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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 631 records · Page 35
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Vehicle Technologies and Fuel Cell Technologies Office Research and Development Programs: Prospective Benefits Assessment Report for Fiscal Year 2018

Under a diverse set of programs, the Vehicle Technologies and Fuel Cell Technologies Offices of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy invest in early-stage research of advanced batteries and electrification, engines and fuels, materials, and energy-efficient mobility systems; hydrogen production, delivery, and storage; and fuel cell technologies. This report documents the estimated benefits of successful development and implementation of advanced vehicle technologies. It presents a comparison of a scenario with completely successful implementation of Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (FCTO) technologies (the Program Success case) to a future in which there is no contribution after Fiscal Year 2017 by the VTO or FCTO to these technologies (the No Program case). Benefits were attributed to individual program technology areas, which included FCTO research and development and the VTO programs of electrification, advanced combustion engines and fuels, and materials technology. Projections for the Program Success case indicate that by 2035, the average fuel economy of on-road, light-duty vehicle stock could be 24% to 30% higher than in the No Program case, while fuel economy for on-road medium- and heavy-duty vehicle stock could be as much as 13% higher. The resulting petroleum savings in 2035 were estimated to be as high as 1.9 million barrels of oil per day, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions were estimated to be as high as 320 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. Projections of light-duty vehicle adoption indicate that although advanced-technology vehicles may be somewhat more expensive to purchase, the fuel savings result in a net reduction of consumer cost. In 2035, reductions in annual fuel expenditures for vehicles (both light- and heavy-duty) are projected to range from $86 billion to $109 billion (2015$), while the projected increase in new vehicle expenditures in the same year ranges from $6 billion to $24 billion (2015$).

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Overview of Clean Hydrogen Program at NREL

Comprehensive, concerted efforts supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) are advancing research and development to demonstrate clean hydrogen production and industrial decarbonization pathways. These pathways enable an economically competitive and environmentally beneficial future energy system across sectors and can address specific applications that are difficult to decarbonize. NREL's research accelerates development, integration, and scale up of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies to enable widespread deployment across multiple energy sectors. Our work helps industry overcome technical challenges and supports DOE's H2@Scale vision for clean hydrogen across multiple applications and economic sectors. We also bridge technologies with other research areas across the lab and through multiple DOE and national lab research initiatives, consortia, and collaborations including: the Hydrogen Energy Earthshot, H2@Scale, National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap, H2NEW: Hydrogen from Next-generation Electrolyzers of Water Consortium, HydroGEN: Advanced Water Splitting Materials Consortium, HyMARC Hydrogen Materials Advanced Research Consortium.

ARIES↗
DOE OSTI2022

City-level impacts of building tune-ups: Findings from Seattle's building tune-ups program

Many U.S. cities are implementing policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their buildings. These range from building energy benchmarking and disclosure to building performance standards (BPS) that require buildings to meet specific targets of energy use or emissions. The City of Seattle adopted a climate action plan in 2013 that set a goal of zero net GHG emissions in the road transportation, buildings, and waste sectors by 2050, with a number of near and long term actions. Seattle implemented mandatory building tune-ups in 2016, applying to commercial buildings larger than 50,000 sqft. Building tune-ups1 involve assessment and implementation of operational and maintenance (O + M) improvements to achieve energy and water efficiency, such as changes to thermostat set points or adjusting lighting or irrigation schedules. Seattle's tune-ups program covered 27 such improvements in HVAC, lighting, domestic hot water, and envelope systems.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Soft Matter Thermal and Mechnical Devices

The participant company, Treau, makes homes and buildings more comfortable with quiet, energy efficient, and easy to install heating and cooling systems. They entered the Cyclotron Road program with an idea for a heat exchanger and compressor and a general idea that the building heating and cooling sector was the best first target market. While at Cyclotron Road, they used the Cyclotron Road program staff and Berkeley Lab expertise to better understand the needs of the heating and cooling equipment market. This was critical to understand who the end customer was, and what features were needed in this market. They were then able to conduct product development with this target market/customer in mind. The Cyclotron Road program was also critical in building a manufacturing and scale-up plan that allowed the participant to build a credible growth and fundraising strategy. By the end of the program, the participant had a working prototype testing at Berkeley Lab’s HVAC testing facilities.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

Improving Mathematical Exposition of an Industrial-Scale Linear Program

Industrial-scale models require considerable setup time; hence, once built, they are used in myriad ways to consider closely related cases. In practice, the code for these models frequently evolves without appropriate notational choices, largely as a result of the lengthy development time of, and the number of individuals contributing to, their formulation. This leads to inefficiencies and obfuscates model structures that might be leveraged to expedite solutions. In this paper, we advocate for an emerging literature on model formulation “best practices” and present the reformulation of a widely used industrial-scale linear program. The efficient mathematical expression of this linear program, used to plan capacity expansion in the energy sector, allows for greater transparency of model structures and enhanced ability to identify computational performance improvements, as well as a lucid interpretation of its solutions. This type of formulation is employed in several mathematical programming courses at our university as an example of the advantages of best practices; the model more broadly is used widely to inform policy in the U.S. energy sector.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

NEAMS Burnup Extension Accomplishments and Remaining Modeling Gaps

The economic viability of light-water reactors (LWRs) in the United States is declining in heavily subsidized markets, and as a result, the nuclear industry is looking for opportunities to enhance the economic competitiveness of nuclear power. This is not a foreign concept to the nuclear industry: in the mid-2000s, the nuclear industry set out to achieve zero fuel failures by 2010. The goal in this effort was to drive down the cost of reactor shut down by replacing a pin or bundle in response to fuel rod failure. 2010 brought about the initiative to deliver the nuclear promise to reduce operating cost by 30% to improve nuclear energy’s economic competitiveness before 2020. The emergence of accident-tolerant fuel also offers the nuclear industry an opportunity to build on these past successes and deliver affordable, clean energy. Accident-tolerant fuel has been shown to provide superior performance compared to traditional Zircaloy/UO2 fuel concepts, offering the unique ability to remove operational limitations that inhibit the economic viability of nuclear power. This has led the industry to begin building a technical case to extend the peak rod average burnup beyond 62 GWd/tU to extend pressurized water reactor cycle lengths to 24 months and to develop more efficient boiling water reactor core designs. The Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program mission is to develop advanced modeling and simulation tools and capabilities to accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear energy technologies. The primary safety concern inhibiting the nuclear industry from extending burnup is related to high-burnup fuel fragmentation, relocation, and dispersal. Therefore, the NEAMS program developed a targeted 5-year plan to support the industry’s efforts to extend burnup. This milestone report summarizes the 5-year plan that was enacted in FY20, followed by a discussion of the ongoing activates required to fulfill the 5-year plan, as well as the approach to address the current modeling gaps. Additionally, an LWR stakeholder meeting was held to communicate work performed in the NEAMS program over the past three years, to assess the LWR community’s perspective on the impact of the program, and to identify remaining significant gaps in the NEAMS suite of capabilities. This engagement will be documented by the Electric Power Research Institute and used by NEAMS to redirect current LWR scope as needed and to develop the next phase for LWR research and development.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

SiC cladding R&D execution plan

To advance the development of accident-tolerant fuel cladding for light-water reactors, the Advanced Fuels Campaign actively addresses the R&D gap between the specialized technological progress in SiC-based composite materials, led by industrial partners, and the fundamental scientific understanding of material behavior under reactor operating conditions. The laboratory activities are systematically organized based on the Development Strategy document, which outlines critical barriers to the use of SiC composites in nuclear energy applications for the coming decade and beyond. To complement the strategy, this execution plan specifies a detailed year-by-year work package and establishes key milestones for assessing progress in technological advancement. This plan has been formulated in collaboration with principal investigators at national laboratories, stakeholders, and industry partners with the goal of closing technology gaps and readying SiC-based cladding technologies for full-scale commercial testing. The research conducted at the national laboratories is categorized into three primary subjects: (1) addressing challenges associated with the performance of SiC cladding under normal operating environments, (2) identifying the failure limits of SiC cladding under accident conditions, and (3) modeling fuel performance for SiC cladding systems. Comprehensive laboratory activities integrate the development of advanced modeling tools for SiC-based cladding systems with experimental validation via integrated testing of multiphysics phenomena. This document lays out the laboratory plan to support the development of SiC-based technologies, which have the potential for significant operational and safety benefits for the U.S. nuclear industry. This plan aligns with industry developer needs, relevant Nuclear Energy University Programs, and Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation Programs to ensure SiC cladding technologies are matured as efficiently as possible and will be maintained and updated to accommodate the dynamically evolving progress of development, capability needs, and resource availability.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Enhanced Simulation Tools for Scheduling Solar Plus Storage Power Plants

This is the final technical report for the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Solar Energy Technology's Office Balance of Systems program, Award Number 38429. This report summarizes the key outputs and findings of the project, which was focused on long-duration energy storage (LDES) and solar. In particular, one of the most significant challenges of maximizing the value of variable solar energy is the timing of charging and discharging stored energy from LDES devices. Power systems often fail to capture the benefits of LDES and can undervalue the role of storage in providing energy arbitrage, reliability support, and resiliency. This project examined those challenges and proposed alternative methodologies that better capture the value that LDES can provide.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1981

First phase testing of solar thermal engine at United Stirling

The objective of the program is to demonstrate that the Stirling engine is a practical efficient and reliable energy converter when integrated with a parabolic dish concentrator, and that it has the potential of being cost competitive with fossil fueled electric generating systems of today. The engine, with its receiver (solar heat exchanger), alternator and control system, is described.

Percival, W.↗
NASA NTRS1991

NASA's Software Bank (General Thermal Analysis)

The COSMIC program - The General Thermal Analyzer Program - assisted Salem Automation in evaluating technology and modeling reheat furnaces to determine energy efficiency and quality.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2019

Clean Energy Technologies for Oil & Gas Industry Operations

The declining prices of renewable energy technologies is an opportunity to potentially provide clean power and heat to industrial sectors, such as oil and gas, enabling more efficient production and use of resources. This presentation covers energy technology markets and JISEA programs on the intersection of renewable energy and oil and gas operations, including upstream extraction, midstream delivery, and refining.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS2013

Pt-Ni and Pt-Co Catalyst Synthesis Route for Fuel Cell Applications

Oxygen reduction reactions (ORRs) at the cathode are the rate-limiting step in fuel cell performance. The ORR is 100 times slower than the corresponding hydrogen oxidation at the anode. Speeding up the reaction at the cathode will improve fuel cell efficiency. The cathode material is generally Pt powder painted onto a substrate (e.g., graphite paper). Recent efforts in the fuel cell area have focused on replacing Pt with Pt-X alloys (where X = Co, Ni, Zr, etc.) in order to (a) reduce cost, and (b) increase ORR rates. One of these strategies is to increase ORR rates by reducing the powder size, which would result in an increase in the surface area, thereby facilitating faster reaction rates. In this work, a process has been developed that creates Pt-Ni or Pt-Co alloys that are finely divided (on the nano scale) and provide equivalent performance at lower Pt loadings. Lower Pt loadings will translate to lower cost. Precursor salts of the metals are dissolved in water and mixed. Next, the salt mixtures are dried on a hot plate. Finally, the dried salt mixture is heattreated in a furnace under flowing reducing gas. The catalyst powder is then used to fabricate a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) for electrochemical performance testing. The Pt- Co catalyst-based MEA showed comparable performance to an MEA fabri cated using a standard Pt black fuel cell catalyst. The main objective of this program has been to increase the overall efficiencies of fuel cell systems to support power for manned lunar bases. This work may also have an impact on terrestrial programs, possibly to support the effort to develop a carbon-free energy source. This catalyst can be used to fabricate high-efficiency fuel cell units that can be used in space as regenerative fuel cell systems, and terrestrially as primary fuel cells. Terrestrially, this technology will become increasingly important when transition to a hydrogen economy occurs.

Firdosy, Samad A.↗
DOE OSTI2024

The role of above-code labeling programs in reducing CO 2 e emissions in residential buildings

Residential buildings account for 15 % of total U.S. carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. Voluntary, above-code labeling programs, such as the ENERGY STAR and Zero Energy Ready Home programs, can play a crucial role in reducing the carbon footprint of the new construction residential building sector by encouraging adoption of more energy-efficient and lower emissions building practices and technologies. It's important for the industry to understand the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2 e) and energy cost savings potential of these programs. Here, to estimate the potential CO 2 e emissions savings for homes built to above-code labeling program levels, it is imperative to have reliable and accurate tools for estimating emissions from buildings. The open-source OpenStudio-ERI workflow employs detailed physics-based building energy modeling (BEM) to estimate energy usage and operational CO 2 e emissions. In this study we use the OpenStudio-ERI workflow and regional, time-varying emissions factors from the Cambium database to compare the CO 2 e emissions and energy costs of homes built to performance levels required by these above-code labeling programs relative to homes built to model energy codes. We present the results of our analysis and provide a range of emissions and annual energy cost savings for the above-code labeling programs.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

pnnl/CPACE

C-PACE Market Assessment Tool This tool was developed for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) Working Group to support state and local governments creating, joining, and implementing C-PACE programs. This tool allows users to input a jurisdiction (city, county, or state) and automate a report with building characteristics, energy use, and energy efficiency savings opportunities for commercial buildings in that jurisdiction. The report generated by the tool identifies jurisdiction-specific energy end uses, building use types, and building technologies that a local C-PACE program should consider focusing on to more effectively allocate limited resources and maximize energy savings and investment.

Keene, Kevin↗
DOE OSTI2017

The International Database of Efficient Appliances (IDEA): A New Resource for Global Efficiency Policy

A major barrier to effective appliance efficiency program design and evaluation is a lack of data for determination of market baselines and cost-effective energy savings potential. The data gap is particularly acute in developing countries, which may have the greatest savings potential per unit GDP. To address this need, we are developing the International Database of Efficient Appliances (IDEA), which automatically compiles data from a wide variety of online sources to create a unified repository of information on efficiency, price, and features for a wide range of energy-consuming products across global markets. This paper summarizes the database framework and demonstrates the power of IDEA as a resource for appliance efficiency research and policy development. Using IDEA data for refrigerators in China and India, we develop robust cost-effectiveness indicators that allow rapid determination of savings potential within each market, as well as comparison of that potential across markets and appliance types. We discuss implications for future energy efficiency policy development.

Gerke, Brian F↗
DOE OSTI2021

Overview of the NCSP Nuclear Data Program [Slides]

The mission of the NCSP is to provide sustainable expert leadership, direction and the technical infrastructure necessary to develop, maintain and disseminate the essential technical tools, training and data required to support safe, efficient fissionable material operations within the Department of Energy. The vision of the NCSP is to create a continually improving, adaptable and transparent program that communicates and collaborates globally to incorporate technology, practices and programs to be responsive to the essential technical needs of those responsible for developing, implementing and maintaining nuclear criticality safety.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Approach to Low-Cost High-Efficiency OLED Lighting. Building Technologies Solid State Lighting (SSL) Program Final Report

This project developed an integrated substrate which organic light emitting diode (OLED) panel developers could employ the integrated substrate to fabricate OLED devices with performance and projected cost meeting the MYPP targets of the Solid State Lighting Program of the Department of Energy. The project optimized the composition and processing conditions of the integrated substrate for OLED light extraction efficiency and overall performance. The process was further developed for scale up to a low-cost process and fabrication of prototype samples. The encapsulation of flexible OLEDs based on this integrated substrate was also investigated using commercial flexible barrier films.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for New Home Construction in Maui

For residential property owners preparing to rebuild homes in Maui, this fact sheet, produced by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), provides a brief introduction to the topics of renewable energy and energy efficiency for new residential construction, presents a few high-level considerations and key concepts, and provides a sampling of information on rebates, incentives, certification programs, standards, and relevant policies. This fact sheet is not intended to be comprehensive nor to replace local resources.

appliances↗