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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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This work will focus on analysis of defects in modules fabricated using a conductive backsheet. While most defect types are known, reasonable methods for easily detecting manufactured defects are still relatively unknown.
PLatypus is a field photoluminescence system under development at NLR. This project will cover improvements to PLatypus that enhance the current prototype's ability to efficiently do field imaging campaigns.
Site-specific, long-term, continuous, and high-resolution measurements of solar irradiance are important for developing renewable resource data. These data are used for several research and development activities consistent with the NLR mission: establish a national 3-year climatological database of measured solar irradiances; provide high quality ground-truth data for satellite remote sensing validation; support development of radiative transfer models for estimating solar irradiance from available meteorological observations; provide solar resource information needed for technology deployment and operations. Data acquired under this agreement will be available to the public through NLR's Measurement & Instrumentation Data Center – MIDC (http://www.nlr.gov/midc) Or the Renewable Resource Data Center - RReDC (http://rredc.nlr.gov). The MIDC offers a variety of standard data display, access, and analysis tools designed to address the needs of a wide user audience (e.g., industry, academia, and government interests).
The goal of this project will be to establish manufacturing processes for PEM electrolyzers in Rochester, New York capable of producing 5GW of PEM electrolyzer stacks per year, while achieving the cost, production and performance targets.
The Parties are working together to utilize a one-step atmospheric microplasma reaction for the elimination of electrolyte degradation products and the relithiation of end-of-life cathode materials. This project aims to streamline the direct recycling process of battery components by reducing the required steps and time.
Contractor will conduct supply chain life cycle assessment analysis.
Tereform, Inc. (Tereform) is developing molecular deconstruction processes to transform waste materials into chemical building blocks. During the CRADA, Tereform deconstructed real-world post-consumer substrates into chemical monomers, validated their performance on laboratory scales, demonstrated feasibility of the degradation products in downstream transformations, and successfully scaled the reaction to kilogram-scale. These results were used to develop and refine technoeconomic analysis and lifecycle assessments to evaluate the economic feasibility and environmental impacts of the process.
The National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) will conduct electrochemical testing and characterization on the partners lithium ion cells as well as provide and validate laser-ablated electrode materials for enhancing cell rate performance.
Strategy support to determine the best approach to deploy solar technologies and commercially viable heat pump projects across their existing Rural Energy Partners solar project development support channel.
This project will conduct a techno-economic analysis comparing the three-phase, 125 kW, 2.2-level topology, SiC-based PV inverter from participant and a commercially available comparable product.
The National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) and AltiSora, LLC., will develop new lightweight cementitious composite material technologies that will utilize wind turbine blade waste as a raw material to; (1) allow a high value addition (2) at low cost, enabling (3) a significant waste consumption volume; while (4) consuming the entire wind turbine blade, without (5) creating any waste or emissions and to also (6) offer specific benefits to communities involved.
This project seeks to develop device design, materials composition, and processing tools and parameters to fabricate semi-transparent perovskite solar cells and modules for application in stand-alone products or added to other solar cells in a mechanically stacked tandem configuration. This technology presents significant advanced manufacturing challenges and opportunities in getting to scale, including development of perovskite inks, scalable perovskite and heterojunction deposition and annealing processes, heterojunction composition, transparent electrode composition and deposition process, anti-reflection layer composition and deposition process, and cell to module integration processes. Modification 5: The proposed project seeks to develop device design, materials composition, and processing tools and parameters to fabricate semi-transparent perovskite solar cells and modules for application in stand-alone products or added to other solar cells in a mechanically-stacked tandem configuration. This technology presents significant advanced manufacturing challenges and opportunities in getting to scale, including development of perovskite inks, scalable perovskite and heterojunction deposition and annealing processes, heterojunction composition, transparent electrode composition and deposition process, passivation layers including in module scribes, anti-reflection layer composition and deposition process, and cell to module integration processes. Advanced metrology and characterization will be performed on perovskite films, cells and module. Furthermore, we will examine module or materials recycling for circular economy considerations. Modifcation 6: Gigahertz frequency microwave pump-probe spectroscopies are highly sensitive to thin film semiconductor photoconductivity of individual and stacks of layers that comprise perovskite solar cells. As such, these techniques will be used to qualify reproducibility and quality correlations during the manufacturing process. Modification 7: Mechanical adhesion of top contacts within perovskite modules significantly impacts the durability of the module when exposed to accelerated degradation testing. The adhesion between the perovskite/transport layer interface and the transport layer/top contact interface are both very sensitive small changes in processing. ALD processing conditions of the transport layer will be tuned to optimize the mechanical adhesion within the perovskite module stack.
The Agile BioFoundry (ABF) is a consortium of national laboratories dedicated to accelerating biomanufacturing and enabling the bioeconomy. The ABF operates a flexible biotechnology platform that can adjust to the needs of numerous government, academic, and industrial partners, thus enabling them to rapidly develop and optimize the production of a wide range of bioproducts. In this project, the ABF partnered with Birch Biosciences, Inc. to use ABF technology to assist in the development of high-performance enzymes that enable circular, sustainable recycling of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) plastics. A primary goal of this project is to enable cost-effective, high yield, sustainable recycling of PET plastic packaging products.
NLR and Plug will collaborate on process development and quality control methodologies for proton exchange fuel cell manufacturing.
Hydrogen stations today serve the emerging market of light duty fuel cell vehicles, primarily in California with over 30 public retail locations. There has been a steady increase in the number of stations open and hydrogen dispensed, especially in the last two years. From 2015 to 2016, the annual amount of hydrogen dispensed increased from 27,400 kg to 109,200 kg, a nearly fourfold increase in just one year. One station dispensed nearly 12,000 kg in the second quarter of 2017. Despite the significant progress, gaps exist between current infrastructure capabilities and future requirements. For example, fuel cell vehicle applications such as buses, medium-duty, and heavy-duty trucks will gain market share and this must be considered as future customers at hydrogen stations. The expected number of light duty fuel cell vehicles in California alone are expected to grow from approximately 4,000 to over 13,000 by 2020, and 37,000 by 2023. To serve the multiple mobile fuel cell technologies and increased demand, hydrogen stations will have to increase output, decrease cost, and improve reliability. To address these challenges, the project team will demonstrate a hydrogen-focused integrated renewable energy production, storage, and transportation fuel distribution/retailing system. The proposed R&D tasks address key challenges related to light duty station/component reliability and development and validation of high flow rate system models for new applications like medium and heavy-duty truck fueling.
This CRADA modification involves analyses on a variety of CdTe-PV related materials, test structures, solar cells, and modules produced at FSLR and/or NLR and adds analysis related to module degradation and reliability. Materials will be provided by FSLR, NLR, and/or by interleaving FSLR and NLR layers and processes. Module reliability activities will include technical risk assessment, materials characterization, module and test structure characterization, modeling, accelerated test development, and outdoor testing.
In this project Prenexus Health, Inc. (Prenexus) and NLR will develop rapid characterization tools to improve the Prenexus production process. First, we will develop a tool to predict the overall performance of the Prenexus manufacturing process converting high-fiber sugarcane to xylo-oligosaccharides (XOS) (both the overall process yield and the composition of the XOS product) using rapid characterization of the incoming feedstock and knowledge of key process parameters. This tool will dramatically increase Prenexus’ understanding of the overall process. Second, we will develop a tool to predict the concentration of soluble oligomeric and monomeric xylose and organic acids in multiple process streams at-line in the Prenexus process, enabling real-time process control of the conversion process.
This project will evaluate the impact of augmenting a utility situational awareness with additional supervisory sensors downstream of the substation to enhance the resiliency and reliability of the power delivery and management by improving the identification of a fault location.