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NASA NTRS2008

Titan's Atmospheric Dynamics and Meteorology

Titan, after Venus, is the second example of an atmosphere with a global cyclostrophic circulation in the solar system, but a circulation that has a strong seasonal modulation in the middle atmosphere. Direct measurement of Titan's winds, particularly observations tracking the Huygens probe at 10degS, indicate that the zonal winds are generally in the sense of the satellites rotation. They become cyclostrophic approx. 35 km above the surface and generally increase with altitude, with the exception of a sharp minimum centered near 75 km, where the wind velocity decreases to nearly zero. Zonal winds derived from the temperature field retrieved from Cassini measurements, using the thermal wind equation, indicate a strong winter circumpolar vortex, with maximum winds at mid northern latitudes of 190 ms-' near 300 km. Above this level, the vortex decays. Curiously, the zonal winds and temperatures are symmetric about a pole that is offset from the surface pole by approx.4 degrees. The cause of this is not well understood, but it may reflect the response of a cyclostrophic circulation to the offset between the equator, where the distance to the rotation axis is greatest, and the solar equator. The mean meridional circulation can be inferred from the temperature field and the meridional distribution of organic molecules and condensates and hazes. Both the warm temperatures in the north polar region near 400 km and the enhanced concentration of several organic molecules suggests subsidence there during winter and early spring. Stratospheric condensates are localized at high northern latitudes, with a sharp cut-off near 50degN. Titan's winter polar vortex appears to share many of the same characteristics of winter vortices on Earth-the ozone holes. Global mapping of temperatures, winds, and composition in he troposphere, by contrast, is incomplete. The few suitable discrete clouds that have bee found for tracking indicate smaller velocities than aloft, consistent with the Huygens measurements. At low latitudes the zonal winds near the surface appear not to be westward as on Earth, but eastward. Because the net zonal-mean time-averaged torq exerted by the surface on the atmosphere should vanish, this implies westward flow o part of the surface; the question is where. The latitude contrast in tropospheric temperatures, deduced from radio occultations at low, mid, and high latitudes, is small approx.5 K at the tropopause and approx.3 K at the surface.

Flasar, F. M.↗
DOE OSTI2026

EVs-at-RISC: A Secure and Resilient Interoperable SCM Control System Architecture for Electric Vehicle’s-at-Scale (Final Technical Report)

The EVs-at-RISC project was a five-year research, development, and demonstration initiative to create foundational tools for utility-scale fleet aggregation and Smart Charge Management (SCM) of Electric Vehicles (EV), Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (EVCI), and related Distributed Energy Resources (DER). Rather than seeking to develop and demonstrate highly perfected SCM algorithms and control strategies, this project instead focused on creating foundational software solutions that enable unprecedented digital interoperability across the communications technologies and vendor platforms used to manage EV , EVCI, and DER, as well as existing energy management infrastructure operated by utilities, grid operators, and aggregators. This project then extends these novel interoperability capabilities to develop and deploy powerful middleware abstractions across grid edge networks and EVCI/DER fleet aggregations incorporating modern software tools and best practices, such as CI/CD, to bring the immense capabilities of infrastructure-as-code and policy-as-code to modern grid edge network environments. This addresses the foremost systemic issues preventing realization of any net operational benefits from scaled deployment of behind-the-meter EV, EVCI, and DER assets in electric power grids and markets today. The results of this approach and project unlock massive potential for new SCM capabilities to be easily prototyped, evaluated, and deployed at-scale within the existing grid edge network infrastructure and EVCI/DER technology ecosystem. The EVs-at-RISC project achieves this by extending Open Field Message Bus (OpenFMB), a conceptual model for digital interoperability and distributed intelligence in traditional front-of-meter utility SCADA networks, validating our hypothesis that OpenFMB could be similarly used to solve systemic digital interoperability issues in behind-the-meter environments and unlock real-world utility-scale SCM capabilities without requiring any new proprietary vendor solutions or significant infrastructure reconfiguration.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Global Carbon Budget 2025

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesise datasets and methodologies to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO 2 emissions (E FOS ) are based on energy and cement production data. Emissions from land-use change (E LUC ) are estimated by bookkeeping models based on land-use data. The global atmospheric CO 2 growth rate (G ATM ) is computed from changes in concentration measured at surface stations. The global net uptake of CO 2 by the ocean (S OCEAN ) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based fCO 2 -products. The global net uptake of CO 2 by the land (S LAND ) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. Additional lines of evidence are provided by atmospheric inversions, atmospheric oxygen measurements, ocean interior observation-based estimates, and Earth System Models. This year, we introduced corrections on the E LUC , S OCEAN and S LAND estimates. The sum of all sources and sinks results in the carbon budget imbalance (B IM ), a measure of imperfect data and incomplete understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ± 1σ. For the year 2024, E FOS increased by 1.1 % relative to 2023, with fossil emissions at 10.3 ± 0.5 GtC yr −1 (including the cement carbonation sink, 0.2 GtC yr −1 ), E LUC was 1.3 ± 0.7 GtC yr −1 , for total anthropogenic CO 2 emissions of 11.6 ± 0.9 GtC yr −1 (42.4 ± 3.2 GtCO2 yr −1 ). Also, for 2024, G ATM was 7.9 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1 (3.73 ± 0.1 ppm yr −1 ), 2.2 GtC above the 2023 growth rate. SOCEAN was 3.4 ± 0.4 GtC yr −1 and S LAND was 1.9 ± 1.1 GtC yr −1 , leaving a large negative B IM (−1.7 GtC yr −1 ), suggesting that the total sink or G ATM is strongly overestimated in 2024. The global atmospheric CO 2 concentration averaged over 2024 reached 422.8 ± 0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2025 suggest an increase in E FOS relative to 2024 of +1.0 % (0.2 % to 1.7 %) globally, and atmospheric CO 2 concentration increasing by 2.1 ppm reaching 425.6 ppm, 53 % above the pre-industrial level (around 278 ppm in 1750). Overall, the mean and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2024, with a near-zero overall budget imbalance, although discrepancies of up to around 1 GtC yr −1 persist for the representation of annual to decadal variability in CO 2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows: (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use change emissions, (2) a low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO 2 flux in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different methods on the mean ocean sink. This living data update documents changes in methods and datasets applied to this most-recent global carbon budget as well as evolving community understanding of the global carbon cycle. The data presented in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2025 (Friedlingstein et al., 2025c).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Microchannel-based Membrane-less Extraction of Li from Unconventional Lithium Sources & the Separation of REE

This final report provides an overview of the Project's entire duration, covering July 1, 2021 to December 31, 2023. It primarily focuses on the achievements, technological developments, and unique challenges the team faced while working on separating and extracting Lithium from produced waters. The project's primary aim was to create an integrated, high-throughput, membrane-less, and modular microfluidic platform that could extract Lithium from unconventional sources. We have successfully met all goals and milestones envisioned in the SOPO document. The most critical primary milestones, including the Go-No-Go milestone (refer to the Gantt chart in the Appendices), were successfully accomplished. We demonstrated phase separation (>90%) and extraction (>85%) performance in the MPSE using synthetic, and representative produced water composition feed at 50 ml/min total flow through MPSE 36. We have also performed a parametric study of the MPSE operations, beyond the scope of SOPO, exploring operating conditions of current and broader interest. The extended investigation of operational parameters is concurrent with our efforts to seek further development of the MPSE technology beyond the scope of the Project. Along these lines of development, we have made efforts to be responsive to DOE calls for technological developments of other types of resources (beyond PW) for the recovery of Critical Materials and higher TRL development (beyond TRL 4). During the work on this Project, we developed and implemented three innovative technical approaches that emerged from our efforts to successfully meet the Project milestones. The innovative & original technical approaches developed and implemented in this Project are now the contributions to process engineering that could be clearly credited to the Project. First, Convergent Design Approach is a comprehensive feedforward & feedback loop of four design phases: i) design for functionality, ii) design for manufacturing, iii) design for sustainability, and iv) design for market. Next was Process Intensification. A major aim of this Project was to create an innovative phase separation & extraction microscale-based technology for Li separation – thus the words microchannel-based in the Project title. A microscale-based technology is intrinsically in the center of the Process Intensification domain as defined by its unique principles. Therefore, Process Intensification was implicitly envisioned in the Project’s SOPO. Lastly, Time Scale Analysis is a novel tool for discovering the needs and directions of Process Intensification implementations in any process technology. This Project is fully credited for developing and implementing the three novel technical approaches mentioned above. These are general contributions to process engineering that emerged from this Project. Beyond the original SOPO scope, the OSU-U.Pitt research group utilized a Convergent Design methodology, integrating first-principles mathematical modeling with experimental validation on the Minimum Development Vehicle. By creating these Digital Twins, the team rapidly assessed manufacturing iterations to support TEA analysis. This framework further enabled the development of advanced Surface Modification Techniques, where hydrophobic and oleophobic coating strategies were optimized via Digital Twin tools and validated through rigorous 100-hour longevity testing. TEA Analysis: The closing efforts of this Project were focused on the TEA analysis. TEA analysis had two primary functions: i) enabling critical assessments of design variations withing 10 the Concurrent Design Approach, thus enabling evolution of the MPSE design to reach faster- better-cheaper alternatives; and ii) to create a bridge between the accomplishments of this Project and future projects of higher TRL, beyond TRL 6 level. It is important to note that the TEA model created in the Project stirred the technological solutions for the recovery of critical materials toward a vision of a very profitable modular plant that has unique zero-waste water discharge signature. More importantly, thanks to our experimental performance data and conservative assumptions, the TEA model predicts minimal technological and investment risks. Low cost of a modular unit of a nominal capacity of [1000 tons of Li 2 CO 3 /year] positions the MPSE based technology within the reach of community investors, thus offering a paradigm shift in the development of critical technologies. The project successfully navigated two primary challenges: solvent selection and manufacturing adaptation. Restricted by the SOPO to existing literature for lithium recovery, the team identified a critical need for a "material excellence program" to develop next-generation solvents, eventually concluding with a preliminary investigation into promising Ionic Liquids (ILs). Simultaneously, COVID-19 supply chain disruptions forced a pivot from traditional manufacturing to advanced additive methods at ATAMI-OSU. By transitioning from stainless steel to 3D-printed polymer substrates, the team achieved a transformative three-order-of- magnitude reduction in manufacturing costs and compressed prototyping timelines from several months to just two days. The MPSE technology offers significant energy, environmental, and economic advantages by overcoming the traditional bottlenecks of phase-separation hardware and contactor size. Unlike conventional mixer-settlers or membrane-based systems, MPSE operates without moving parts or fouling-prone membranes, achieving robust performance even with challenging, viscous, or particulate-heavy feeds. Key performance metrics include an energy intensity reduction of 5–50x (3–40 kJ/m 3 ) compared to incumbent technologies and a dramatic reduction of processing time to under 60 seconds, which drastically reduces the physical plant footprint. These technical efficiencies translate into superior economic outcomes; for a 100 t/year Li 2 CO 3 facility, implementing MPSE is projected to nearly halve contactor CAPEX (from $\$$6.08M to $\$$3.01M) and significantly increase the project's Net Present Value (NPV), derisking new investment and enabling distributed critical-mineral processing configurations. The commercialization of MPSE technology is being spearheaded by Vigsur Dynamics Inc., which has adopted a structured, parallel approach to technical and business development since its formation in January 2026. Following extensive customer discovery and engagement with the Oregon State University accelerator, Vigsur Dynamics is working to establish a business model that transitions from pilot demonstrations to modular hardware sales, ultimately aiming for a "build-own-operate" service strategy. Current technical milestones—including 100 hours of continuous operation, superior energy efficiency, and successful 6-unit modular scale-up— provide a foundation for this transition. Backed by ongoing IP licensing and a growing network of industrial and venture advisors, the company is actively de-risking the platform to replace conventional mixer-settler systems in the critical minerals market.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS2009

Chapter 13. Atmospheric Dynamics and Meteorology

Titan, after Venus, is the second example in the solar system of an atmosphere with a global cyclostrophic circulation, but in this case a circulation that has a strong seasonal modulation in the middle atmosphere. Direct measurement of Titan's winds, particularly observations tracking the Huygens probe at 10 deg S, indicate that the zonal winds are mostly in the sense of the satellite's rotation. They generally increase with altitude and become cyclostrophic near 35 km above the surface. An exception to this is a sharp minimum centered near 75 km, where the wind velocity decreases to nearly zero. Zonal winds derived from temperatures retrieved from Cassini orbiter measurements, using the thermal wind equation, indicate a strong winter circumpolar vortex, with maximum winds of 190 m/s at mid northern latitudes near 300 km. Above this level, the vortex decays. Curiously, the stratospheric zonal winds and temperatures in both hemispheres are symmetric about a pole that is offset from the surface pole by about 4 deg. The cause of this is not well understood, but it may reflect the response of a cyclostrophic circulation to the onset between the equator, where the distance to the rotation axis is greatest, and the seasonally varying subsolar latitude. The mean meridional circulation can be inferred from the temperature field and the meridional distribution of organic molecules and condensates and hazes. Both the warm temperatures near 400 km and the enhanced concentration of several organic molecules suggest subsidence in the north polar region during winter and early spring. Stratospheric condensates are localized at high northern latitudes, with a sharp cut-off near 50 deg N. Titan's winter polar vortex appears to share many of the same characteristics of isolating high and low-latitude air masses as do the winter polar vortices on Earth that envelop the ozone holes. Global mapping of temperatures, winds, and composition in the troposphere, by contrast, is incomplete. The few suitable discrete clouds that have been found for tracking indicate smaller velocities than aloft, consistent: with the Huygens measurements, Along the descent trajectory, the Huygens measurements indicate eastward zonal winds down to 7 km, where they shift westward, and then eastward again below 1 km dawn to the surface. The low-latitude dune fields seen in Cassini RADAR images have been interpreted as longitudinal dunes occurring in a mean eastward zonal wind. This is not like Earth, where the low-latitude winds are westward above the surface. Because the net zonal-mean time-averaged torque exerted by the surface on the atmosphere should vanish, there must be westward flow over part of the surface; the question is where and when. The meridional contrast in tropospheric temperatures deduced from radio occultations at low, mid, and high latitudes. is small, approximately 5 K at the tropopause and approximately 3 K at the surface. This implies efficient heat transport, probably by axisymmetric meridional circulations. The effect of the methane "hydrological" cycle on the atmospheric circulation is not well constrained by existing measurements, Understanding the mature of the surface-atmosphere coupling will be critical to elucidating the atmospheric transports of momentum, heat, and volatiles.

Flasar, F. M.↗
NASA NTRS2022

Analysis of Base Metal Microstructures and Mechanical Properties of a Single-Piece, Spin-Formed Forward Pressure Vessel Bulkhead

In 2012, a pathfinder forward pressure vessel bulkhead (FPVBH) for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) was fabricated using aluminum (Al) alloy 2219. The demonstration article was offered as a replacement for the baseline configuration, which at that time was a multi-piece welded construction using aluminum-lithium (Al-Li) alloy 2195. In 2014, the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) funded a Phase I effort to explore spin-forming as a manufacturing method to produce a complex-shaped, single-piece FPVBH for the crew module (CM) [1]. The primary focus of the NESC effort was to expand spin-forming technology to the fabrication of an Al-Li 2195 FPVBH. As a result, limited testing and analysis was performed on the original Al 2219 article. In this study, a sufficiently large plate of Al 2219 was not available for the fabrication of a FPVBH. Therefore, the forming blank comprised two plates (from different lots) butt welded together using a single friction stir weld. The welded forming blank was then spin formed into the FPVBH configuration and heat treated to the T62 temper. Mechanical property testing of the spin-formed 2219-T62 FPVBH revealed that the tensile properties were comparable to the Metallic Material Properties Development and Standardization (MMPDS) A-basis allowable for Al 2219-T6 wrought products. However, post-spin forming application of the standard heat treatment produced large, recrystallized grains in the material. The response varied within the two plates; one plate lot exhibited nearly complete recrystallization, while the other lot contained bands of recrystallization. Although no reduction in tensile properties was observed due to these microstructural variations, a more detailed investigation was recommended to better understand the effect of spin forming on the recrystallization mechanism and the impact on other material properties. The current study examined the microstructure and mechanical properties of the fully processed Al 2219-T62 FPVBH with emphasis on comparing differences between the two plates. Testing was limited to the cone region of the FPVBH. The two specific tasks in this study were: a) Characterization of the microstructure and mechanical properties in the two plates used in the FPVBH. b) Isolation of the impact of each step in the thermo-mechanical processing (TMP) sequence of the FPVBH on recrystallization and grain growth. Mechanical property testing sampled regions containing both large, recrystallized and small, unrecrystallized grains. Tensile strengths and elongations were equivalent in both regions and exceeded MMPDS A-basis allowables. Fracture toughness was equivalent in both regions and fracture morphology was typical of aluminum alloys. The fatigue precrack region of the fracture toughness specimens appeared more faceted in the recrystallized plate. This suggests that property testing that is more sensitive to grain size, such as fatigue crack growth rate and stress corrosion cracking, may be warranted. Alcoa reviewed the production records for the two plate lots and confirmed that composition of both plates was within the allowable range for Al 2219 and that plate processing steps were all performed within production limits. However, the Fe content was notably higher in the fully recrystallized plate, resulting in a greater volume fraction of large Fe-bearing inclusions and Al-Cu constituent particles. Alcoa did not provide details regarding plate processing variables for the two plate lots. It was surmised that deformation by hot rolling was the most accurate TMP simulation of commercial spin forming within a laboratory setting. Both hot rolling and spin forming comprise combinations of shear and compressive deformation. The through-thickness strain caused by hot rolling is symmetrical about the mid-plane, as the rollers contact both sides of the material. Shear strains are maximum at the inner and outer surfaces and trend toward zero at the mid-thickness. In contrast, spin forming utilizes a single roller on the outer surface, producing a gradient in shear stress through the thickness. Shear strains in spin-formed material are highest at the outer surface due to direct contact with the roller, and trend toward zero at the inner surface. Consequently, there will undoubtedly be some discrepancies in the mechanical response of hot-rolled and spin-formed products in the through-thickness direction. Interrupted TMP simulations were performed on remnant plate from the FPVBH forming blank in order to isolate the effects of a post-weld anneal, spin-forming deformation/thermal cycling, and solution heat treatment (SHT) on development of the recrystallized microstructures. Analysis confirmed that large, recrystallized grains formed exclusively during SHT and only after a certain deformation level was exceeded. Remnant plate from both lots that received thermal processing only did not exhibit recrystallization but exhibited fully recrystallized microstructures when processed by hot rolling. This indicates that (1) the level of deformation exceeded the critical level for recrystallization in both plates and (2) that the level of deformation during hot rolling was greater than that which accumulated during spin forming of the FPVBH. Comparison of the hot-rolled plate with the spin-formed material showed that the recrystallized grain size was larger in the FPVBH, providing further evidence that deformation levels were lower in the FPVBH. The most plausible explanation for the differing degrees of recrystallization in the two plates is particle stimulated nucleation (PSN) at the Fe-bearing inclusions and large Al-Cu constituent particles. In the plate with higher solute content, the greater volume fraction of these particles reduces the deformation level required to promote recrystallization. During spin forming the critical deformation level was likely exceeded for the higher Fe content plate resulting in a fully recrystallized microstructure. The lower Fe content plate developed a microstructure that exhibited bands of recrystallization due to the combination of a non-uniform distribution of particles and deformation. The critical deformation required for recrystallization was likely only exceeded during spin forming in regions of higher particle content. While there were differences in Fe content between these lots of Al 2219 plate, the composition of both was within defined alloy limits and Alcoa reported no anomalies during plate production. The observed differences in recrystallization after spin forming may reflect the inherent variability between these two lots of plate. The spin-forming vendor, Spincraft, reported that similar variations in recrystallized microstructures have been observed during examination of multiple spin-forming trials of a different 2xxx series aluminum alloy. Hence, tighter chemical specification limits on impurity levels in Al 2219 plate may help ensure uniform, predictable microstructures. Finally, the tensile and fracture toughness properties were not affected by the microstructural variations noted.

single-piece↗