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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 757 records · Page 42
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Effect of particle characteristics on the evolution of particle size, particle morphology, and fabric of sands loaded under uniaxial compression

This work presents the results and analyses of uniaxial compression experiments performed on three silica sands. The sands have comparable particle-size distributions, but their particles differ in morphology and strength. Cylindrical samples of the three sands were compressed in a loading device placed inside an X-ray microscope (XRM) and scanned at multiple stress levels during uniaxial compression. 3D tomography data of the samples obtained from the XRM at different stress levels were then analyzed to obtain the distributions of particle size, particle morphology, and interparticle contact normals within the sample. Results indicate that: (1) the compressibility of the sands loaded under uniaxial compression is closely tied to particle morphology and strength and (2) the anisotropy in the orientations of interparticle contact normals generally increases with axial stress; however, this increase is limited by the occurrence of particle crushing in the sample.

3D X-ray computed tomography↗
DOE OSTI2024

Shock Response of Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) Under Explosive Loading

Abstract The dynamic response of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) is well understood for one-dimensional planar impact shocks, but limited research has been performed on the response of PMMA under spherical shock loading. In this work, the shock decay of an explosively-driven shock wave into PMMA was experimentally measured. PMMA cubes of various geometries were explosively loaded with an RP-80 detonator to produce the explosive shock wave. High-speed schlieren imaging was implemented to measure the explosively-driven shock wave velocity throughout the PMMA cubes. Photon Doppler velocimetry (PDV) was used to measure the particle velocity imparted by the shock wave at the surface of the cubes. The material shock response was studied at distances from 21.91 to 133.3 mm from the explosive source. The particle velocity history measured by PDV was compared to the wave profile visualized in the high-speed images. The shock wave pulse amplitude decreased with increased distance from the source. The conducted experiments extend the PMMA shock Hugoniot relating to the lower shock and particle velocity regime.

Torres, S. M. (ORCID:0009000287177206)↗
DOE OSTI2020

Effects of heat treatment and build orientation on the evolution of $ϵ$ and $α'$ martensite and strength during compressive loading of additively manufactured 304L stainless steel

In this paper, the effect of heat-treatment and build orientation on martensitic phase transformation in additively manufactured (AM) 304L stainless steel is studied and compared with conventionally produced wrought material. The relationships between observed martensitic transformations and material microstructures and their effects on mechanical strength are established through experimental observations. In situ high-energy X-ray powder diffraction measurements were performed to monitor the evolution of $ϵ$ and $α'$ martensite during compressive loading of stainless steel. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) was used to provide insight on initial grain morphology, crystallographic misorientation within grains, and crystallographic texture. Heat treatment alters the microstructure of AM samples creating different initial conditions. This difference in starting microstructure resulted in variability in martensitic transformation during compressive deformation. The rate of martensitic transformation decreased for AM samples treated with temperatures up to 1100°C, after which the AM microstructures recrystallized, resulting in increased rate of martensitic transformation for those samples treated at higher temperatures. It was also observed that aligning the axis of compression with the AM build direction resulted in a lower rate of strain-induced martensite formation as opposed to aligning the compression axis perpendicular to it. More favorable distribution of crystal orientations in the latter loading orientation promoted martensitic transformation. These and additional experimental observations from EBSD in terms of kernel average misorientation, mean grain orientation spread, and mean crystallite size reveal strong microstructural effects on strength of additively manufactured metallic materials.

304L stainless steel↗
DOE OSTI2020

Modeling occupancy-driven building loads for large and diversified building stocks through the use of parametric schedules

Building energy modeling provides a fundamental tool to assess the potential for energy efficiency to contribute to reducing world energy consumption and global emissions. Occupancy-related operations are a key source of uncertainty for building energy analysis, particularly for aggregated building stocks. At a district or city level, it is critical to estimate aggregated power load profiles for sizing power grid infrastructure, power plant capacity allocation, and energy efficiency measures. The stochastic nature of behavior-related operations complicates the creation of models that accurately capture building load profiles for entire building stocks. This research introduces a new methodology called parametric schedules to model occupancy-driven schedules for large and diverse building stocks. In contrast to computationally expensive methodologies proposed in the literature, our work does not use a recursive time-consuming step. Occupancy is estimated by the extrapolation of operation times directly from metered electric consumption data; occupancy-related schedules are stochastically assigned to each building model, guaranteeing diversity of operation times in the stock. Our procedure has been tested on a large, diversified data-set of 25,000 commercial buildings in Los Angeles, California. It proved to be able to adequately represent the stochastic schedules diversity of the stock and to refine the stock calibration process by 1%. This innovative approach represents a useful asset for utility companies, grid operators, urban planners, and balancing authorities, seeking to improve building stock modeling and better estimate the impact of energy conservation measures. – This work is part of a larger stock modeling tool called ComStock, which is under development by NREL.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

Quantifying the effect of multiple load flexibility strategies on commercial building electricity demand and services via surrogate modeling

The expansion of commercial building demand response as a demand-side management resource for the electric grid necessitates new decision support resources for customers seeking to assess the benefit–risk tradeoffs of possible strategies for energy flexible building operations. To address this need, we, in this study, develop surrogate models that predict the impacts of several load flexibility strategies on commercial building electricity demand and indoor temperature, focusing on offices and retail buildings at multiple scales. The surrogate models are fit to a synthetic database generated via whole building simulations, which establish the relationships between the key operational features of a given strategy and potential changes in building demand and temperature across a variety of contexts. The surrogate models are translated to a Bayesian framework to allow straightforward communication of uncertainty and parameter updating given new evidence. We find strong predictive performance across the suite of models, underscoring the usefulness of the approach in guiding decisions about implementing load flexibility strategies under a particular set of operational and environmental conditions.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Microgrid design and multi-year dispatch optimization under climate-informed load and renewable resource uncertainty

Microgrids are an increasingly popular solution to provide energy resilience in response to increasing grid dependency and the growing impacts of climate change on grid operations. However, existing microgrid models do not currently consider the uncertain and long-term impacts of climate change when determining a set of design and operational decisions to minimize long-term costs or meet a resilience threshold. In this paper, we develop a novel scenario generation method that accounts for the uncertain effects of (i) climate change on variable renewable energy availability, (ii) extreme heat events on site load, and (iii) population and electrification trends on load growth. Additionally, we develop a two-stage stochastic programming extension of an existing microgrid design and dispatch optimization model to obtain uncertainty-informed and climate-resilient energy system decisions that minimizes long-term costs. Use of sample average approximation to validate our two case studies illustrates that the proposed methodology produces high-quality solutions that add resilience to systems with existing backup generation while reducing expected long-term costs.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

High solids loading biorefinery for the production of cellulosic sugars from bioenergy sorghum

A novel process applying high solids loading in chemical-free pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis was developed to produce sugars from bioenergy sorghum. Hydrothermal pretreatment with 50% solids loading was performed in a pilot scale continuous reactor followed by disc refining. Sugars were extracted from the enzymatic hydrolysis at 10% to 50% solids content using fed-batch operations. Here, three surfactants (Tween 80, PEG 4000, and PEG 6000) were evaluated to increase sugar yields. Hydrolysis using 2% PEG 4000 had the highest sugar yields. Glucose concentrations of 105, 130, and 147 g/L were obtained from the reaction at 30%, 40%, and 50% solids content, respectively. The maximum sugar concentration of the hydrolysate, including glucose and xylose, obtained was 232 g/L. Additionally, the glucose recovery (73.14%) was increased compared to that of the batch reaction (52.74%) by using two- stage enzymatic hydrolysis combined with fed-batch operation at 50% w/v solids content.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The role of binding modules in enzymatic poly(ethylene terephthalate) hydrolysis at high-solids loadings

In nature, enzymes that deconstruct biological polymers, such as cellulose and chitin, often exhibit multi-domain architectures, comprising a catalytic domain and a non-catalytic binding module; the latter serves to increase the enzyme concentration at the substrate surface. This multi-domain architecture has been shown to improve the hydrolysis of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) using engineered cutinase enzymes. Here, we examine the role of accessory binding modules at industrially relevant PET solids loadings necessary for cost-effective enzymatic recycling. Using a thermostable variant of leaf compost cutinase (LCC), we produced synthetic fusion constructs of LCC with five type A carbohydrate-binding modules (CBMs). At solids loadings below 10 wt%, the CBMs improve aromatic monomer yield from PET, but above this threshold, conversion extents up to 97% are reached with no added benefits from the presence of CBM fusions. This suggests that fusion constructs with the herein studied CBMs are not necessary for industrial enzymatic PET recycling.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Understanding the plasticity contributions during laser-shock loading and spall failure of Cu microstructures at the atomic scales

A hybrid atomic-scale and continuum modeling framework is used to study the microstructural evolution during the laser-induced shock deformation and failure (spallation) of copper microstructures. A continuum two-temperature model (TTM) is used to account for the interaction of Cu atoms with a laser in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The MD-TTM simulations study the effect of laser loading conditions (laser fluence) on the microstructure (defects) evolution during various stages of shock wave propagation, reflection, and interaction in single-crystal (sc) Cu systems. In addition, the role of the microstructure is investigated by comparing the defect evolution and spall response of sc-Cu and nanocrystalline (nc) Cu systems. The defect (stacking faults and twin faults) evolution behavior in the metal at various times is further characterized using virtual in situ selected area electron diffraction and x-ray diffraction during various stages of evolution of microstructure. Here, the simulations elucidate the uncertain relation between spall strength and strain-rate and the much stronger relation between the spall strength and the temperatures generated due to laser shock loading for the small Cu sample dimensions considered here.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Natural gas maximal load delivery for multi-contingency analysis

An increasing dependence on natural gas has amplified existing vulnerabilities to the power grid, including disruptions to gas transmission networks from natural and man-made disasters. To address the operational challenges arising from these disruptions, we, in this study, consider the problem of estimating the steady-state operating capacity of a damaged gas pipeline network while ensuring the maximal delivery of load. Specifically, we formulate the mixed-integer nonconvex maximal load delivery (MLD) problem, which proves difficult to solve on large-scale networks. To address this challenge, we present a relaxation of the MLD problem and use it to determine bounds on the transport capacity of a gas pipeline system. A rigorous computational evaluation over network models ranging in size from 11 to 4,197 junctions shows that the relaxation-based method is suitable for analyzing the impacts of multi-contingency network disruptions, often converging to the optimal solution of the relaxation in less than ten seconds.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
DOE OSTI2020

A novel equivalent circuit for GDC-based solid oxide cells considering the variations of cell resistances under load

Regarding the mixed ionic-electronic conductive electrolytes, there are several constant assumptions about cell resistances and transference numbers. In this work, the charge transport frameworks of mixed conductive SOCs are comprehensively illustrated. And the independent external current density is introduced into the equivalent circuit for considering the variations of cell resistances under load. The updated expressions of cell resistances together with transference numbers are deduced rigorously based on the equivalent circuit. Electrolyte-supported NiO-GDC/GDC/LSCF cells are tested, and the experimental results validate the variations of cell resistances, especially for the polarization resistance. The comparisons show that electron hole resistances together with transference number calculated by the updated expressions are larger than those obtained by Liu’s method. More accurate transference number and cell resistances under load can be achieved by using the proposed method in this study.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Enable superior performance of ultra-high loading electrodes through the cost-efficient solvent-free electrode manufacturing technology

This research explores an innovative solvent-free method for fabricating ultra-high loading NMC811 and graphite electrodes (~6mAh∙cm -2 ), showcasing remarkable electrochemical performance enhancements compared to the electrodes prepared by the conventional slurry-casting method. Here, the optimized microstructure with dry-printed (DP) electrodes enhanced electrolyte penetration and minimized lithium-ion diffusion tortuosity resulting in improved rate performance at high current rates. Additionally, this innovative electrode manufacturing approach enables more uniform CEI and SEI formation and growth, which effectively doubles the cycle life of single-layer pouch cells with DP electrodes. Beyond the performance enhancements, this method also offers a notable 29.2 % overall cost advantages, potentially revolutionizing future battery manufacturing. The findings presented in this work underscore the potential of solvent-free manufacturing technology as a high-loading capable and cost-efficient path for advanced battery production.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Enhanced deep neural networks with transfer learning for distribution LMP considering load and PV uncertainties

As the flexibility of generation and demand increases in distribution systems, the residential loads are emerging as a promising means to participate in demand response and the transactive energy market. Market pricing is an instrumental mechanism for the distribution system operator to exploit the full potential of the flexible resources. The distribution locational marginal price (DLMP) can be used to guide the residential load consumption. This type of market signal helps the distribution system operator to optimize the scheduling of all resources while satisfying related network constraints through a day-ahead market. However, solving the optimization problem for large-scale systems can be computationally expensive. To address the scalability and practicability limitations of the DLMP framework, a learning-based approach is proposed in this paper to complement the day-ahead distribution market framework. Here, the proposed approach combines long short-term memory and transfer learning to develop deep neural network that can capture the spatial–temporal correlation of the input data. The model can determine the optimal DLMP for each node in a distribution system without the system parameters required to formulate the optimization problem. Testing results on IEEE 33-bus and 123-bus systems show that the proposed approach can generate a comparable DLMP against the optimization solutions.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Four-dimensional microstructurally small fatigue crack growth in cyclically loaded nickel superalloy specimen

Here, we nondestructively image a low-solvus high refractory (LSHR) nickel base specimen microstructure during cyclic loading to characterize crack propagation during the microstructurally small crack (MSC) growth regime. Micro-computed tomography (uCT) is used to characterize the material density and identify crack interfaces, while high-energy diffraction microscopy (HEDM) provides snapshots of the microstructural orientation field changes. From these measurements, data are computationally reconstructed and coregistered to describe the specimen’s configuration before load, before crack nucleation, and throughout the crack propagation/loading process. An MSC forms at a FIB-cut notch, which was previously placed to concentrate stress at the center of the specimen gauge, and propagates along a facet parallel to the local {1 1 1} crystallographic plane. Analysis of available crystallographic slip directions and measured point-to-point disorientation axes indicate probable single and coplanar slip activity along FCC octahedral planes within this region. Similar analyses of other crack propagation facets reveal generally slower growth along directions favoring zig-zag cross and codirectional cross slip, which are often disfavored at room temperature.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Hot-melt extrudability of amorphous solid dispersions of flubendazole-copovidone: An exploratory study of the effect of drug loading and the balance of adjuvants on extrudability and dissolution

The FDA-approved anthelmintic flubendazole has shown potential to be repositioned to treat cancer and dry macular degeneration; however, its poor water solubility limits its use. Amorphous solid dispersions may overcome this challenge, but the balance of excipients may impact the preparation method and drug release. Here, we evaluate the influence of adjuvants and drug loading on the development of an amorphous solid dispersion of flubendazole-copovidone by hot-melt extrusion. The drug, copovidone, and adjuvants (magnesium stearate and hydroxypropyl cellulose) mixtures were statistically designed, and the process was performed in a twin-screw extruder. The study showed that flubendazole and copovidone mixtures were highly extrudable, except when drug loading was high (>40%). Furthermore, magnesium stearate positively impacted the extrusion and was more effective than hydroxypropyl cellulose. The extruded materials were evaluated by modulated differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray powder diffraction, obtaining positive amorphization and physical stability results. Pair distribution function analysis indicated the presence of drug rich domains with medium-range order structure and no evidence of polymer-drug interaction. All extrudates presented faster dissolution (HCl, pH 1.2) than pure flubendazole, and both adjuvants had a notable influence on the dissolution rate. In conclusion, hot-melt extrusion may be a viable option to obtain stable flubendazole: copovidone amorphous dispersions.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

One-pot generation of lignin microspheres and digestible substrate with a polyol-DES pretreatment in high solid loading

Previous lignin microspheres (LMS) preparation needs multiple steps with very low yield and high cost. Herein, we developed a high-solid deep eutectic solvent (DES) pretreatment for an effective lignin fractionation and enzymatic saccharification of moso bamboo under mild temperature (110 °C) with high-solid loading. Lignin was significantly removed from the plant cell wall, and cellulose properties (e.g., crystallinity and degree of polymerization) were also altered during the pretreatment. As a result, the enzymatic digestibility of the pretreated bamboo was dramatically increased. Uniform micro-spherical lignin was directly produced from the pretreatment system, and its particle size could be regulated by controlling the solid loadings and pretreatment temperatures. The lignin microspheres formation mechanism was investigated by analyzing the lignin's size distribution, molecular weight distribution, chemical structure, and hydrophobicity. The DES showed excellent recyclability, and the recycled DES could still remove 42.78% lignin even after 7th circulation associated with 100% glucan saccharification. Further, the mass balance based on 1000 g biomass showed that 196.28 g LMS was directly recovered, which exhibited a high RhB adsorption. Besides, 404.91 g glucose and 36.67 g xylose were obtained after the enzymatic saccharification process. Specifically, GAPI analysis exhibited a near total green and yellow portions of the pictogram, indicating our DES process was green enough to make this biorefinery sustainable. Overall, the proposed DES generated synergistic productions of digestible solid and LMS which could contribute to establish a green and sustainable biorefinery sequence with diverse outputs in one pot.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2026

Quantification of [MTBD][beti] loading and its effects on Pt/HSC electrode performance in hydrogen fuel cells

High surface area carbon-supported platinum catalysts (Pt/HSC) are widely used in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells but often suffer from limited proton and oxygen transport within porous domains. To address these challenges, we integrate the ionic liquid [MTBD][beti] into Pt/HSC catalyst layers using two deposition methods-one-pot and sequential deposition-to tune IL distribution within micropores and mesopores. A combination of ex situ and in operando techniques were employed to elucidate electrode structure-performance relationships across a range of IL loadings. Sequential deposition achieved more efficient pore filling and higher IL retention at lower IL:C ratios, enabling enhanced proton conductivity and protection of active sites. Compared to the IL-free Pt/HSC, IL-modified electrodes demonstrated up to 28% improvement in mass activity and enhanced high-current-density performance under low relative humidity, while maintaining comparable performance under humidified conditions. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and CO displacement experiments reveal that improvements are linked to reduced ionic resistance and lower sulfonate adsorption on Pt sites, rather than changes in electrochemical surface area. However, excessive IL loading leads to mass transport losses. These results highlight the importance of selective pore filling and efficient IL distribution in achieving kinetic gains without compromising ionic and gas transport.

08 HYDROGEN↗