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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 487 records · Page 27
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

The sponge effect and carbon emission mitigation potentials of the global cement cycle

Cement plays a dual role in the global carbon cycle like a sponge: its massive production contributes significantly to present-day global anthropogenic CO 2 emissions, yet its hydrated products gradually reabsorb substantial amounts of atmospheric CO 2 (carbonation) in the future. The role of this sponge effect along the cement cycle (including production, use, and demolition) in carbon emissions mitigation, however, remains hitherto unexplored. Here, we quantify the effects of demand- and supply-side mitigation measures considering this material-energy-emissions-uptake nexus, finding that climate goals would be imperiled if the growth of cement stocks continues. Future reabsorption of CO 2 will be significant (~30% of cumulative CO 2 emissions from 2015 to 2100), but climate goal compliant net CO 2 emissions reduction along the global cement cycle will require both radical technology advancements (e.g., carbon capture and storage) and widespread deployment of material efficiency measures, which go beyond those envisaged in current technology roadmaps.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Cooling Matters: Benchmarking Large Language Models and Vision-Language Models on Liquid-Cooled Versus Air-Cooled H100 GPU Systems

The unprecedented growth in artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, recently dominated by large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs), has intensified power and cooling demands in data centers. This study benchmarks LLMs and VLMs on two HGX nodes, each with 8× NVIDIA H100 graphics processing units (GPUs), using liquid and air cooling. Leveraging GPU Burn, Weights & Biases, and IPMItool, we collect detailed thermal, power, and computation data. Results show that the liquid-cooled systems maintain GPU temperatures between 41-50$^\circ$C, while the air-cooled counterparts fluctuate between 54-72$^\circ$C under load. This thermal stability of liquid-cooled systems yields 17% higher performance (54 TFLOPs/ GPU vs. 46 TFLOPs/GPU), performance-per-watt, reduced energy overhead, and greater system efficiency than the air-cooled counterparts. These findings underscore the energy and sustainability benefits of liquid cooling, offering a compelling path forward for hyperscale data centers seeking to optimize AI infrastructure. https://github.com/iscaas/Cooling-Matters.

Latif, Imran↗
DOE OSTI2023

Accomplishments and challenges of metrics for sustainable energy, population, and economics as illustrated through three countries

The global Sustainable Development Goals require meeting multiple objectives on energy, population, economics, and ecosystems. Development and economic growth as defined by current metrics requires energy inputs, yet energy growth can also increase negative impacts on natural systems. To achieve sustainable development goals, policymakers and technologists will need energy system solutions that consider not only cost and efficiency but also population, quality of life, natural ecosystems, and culture that accommodates different starting points and transition timelines of various countries. To explore possible approaches, this perspectives paper summarizes energy in the context of economic growth and population, illustrating concepts through the diverse status and direction of three countries--Japan, the United States, and Bangladesh--as potential views into a post-growth sustainable future. Four fundamental questions on long-term energy development are identified, related to optimal energy use per capita, sustainable global energy demand, managing an energy transition with stable population, and the need for generalizable approaches across countries.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS1994

A Lab-Scale CELSS

It has been shown that prohibitive resupply costs for extended-duration manned space flight missions will demand that a high degree of recycling and in situ food production be implemented. A prime candidate for in situ food production is the growth of higher level plants. Research in the area of plant physiology is currently underway at many institutions. This research is aimed at the characterization and optimization of gas exchange, transpiration and food production of higher plants in order to support human life in space. However, there are a number of unresolved issues involved in making plant chambers an integral part of a closed life support system. For example, issues pertaining to the integration of tightly coupled, non-linear systems with small buffer volumes will need to be better understood in order to ensure successful long term operation of a Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS). The Advanced Life Support Division at NASA Ames Research Center has embarked on a program to explore some of these issues and demonstrate the feasibility of the CELSS concept. The primary goal of the Laboratory Scale CELSS Project is to develop a fully-functioning integrated CELSS on a laboratory scale in order to provide insight, knowledge and experience applicable to the design of human-rated CELSS facilities. Phase I of this program involves the integration of a plant chamber with a solid waste processor. This paper will describe the requirements, design and some experimental results from Phase I of the Laboratory Scale CELSS Program.

Flynn, Mark E.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Transforming the NAS: The Next Generation Air Traffic Control System

The next-generation air traffic control system must be designed to safely and efficiently accommodate the large growth of traffic expected in the near future. It should be sufficiently scalable to contend with the factor of 2 or more increase in demand expected by the year 2020. Analysis has shown that the current method of controlling air traffic cannot be scaled up to provide such levels of capacity. Therefore, to achieve a large increase in capacity while also giving pilots increased freedom to optimize their flight trajectories requires a fundamental change in the way air traffic is controlled. The key to achieving a factor of 2 or more increase in airspace capacity is to automate separation monitoring and control and to use an air-ground data link to send trajectories and clearances directly between ground-based and airborne systems. In addition to increasing capacity and offering greater flexibility in the selection of trajectories, this approach also has the potential to increase safety by reducing controller and pilot errors that occur in routine monitoring and voice communication tasks.

Erzberger, Heinz↗
NASA NTRS2019

Early Prototype Development of the Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System (PONDS)

Long-duration space missions will eventually require a fresh food supply to supplement crew diets, which means growing crops in space. The Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System (PONDS) is a new plant growth approach that contains both an area for a contained substrate and a reservoir for water and/or plant nutrient solutions. Ground studies have shown that the system facilitates both reliable water delivery to seeds for germination (e.g., while avoiding overwatering), and transport of water from the reservoir for improved plant growth while providing nutrients and oxygen to the root zone. In ground prototypes a capillary mat wicking material passively links the water/nutrient solution reservoir to a removable rooting module containing a substrate adapted to support plant growth. Oxygen permeable membranes are incorporated into both the reservoir walls and the rooting modules, bringing in oxygen from outside of the system into the reservoir and then into the rooting modules where the plant roots proliferate. Water is delivered from the reservoir to the substrate contained within the rooting module through the use of wicking material inserted into the plant growth substrate both from the bottom and from the sides of the rooting module. The capillary mat material is intrinsically hydrophilic and continuously wicks water to the substrate throughout the plant growth interval. The system is therefore self-watering in terms of supplying water to the root zone encompassed within the rooting module on demand. At the top, a hydrophilic phenolic foam plug surrounds the wick in the seed insertion zone, and both contains the substrate within the rooting module, and facilitates removal of excess moisture from the capillary mat wick before it can encompass seeds prior to germination. This work is supported by NASA’s Space Life and Physical Sciences and Research Applications Division (SLPSRAD).

Levine, Howard G.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Hybrid MEMS-CMOS ion traps for NISQ computing

Surging interest in engineering quantum computers has stimulated significant and focused research on technologies needed to make them manufacturable and scalable. In the ion trap realm this has led to a transition from bulk three-dimensional macro-scale traps to chip-based ion traps and included important demonstrations of passive and active electronics, waveguides, detectors, and other integrated components. At the same time as these technologies are being developed the system sizes are demanding more ions to run noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) algorithms, growing from around ten ions today to potentially a hundred or more in the near future. To realize the size and features needed for this growth, the geometric and material design space of microfabricated ion traps must expand. In this paper we describe present limitations and the approaches needed to overcome them, including how geometric complexity drives the number of metal levels, why routing congestion affects the size and location of shunting capacitors, and how RF power dissipation can limit the size of the trap array. Finally, we also give recommendations for future research needed to accommodate the demands of NISQ scale ion traps that are integrated with additional technologies.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

Electrification Futures Study: Methodological Approaches for Assessing Long-Term Power System Impacts of End-Use Electrification

By its nature, electrification enhances the coupling between the electric sector and end-use sectors. Assessing the impacts of electrification requires both an examination of the complex interactions between sectors and a broader assessment of multiple parts of the energy system. The Electrification Futures Study (EFS) uses several complementary modeling and analysis tools to analyze the impacts of electrification on the U.S. energy system. In particular, the EFS relies on an overarching scenario analysis approach, but through the use of separate modeling approaches designed to assess various electricity demand- and supply-side futures. The primary model employed to generate the supply-side scenarios is the Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) model, which is a capacity expansion model for the U.S. electricity system through 2050. Traditionally, the model has been primarily exercised in scenario analysis that implicitly assumed limited electrification. Because of this assumption, resulting future load profiles are approximated by historical ones, load growth is driven primarily by population and economic growth only, and changes in direct end-use natural gas consumption do not effect natural gas costs for electricity generation. In this report, we (1) reflect the potential for resource sharing between regions given these changes in demand, (2) represent how changes in natural gas consumption in end-use sectors could impact the economics of natural gas-fired generation, and (3) document a new model representation of demand-side flexibility used for the EFS. These improvements to ReEDS are employed for the EFS supply-wide analysis, which is summarized in a companion EFS report titled Electrification Futures Study: Scenarios of Power System Evolution and Infrastructure Development for the United States (Murphy et al. 2019). The data and methods documented in this report could also be adapted for other models with similar scope and limitations as ReEDS, and these data and methods could be used to assess future electric system scenarios.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS2004

Transportation Network Topologies

A discomforting reality has materialized on the transportation scene: our existing air and ground infrastructures will not scale to meet our nation's 21st century demands and expectations for mobility, commerce, safety, and security. The consequence of inaction is diminished quality of life and economic opportunity in the 21st century. Clearly, new thinking is required for transportation that can scale to meet to the realities of a networked, knowledge-based economy in which the value of time is a new coin of the realm. This paper proposes a framework, or topology, for thinking about the problem of scalability of the system of networks that comprise the aviation system. This framework highlights the role of integrated communication-navigation-surveillance systems in enabling scalability of future air transportation networks. Scalability, in this vein, is a goal of the recently formed Joint Planning and Development Office for the Next Generation Air Transportation System. New foundations for 21PstP thinking about air transportation are underpinned by several technological developments in the traditional aircraft disciplines as well as in communication, navigation, surveillance and information systems. Complexity science and modern network theory give rise to one of the technological developments of importance. Scale-free (i.e., scalable) networks represent a promising concept space for modeling airspace system architectures, and for assessing network performance in terms of scalability, efficiency, robustness, resilience, and other metrics. The paper offers an air transportation system topology as framework for transportation system innovation. Successful outcomes of innovation in air transportation could lay the foundations for new paradigms for aircraft and their operating capabilities, air transportation system architectures, and airspace architectures and procedural concepts. The topology proposed considers air transportation as a system of networks, within which strategies for scalability of the topology may be enabled by technologies and policies. In particular, the effects of scalable ICNS concepts are evaluated within this proposed topology. Alternative business models are appearing on the scene as the old centralized hub-and-spoke model reaches the limits of its scalability. These models include growth of point-to-point scheduled air transportation service (e.g., the RJ phenomenon and the 'Southwest Effect'). Another is a new business model for on-demand, widely distributed, air mobility in jet taxi services. The new businesses forming around this vision are targeting personal air mobility to virtually any of the thousands of origins and destinations throughout suburban, rural, and remote communities and regions. Such advancement in air mobility has many implications for requirements for airports, airspace, and consumers. These new paradigms could support scalable alternatives for the expansion of future air mobility to more consumers in more places.

Holmes, Bruce J.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Transportation Network Topologies

A discomforting reality has materialized on the transportation scene: our existing air and ground infrastructures will not scale to meet our nation's 21st century demands and expectations for mobility, commerce, safety, and security. The consequence of inaction is diminished quality of life and economic opportunity in the 21st century. Clearly, new thinking is required for transportation that can scale to meet to the realities of a networked, knowledge-based economy in which the value of time is a new coin of the realm. This paper proposes a framework, or topology, for thinking about the problem of scalability of the system of networks that comprise the aviation system. This framework highlights the role of integrated communication-navigation-surveillance systems in enabling scalability of future air transportation networks. Scalability, in this vein, is a goal of the recently formed Joint Planning and Development Office for the Next Generation Air Transportation System. New foundations for 21st thinking about air transportation are underpinned by several technological developments in the traditional aircraft disciplines as well as in communication, navigation, surveillance and information systems. Complexity science and modern network theory give rise to one of the technological developments of importance. Scale-free (i.e., scalable) networks represent a promising concept space for modeling airspace system architectures, and for assessing network performance in terms of scalability, efficiency, robustness, resilience, and other metrics. The paper offers an air transportation system topology as framework for transportation system innovation. Successful outcomes of innovation in air transportation could lay the foundations for new paradigms for aircraft and their operating capabilities, air transportation system architectures, and airspace architectures and procedural concepts. The topology proposed considers air transportation as a system of networks, within which strategies for scalability of the topology may be enabled by technologies and policies. In particular, the effects of scalable ICNS concepts are evaluated within this proposed topology. Alternative business models are appearing on the scene as the old centralized hub-and-spoke model reaches the limits of its scalability. These models include growth of point-to-point scheduled air transportation service (e.g., the RJ phenomenon and the Southwest Effect). Another is a new business model for on-demand, widely distributed, air mobility in jet taxi services. The new businesses forming around this vision are targeting personal air mobility to virtually any of the thousands of origins and destinations throughout suburban, rural, and remote communities and regions. Such advancement in air mobility has many implications for requirements for airports, airspace, and consumers. These new paradigms could support scalable alternatives for the expansion of future air mobility to more consumers in more places.

Holmes, Bruce J.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Resource Assessment for Distributed Wind Energy: An Evaluation of Best-Practice Methods in the Continental US

Current wind resources within the United States (US) indicate a potential to profitably install nearly 1,400 gigawatts of distributed wind (DW) capacity. This amount is equivalent to over half of the United States’ current energy demand from electricity, making it enough to power millions of homes and businesses and replace countless fossil fuel-based generating plants. Despite the potential growth of DW in the US, deployments are presently hindered by a lack of confidence in resource estimation methods. One potential challenge is that smaller-scale turbines, with hub heights of 40 meters or less, are disproportionately impacted by obstacles such as buildings and vegetation. These obstacles may produce complex wake effects, best modeled with high-fidelity complex fluid dynamics (CFD) models that are too computationally expensive to use for routine siting and resource assessment. Thus, installers today make use of heuristics and simple equations to approximate the impact of obstacles while also leveraging long-term resource data from commercial or publicly available atmospheric models. This study evaluates these historical and commonly used methods alongside new lower-order obstacle models produced from CFD simulations and measurement-based bias correction. The preliminary results from this study show the importance of taking care in the choice and application of mesoscale atmospheric models and the significant value of bias correction using measurements from nearby meteorological towers. Detailed obstacle modeling provides only modest additional gains in performance and, in some cases, can add error, especially at sites where turbines have already been located to avoid obvious impact from upwind obstacles. These findings reinforce the importance of collecting in situ measurements and suggest that obstacle models may be better applied in practice to automated or computer-aided siting, rather than in economic wind resource assessments.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Advancing Sustainability in Data Centers: Evaluation of Hybrid Air/Liquid Cooling Schemes for IT Payload Using Sea Water

Abstract-The growth in cloud computing, Big Data, AI and high-performance computing (HPC) necessitate the deployment of additional data centers (DC's) with high energy demands. The unprecedented increase in the Thermal Design Power (TDP) of the computing chips will require innovative cooling techniques. Furthermore, DC's are increasingly limited in their ability to add powerful GPU servers by power capacity constraints. As cooling energy use accounts for up to 40% of DC energy consumption, creative cooling solutions are urgently needed to allow deployment of additional servers, enhance sustainability and increase energy efficiency of DC's. The information in this study is provided from Start Campus' Sines facility supported by Alfa Laval for the heat exchanger and CO 2 emission calculations. The study evaluates the performance and sustainability impact of various data center cooling strategies including an air-only deployment and a subsequent hybrid air/water cooling solution all utilizing sea water as the cooling source. Here we evaluate scenarios from 3 MW to 15+1 MW of IT load in 3 MW increments which correspond to the size of heat exchangers used in the Start Campus' modular system design. This study also evaluates the CO 2 emissions compared to a conventional chiller system for all the presented scenarios. Results indicate that the effective use of the sea water cooled system combined with liquid cooled systems improve the efficiency of the DC, plays a role in decreasing the CO 2 emissions and supports in achieving sustainability goals.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Battery500 Consortium: Development of High Capacity Cathodes and Robust Solid Electrolytes

As the world have witnessed the tremendous development in portable electronic devices as well as electric vehicles, the current generation lithium-ion battery is unlikely to satisfy the bourgeon of market and the demand of the customers. A next generation battery, with cell energy density higher than 500 Wh kg -1 , needs to be developed to meet the growth of the industry. With its high theoretical capacity (3,860 mAh g -1 , or 2,061 mAh cm -3 ) and low electrochemical potential (–3.04 V versus the standard hydrogen electrode), lithium metal has been regarded as the ideal candidate for the next generation battery anode. In fact, Lithium metal anode is irreplaceable for Lithium-Sulfur chemistry. However, the continuous formation of inactive Li, which eventually leads the loss of reversible capacity of the cell, has prevented lithium metal to be used as anode in commercial rechargeable cells. The ultimate goal of the project is to propose a pathway to enable Li metal battery for stable cycling at 99.9% of Coulombic efficiency with energy density higher than 500 Wh kg -1 . A variety of advanced characterization tools, electrolyte systems, 3D current collectors and failure analysis methodologies have been developed throughout the project during the past 5 years. The UCSD effort is carried out by the groups of Ping Liu and Shirley Meng.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

7-8 GHz Point-to-Point Testing

Wireless spectrum is a limiting resource for continued economic growth in the United States. As discussed in the recent National Spectrum Strategy (NSS), wireless spectrum underpins several aspects of the U.S. economy and the demand for additional spectrum is driving the need for realizing spectrum sharing to enable continued development. At the same time, wireless spectrum is an essential foundation of critical energy infrastructure, including electric, oil, and natural gas resources. In particular, wireless point-to-point (P2P) links are the backbone of vast infrastructure networks that enable the flow of sensor and control information needed to manage critical energy sector infrastructure in the United States. These links will only become more important as the energy sector incorporates more diverse sensing and more efficient control mechanisms, which increases system complexity and data volume requiring more resilient communications. Therefore, the continued economic development of the U.S. depends on determining novel approaches to spectrum management that balance both broad access for advanced wireless technologies and resilience for critical infrastructure.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Evaluate Synergies of Using Hydrothermal Liquefaction and Anerobic Digestion Treatment Technologies for Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities (CRADA 516 Final Report)

The research focuses on utilizing a new anaerobic digestion (AD) configuration to treat the aqueous by-product generated by hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of sewage sludge. This report found that for Anaerobic Digestion for HTL By-product, Anaerobic biofilms can degrade some HTL wastewater contaminants, but co-digestion is essential to address nutrient deficiencies and optimize performance. Without AD, toxicity of HTL aqueous streams may limit broader adoption in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) used an innovative reactor design, involving a dynamic membrane anaerobic bioreactor to promote biofilm growth, improving contaminant degradation. The tree-like structure inside the reactor supports biofilm development with recirculation enhancing microbial activity. Overall, a 70% chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal was achieved, although nutrient supplementation is required for stability. The reactor achieved a diverse microbial community, including methanogens and bacteria capable of degrading phenols and aromatics.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
NASA NTRS1980

Outlook for advanced concepts in transport aircraft

Air transportation demand trends, air transportation system goals, and air transportation system trends well into the 21st century were examined in detail. The outlook is for continued growth in both air passenger travel and air freight movements. The present system, with some improvements, is expected to continue to the turn of the century and to utilize technologically upgraded, derivative versions of today's aircraft, plus possibly some new aircraft for supersonic long haul, short haul, and high density commuter service. Severe constraints of the system, expected by early in the 21st century, should lead to innovations at the airport, away from the airport, and in the air. The innovations are illustrated by descriptions of three candidate systems involving advanced aircraft concepts. Advanced technologies and vehicles expected to impact the airport are illustrated by descriptions of laminar flow control aircraft, very large air freighters and cryogenically fueled transports.

Conner, D. W.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Clean Energy Transformation in Bangladesh

Since 2011, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have partnered to support Bangladesh’s energy transition by enabling the deployment of advanced energy systems. The USAID-NREL Partnership launched the Reinforcing Advanced Energy Systems (RAES) program in May 2021 as a mechanism for providing a broader array of technical assistance to the Government of Bangladesh in support of their goal to promote renewable energy development to stimulate private sector investment, rural economic development, and to meet growing energy demand through domestic energy resources. This fact sheet reviews how USAID and NREL collaborate in Bangladesh to improve energy access and security and stimulate economic growth through the deployment of advanced energy systems.

Bangladesh↗
DOE OSTI2020

Impacts of nitrogen addition on switchgrass root-associated diazotrophic community structure and function

ABSTRACT Cellulosic bioenergy crops, like switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), have potential for growth on lands unsuitable for food production coupled with potential for climate mitigation. Sustainability of these systems lies in identifying conditions that promote high biomass yields on marginal lands under low-input agricultural practices. Associative nitrogen fixation (ANF) is a potentially important nitrogen (N) source for these crops, yet ANF contributions to plant N, especially under fertilizer N addition are unclear. In this study, we assess structure (nifH) and function (ANF) of switchgrass root-associated diazotrophic communities to long-term and short-term N additions using soil from three marginal land sites. ANF rates were variable and often unexpectedly high, sometimes 10× greater than reported in the literature, and did not respond in repeatable ways to long-term or short-term N. We found few impacts of N addition on root-associated diazotrophic community structure or membership. Instead, we found a very consistent root-associated diazotrophic community even though switchgrass seeds were germinated in soil from field sites with distinct diazotrophic communities. Ultimately, this work demonstrates that root-associated diazotrophic communities have the potential to contribute to switchgrass N demands, independent of N addition, and this may be driven by selection of the diazotrophic community by switchgrass roots.

Microbiology↗