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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Geologic hydrogen: From natural occurrences to anthropogenic generation – A review of fundamentals, potential, challenges and prospects

Growing demand for hydrogen is exposing the environmental and economic limits of reforming-based and carbon-managed supply chains, while the scale-up of electrolytic capacity remains capital-constrained. Geologic hydrogen, defined as molecular H₂ generated and stored within the Earth's crust offers a complementary, potentially lower-cost resource, yet exploration is still ad hoc. This review (1) revisits a global inventory of confirmed hydrogen seeps and subsurface occurrences; (2) analyzes the controlling reactions, migration pathways, and trapping conditions governing these occurrences; (3) proposes a process-based geologic hydrogen system concept analogous to, yet distinct from, the petroleum system; and (4) evaluates potential geologic hydrogen systems within the United States as a representative case study. Here, we contrast natural systems powered by serpentinization, mantle degassing or radiolysis with anthropogenic systems that stimulate the same reactions or convert in-situ hydrocarbons. Stable hydrogen accumulations require generation rates that outpace combined physical, chemical and microbial losses; the Bourakébougou field (Mali) exemplifies a self-recharging, free-gas reservoir sustained by meteoric-water serpentinization beneath an efficient caprock. Prospective geologic hydrogen resources are likely to occur in regions where iron-rich lithologies, deep-seated faults, and low-permeability sealing formations coexist. Applying this principle, we highlight three promising hydrogen play types in U.S. geological terrains: ophiolite belts (Appalachian and Californian regions), the Midcontinent Rift and the Lake Superior banded‑iron formations. Multiphysics numerical models and positive-unlabeled machine-learning workflows help to accelerate play screening and de-risk future production; yet, reaction kinetics, stimulation strategies, and full techno-economic and life-cycle assessments remain pivotal knowledge gaps.

Anthropogenic hydrogen generation↗
DOE OSTI2018

Environmental hormesis and its fundamental biological basis: Rewriting the history of toxicology

Highlights: • Autophagy is activated in the framework of hormesis. • Low doses of stressors promote health and extend lifespan. • Health can be maximized via calorie restriction and intermittent fasting. • Hormesis can protect against aging diseases and exogenous environmental stresses. • Hormesis provides a perspective for enhancing community health and patient success. It has long been debated whether a little stress may be “good” for you. Extensive evidence has now sufficiently accumulated demonstrating that low doses of a vast range of chemical and physical agents induce protective/beneficial effects while the opposite occurs at higher doses, a phenomenon known as hormesis. Low doses of environmental agents have recently induced autophagy, a critical adaptive response that protects essentially all cell types, as well as being transgenerational via epigenetic mechanisms. These collective findings highlight a generalized and substantial ongoing dose-response transformation with significant implications for disease biology and clinical applications, challenging the history and practice of toxicology and pharmacology along with an appeal to stake holders to reexamine the process of risk assessment, with the goal of optimizing public health rather than simply avoiding harm.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Thermal property characterization of phase change materials in building applications: A systematic review of fundamentals, recent progress, and future directions

Phase change materials (PCMs) can reduce building peak loads and enable demand-responsive thermal energy storage (TES), but their deployment depends on reliable measurement and interpretation of thermal properties across laboratory, intermediate, and application scales. Here, this review systematically examines characterization methods, testing protocols, and recent advances for neat PCMs and PCM composites, emphasizing thermal conductivity, enthalpy-related properties (phase change temperature, latent heat, specific heat), and cycling stability. For thermal conductivity, we compare steady-state and transient techniques and note limitations when phase transition and contact resistance affect measurements. For enthalpy–temperature characterization, we discuss differential scanning calorimetry together with intermediate- and bulk-scale methods, including T-history, heat flow meter testing, and three-layer calorimetry (3LC), to generate application-relevant enthalpy–temperature profiles. Cycling stability is organized into four experimental families: thermoelectric–air, fully thermoelectric, water-bath, and in situ chamber approaches, with attention to separating reversible supercooling from true degradation such as phase segregation. We highlight emerging noncontact diagnostics, including infrared thermography and embedded sensing, for spatially resolved validation and multiscale interpretation. Finally, we review the growing use of AI and machine learning for property prediction, inverse characterization from experimental signals, and real-time state estimation in building-integrated TES. Key needs include harmonized protocols, interlaboratory benchmarking, uncertainty reporting, and metadata-rich datasets to accelerate reproducible PCM qualification for grid-flexible buildings.

AI↗
DOE OSTI2016

An evaluation of complementary approaches to elucidate fundamental interfacial phenomena driving adhesion of energetic materials

In this study, cohesive Hamaker constants of solid materials are measured via optical and dielectric properties (i.e., Lifshitz theory), inverse gas chromatography (IGC), and contact angle measurements. To date, however, a comparison across these measurement techniques for common energetic materials has not been reported. This has been due to the inability of the community to produce samples of energetic materials that are readily compatible with contact angle measurements. Here we overcome this limitation by using physical vapor deposition to produce thin films of five common energetic materials, and the contact angle measurement approach is applied to estimate the cohesive Hamaker constants and surface energy components of the materials. The cohesive Hamaker constants range from 85 zJ to 135 zJ across the different films. When these Hamaker constants are compared to prior work using Lifshitz theory and nonpolar probe IGC, the relative magnitudes can be ordered as follows: contact angle > Lifshitz > IGC. Furthermore, the dispersive surface energy components estimated here are in good agreement with those estimated by IGC. Due to these results, researchers and technologists will now have access to a comprehensive database of adhesion constants which describe the behavior of these energetic materials over a range of settings.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Adsorption mechanism of alkyl hydroxamic acid onto bastnäsite: Fundamental steps toward rational collector design for rare earth elements

Rare earth element (REE) production is limited in part by inefficient strategies for beneficiation. Hydroxamic acid ligands are promising reagents for the selective flotation of bastnäsite [(Ce,La)FCO 3 ], a major REE ore mineral, but the mechanism and energetics of adsorption are not understood, interfering with the design of new, more efficient reagents. In this work, the adsorption of octyl hydroxamic acid onto bastnäsite was calculated using a combination of experimental and computational methods. In-situ attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy revealed changes in the hydroxamate functional group vibrational frequencies, corresponding to chelation with cerium cations at the bastnäsite surface. The results indicate a monodentate chemisorption mechanism at low surface loading that changes to bidentate chemisorption at higher concentrations. This interpretation is supported by molecular vibrational frequency shifts calculated using density functional theory (DFT), and orientation of the hydrocarbon chain measured by sum frequency generation (SFG) vibrational spectroscopy. The binding enthalpies of octyl hydroxamic acid interacting with La and Ce-bastnäsite surfaces were measured using isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) revealing a stronger coordinating ability with bastnäsite than with a common gangue mineral, calcite (CaCO 3 ). Because octyl hydroxamate favors monodentate adsorption at low surface coverages, the relative chelating strength of metal ions could be a poor predictor for selectivity under monolayer adsorption conditions. At higher surface loadings, where the bidentate mode of adsorption is active, selectivity is likely to be limited by increased flotation of gangue ores.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

High-entropy materials: fundamentals and applications

Metallic high-entropy materials (HEMs), also known as high-entropy alloys (HEAs), are an exotic class of materials that possess desirable properties, such as exceptional strength and ductility, high wear resistance, and corrosion resistance. Due to these positive attributes, HEAs have been proposed for use in the automotive and aerospace industries, nuclear reactor technology, and the biomedical field. In terms of composition, HEAs contain five or more elements in amounts ranging from 5 to 35 atomic percent (at.%) each, resulting in a vast compositional space that is still mainly unexplored to this day. More recently, the field of HEMs has broadened to include materials such as polymers and ceramics.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Fundamental study of furfuryl alcohol dehydration reaction over molybdenum oxide catalyst

Here, the conversion of furfuryl alcohol (FA) and selectivity towards dimers (C 9 -C 10 ) and trimers (C 14 -C 15 ) were investigated over molybdenum oxide (MoO 3 ) catalyst. It was observed that FA conversion increased as an increase of reaction time. However, longer reaction time tended to limit the selectivity to dimers and trimers. Characterization data obtained from XRD, Raman, and XPS showed that after the reaction the terminal Mo=O bond was elongated and the oxidation state was changed from Mo 6+ to Mo 5+ . This was likely caused by the delocalization of extra electron to the Mo center during the activation of FA on MoO 3 surface, instead of the formation of oxygen vacancy. After a proper regeneration process, the structure distortion caused by the elongation of Mo=O bond was fully restored, however, the oxidation state were only restored to Mo 5+ / 6+ . Finally, recyclability test using regenerated MoO 3 indicates Mo 5+ / 6+ can be as active as Mo 6+ .

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗