent to the entrance to a transmembrane channel. The substrate’s glucosyl unit is coordinated by conserved residues of the glycosyltransferase domain and amphipathic interface helices. Site-directed mutagenesis of a conserved gating loop capping the active site reveals its critical function for catalytic activity. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal prolonged interactions of the gating loop with the substrate molecule, particularly across its central conserved region. These transient interactions likely facilitate the proper positioning of the substrate molecule for glycosyl transfer and cellulose translocation.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2017

An environmental friendly animal waste disposal process with ammonia recovery and energy production: Experimental study and economic analysis

Highlights: • An environmental friendly animal manure waste treatment scheme was proposed. • Ammonia was removed and recovered from manure waste in the form of struvite. • Horse manure waste gasification was successfully conducted in a 10 kW gasifier. • Gasifier produces comparable or higher heating value of syngas as other feedstocks. • The proposed scheme is financially superior to pure gasification and incineration. - Abstract: Animal manure waste is considered as an environmental challenge especially in farming areas mainly because of gaseous emission and water pollution. Among all the pollutants emitted from manure waste, ammonia is of greatest concern as it could contribute to formation of aerosols in the air and could hardly be controlled by traditional disposal methods like landfill or composting. On the other hand, manure waste is also a renewable source for energy production. In this work, an environmental friendly animal waste disposal process with combined ammonia recovery and energy production was proposed and investigated both experimentally and economically. Lab-scale feasibility study results showed that 70% of ammonia in the manure waste could be converted to struvite as fertilizer, while solid manure waste was successfully gasified in a 10 kW downdraft fixed-bed gasifier producing syngas with the higher heating value of 4.9 MJ/(N m{sup 3}). Based on experimental results, economic study for the system was carried out using a cost-benefit analysis to investigate the financial feasibility based on a Singapore case study. In addition, for comparison, schemes of gasification without ammonia removal and incineration were also studied for manure waste disposal. The results showed that the proposed gasification-based manure waste treatment process integrated with ammonia recovery was most financially viable.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2021

Wide Dynamic Range, 10 kHz Framing Detector for 4D-STEM

Hybrid pixel array detectors (PADs) have expanded the fidelity, frame rate and dynamic range for diffractive imaging in electron microscopes. With their high detective quantum efficiencies (DQE), the noise performance limited is by counting statistics. Consequently, improving the precision and quality of high-speed images requires increasing the linear dynamic range and the maximum usable beam current. Here we describe a new prototype hybrid PAD, our next-generation electron microscope pixel array detector (NG-EMPAD) that expands both the framing speed and dynamic range of our earlier EMPAD design. Like the EMPAD, electrons are detected directly in a 500 μm thick silicon sensor bonded pixel-by-pixel to a custom signal processing integrated circuit (IC). Each pixel in the IC integrates charge carriers produced by the high-energy incident electrons. Here, in-pixel circuitry uses a combination of techniques to extend the dynamic range, including adaptive gain switching and the quantitative excess charge dumping similar to the EMPAD. In-pixel buffering of signals during readout allows acquiring a new image while reading out the previously collected image, yielding an image collection duty cycle of nearly 100%.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Process Feasibility Analysis of Waste Biomass Valorization to Biochar and Bio-Oil via Slow and Fast Pyrolysis

The United States has abundant biomass and waste feedstock to support the nation's energy addition and affordability targets. Pyrolysis, a thermochemical conversion process, decomposes lignocellulosic feedstocks into liquid, solid, and gaseous fuels that can contribute to the domestic production of biofuels, biopower, and bioproducts. Growing private sector interest in this technology is a key motivation for this comprehensive techno-economic process modeling analysis of a respective biorefinery that includes feedstock preprocessing, slow and fast pyrolysis, and product separation to bio-oil, biochar, and syngas hydrocarbons. Results show that biochar from slow pyrolysis could achieve minimum selling prices (MSPs) of $\$$188-$\$$260/t, competitive with reported market values, while bio-oil from fast pyrolysis is estimated to yield MSPs of $\$$6.49-$\$$9.68/GGE, approximately twice conventional fuel benchmarks. Sensitivity analysis identifies feedstock cost, product yield, and scale as primary cost drivers, while scenarios involving biochar carbon credits and high value applications may substantially improve economics. Overall, these results suggest that continued innovation in feedstock logistics, process integration, and market development will be critical to achieving economically viable and scalable bioproducts.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Challenges in Product Selectivity for Electrocatalytic Reduction of Amine-Captured CO 2 : Implications for Reactive Carbon Capture

CO 2 is a potential feedstock for carbon-based fuels or materials, but is only available in dilute streams. Integrated processes for CO 2 capture and conversion directly valorize the CO 2 captured by sorbent materials, skipping the energetically expensive sorbent regeneration step. Amines are the most heavily studied liquid-phase sorbent materials for CO 2 capture from dilute streams. Amines react with CO 2 in a 2:1 ratio to form the corresponding ammonium carbamate. Ammonium carbamate [NH 4 ][H 2 NCO 2 ] was tested as the substrate using the highly selective and robust CO 2 -to-formate reduction electrocatalyst [( tBu POCOP)Ir(H)(NCCH 3 ) 2 ], where ( tBu POCOP) is the tridentate pincer ligand 2,6-bis(di tert -butyl-phosphonito). When ammonium carbamate was used as the substrate instead of CO 2 , only hydrogen was produced. An equivalent electrolysis with ammonium hexafluorophosphate with CO 2 also resulted in primarily hydrogen. Methyl carbamate and urea were also tested as substrates as proxies for carbamate that do not contain an equivalent of ammonium, and there was also negligible reduction to carbon-based products. These results indicate that the loss of selectivity observed for aminecaptured CO 2 , or ammonium carbamate, is likely due to the generation of the acidic ammonium equivalent as well as the greater challenge of reducing carbamate compared to CO 2 . This study illustrates that catalysts with high selectivity for concentrated CO 2 can favor hydrogen evolution and loss of carbon-based products when amine-captured CO 2 is used instead.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessments for Sustainable Rare Earth Recovery from Coal Byproducts using Biosorption

Coal byproducts could be a promising feedstock to alleviate the supply risk of critical rare earth elements (REEs) due to their abundance and REE content. Herein, we investigated the economic and environmental potential of producing REEs from coal fly ash and lignite through an integrated process of leaching, biosorption, and oxalic precipitation on the basis of experimental data and modeling results. Two microbe immobilization systems (polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) microbe beads and Si sol–gels) were examined for their efficiency in immobilizing Arthrobacter nicotianae to selectively recover REEs. Techno-economic analysis revealed that North Dakota lignite could be a profitable feedstock when Si sol–gel is used due to its high cell loading and REE adsorption capacity as well as high reuse cycles. Life cycle analysis revealed that Si sol–gel-based biosorption could be more environmental friendly than the prevailing REE production in China due to the use of less toxic chemicals. However, fly ash sourced from Powder River Basin coals was neither profitable nor environmentally sustainable, primarily due to low solubility of high-value scandium at an economical pulp density (100 g ash/L of acid solution). To further improve the proposed biotechnology, future research could focus on scandium recovery, leaching efficiency at a high pulp density, and reuse cycles of the immobilized microbes.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
DOE OSTI2025

Integrated CO 2 Capture and Conversion to Formate with a Molecular Platinum Bis(diphosphine) Electrocatalyst

Carbon dioxide is a potentially valuable feedstock for carbon-based fuels or commodities but is only available in dilute streams. Many studies have focused on either the capture and concentration of CO 2 or the reduction of pure CO 2 streams. The direct reduction of sorbent-captured CO 2 in an integrated process would skip the energy-intensive CO 2 concentration and sorbent regeneration step. Herein, we report the electrocatalytic reduction of 1,3-bis(2,6-diisopropylphenyl)imidazolium-2-carboxylate (IPr·CO 2 ), which forms quantitatively from the reaction of sorbent 1,3-bis(2,6-diisopropylphenyl)imidazol-2-ylidene (IPr) with 10% and 0.04% CO 2 streams, by catalyst [Pt(dmpe) 2 ](PF 6 ) 2 (dmpe = 1,2-bis(dimethylphosphino)ethane) to formate with >70% Faradaic efficiencies. Unexpectedly, experimental studies indicate that the proton source phenol facilitates rapid decarboxylation of IPr·CO 2 to release CO 2 , which is the substrate for reduction. Kinetic studies determined the rate of hydride transfer from a catalytic intermediate [HPt(dmpe) 2 ](PF 6 ) to form the C–H bond in formate to be 0.22 M –1 s –1 . Further details on the mechanism, transition state energy, and structure for hydride transfer to CO 2 , a common step in CO 2 reduction, were explored using computational methods.

Chemistry↗
DOE OSTI2025

Implementation and Evaluation of Emission‐Driven Land‐Atmosphere Coupled Simulation in E3SMv2.1

Emissions-driven (prognostic CO 2 ) simulations are essential for representing two-way carbon-climate feedback in Earth System Models. We present an emissions-driven land–atmosphere coupled biogeochemistry (BGC) configuration (BGCLNDATM_progCO2) in version 2.1 of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SMv2.1). This is the first E3SM configuration that performs land-atmosphere emission-hindcasts. Here, we document its implementation, evaluate the model's performance against observations and other models, and propose a structured evaluation protocol for such emissions-driven simulations. We conducted transient historical simulations (1850–2014) with BGCLNDATM_progCO2 and compare them to reference simulations—a land-atmosphere coupled simulation without BGC and a standalone land simulation with BGC, both using prescribed CO 2 concentrations—and to observations. BGCLNDATM_progCO2 overestimates atmospheric CO 2 concentrations by 11–23 ppm yet stays within the 40-ppm spread CMIP6 emission-driven models and retains physical climate properties comparable to the reference runs. The CO 2 biases are partly attributed to underrepresented oceanic CO 2 uptake and inadequate representations of some terrestrial processes. In general, introducing prognostic CO 2 did not change physical climate metrics at the global scale but had larger regional effects, particularly over land where spatially heterogeneous CO 2 and prognostic leaf area index influenced surface energy balance. Finally, we propose a general evaluation protocol including spin-up assessment, atmospheric CO 2 benchmarking, physical climate evaluation, and land biogeochemical analysis to support scientific rigor and facilitate inter-model comparisons. The new configuration lays the groundwork for future enhancements, including improved terrestrial biogeochemical processes, integrated marine biogeochemistry, and additional human–Earth system interactions. These developments advance E3SM toward fully coupled emissions-driven simulations, enabling more accurate carbon–climate feedback projections and informing mitigation policy by providing physically consistent carbon-budget metrics for mitigation scenarios.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗