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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 811 records · Page 45
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DOE OSTI2012

Vehicle Technologies Program Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Report for Fiscal Year 2012

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has defined milestones for its Vehicle Technologies Program (VTP). This report provides estimates of the benefits that would accrue from achieving these milestones relative to a base case that represents a future in which there is no VTP-supported vehicle technology development. Improvements in the fuel economy and reductions in the cost of light- and heavy-duty vehicles were estimated by using Argonne National Laboratory's Autonomie powertrain simulation software and doing some additional analysis. Argonne also estimated the fraction of the fuel economy improvements that were attributable to VTP-supported development in four "subsystem" technology areas: batteries and electric drives, advanced combustion engines, fuels and lubricants, and materials (i.e., reducing vehicle mass, called "lightweighting"). Oak Ridge National Laboratory's MA 3 T (Market Acceptance of Advanced Automotive Technologies) tool was used to project the market penetration of light-duty vehicles, and TA Engineering's TRUCK tool was used to project the penetrations of medium- and heavy-duty trucks. Argonne's VISION transportation energy accounting model was used to estimate total fuel savings, reductions in primary energy consumption, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that would result from achieving VTP milestones. These projections indicate that by 2030, the on-road fuel economy of both light- and heavy-duty vehicles would improve by more than 20%, and that this positive impact would be accompanied by a reduction in oil consumption of nearly 2 million barrels per day and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of more than 300 million metric tons of CO 2 equivalent per year. These benefits would have a significant economic value in the U.S. transportation sector and reduce its dependency on oil and its vulnerability to oil price shocks.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2012

Recovery Act: Training Program Development for Commercial Building Equipment Technicians (Final Scientific/Technical Report)

The overall goal of this project has been to develop curricula, certification requirements, and accreditation standards for training on energy efficient practices and technologies for commercial building technicians. These training products will advance industry expertise towards net-zero energy commercial building goals and will result in a substantial reduction in energy use. The ultimate objective is to develop a workforce that can bring existing commercial buildings up to their energy performance potential and ensure that new commercial buildings do not fall below their expected optimal level of performance. Commercial building equipment technicians participating in this training program will learn how to best operate commercial buildings to ensure they reach their expected energy performance level. The training is a combination of classroom, online and on-site lessons. The Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) developed curricula using subject matter and adult learning experts to ensure the training meets certification requirements and accreditation standards for training these technicians. The training targets a specific climate zone to meets the needs, specialized expertise, and perspectives of the commercial building equipment technicians in that zone. The combination of efficient operations and advanced design will improve the internal built environment of a commercial building by increasing comfort and safety, while reducing energy use and environmental impact. Properly trained technicians will ensure equipment operates at design specifications. A second impact is a more highly trained workforce that is better equipped to obtain employment. Organizations that contributed to the development of the training program include TEEX and the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) (both members of The Texas A&M University System). TEES is also a member of the Building Commissioning Association. This report includes a description of the project accomplishments, including the course development phases, tasks associated with each phase, and detailed list of the course materials developed. A summary of each year's activities is also included.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2012

Recovery Act: Low Cost Integrated Substrate for OLED Lighting Development

PPG pursued the development of an integrated substrate, including the anode, external, and internal extraction layers. The objective of PPG's program was to achieve cost reductions by displacing the existing expensive borosilicate or double-side polished float glass substrates and developing alternative electrodes and scalable light extraction layer technologies through focused and short-term applied research. One of the key highlights of the project was proving the feasibility of using PPG's high transmission Solarphire® float glass as a substrate to consistently achieve organic lightemitting diode (OLED) devices with good performance and high yields. Under this program, four low-cost alternatives to the Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) anode were investigated using pilot-scale magnetron sputtered vacuum deposition (MSVD) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technologies. The anodes were evaluated by fabricating small and large phosphorescent organic lightemitting diode (PHOLED) devices at Universal Display Corporation (UDC). The device performance and life-times comparable to commercially available ITO anodes were demonstrated. A cost-benefit analysis was performed to down-select two anodes for further low-cost process development. Additionally, PPG developed and evaluated a number of scalable and compatible internal and external extraction layer concepts such as scattering layers on the outside of the glass substrate or between the transparent anode and the glass interface. In one external extraction layer (EEL) approach, sol-gel sprayed pyrolytic coatings were deposited using lab scale equipment by hand or automated spraying of sol-gel solutions on hot glass, followed by optimizing of scattering with minimal absorption. In another EEL approach, PPG tested large-area glass texturing by scratching a glass surface with an abrasive roller and acid etching. Efficacy enhancements of 1.27x were demonstrated using white PHOLED devices for 2.0mm substrates which are at par with the standard diffuser sheets used by OLED manufacturers. For an internal extraction layer (IEL), PPG tested two concepts combining nanoparticles either in a solgel coating inserted between the anode and OLED or anode and glass interface, or incorporated into the internal surface of the glass. Efficacy enhancements of 1.31x were demonstrated using white PHOLED devices for the IEL by itself and factors of 1.73x were attained for an IEL in combination of thick acrylic block as an EEL. Recent offline measurements indicate that, with further optimization, factors over 2.0x could be achieved through an IEL alone.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2013

Recovery Act: Finite Volume Based Computer Program for Ground Source Heat Pump Systems

This report is a compilation of the work that has been done on the grant DE-EE0002805 entitled Finite Volume Based Computer Program for Ground Source Heat Pump Systems. The goal of this project was to develop a detailed computer simulation tool for GSHP (ground source heat pump) heating and cooling systems. Two such tools were developed as part of this DOE (Department of Energy) grant; the first is a two-dimensional computer program called GEO2D and the second is a three-dimensional computer program called GEO3D.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Recovery Act: Integrated DC-DC Conversion for Energy-Efficient Multicore Processors

In this project, we have developed the use of thin-film magnetic materials to improve in energy efficiency of digital computing applications by enabling integrated dc-dc power conversion and management with on-chip power inductors. Integrated voltage regulators also enables fine-grained power management, by providing dynamic scaling of the supply voltage in concert with the clock frequency of synchronous logic to throttle power consumption at periods of low computational demand. The voltage converter generates lower output voltages during periods of low computational performance requirements and higher output voltages during periods of high computational performance requirements. Implementation of integrated power conversion requires high-capacity energy storage devices, which are generally not available in traditional semiconductor processes. We achieve this with integration of thin-film magnetic materials into a conventional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process for high-quality on-chip power inductors.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2013

Recovery Act: Novel Kerf-Free PV Wafering that provides a low-cost approach to generate wafers from 150um to 50um in thickness

The technical paper summarizes the project work conducted in the development of Kerf-Free silicon wafering equipment for silicon solar wafering. This new PolyMax technology uses a two step process of implantation and cleaving to exfoliate 50um to 120um wafers with thicknesses ranging from 50um to 120um from a 125mm or 156mm pseudo-squared silicon ingot. No kerf is generated using this method of wafering. This method of wafering contrasts with the current method of making silicon solar wafers using the industry standard wire saw equipment. The report summarizes the activity conducted by Silicon Genesis Corporation in working to develop this technology further and to define the roadmap specifications for the first commercial proto-type equipment for high volume solar wafer manufacturing using the PolyMax technology.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2012

Recovery Act: 'Carbonsheds' as a Framework for Optimizing United States Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Pipeline Transport on a Regional to National Scale

Carbonsheds are regions in which the estimated cost of transporting CO 2 from any (plant) location in the region to the storage site it encompasses is cheaper than piping the CO 2 to a storage site outside the region. We use carbonsheds to analyze the cost of transport and storage of CO 2 in deploying CCS on land and offshore of the continental U.S. We find that onshore the average cost of transport and storage within carbonsheds is roughly $10/t when sources cooperate to reduce transport costs, with the costs increasing as storage options are depleted over time. Offshore transport and storage costs by comparison are found to be roughly twice as expensive but t may still be attractive because of easier access to property rights for sub-seafloor storage as well as a simpler regulatory system, and possibly lower MMV requirements, at least in the deep-ocean where pressures and temperatures would keep the CO 2 negatively buoyant. Agent-based modeling of CCS deployment within carbonsheds under various policy scenarios suggests that the most cost-effective strategy at this point in time is to focus detailed geology characterization of storage potential on only the largest onshore reservoirs where the potential for mitigating emissions is greatest and the cost of storage appears that it will be among the cheapest.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2012

Recovery Act - Demonstration of Sodium Ion Battery for Grid Level Applications

Aquion Energy received a $5.179 million cooperative research agreement under the Department of Energy's Smart Grid Demonstration Program Demonstration of Promising Energy Storage Technologies (Program Area 2.5) of FOA DE-FOE-0000036. The main objective of this project was to demonstrate Aquion's low cost, grid-scale, ambient temperature sodium ion energy storage device. The centerpiece of the technology is a novel hybrid energy storage chemistry that has been proven in a laboratory environment. The objective was to translate these groundbreaking results from the small-batch, small-cell test environment to the pilot scale to enable significant numbers of multiple ampere-hour cells to be manufactured and assembled into test batteries. Aquion developed a proof of concept demonstration unit that showed similar performance and major cost improvement over existing technologies. Beyond minimizing cell and system cost, Aquion built a technology that is safe, environmentally benign and durable over many thousands of cycles as used in a variety of grid support roles.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2012

Recovery Act: Molecular Simulation of Dissolved Inorganic Carbons for Underground Brine CO2 Sequestration

To further our understanding and develop the method for measuring the DICs under geological sequestration conditions, we studied the infrared spectra of DICs under high pressure and temperature conditions. First principles simulations of DICs in brine conditions were performed using a highly optimized ReaxFF-DIC forcefield. The thermodynamics stability of each species were determined using the 2PT method, and shown to be consistent with the Reax simulations. More importantly, we have presented the IR spectra of DIC in real brine conditions as a function of temperature and pressure. At near earth conditions, we find a breaking of the O-C-O bending modes into asymmetric and symmetric modes, separated by 100cm -1 at 400K and 5 GPa. These results can now be used to calibrate FTIR laser measurements.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2012

American Recovery & Reinvestment Act: Fuel Cell Hybrid Power Packs and Hydrogen Refueling for Lift Trucks

HEB Grocery Company, Inc. (H-E-B) is a privately-held supermarket chain with 310 stores throughout Texas and northern Mexico. H-E-B converted 14 of its lift reach trucks to fuel cell power using Nuvera Fuel Cells’ PowerEdge™ units to verify the value proposition and environmental benefits associated with the technology. Issues associated with the increasing power requirements of the distribution center operation, along with high ambient temperature in the summer and other operating conditions (such as air quality and floor surface condition), surfaced opportunities for improving Nuvera’s PowerEdge fuel cell system design in high-throughput forklift environments. The project included on-site generation of hydrogen from a steam methane reformer, called PowerTap™ manufactured by Nuvera. The hydrogen was generated, compressed and stored in equipment located outside H-E-B’s facility, and provided to the forklifts by hydrogen dispensers located in high forklift traffic areas. The PowerEdge fuel cell units logged over 25,300 operating hours over the course of the two-year project period. The PowerTap hydrogen generator produced more than 11,100 kg of hydrogen over the same period. Hydrogen availability at the pump was 99.9%. H-E-B management has determined that fuel cell forklifts help alleviate several issues in its distribution centers, including truck operator downtime associated with battery changing, truck and battery maintenance costs, and reduction of grid electricity usage. Data collected from this initial installation demonstrated a 10% productivity improvement, which enabled H-E-B to make economic decisions on expanding the fleet of PowerEdge and PowerTap units in the fleet, which it plans to undertake upon successful demonstration of the new PowerEdge reach truck product. H-E-B has also expressed interest in other uses of hydrogen produced on site in the future, such as for APUs used in tractor trailers and refrigerated transport trucks in its fleet.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2013

Vehicle Technologies Program Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Report for Fiscal Year 2014

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has defined milestones for its Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) technology programs. This report provides estimates of the benefits that would accrue from achieving these milestones relative to a base case that represents a future in which there is no VTO-supported vehicle technology development. This was done by estimating fuel use, primary energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, including energy and GHG emissions from fuel production for the base case and the program “target” case. The target case represented the future with completely successful deployment of VTO technologies. Market penetrations of different vehicle types with and without VTO technologies were projected using market share models, and a stock and energy accounting model was used to make projections of energy consumption and GHG emissions for the base and target cases. The differences between the base case and the target case were attributed to VTO technologies. Improvements in fuel economy of various vehicle types were attributed to individual VTO technology areas, which included batteries and electric drives, advanced combustion engines, fuels and lubricants, materials (i.e., reducing vehicle mass, also called “lightweighting”), and for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, reduction in rolling and aerodynamic resistance.

Stephens, T. S.↗
DOE OSTI2012

Recovery Act: Web-based CO 2 Subsurface Modeling

The Web-based CO 2 Subsurface Modeling project focused primarily on extending an existing text-only, command-line driven, isothermal and isobaric, geochemical reaction-transport simulation code, developed and donated by Sienna Geodynamics, into an easier-to-use Web-based application for simulating long-term storage of CO 2 in geologic reservoirs.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2012

Recovery Act: Waste Energy Project at AK Steel Corp. Middletown Works

In 2008, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (“Air Products”) began development of a project to beneficially utilize waste blast furnace “topgas” generated in the course of the iron-making process at AK Steel Corporation’s Middletown, Ohio works. In early 2010, Air Products was awarded DOE Assistance Agreement DE-EE002736 to further develop and build the combined-cycle power generation facility. In June 2012, Air Products and AK Steel Corporation terminated work when it was determined that the project would not be economically viable at that time nor in the foreseeable future. The project would have achieved the FOA-0000044 Statement of Project Objectives by demonstrating, at a commercial scale, the technology to capture, treat, and convert blast furnace topgas into electric power and thermal energy.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2013

Recovery Act: Advanced Interaction, Computation, and Visualization Tools for Sustainable Building Design

Current building energy simulation technology requires excessive labor, time and expertise to create building energy models, excessive computational time for accurate simulations and difficulties with the interpretation of the results. These deficiencies can be ameliorated using modern graphical user interfaces and algorithms which take advantage of modern computer architectures and display capabilities. To prove this hypothesis, we developed an experimental test bed for building energy simulation. This novel test bed environment offers an easy-to-use interactive graphical interface, provides access to innovative simulation modules that run at accelerated computational speeds, and presents new graphics visualization methods to interpret simulation results. Our system offers the promise of dramatic ease of use in comparison with currently available building energy simulation tools. Its modular structure makes it suitable for early stage building design, as a research platform for the investigation of new simulation methods, and as a tool for teaching concepts of sustainable design. Improvements in the accuracy and execution speed of many of the simulation modules are based on the modification of advanced computer graphics rendering algorithms. Significant performance improvements are demonstrated in several computationally expensive energy simulation modules. The incorporation of these modern graphical techniques should advance the state of the art in the domain of whole building energy analysis and building performance simulation, particularly at the conceptual design stage when decisions have the greatest impact. More importantly, these better simulation tools will enable the transition from prescriptive to performative energy codes, resulting in better, more efficient designs for our future built environment.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Recovery Act: Advanced Direct Methanol Fuel Cell for Mobile Computing

The objective of the project was to advance portable fuel cell system technology towards the commercial targets of power density, energy density and lifetime. These targets were laid out in the DOE’s R&D roadmap to develop an advanced direct methanol fuel cell power supply that meets commercial entry requirements. Such a power supply will enable mobile computers to operate non-stop, unplugged from the wall power outlet, by using the high energy density of methanol fuel contained in a replaceable fuel cartridge. Specifically this project focused on balance-of-plant component integration and miniaturization, as well as extensive component, subassembly and integrated system durability and validation testing. This design has resulted in a pre-production power supply design and a prototype that meet the rigorous demands of consumer electronic applications.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2012

Recovery Act: Data Center Transfer from “Always On” to “Always Available” to Reduce Power

The project encompasses the solution to the problem of underutilized IT resources in and across data centers, which is to develop an “On Demand” operational model. Within this context, by keeping the optimum number of servers online at any time to meet actual customer demand, data center operators are able to generate significant cost and energy savings. Servers that are not needed to meet demand are taken offline automatically. They are brought online dynamically as demand increases, thus matching customer demand with the computing supply needed to guarantee expected service levels. The swings between peak and non-peak usage become a cost reduction opportunity.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2013

Recovery Act: Strategies for Voltage Control and Transient Stability Assessment

As wind generation grows, its influence on power system performance will becoming increasingly noticeable. Wind generation differs from traditional forms of generation in numerous ways though, motivating the need to reconsider the usual approaches to power system assessment and performance enhancement. The project has investigated the impact of wind generation on transient stability and voltage control, identifying and addressing issues at three distinct levels of the power system: 1) at the device level, the physical characteristics of wind turbine generators (WTGs) are quite unlike those of synchronous machines, 2) at the wind-farm level, the provision of reactive support is achieved through coordination of numerous dissimilar devices, rather than straightforward generator control, and 3) from a systems perspective, the location of wind-farms on the sub-transmission network, coupled with the variability inherent in their power output, can cause complex voltage control issues. The project has sought to develop a thorough understanding of the dynamic behaviour of type-3 WTGs, and in particular the WECC generic model. The behaviour of such models is governed by interactions between the continuous dynamics of state variables and discrete events associated with limits. It was shown that these interactions can be quite complex, and may lead to switching deadlock that prevents continuation of the trajectory. Switching hysteresis was proposed for eliminating deadlock situations. Various type-3 WTG models include control blocks that duplicate integrators. It was shown that this leads to non-uniqueness in the conditions governing steady-state, and may result in pre- and post-disturbance equilibria not coinciding. It also gives rise to a zero eigenvalue in the linearized WTG model. In order to eliminate the anomalous behaviour revealed through this investigation, WECC has now released a new generic model for type-3 WTGs.

17 WIND ENERGY↗