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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 739 records · Page 41
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Thermal Reservoir Networks for Modularly Expandable Thermal Microgrids

The Department of Defense (DoD) faces the substantial challenge of cost-effectively retrofitting one to two installations per month, each comprising approximately 1,000 buildings, to improve resilience, reduce energy consumption, and enhance energy supply security. Achieving these objectives requires optimal system selection and effective risk mitigation during system integration. To address this need, we introduce Platform-Based Design (PBD), a structured, hierarchical methodology adapted from other industrial sectors to the domain of energy system retrofits. We demonstrate the effectiveness of PBD through a techno-economic feasibility study comparing geothermal-coupled thermal energy networks (TENs) with conventional energy systems for heating, cooling, and powering 17 buildings at Joint Base Andrews (JBA) in Maryland. Our analysis illustrates that the PBD approach enables rigorous, data-driven, sequential decision making, resulting in a family of Pareto-optimal systems, among which the TEN emerged as the most promising solution. The selected TEN design integrates geothermal borefields, heat recovery heat pumps, photovoltaic (PV) arrays, and battery storage. Compared to the baseline system – gas heating combined with air-source chillers – the proposed TEN reduces annual imported energy by 74% and peak electricity demand by 45%, achieves a levelized cost of energy of $\$0.210$/kWh, and substantially enhances resilience. Life-cycle costs increase by approximately 6%, and initial investment costs are about 2.5 times higher than the baseline. However, if central plant infrastructure, district loops, and utility-scale PV and battery systems are privately funded and operated, the initial investment would fall below the baseline system cost. Critical to achieving these significant performance improvements were detailed nonlinear dynamic simulations coupling geothermal heat transfer, energy system operation, and realistic feedback control logic. These simulations identified essential design modifications and control strategy refinements that substantially reduced energy use, peak demand, and compressor shortcycling, thereby improving durability and reliability—issues that would have been significantly more expensive to resolve during operation. Additionally, the verification step highlighted sensitivities to key design parameters that could reduce initial investment by approximately $\$2$ million and reduce annual life-cycle costs more than $\$300,000$. We recommend adopting the PBD methodology for future feasibility studies and TEN pilot projects to gain valuable operational experience. Furthermore, we recommend that DoD invest in transferring and scaling the PBD methodology to other installations. This entails developing standardized computational frameworks and component libraries as well as training industry in conducting PBD. Such investments would enable rapid, robust, reliable, and cost-effective retrofits, supporting DoD’s ambitious energy system modernization goals.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2019

Characterization of Soft Error Rate Against Memory Elements Spacing and Clock Skew in a Logic with Triple Modular Redundancy in a 65nm Process

Single Event Effects introduce soft errors in ASICs. Design methodologies like Triple ModularRedundancy (TMR) with clock skew insertion, a system level redundancy technique is a commonpractice by designers to mitigate soft errors. However, the optimal spacing between memoryelements in a TMR in 65nm process hasn't been addressed so far. RD53SEU is a mini ASICdevelopment under the framework of the CERN RD53 collaboration to characterize the soft errorrates against the separation spacing and clock skew between memory elements in a TMR. Thisarticle describes the architecture and design aspects of the various test structures on the RD53SEUtest chip.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2025

Energy-momentum tensor in the 2D Ising CFT in full modular space

A set of lattice operators for the energy-momentum (EM) tensor in the Ising CFT is derived in the spin variables. Our expression works under arbitrary affine transformation both on triangular and hexagonal lattices (where the former includes the rectangular lattices). The correctness of the operators is numerically confirmed in Monte Carlo calculations by comparing the results with the conformal Ward identity, including the operator normalization. In the derivation of the EM tensor, a staggered structure of the affine-transformed hexagonal lattice is analyzed, which shows a peculiar shift from the circumcenter dual lattice and appears as a mixing angle between the holomorphic part $T(z)$ and the antiholomorphic part $\tilde T(\bar z)$. The details of this contribution will appear in a subsequent paper.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Non-Idealities in Lab-Scale Kinetic Testing: A Theoretical Study of a Modular Temkin Reactor

The Temkin reactor can be applied for industrial relevant catalyst testing with unmodified catalyst particles. It was assumed in the literature that this reactor behaves as a cascade of continuously stirred tank reactors (CSTR). However, this assumption was based only on outlet gas composition or inert residence time distribution measurements. The present work theoretically investigates the catalytic CO2 methanation as a test case on different catalyst geometries, a sphere, and a ring, inside a single Temkin reaction chamber under isothermal conditions. Axial gas-phase species profiles from detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are compared with a CSTR and 1D plug-flow reactor (PFR) model using a sophisticated microkinetic model. In addition, a 1D chemical reactor network (CRN) model was developed, and model parameters were adjusted based on the CFD simulations. Whereas the ideal reactor models overpredict the axial product concentrations, the CRN model results agree well with the CFD simulations, especially under low to medium flow rates. This study shows that complex flow patterns greatly influence species fields inside the Temkin reactor. Although residence time measurements suggest CSTR-like behavior, the reactive flow cannot be described by either a CSTR or PFR model but with the developed CRN model.

Wehinger, Gregor D. (ORCID:0000000217743391)↗
DOE OSTI2024

Performance of a Modular Ton-Scale Pixel-Readout Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber

The Module-0 Demonstrator is a single-phase 600 kg liquid argon time projection chamber operated as a prototype for the DUNE liquid argon near detector. Based on the ArgonCube design concept, Module-0 features a novel 80k-channel pixelated charge readout and advanced high-coverage photon detection system. In this paper, we present an analysis of an eight-day data set consisting of 25 million cosmic ray events collected in the spring of 2021. We use this sample to demonstrate the imaging performance of the charge and light readout systems as well as the signal correlations between the two. We also report argon purity and detector uniformity measurements and provide comparisons to detector simulations.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2021

Portage: A Modular Data Remap Library for Multiphysics Applications on Advanced Architectures

Portage is a scalable and extensible remap library for numerical simulations. It supports state-of-the-art remap schemes for meshes and particles in 2D and 3D up to a second-order accuracy. Portage ensures critical properties such as local/global conservation and bounds preservation for mesh remap. It enables multi-material field remap through a dedicated plugin, and leverages the hybrid parallelism exposed by advanced architectures using multi-processing and multi-threading.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

Ductile alloys for sealing modular component interfaces

A vane assembly (10) having: an airfoil (12) and a shroud (14) held together without metallurgical bonding there between; a channel (22) disposed circumferentially about the airfoil (12), between the airfoil (12) and the shroud (14); and a seal (20) disposed in the channel (22), wherein during operation of a turbine engine having the vane assembly (10) the seal (20) has a sufficient ductility such that a force generated on the seal (20) resulting from relative movement of the airfoil (12) and the shroud (14) is sufficient to plastically deform the seal (20).

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2017

3D printed modular centrifugal contactors and method for separating moieties using 3D printed optimized surfaces

The present invention provides an annular centrifugal contactor, having a housing to receive a plurality of liquids; a rotor inside the housing; an annular mixing zone, with a plurality of fluid retention reservoirs; and an adjustable stem that can be raised to restrict the flow of a liquid into the rotor or lowered to increase the flow of liquid into the rotor. The invention also provides a method for transferring moieties from a first liquid to a second liquid, the method having the steps of combining the fluids in a housing whose interior has helically shaped first channels; subjecting the fluids to a spinning rotor to produce a mixture, whereby the channels simultaneously conduct the mixture downwardly and upwardly; and passing the mixture through the rotor to contact second channels, whereby the channels pump the second liquid through a first aperture while the first fluid exits a second aperture.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗