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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 55 records · Page 3

Challenges and Opportunities for the Development of Commercial Maritime Surface Vessel Nuclear Propulsion (CMNP)

Maritime transport and trade are currently responsible for producing nearly 1 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions annually, representing 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. While maritime shipping is acknowledged as the most efficient carrier of goods in terms of its costs and carbon intensity, the sector relies overwhelmingly on the use of heavy fuel oil (HFO). This fuel source currently is unmatched in terms of its global availability, safety, security of supply, price, and energy density. Combined, these characteristics are responsible for the outsized contribution of the sector to the global economy: roughly 90% of all transported goods spend time at sea. Commercial maritime nuclear propulsion provides opportunities to transition maritime trade to clean energy but also comes with challenges. Both are covered in this report based on 60+ interviews with professionals from the maritime and nuclear energy sectors.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Development and Commercialization of Heavy-Duty Battery Electric Trucks Under Diverse Climate Conditions (DTNA EMG Innovation eCascadia 2.0 Final Technical Report)

During this project DTNA advanced heavy-duty transportation technologies to produce the eCascadia 2.0, a fully commercialized Class 7/8 electric tractor with the range and durability to meet the needs of 70% of freight movement in the United States. The eCascadia2.0 provides flexibility, operational performance, efficiency, and maintenance cost savings to the end user. The most direct outcome of this project is a commercially viable zero-emission heavy duty option with a 250-mile daily range and sufficient payload for regional haul duty cycles. The larger outcome is an acceleration of the market transformation away from petroleum-based fuels. DTNA’s comprehensive sales team, dealer network, customer network and maintenance and support teams will ensure that this is not a standalone zero-emission truck, but rather one that can be produced, marketed, and operated at scale to realize vast greenhouse gas and criteria pollutant emissions reductions, while also bringing zero emission vehicles closer to cost parity.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Development and Commercialization of a Nanosegrated Oxygen Evolution Reaction Electrocatalyst

The research under this CRADA adds to the understanding of how catalyst activity and durability should be balanced and tailored for oxygen evolution reaction. The research also provides technical insights in how catalyst degradation might occur under long-term operation under highly oxidative and acidic conditions. In longer term, the project could benefit the pubic by enabling more efficient, affordable and reliable electrolysis technologies.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Considerations of Alloy N Code Extension for Commercial Molten Salt Reactor Development and Deployment

For commercial development and deployment of the molten salt reactor, a structural alloy that provides both strength at high temperature and resistance to very corrosive molten salt environment is required. To meet this requirement, a survey is conducted on domestic and international candidate alloys. Alloy N turns out to be the sole frontrunner in readiness for qualification to enable the desired deployment within an estimated 10 years. A review of the qualification for commercial nuclear applications indicates that Alloy N has met a large portion of the requirements. Gaps in the qualification are also identified. A search for historical data is underway to retrieve information needed for filling the gaps and upgrading the qualification. Scope of the discovered historical data is briefly discussed and strategic planning for research and development pathway is suggested to ensure successful evolution in commercial deployment of the molten salt reactor system.

Ren, Weiju↗

WETO Software Stack Best Practices

Wind energy researchers typically share one key characteristic: a passion for increasing wind energy in the global energy mix. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) supports this mission in a number of ways including allocating funding directly to various aspects of wind energy research through the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) via the Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO). While the traditional output of research is academic publication, software development efforts are increasingly a major focus. Software tools in the research environment allow researchers to describe an idea and quickly increase the scope and scale as they study it further. As a product of research, these tools represent a direct pipeline from researcher to industry practitioners since they are the implementation of ideas described in academic publications. Given this vital role in wind energy research and commercial development, the broad research software portfolio supported by WETO must maintain a minimum level of quality to support the wind energy field in the growing transition to renewable energy. This report outlines a series o f best practices to be adopted by all WETO-supported software projects, as well as expectations that the communities interacting with these projects should have of the developers and tools themselves. Wind energy research software has a unique standing in the field of scientific software. The stakeholders are varied with a subset being: (1) DOE EERE leadership, (2) DOE WETO leadership and program managers, (3) National lab leadership, (4) Associated project principle investigators, (5) Research software engineers, (6) Wind energy researchers in academia (including graduate students, post docs, and national lab staff), (7) Industry researchers and practitioners, (8) Commercial software developers, and (9) The general public interested in wind energy. These software are typically the end-user of other generic software libraries, so the funding cycles are often tied to applied research rather than the development of the software itself. Since the developers are also wind energy researchers, these tools are typically designed in a way that closely resembles the application in which they're used. Additionally, the expertise and incentives for the developers have a high variability, and often neither are aligned with software engineering or computer science. Given the unique environment in which wind energy research software is produced and consumed, it is critical for model owners to understand the context of their software. A framework for developing this understanding is to answer the following questions of a given software project: What is it's purpose? What is its role in the field of wind energy? What is the profile of the expected users? For how long will it be relevant? What is the expected impact? These questions allow model owners to identify the appropriate methods for the design, development, and long term maintenance of their software. Additionally, the answer provide context for future planners to understand why particular decisions were made and discern the consequences of changing course. The information is aggregated from experience within WETO-supported software development groups as well as external organizations and efforts to define the craft of research software engineering. These best practices aim to make the collaborative development process efficient and effective while improving the model understanding across stakeholders. Additionally, the general adoption of a common framework for software quality ensures that the end users of WETO software can trust these tools and accurately understand the risks to workflow integration.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Technical and Programmatic Consequences of a Hypersonic Vehicle Flight Test Ban

The hypersonic vehicle (HV) is defined as any vehicle capable of traveling at or above five times the local speed of sound (Mach 5). Development of hypersonic flight has been pursued since the late 1950s, especially for reentry of missile warheads and returning orbiting spacecraft. Although considerable progress has been made since then, air- breathing and gliding hypersonic flight remains in the development and testing phase. Concerns have been raised, however, about continued HV flight tests because of HV's potential military use, which has the potential to encourage hair-trigger tactics that would increase crisis instability. In recent years, non-governmental organizations have called for a ban on HV flight testing for the primary purpose of halting continued development of the HV as a weapon. The emphasis on banning flight tests is due to its vital role in aerospace programs. Without it, significant technical uncertainties remain, creating safety and reliability issues that would discourage commercial development. Although the cost and time involved in flight tests have already spurred the use of other test methods, none can completely reproduce the flight test environment. Flight tests are important for reasons such as generating data unique to flight test environments to use in validating models and verifying ground test data, identifying unanticipated problems, and reducing risk. Commercial HV technology development today depends on advancements in four areas: propulsion; aerodynamics; critical guidance, navigation and control; and thermal management. This report summarizes the ramifications on HV technology development if flight tests were banned.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Techno-Economic Analysis of Integrated Gasification Fuel Cell Systems

This National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) study describes the results of a pathway study for coal-based integrated gasification and solid oxide fuel cell (IGFC) power systems with and without carbon capture and storage. Two pathway scenarios are considered, based on the operating pressure of the SOFC. Three gasification technologies, including a conventional technology, differing in the syngas methane content, which has a significant effect on the IGFC system performance, were considered. The performance and cost benefits were estimated for a series of projected gains made through the development of advances in the component technologies or improvements in plant costs and availability. The objective of the study is to provide targeted research and development guidance to the FECM SOFC Program and SOFC commercial developers.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

Wyoming CarbonSAFE Phase III: Site Characterization and Permitting Commercial-Scale Carbon Storage Complex Feasibility Study at Dry Fork Station, Wyoming

This report presents the findings of the technical and non-technical site characterization and permitting activities (“Phase III”) conducted under the Wyoming CarbonSAFE: Accelerating CCUS Commercialization and Deployment at Dry Fork Power Station (DFS) and the Wyoming Integrated Test Center project (“Wyoming CarbonSAFE”). Wyoming CarbonSAFE is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (“CarbonSAFE”) Initiative. The results of Phase III demonstrate that the Wyoming CarbonSAFE project - referred to as the Northern Powder River Basin Carbon Sequestration Hub (NPRB-CSH) - meets the technical, regulatory, and commercial feasibility requirements necessary to advance toward commercial development and construction. The activities completed under this project Phase make the NPRB-CSH one of the region’s most commercially ready carbon storage sites. Completion of this Phase included the finalization of all site surface and subsurface characterization activities, completion and testing of two Class VI standard wells, 10 draft Class VI permits-to construct to address the future needs of a storage complex, finalized NEPA assessments, transportation and capture FEED studies, and a full commercialization strategy with economic modeling, operation and site closure strategies. The NPRB-CSH meets all requirements to progress to a CarbonSAFE Phase IV program or advance to full commercial operations under the development of a business partner.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

Managing Environmental Effects to Facilitate Marine Renewable Energy Development

The marine renewable energy (MRE) industry is in the early stages of commercial development. In addition to the challenges of deploying and maintaining devices under harsh ocean conditions and transporting electricity to shore, concerns around potential environmental effects continue to slow permitting (consenting) processes. Regulators and stakeholders perceive a wide array of potential environmental interactions as risky and highly uncertain, and request that considerable baseline assessments and post-installation monitoring be carried out in order to permit or license a project. The MRE industry is struggling with the high cost of baseline assessments and post-installation monitoring, as well as extended timelines for obtaining permits, leading to uncertainty and risk for financing projects. As a means to mitigate this uncertainty and risk, regulators in the US have been engaged to ensure that they understand the underlying science that drives these challenges and to explore the feasibility of transferring learning and information from early MRE projects and analogous industry interactions to inform potential environmental effects and permitting for new MRE projects. The ability to use data and information from one project or location to another can aid the industry by reducing the high costs of environmental monitoring and accelerating permitting processes for future projects. This paper presents findings of a regulator survey and other engagements with regulators, provides insight into the process of data transferability, suggests a framework for data transferability and collection consistency, and details efforts to engage the research community in furthering this process.

Marine renewable energy, environmental effects, da↗

Development of integrated screening, cultivar optimization, and verification research (DISCOVR): A coordinated research-driven approach to improve microalgal productivity, composition, and culture stability for commercially viable biofuels production

To address major knowledge gaps and barriers to the commercial development of algal biomass for biofuels and co-products, a collaborative consortium, Development of Integrated Screening, Cultivar Optimization, and Verification Research (DISCOVR), was established in 2016. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), this consortium constitutes a partnership between four DOE national laboratories - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) - and the Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation (AzCATI) at Arizona State University. To address the barriers of strain selection for achieving high seasonal productivities with a suitable composition and culture resilience, a tiered strain down-selection pipeline is implemented. At Tier I, the temperature and salinity tolerance of strains is determined in flask cultures; at Tier II, the areal biomass productivity and composition is determined in climate-simulation photobioreactors; at Tier III, the productivity and culture stability are determined in outdoor raceways. The top performing strains move forward to long-term testing at the algae testbed site at AzCATI to generate annual biomass productivity data. Concurrent to the strain down-selection in the DISCOVR pipeline, hypotheses for increasing biomass productivity, shifting biomass composition to enhance intrinsic value, and improving culture stability and resistance to pests are also tested. Techno-economic analyses are carried out to determine whether promising findings from laboratory studies or proposed modifications in outdoor pond cultivation conditions translate into reductions in the minimum biomass selling price (MBSP). Notably, in the three years following the launch of DISCOVR, annual biomass productivity has increased from 11.7 to 17.6 g m -2 day -1 , resulting in an MBSP decrease from 824 to 611 $ ton -1 .

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

Techno-Economic Analysis of Natural Gas Fuel Cell Plant Configurations

The United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have been pursuing the development of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology to enable future power generation systems that are consistent with the cornerstones of the DOE mission—to ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy and environmental challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. The U.S. DOE FECM SOFC Program is currently focused on the development of low-cost, highly efficient, and reliable SOFC power systems. NETL’s SOFC technology development roadmap is aligned with near-term market opportunities in the distributed generation sector to validate and advance the technology while paving the way for utility-scale (> 50 MW) natural gas and coal-derived synthesis gas-fueled applications via progressively larger system demonstrations. The present study represents a part of a series of system evaluations being developed at NETL to aid in prioritizing technological advances along research pathways to the realization of utility-scale SOFC systems, a transformational goal of the fuel cell program. In particular, the system performance of utility-scale natural gas fuel cell (NGFC) systems with and without carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) capture is presented. The objective of the study is to provide targeted research and development (R&D) guidance to the FECM SOFC Program and SOFC commercial developers to accelerate technology deployment.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

Open V2X at ESIF: June 2015 - February 2017 (Final Report)

The University of Delaware (UD), and their industrial partners, have carried out testing, documentation, and standards development at ESIF. These activities are intended to help meet the objective of NREL's INTEGRATE program, to enable clean energy technologies to increase the hosting capacity of the grid, by providing grid services in a holistic manner using an open source, interoperable platform. In particular, the 'Open V2X at ESIF' project worked to facilitate standardization and interoperability for Electric Vehicle technologies, including battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles (hence EV) to provide grid services. This was done by interconnecting and testing EV and EVSE (charging station) hardware from different manufacturers, by developing standards and test protocols for standards, and by documenting new protocols to be proposed as standards. Contractor-supplied equipment used in the testing included Vehicle Smart Links (VSLs) installed in an EV and School Bus, single-phase and three-phase charging stations, and an optimizing aggregator (software running on a server, hence just 'Aggregator'). The Aggregator software was developed by U of Delaware and is now licensed to Nuvve Corp for commercial development, and licensed to NRG/EVgo for demonstrations. The Aggregator monitors capacity and operations of the EVs and EVSEs, dispatches them in response to requests, and reports their operations and metered power flow. In operation, as vehicles move, plug-in and unplug, the aggregator tracks the total capacity available within a defined jurisdiction or RTO (Regional Transmission Organization, synonym for ISO or TSO), and dispatches part or all of that capacity based on market or direct dispatch signals from a grid entity. The VSL is the data acquisition and control module in the resource itself (EVSE or EV), with rich communication between a single Optimizing Aggregator and many VSL (one in each resource). All requests and dispatch events are also logged by the aggregator to make the provision of grid power auditable. For these tests, the dispatch was typically a recorded signal, the VSL was in the EV or EVSE, and the recording of experimental performance was often carried out by the normal logging functions of the aggregator.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Maritime Fuel Cell Generator Project [FY2019]

The objective of this project is the demonstration, and validation of hydrogen fuel cells in the marine environment. The prototype generator can be used to guide commercial development of a fuel cell generator product. Work includes assessment and validation of the commercial value proposition of both the application and the hydrogen supply infrastructure through third-party hosted deployment as the next step towards widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells in the maritime environment.

08 HYDROGEN↗