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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 613 records · Page 34
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Selective depolymerization of polyolefin copolymer via high-entropy alloy catalyzed pyrolysis in a double-layered ultrafast heating reactor

Chemical recycling of polyolefin copolymers (PCPs) is essential for mitigating plastic pollution, yet achieving selective depolymerization into C 2 –C 3 monomers at high productivity remains challenging. Here, we introduce a double-layered ultrafast heating reactor (DUHR) that integrates Joule heating with a high-entropy alloy (HEA) catalyst composed of near-equimolar Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, and Ni. We achieve highly selective depolymerization of PCP into ethylene and propylene, yielding a 70% non-condensable fraction. Significant aromatic fractions form via radical-driven pathways—a behavior distinct from conventional externally heated pyrolyzers—highlighting DUHR's ability to generate reactive species and modulate reaction pathways. Furthermore, these findings demonstrate an effective strategy for chemical recycling of real-world plastic waste for polyolefin circularity and sustainable resource recovery.

Chemical recycling↗
DOE OSTI2024

Carbon management technology pathways for reaching a U.S. Economy-Wide net-Zero emissions goal

The Carbon Management Study Group of the 37 th Energy Modeling Forum (EMF 37) designed seven scenarios to explore the role of three potentially key technology suites – point source carbon dioxide capture and storage (PSCCS), direct air capture of carbon dioxide (DACCS), and hydrogen systems (H 2 ) – in shaping the broader technology pathways to reaching net-zero carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions in United States by 2050. Each scenario was run by up to 13 models participating in the EMF 37 study. Results show that carbon dioxide removal technologies were consistently a major part of successful pathways to net-zero U.S. CO 2 emissions in 2050. Achieving this net-zero CO 2 goal without any form of carbon dioxide capture and storage was found to be impossible for most models; some models also found it impossible to reach net-zero without DACCS. The marginal cost of achieving net-zero CO 2 emissions in 2050 was between two and 10 times higher without PSCCS and/or DACCS available. The carbon price at which DACCS was deployed as a backstop technology depended upon the assumed cost at which DACCS was available at scale. Carbon prices were between $\$$250 and $\$$500 per ton CO 2 when DACCS deployed as a backstop. The average CO 2 capture rate across all models in 2050 in the central net-zero scenario was 1.3 GtCO 2 /year, which implies a substantial upscaling of capacity to move and store CO 2 . Finally, hydrogen sensitivity scenarios showed that H 2 typically constituted a relatively small share of the overall U.S. energy system; however, H 2 deployed in applications that are considered hard to decarbonize, facilitating transition towards net-zero emissions.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Daily operational impacts on battery degradation in heavy-duty electric drayage trucks

Battery aging is a critical factor influencing the performance, longevity, and cost of ownership of battery electric trucks (BETs). This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of battery aging for two Li-ion battery chemistries, Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt (NMC) and Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP), accounting for both cycling and calendar aging. In contrast to traditional methods that rely on simplified linear degradation models based on manufacturer-provided data, this study employs semi-empirical aging models calibrated to experimentally collected data. The models are integrated into a detailed vehicle simulation environment, enabling a comprehensive assessment of battery degradation under realistic operating conditions. A case study focusing on heavy-duty electric drayage truck operations in the Port of Savannah, GA, is presented to illustrate the impact on battery pack lifespan of: seasonal variations, daily operational activities, charging strategies, and battery storage conditions. The results illuminate the significance of the battery pack’s state of charge during stationary periods, such as overnight storage or weekend parking, on battery degradation and its potential implications for long-term vehicle viability. Additionally, the study explores how different operational and environmental factors affect battery degradation, offering critical insights into best battery charging and storage practices. Our results demonstrate that LFP outperforms NMC in terms of years of useful life; however, by utilizing charging strategies that minimize the amount of time the battery spends resting at high levels of state-of-charge, the lifespan of the battery pack that uses NMC can nonetheless be increased by more than a factor of two.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Reducing the cost of home energy upgrades in the US: An industry survey

Decarbonizing the US residential building stock requires a substantial acceleration in home energy upgrades. Numerous barriers exist to accelerating adoption of efficient and electric building technologies, but foremost among these is high upfront costs. This study uses an industry survey delivered to a sample of home energy professionals to examine promising cost reduction strategies across a range of project types, including HVAC, water heating, and envelope/insulation projects. The survey included quantitative and qualitative questions to collect evidence on the estimated cost reduction potential of these strategies and their likelihood of use in the construction industry. The 167 survey respondents included contractors, energy consultants, architects, manufacturers, and others with experience in delivering energy upgrades in single-family and multifamily buildings in the US. Results show that significant cost reductions are achievable by minimizing additional infrastructure costs (such as replacing electric panels), streamlining project planning/management, and deploying innovations that simplify installation. We find that for a typical deep retrofit project, including heat pumps for space and water heating in addition to envelope upgrades, the strategies could result in a total installed cost reduction of nearly 50%, dramatically improving the customer economics of such a project. This research makes a novel contribution to the literature on strategies to reduce the costs of residential retrofits. We discuss how our study's insights on the highest-value cost reduction strategies for home energy upgrades can further accelerate their uptake in the US housing stock.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2025

Direct Deoxygenation of Phenol over Fe-Based Bimetallic Surfaces Using On-the-Fly Surrogate Models

We present an accelerated nudged elastic band (NEB) study of phenol direct deoxygenation (DDO) on Fe-based bimetallic surfaces using a recently developed Gaussian process regression (GPR) calculator. Our test calculations demonstrate that the GPR calculator achieves up to 3 times speedup compared to conventional density functional theory calculations while maintaining high accuracy, with energy barrier errors below 0.015 eV. Using GPR-NEB, we systematically examine the DDO mechanism on pure Fe(110) and surfaces modified with Co and Ni in both top and subsurface layers. Our results show that subsurface Co and Ni substitutions preserve favorable thermodynamics and kinetics for both C–O bond cleavage and C–H bond formation, comparable to those on the pure Fe(110) surface. In contrast, top-layer substitutions generally increase the C–O bond cleavage barrier, render the step endothermic, and result in significantly higher reverse reaction rates, making DDO unfavorable on these surfaces. This work demonstrates the effectiveness of GRR-accelerated transition state searches for complex surface reactions and provides insights into rational design of bimetallic catalysts for selective deoxygenation.

Aromatic compounds↗
DOE OSTI2026

AI-assisted rapid crystal structure generation towards a target local environment

In material design, traditional crystal structure prediction approaches are expensive as they require extensive structural sampling through expensive energy minimization methods. Emerging artificial intelligence (AI) generative models have shown great promise in rapidly generating realistic crystals, but they typically handle only a few tens of atoms per unit cell. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a symmetry-informed approach, the Local Environment Geometry-Oriented Crystal Generator (LEGO-xtal). Our method generates initial structures using AI models trained on an augmented dataset, and then optimizes them using structure descriptors rather than energy-based optimization. We demonstrate its effectiveness by expanding from 25 known low-energy sp2 carbon allotropes to over 1700, all within 0.5 eV/atom of the ground-state energy of graphite. This framework offers a generalizable strategy for the targeted design of materials with modular building blocks, such as metal-organic frameworks and battery materials.

Ridwan, Osman Goni [University of North Carolina a↗
DOE OSTI2024

Chemical and electrochemical pathways to low-carbon iron and steel

Currently, the iron and steel industry is responsible for 7% of global CO 2 emissions. In this review, we summarize the operational principles of current emissions-intensive steelmaking technologies and review emerging low- and zero-carbon technologies that could substantially reduce emissions. Current technologies that are discussed include blast furnaces, electric arc furnaces, and smelting. Promising low-carbon routes include use of alternative reductants for ore processing (hydrogen direct reduction, hydrogen plasma-smelting, hydrogen smelting, and ammonia-based reduction), electrolytic iron production (with aqueous and molten oxide electrolytes) and biocarbon-based electric arc furnace operation. Advantages of each approach are presented, and remaining research hurdles are identified.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

The levelized cost of exergy: a technoeconomic framework for energy system comparison

While the levelized costs of electricity and heat have been quantified before, these two metrics cannot be directly compared, due to the different exergy content of heat and work. To address this, we develop a levelized cost of exergy (LCOEx) framework that enables direct comparisons between energy sources and processes. We find that moderate- and high-grade heat have an LCOEx that is comparable to electricity (5–10 ¢ per kWh ex ), while low-grade heat sources have much higher LCOEx values (>50 ¢ per kWh ex ). The LCOEx of a system's output is affected by (i) the LCOEx of the system input, (ii) the CAPEX of the system, and (iii) the exergetic efficiency of the system. We use our framework to identify which processes are already achieved with relatively high cost effectiveness (production of fuels, hydrogen, and ammonia) and which have room for improvement (dehumidification, food production).

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2026

Crystal generation using the fully differentiable pipeline and latent space optimization

We present a materials generation framework that couples a symmetry-conditioned variational autoencoder with a differentiable SO(3) power spectrum objective to steer candidates toward a specified local environment under the crystallographic constraints. In particular, we implement a fully differentiable pipeline that performs batch-wise optimization on both direct and latent crystallographic representations. Using the GPU acceleration, the implementation achieves about fivefold speed compared to our previous CPU workflow, while yielding comparable outcomes. In addition, we introduce the optimization strategy that alternatively performs optimization on the direct and latent crystal representations. This dual-level relaxation approach can effectively escape local minima defined by different objective gradients, thus increasing the success rate of generating complex structures satisfying the target local environments. This framework can be extended to systems consisting of multi-components and multi-environments, providing a scalable route to generate material structures with the target local environment.

conditional VAE↗
DOE OSTI2025

A Digital Twin for an Inverter-Based Resource Power Plant: Real-time data streaming unlocks situation awareness

Here, this study presents the development and successful implementation of a digital twin specifically designed for a grid-connected IBR power plant. By integrating a reduced-order model of the IBR system and dynamically updating the grid impedance with real-time data, the digital twin effectively captures and replicates the behavior of the physical system. Its accuracy and reliability are validated through critical test scenarios, including a three-phase fault and a line-tripping event. The results confirm that the digital twin closely emulates its physical counterpart, demonstrating its strong potential for real-time analysis, system monitoring, and predictive decision making in modern power systems.

Digital twins↗
DOE OSTI2026

An On-Demand Electric Transit Case Study of New Rochelle, New York

Here, this article characterizes the performance and ridership patterns of an on-demand transit (ODT) service utilizing lightweight electric vehicles (EVs) in New Rochelle, New York. Ridership sociodemographics, travel patterns (both temporal and spatiotemporal), and energy use from the service were explored using travel and survey data from September 2019 through December 2023. The ODT service was found to be used more by women (nearly 60%) and younger demographics (>65% under the age of 42), with peak use in the middle of the day and a grocery store as a top origin and destination. The service was utilized primarily for short trips (86% under 2 mi), with approximately one-third of riders using the ODT service to connect to a train or bus. The costs associated with fueling/charging were compared for different types of fleet vehicles, and the small, right-sized EVs were found to have annual charging costs that were roughly half of the refueling costs for conventional hybrid vans, and 24 times lower than a fleet of diesel buses. Evaluating the vehicle fleet and mapping current socio-spatial travel demand can inform system performance, guide service area development, and support future planning such as expansion to nearby communities and transit hubs. The findings in this case study suggest that on-demand electric transit may be a significant and growing space for advancing highly valued public mobility services. Public transport interventions that consider right-sized, electric, on-demand vehicles can help improve mobility access and reduce energy use and refueling costs.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Rural EVSE Planning and Analysis

The dataset includes detailed anonymized public charging station usage from several rural stations on the ChargePoint and Shell Recharge Solutions (formerly Greenlots) networks situated in and around Athens, Ohio, a rural Appalachian community. Both Level 2 and DC fast charging stations are represented. Historical data in the set date back to 2019; additional data will be uploaded semiannually until the project's completion in 2023. Each charging session recorded includes information on date and time, location, charging station level, session duration, energy delivered, and fuel savings.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

Community and Passenger Survey Responses for Bastrop, Texas Low-Speed Electric Vehicle Mobility Service Project

This document describes the contents of the following data products: 1. ALL-survey_results_NREL_LiveWire_04_14_2023 (Excel file with two worksheets) 2. eCab_DOE_NREL_LiveWire_04_14_2023_results_all_surveys_except_SP_csv (CSV file) 3. eCab_DOE_NREL_LiveWire_04_14_2023_SP_survey_results_only_csv (CSV file). These data products contain the results of the surveys conducted throughout the DOE-funded Electric First-/Last-Mile On-Demand Shuttle Service for Rural Communities in Central Texas project. The Excel file is the original database of all the survey results (contained in two worksheets). The CSV files are those two worksheets saved as individual CSV files.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

Individual Motorist Data - Ohio EV Ownership Trends

The individual motorist dataset contains data and analysis of consumer electric vehicle (EV) ownership trends in rural Appalachian Ohio in comparison with statewide trends. The data span four years, from Q1 2020 to Q2 2023 (partial). They are sourced from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles registration records and contain detail on drivetrain type (battery-electric vehicle [BEV] or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle [PHEV]); specific vehicle make and model; and registration location at county, city, and ZIP code levels of spatial resolution. Registration data are analyzed at the county level against such indicators as median income, poverty status, urban-rural status, and density of public charging infrastructure. In addition to tabular data, a GIS shapefile with many analysis fields joined is included.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

EV Shuttle Bus Pilot

The EV Shuttle Bus Pilot dataset contains data and analysis from Hocking-Athens-Perry Community Action's demonstration of an electric bus on routes of their rural Athens Public Transit system. The vehicle used in the demonstration was a Ford E-450 cutaway equipped with an electric drivetrain, a 127-kWh battery system by Motiv Power Systems, and a cabin upfit by Turtle Top. Data gathered include route assignments, running time and distance, fuel economy, and charge cycles. A comparison of the vehicle's observed duty cycle with duty cycle modeling from other rural transit fleets in the National Transit Database is included to help better understand the rural adoption potential for this fleet technology.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗