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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
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Heavy-Duty Truck Electrification and the Impacts of Depot Charging on Electricity Distribution Systems

Major technological advancements and recent policy support are improving the outlook for heavy-duty truck electrification in the United States. In particular, short-haul operations (=200 miles (=322 km)) are prevalent and early candidates for plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) given their short, predictable routes and return-to-base applications, which allows vehicles to recharge when off shift at their depots. Although previous studies investigated the impacts of added electrical loads on distribution systems, which included light-duty EVs, the implications for heavy-duty EV charging are underexplored. Here we summarize the causes, costs and lead times of distribution system upgrades anticipated for depot charging. We also developed synthetic depot charging load profiles for heavy-duty trucks from real-world operating schedules, and found that charging requirements are met at common light-duty EV charging rates (=100 kW per vehicle). Finally, we applied depot charging load profiles to 36 distribution real-world substations, which showed that most can accommodate high levels of heavy-duty EV charging without upgrades.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Status of GTA Gear Inspection after Testing in Sodium

The Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop (METL) is an intermediate-scale liquid metal experimental facility that provides purified reactor-grade (R-grade) sodium to various experimental test vessels. In these test vessels, components that are required to operate in an advanced fast reactor can be tested in a prototypical sodium environment. Experiments conducted in METL significantly assist in the development and maturation of systems and components for advanced reactors. The METL facility consists of multiple test segments including: a purification and diagnostic loop (cold trap was designed after EBR-II), two 18” diameter test vessels with 150 L capacities capable of operating in static or dynamic flow at 538°C, two 28” diameter test vessels with 644 L capacities capable of operating in static or dynamic flow at 650°C, a 3,180 L dump tank with 21 instrumentation ports, and the infrastructure to expand capacity in the future.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2024

EV SALaD 2023 Demonstration: Best Practices and Mitigations for Protecting EVSE Infrastructure

The Electric Vehicle Secure Architecture Laboratory Demonstration (EV SALaD) program is a demonstration of cybersecurity best practices for high-power electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure led by Idaho National Laboratory (INL), in collaboration with other DOE National Laboratories participating in the EVs at Scale Consortium.a Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) participated in the first 2-year (FY22-23) demonstration cycle for EV SALaD. This report documents the FY23 demonstration, the second in a series of demonstrations and collaborations in deploying and operating cybersecure EV charging infrastructure. It includes a summary of improvements from the FY22 demonstration, technical analysis of the FY23 demonstration, how the research demonstrates cyber-physical and cybersecurity best practices for high-power EV charging infrastructure, and related impacts to national and energy security. For EV SALaD, the FY22 demonstration focused on the detection, ranking, and prioritization of anomalous events for high-power EV charging. The FY23 demonstration additionally included the demonstration of cybersecurity best practices, which included protection and mitigation solutions to prevent, respond, and recover from anomalous events. During the demonstrations, the multi-lab EV SALaD team conducted a Test Effect Payload (TEP)b evaluation on extreme fast charger (XFC) hardware equipped with Cerberus, a detection and response solution, to demonstrate anomaly detection and mitigation cybersecurity best practices against cyber-enabled events.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Hardware Autonomy for Space Infrastructure

NASA prioritizes autonomous systems development with the expectation that it will continue to drive significant improvements in human and science exploration capability. Crew operations benefit from a spectrum of machine assistance to complete replacement of dangerous or highly repetitive tasks. Many science operations have a teleoperation component, and similarly benefit from a range of autonomy implementations that make long distance applications feasible. As we consider longer duration deep space missions, we also consider higher levels of autonomy in order meet emergent safety, maintenance, and logistics needs. One of the challenges within this scope is installation and maintenance of infrastructure, such as large scale instrumentation and communications equipment, crew habitats, and operational facilities. We describe how a programmable meta-material architecture may shift the paradigm of how we design, build, and operate future space infrastructure and assets. A primary objective of this strategy is to free the design space from launch vehicle constraints and fundamentally shift how a mission is designed and conducted. This integrates advances in materials (mechanical meta-materials), manufacturing (cooperative mobile robotics), and autonomy (multi-agent planning algorithms). Engineering systems that utilize a modular and reconfiguration building block approach, such as digital communication and computation systems, currently lead in terms of size and complexity scalability. NASA is extending the benefits and flexibility of digital systems to hardware systems, to optimize materials life-cycle management and expand our space exploration mission capabilities to meet long duration and deep space infrastructure needs, in accordance with long term NASA goals of "in-space reliance" and "mass-less exploration."

In space assembly↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Managing Multi-Instrument Data Streams in Secure Environments

The capture and curation of all primary instrument data is a potentially valuable source of added insight into experiments or diagnostics in laboratory experiments. The data can, when properly curated, enable analysis beyond the current practice that uses just a subset of the as-measured data. Complete curated data can also be input for machine learning and other data exploration tools. Conveniently storing and accessing instrument data requires that the instruments are connected to databases and users through a networking infrastructure. This infrastructure needs to accommodate a wide array of instruments which can range from single laboratory mounted probes for environment monitoring to computers managing multiple instruments. These resources may also include mobile devices on which researchers record instrument and experiment state related notes. These varied data sources bring with them the challenges of different communications capabilities and protocols as well as the primary data typically being produced in proprietary formats. These challenges are further compounded when the instruments need to operate in secure environments such as required in national laboratories. We will discuss the SmartLab, an ongoing effort to set up a system for instrument and simulation data curation at NASA Langley Research Center. We will outline the challenges faced in managing the data sources required for ongoing research activities and the solutions that are being considered and implemented to address those challenges.

instrument data management↗
NASA NTRS2018

Portable, Low-Cost, Column Carbon Dioxide and Methane Measurements for Validating Satellite Observations in Remote Locations

We present a low-cost (~$10K per instrument), portable solution to ground-based validation of satellite observations for difficult to reach locations with precisions of 1 ppm XCO2 and 10 ppb XCH4 for hourly data products. While Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) is the gold-standard for ground validation, there are locations where a ground column validation data point would be useful but conditions are not conducive to a permanent station. Examples include wetlands, thawing permafrost, the tropics, the Amazon, sub-Saharan Africa, as well as locations without a power grid or with geopolitical conflict. In addition, the low-cost and portability mean a geographical region can be studied in depth with multiple instruments. This passive, sun-pointing instrument is a miniaturized, laser heterodyne radiometer (mini-LHR) that has been under development by our team since 2009. It can be operated either in tandem with AERONET (a global network of 500 instruments that measure aerosol optical depth), or as a stand-alone instrument with a low-cost (~$3K), light-weight sun tracker. One of the main benefits of the mini-LHR is that it can quickly reach remote locations and provide a validation measurement even if there is limited or no infrastructure at the site. The instrument weighs ~10 lbs, fits into a backpack, and is powered by two folding solar panels and a battery pack. In clear conditions, the instrument can be set-up in under an hour. Portability means that mini-LHRs can be easily moved for side-by-side comparisons with other mini-LHRs and with TCCON which simplifies assessing instrument bias as well as accuracy. Like TCCON, the mini-LHR points directly at the sun with a narrow field-of-view and is its insensitivity to cloud and aerosol scattering that is common to nadir-pointing passive satellite approaches. Here we present a collection of sample data sets to demonstrate performance from locations that vary in climate, altitude, solar zenith angle, hours of sun per day, etc., as well as data from side-by-side TCCON comparisons. Retrievals of CO2 and CH4 were completed using the NASA/Goddard's Planetary Spectrum Generator (PSG) that incorporates meteorological inputs from Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) data set.

Wilson, Emily W.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Comparison of Sub-Ppm Instrument Response Suggests Higher Detection Limits Could Be Used to Quantify Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Infrastructure

Quantifying and controlling fugitive methane emissions from oil and gas facilities remains essential for addressing climate goals, but the costs associated with monitoring millions of production sites remain prohibitively expensive. Current thinking, supported by measurement and simple dispersion modelling, assumes single-digit parts-per-million instrumentation is required. To investigate instrument response, the inlets of three trace-methane (sub-ppm) analyzers were collocated on a facility designed to release gas of known composition at known flow rates between 0.4 and 5.2 kg CH 4 h –1 from simulated oil and gas infrastructure. Methane mixing ratios were measured by each instrument at 1 Hertz resolution over nine hours. While mixing ratios reported by a cavity ring-down spectrometer (CRDS)-based instrument were on average 10.0 ppm (range 1.8 to 83 ppm), a mid-infrared laser absorption spectroscopy (MIRA)-based instrument reported short-lived mixing ratios far larger than expected (range 1.8 to 779 ppm) with a similar nine-hour average to the CRDS (10.1 ppm). We suggest the peaks detected by the MIRA are likely caused by a micrometeorological phenomenon, where vortex shedding has resulted in heterogeneous methane plumes which only the MIRA can observe. Further analysis suggests an instrument like the MIRA (an optical-cavity-based instrument with cavity size ≤10 cm3 measuring at ≥2 Hz with air flow rates in the order of ≤0.3 slpm at distances of ≤20 m from the source) but with a higher detection limit (25 ppm) could detect enough of the high-concentration events to generate representative 20 min-average methane mixing ratios. Even though development of a lower-cost, high-precision, high-accuracy instrument with a 25 ppm detection threshold remains a significant problem, this has implications for the use of instrumentation with higher detection thresholds, resulting in the reduction in cost to measure methane emissions and providing a mechanism for the widespread deployment of effective leak detection and repair programs for all oil and gas infrastructure.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Plant Modernization Technical Program Plan for FY 2021

This report presents the Technical Program Plan for FY 2019 for the Department of Energy Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program – Plant Modernization research pathway. A summary of the vision and strategy is provided to explain how this program addresses key issues and barriers for modernizing instrumentation and control technologies and infrastructure in domestic nuclear power plants. The report describes the pilot projects that have been formulated to develop and validate enabling technologies over the next several years that will result in digital alternatives to the legacy analog II&C systems in place today. This will allow much needed modernization of these systems to address reliability and obsolescence problems, as well as serve as a platform for substantial operational improvement. The report further describes key project resources and cooperative relationships, including the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute )NEI), the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), the IFE Halden Reactor Project, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and industry suppliers, that are instrumental to the success of the program. The report also lists the schedule for all program products, including the titles and report numbers for all published reports under this program.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Plant Modernization Technical Program Plan for FY 2021

This report presents the Technical Program Plan for FY 2019 for the Department of Energy Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program – Plant Modernization research pathway. A summary of the vision and strategy is provided to explain how this program addresses key issues and barriers for modernizing instrumentation and control technologies and infrastructure in domestic nuclear power plants. The report describes the pilot projects that have been formulated to develop and validate enabling technologies over the next several years that will result in digital alternatives to the legacy analog II&C systems in place today. This will allow much needed modernization of these systems to address reliability and obsolescence problems, as well as serve as a platform for substantial operational improvement. The report further describes key project resources and cooperative relationships, including the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute )NEI), the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), the IFE Halden Reactor Project, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and industry suppliers, that are instrumental to the success of the program. The report also lists the schedule for all program products, including the titles and report numbers for all published reports under this program.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Characterization of a selective, zero power sensor for distributed sensing of hydrogen in energy applications

The use of hydrogen as a clean and renewable energy source is increasing rapidly for both vehicle and stationary applications. There are safety concerns for the locations in which hydrogen is made, used, and transported (i.e., pipelines and tanker trucks). Sensors are needed to comply with safety regulations and to enable a smooth and safe rollout of hydrogen as an alternative energy. However, hydrogen sensors do not yet exist that have the combined features of small size and low power for easy deployment coupled with high-volume manufacturability and low cost. This is necessary to accommodate the emerging fixed and mobile markets while retaining critical metrological metrics, including measurement range, detection limits, selectivity, fast response, stability, and long lifetime. An amperometric gas sensor for hydrogen (AGS) has been developed using an innovative manufacturing method. The sensor was designed using scalable fabrication strategies based on “Printed Electronics” (PE) methodology which are compatible with large-scale production. Prototype sensors were batch fabricated with multiple individual elements on a substrate compatible in size with a standard 8-inch wafer to enable high-volume, low-cost manufacturing, thereby leveraging PE and semiconductor fabrication infrastructure. This novel AGS was instrumented with control circuitry and evaluated for hydrogen detection in the range of 0–5000 ppmv H2 in air. Specific performance evaluations included assessment of the sensor measurement range, repeatability, and selectivity.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2020

Development of an Advanced Integrated Operations Concept for Hybrid Control Rooms

The U.S. Nuclear Industry has an urgent need to reduce the operations and maintenance costs to remain economically competitive in today’s energy market. Measures to improve efficiency in operations will need to leverage technology in a way that safely transforms how plants are operated. This work describes the development of an integrated operations concept that integrates data from existing Instrumentation and Control (I&C) infrastructure, upgraded I&C systems, new sensors, and field technologies such as computer-based procedures to provide operators with centralized, streamlined instructions. The concept was developed to allow for an operator to remotely supervise many plant activities and to dramatically streamline plant operations and maintenance. This report describes the design philosophy, the analysis used to inform design, the implementation in the Human Systems Simulation Laboratory, and illustrates the design concept.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Demonstration and Evaluation of an Advanced Integrated Operations Concept for Hybrid Control Rooms

The U.S. nuclear industry has an urgent need to reduce operations and maintenance costs to remain economically competitive in today’s energy market. Measures to improve efficiency in operations will need to leverage technology in a way that safely transforms how plants are operated. This work describes the Evaluation of an integrated operations concept that draws together data from existing Instrumentation and Control (I&C) infrastructure, upgraded I&C systems, new sensors, and field technologies such as computer-based procedures to provide operators with centralized, streamlined instructions. The concept was developed to allow for an operator to remotely supervise many plant activities and to dramatically streamline plant operations and maintenance. This describes the methods, results, and design recommendations for the concept based on an operator workshop to evaluate the concept.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modular Autonomous Experimentation for Biological Applications (Full Report)

The Modular Autonomous Research System (MARS) was developed to address the pressing need for faster, more reliable, and more adaptable scientific discovery. Traditional experimentation is limited by manual labor, long cycle times, and fragmented data streams, which constrain the ability to explore complex chemical and materials design spaces. To overcome these limitations, we created an integrated, modular platform that combines laboratory robotics, diverse measurement instruments, and a central data infrastructure with artificial intelligence–driven decision-making. The system links liquid handling robots, robotic arms, and optical plate readers into a closed loop where experiments are executed automatically, data is analyzed in real time, and subsequent experimental conditions are adaptively chosen to maximize information gain. Over the course of the project, MARS was validated on two primary test cases—spectroscopic metal–ligand binding assays and peptide-directed mineralization—which highlighted the system’s ability to handle uncertainty and variability in experimental measurements. To further demonstrate modularity and extensibility, we also established additional testbeds in electrochemistry for catalyst discovery and electrolyte formulation for advanced batteries. The results show that MARS can reliably conduct autonomous campaigns with minimal human intervention, adapt to distinct scientific domains, and provide a scalable model for future self-driving laboratories. This work establishes new capabilities for modular, uncertainty-aware automation and directly supports the need for advanced, data-driven research platforms capable of accelerating discovery across a wide range of scientific and national security missions.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Identifying Opportunities at the Interface of Chemistry and Quantum Information Science (Final Technical Report)

This project convened a National Academies committee to identify opportunities and research priorities at the interface of chemistry and quantum information science (QIS). The work culminated in a consensus study report that (1) articulates three fundamental research areas to advance QIS (design and synthesis of molecular qubits; measurement and control of molecular quantum systems; and experimental and computational scaling of qubit design and function), and (2) underscores the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration, access to facilities and instrumentation, FAIR-aligned data infrastructure, and workforce development initiatives to sustain U.S. leadership in QIS. The report and all other material associated with this project can be downloaded on the project webpage: https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DELS-BCST-21-01 .

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2022

Datasets for characterizing extreme events relevant to hydrologic design over the conterminous United States

Despite the close linkage between extreme floods and snowmelt, particularly through rain-on-snow (ROS), hydrologic infrastructure is mostly designed based on standard precipitation Intensity-Duration-Frequency curves (PREC-IDF) that neglect snow processes in runoff generation. For snow-dominated regions, such simplification could result in substantial errors in estimating extreme events and infrastructure design risk. To address this long-standing problem, we applied the Next Generation IDF (NG-IDF) technique to estimate design basis extreme events for different durations and return periods in the conterminous United States (CONUS) to distinctly represent the contribution of rain, snowmelt, and ROS events to the amount of water reaching the land surface. A suite of datasets were developed to characterize the magnitude, trend, seasonality, and dominant mechanism of extreme events for over 200,000 locations. Infrastructure design risk associated with the use of PREC-IDF was estimated. Accuracy of the model simulations used in the analyses was confirmed by long-term snow data at over 200 Snowpack Telemetry stations. The presented spatially continuous datasets are readily usable and instrumental for supporting site-specific infrastructure design.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

2020 Transportation Research Board Workshop: Infrastructure Spatial Sensing at Intersections: The Potential to Enhance Safety and Enable Automation

The sensing technology that is enabling vehicle automation also can revolutionize traffic intersection safety, control, and efficiency. Infrastructure spatial sensing technology refers to the deployment of sensors that can detect and track all objects in the field of view - for example, mounting lidar sensors, radar, and video imaging at an intersection and fusing the data to produce a three-dimensional dynamic operational awareness. Combining such sensing capability with fail-safe vehicle communications can facilitate applications such as eco-approach and departure, optimizing efficient vehicle-signal coordination, and reducing traffic accidents through increasing safety. Furthermore, evidence is mounting suggesting that infrastructure-based sensing is needed in order to safely deploy automated public mobility alongside the normal vehicle and pedestrian traffic in our cities. Six speakers were invited to present their work from various aspects (safety, efficiency, and automation) addressing infrastructure-based sensing at the workshop on Infrastructure Spatial Sensing hosted in Washington DC as part of the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in January 12, 2019. A summary of the presentation are included herein.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2021

How the NRC modernized its digital I&C infrastructure and where it goes from here

The NRC first formally developed infrastructure for the review of digital instrumentation and control (I&C) systems in the 1990’s. Although, the current U.S. fleet of nuclear power plants were originally designed and constructed with analog systems, the U.S. nuclear industry has for more that thirty years been working to upgrade these older systems with modern digital systems. Digital systems have many advantages but also pose different engineering challenges and need to be reviewed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in a different way. Because of this the NRC started looking at its regulatory infrastructure to see if changes needed be made to support the expanded safe use of digital systems in nuclear power plants. Several efforts in the 1990’s included a review by the National Academies’ National Research Council, a review of the impact of potential new digital systems by the NRC staff as a result of advanced reactor designs and the NRC staff’s update to the I&C section of the Standard Review Plan (SRP) (Ref 1).

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Safety-Related Instrumentation and Control Pilot Upgrade: Initial Scoping Phase Implementation and Lessons Learned

In May 2016, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff provided a digital instrumentation and control (I&C) regulatory infrastructure integrated action plan to the NRC for approval. One of the objectives of that plan was to establish a clear regulatory structure with reduced regulatory uncertainty to enable the expanded safe use of digital I&C in commercial nuclear reactors while continuing to ensure safety and security. To achieve this end, the NRC, with collaboration from industry, developed a streamlined License Amendment Request Alternate Review (AR) process for safety-related (SR) digital I&C upgrades. In spite of this effort, the industry has remained reluctant to perform such I&C upgrades because of perceived regulatory and financial risks associated with being the first or an early adopter of the AR process for SR I&C upgrades. The U.S. Department of Energy Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program at the Idaho National Laboratory performed Initial Scoping Phase research to help break this impasse by supporting a SR I&C Pilot Upgrade, working with MPR Associates, ScottMadden Inc., and Exelon Generation. Exelon’s Limerick Generating Station (LGS) was selected as the target for this research. This paper summarizes the Initial Scoping Phase engineering and operations, licensing, and project management activities necessary to bound the scope, schedule, and estimated cost of the project sufficiently to enable utility management authorization of Conceptual Design Phase activities. These efforts and associated products are intended to provide a template to support larger industry efforts to perform similar upgrades as a foundation stone for a digital transformation that will improve plant safety, reliability, and operational performance while lowering plant total cost of ownership. As a result of the combined effort of Exelon Generation and research participants, Conceptual Design Phase activities for the subject upgrade at LGS were approved by Exelon. Further, the U.S. Department of Energy also awarded a $50 million cost share award to Exelon in order to pave the way for SR I&C modernization and associated control room upgrades across the U.S. nuclear fleet. Additional research reports are planned for the Conceptual Design Phase, Detailed Design Phase, and the Implementation Phase of the LGS project to document the process followed and promulgate lessons learned to industry.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗