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DOE OSTI2018

High-Performance Capacitive Deionization via Manganese Oxide-Coated, Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotubes

Discovering electrode materials with exceptional capacitance, an indicator of the ability of a material to hold charge, is critical for developing capacitive deionization devices for water desalination. Maganese oxides (MnOx) have shown promise as capacitive electrode materials, but they exhibit a tradeoff where higher loading of the active MnOx comes at a cost of lower conductivity. To address this challenge and achieve high salt adsorption, we fabricated electrodes comprising vertically aligned core-shell nanostructures using atomic layer deposition (ALD) to coat thin films of MnOx onto vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs). The inherently hierarchical, anisotropic, three-dimensional macroporous structure of VACNTs and the tunable coating, a hallmark of ALD, enabled co-optimization of the hybrid material’s specific capacitance with respect to mass and geometric area. The specific capacitance was optimized in this study to 215 ± 7 F/g and 1.1 ± 0.1 F/cm 2 in 1 M NaCl electrolyte at 5 mV/s scan rate, respectively. This material exhibited remarkable sodium ion adsorption capacity of 489 ± 25 μmol Na /g material (two-fold higher than pristine VACNTs) at a functioning voltage of 1.2 V, which may ultimately enable expanded desalination applications of capacitive deionization.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗

DOE OSTI2025

Glancing Angle Deposition in Gas Sensing: Bridging Morphological Innovations and Sensor Performances

Glancing Angle Deposition (GLAD) has emerged as a versatile and powerful nanofabrication technique for developing next-generation gas sensors by enabling precise control over nanostructure geometry, porosity, and material composition. Through dynamic substrate tilting and rotation, GLAD facilitates the fabrication of highly porous, anisotropic nanostructures, such as aligned, tilted, zigzag, helical, and multilayered nanorods, with tunable surface area and diffusion pathways optimized for gas detection. This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of recent advances in GLAD-based gas sensor design, focusing on how structural engineering and material integration converge to enhance sensor performance. Key materials strategies include the construction of heterojunctions and core–shell architectures, controlled doping, and nanoparticle decoration using noble metals or metal oxides to amplify charge transfer, catalytic activity, and redox responsiveness. GLAD-fabricated nanostructures have been effectively deployed across multiple gas sensing modalities, including resistive, capacitive, piezoelectric, and optical platforms, where their high aspect ratios, tailored porosity, and defect-rich surfaces facilitate enhanced gas adsorption kinetics and efficient signal transduction. These devices exhibit high sensitivity and selectivity toward a range of analytes, including NO2, CO, H2S, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), with detection limits often reaching the parts-per-billion level. Emerging innovations, such as photo-assisted sensing and integration with artificial intelligence for data analysis and pattern recognition, further extend the capabilities of GLAD-based systems for multifunctional, real-time, and adaptive sensing. Finally, current challenges and future research directions are discussed, emphasizing the promise of GLAD as a scalable platform for next-generation gas sensing technologies.

Chemistry↗

DOE OSTI2021

Impurity screening behavior of the high-field side scrape-off layer in near-double-null configurations: prospect for mitigating plasma-material interactions on RF actuators and first-wall components

The impurity screening response of the high-field side (HFS) scrape-off layer (SOL) to localized nitrogen injection is investigated on Alcator C-Mod for magnetic equilibria spanning lower-single null, double-null and upper single null configurations under otherwise identical plasma conditions. L-mode, EDA H-mode and I-mode discharges are investigated. HFS impurity screening is found to depend on magnetic flux balance and the direction of B×?B relative to the most active divertor. Impurity ‘plume’ emission patterns indicate that both parallel and perpendicular (E×B) flows in the SOL contribute to the ‘flushing’ of impurities towards the active divertor, thereby affecting the overall impurity screening behavior. Despite the fact that the HFS scrape-off layer is extremely narrow in near-double-null configurations, this SOL is able to screen locally injected nitrogen at least as effectively as the low-field side (LFS) SOL – up to a factor of 10 more effective, depending on specific plasma conditions and whether the magnetic geometry produces parallel flows that work with or against E×B flows. For situations in which the E×B drift of the impurity ions opposes parallel flow toward the primary divertor, HFS impurity screening is found to be least effective. When E×B drifts assist parallel flow toward the primary divertor, HFS impurity screening is found to be very effective. These data support the idea of placing RF actuators and close-fitting wall components on the high-field side of the tokamak. With this configuration, near-double-null magnetic topologies may be used for active control of plasma parameters at the antenna/plasma interface for optimal RF coupling, mitigate the generation of local impurities from plasma-material interactions and, taking advantage of favorable plasma flows and good screening properties of the HFS SOL, further minimize the impact of wall-born impurity sources on the plasma core.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

NASA NTRS1978

Design of polymeric immunomicrospheres for cell labelling and cell separation

Synthesis of several classes of hydrophylic microspheres applied to cell labeling and cell separation is described. Five classes of cross-linked microspheres with functional groups such as carboxyl, hydroxyl, amide and/or pyridine groups were synthesized. These functional groups were used to bind covalently antibodies and other proteins to the surface of the microspheres. To optimize the derivatisation technique, polyglutaraldehyde immunomicrospheres were prepared and utilized. Specific populations of human and murine lymphocytes were labelled with microspheres synthesized by the emulsion of the ionizing radiation technique. The labelling of the cells by means of microspheres containing an iron core produced successful separation of B from T lymphocytes by means of a magnetic field.

Rembaum, A.↗

NASA NTRS1981

Oxidation-induced contraction and strengthening of boron fibers

An investigation was conducted to measure and understand the physical and mechanical effects that occur in boron fibers during and after thermal treatment in a controlled oxygen argon gaseous mixture. Of principal concern was the optimization of this treatment as a secondary processing method for significantly improving fiber tensile strength. Strengthening was accomplished by an oxidation induced axial contraction of the fiber and a resulting axial compression of strength limiting flaws within the fiber's tungsten boride core. Various physical observations were used to develop mechanistic models for oxidation, contraction, and flow formation. Processing guidelines are discussed for possibly exceeding the 5.5 GN/sq m strength limit and also for achieving fiber strengthening during application of boron containing diffusion barrier coatings.

Dicarlo, J. A.↗

NASA NTRS1984

STARS: A general-purpose finite element computer program for analysis of engineering structures

STARS (Structural Analysis Routines) is primarily an interactive, graphics-oriented, finite-element computer program for analyzing the static, stability, free vibration, and dynamic responses of damped and undamped structures, including rotating systems. The element library consists of one-dimensional (1-D) line elements, two-dimensional (2-D) triangular and quadrilateral shell elements, and three-dimensional (3-D) tetrahedral and hexahedral solid elements. These elements enable the solution of structural problems that include truss, beam, space frame, plane, plate, shell, and solid structures, or any combination thereof. Zero, finite, and interdependent deflection boundary conditions can be implemented by the program. The associated dynamic response analysis capability provides for initial deformation and velocity inputs, whereas the transient excitation may be either forces or accelerations. An effective in-core or out-of-core solution strategy is automatically employed by the program, depending on the size of the problem. Data input may be at random within a data set, and the program offers certain automatic data-generation features. Input data are formatted as an optimal combination of free and fixed formats. Interactive graphics capabilities enable convenient display of nodal deformations, mode shapes, and element stresses.

Gupta, K. K.↗

NASA NTRS2012

High-Performance, Multi-Node File Copies and Checksums for Clustered File Systems

Modern parallel file systems achieve high performance using a variety of techniques, such as striping files across multiple disks to increase aggregate I/O bandwidth and spreading disks across multiple servers to increase aggregate interconnect bandwidth. To achieve peak performance from such systems, it is typically necessary to utilize multiple concurrent readers/writers from multiple systems to overcome various singlesystem limitations, such as number of processors and network bandwidth. The standard cp and md5sum tools of GNU coreutils found on every modern Unix/Linux system, however, utilize a single execution thread on a single CPU core of a single system, and hence cannot take full advantage of the increased performance of clustered file systems. Mcp and msum are drop-in replacements for the standard cp and md5sum programs that utilize multiple types of parallelism and other optimizations to achieve maximum copy and checksum performance on clustered file systems. Multi-threading is used to ensure that nodes are kept as busy as possible. Read/write parallelism allows individual operations of a single copy to be overlapped using asynchronous I/O. Multinode cooperation allows different nodes to take part in the same copy/checksum. Split-file processing allows multiple threads to operate concurrently on the same file. Finally, hash trees allow inherently serial checksums to be performed in parallel. Mcp and msum provide significant performance improvements over standard cp and md5sum using multiple types of parallelism and other optimizations. The total speed-ups from all improvements are significant. Mcp improves cp performance over 27x, msum improves md5sum performance almost 19x, and the combination of mcp and msum improves verified copies via cp and md5sum by almost 22x. These improvements come in the form of drop-in replacements for cp and md5sum, so are easily used and are available for download as open source software at http://mutil.sourceforge.net.

Kolano, Paul Z.↗

NASA NTRS2012

NASA Tech Briefs, September 2012

Topics covered include: Beat-to-Beat Blood Pressure Monitor; Measurement Techniques for Clock Jitter; Lightweight, Miniature Inertial Measurement System; Optical Density Analysis of X-Rays Utilizing Calibration Tooling to Estimate Thickness of Parts; Fuel Cell/Electrochemical Cell Voltage Monitor; Anomaly Detection Techniques with Real Test Data from a Spinning Turbine Engine-Like Rotor; Measuring Air Leaks into the Vacuum Space of Large Liquid Hydrogen Tanks; Antenna Calibration and Measurement Equipment; Glass Solder Approach for Robust, Low-Loss, Fiber-to-Waveguide Coupling; Lightweight Metal Matrix Composite Segmented for Manufacturing High-Precision Mirrors; Plasma Treatment to Remove Carbon from Indium UV Filters; Telerobotics Workstation (TRWS) for Deep Space Habitats; Single-Pole Double-Throw MMIC Switches for a Microwave Radiometer; On Shaft Data Acquisition System (OSDAS); ASIC Readout Circuit Architecture for Large Geiger Photodiode Arrays; Flexible Architecture for FPGAs in Embedded Systems; Polyurea-Based Aerogel Monoliths and Composites; Resin-Impregnated Carbon Ablator: A New Ablative Material for Hyperbolic Entry Speeds; Self-Cleaning Particulate Prefilter Media; Modular, Rapid Propellant Loading System/Cryogenic Testbed; Compact, Low-Force, Low-Noise Linear Actuator; Loop Heat Pipe with Thermal Control Valve as a Variable Thermal Link; Process for Measuring Over-Center Distances; Hands-Free Transcranial Color Doppler Probe; Improving Balance Function Using Low Levels of Electrical Stimulation of the Balance Organs; Developing Physiologic Models for Emergency Medical Procedures Under Microgravity; PMA-Linked Fluorescence for Rapid Detection of Viable Bacterial Endospores; Portable Intravenous Fluid Production Device for Ground Use; Adaptation of a Filter Assembly to Assess Microbial Bioburden of Pressurant Within a Propulsion System; Multiplexed Force and Deflection Sensing Shell Membranes for Robotic Manipulators; Whispering Gallery Mode Optomechanical Resonator; Vision-Aided Autonomous Landing and Ingress of Micro Aerial Vehicles; Self-Sealing Wet Chemistry Cell for Field Analysis; General MACOS Interface for Modeling and Analysis for Controlled Optical Systems; Mars Technology Rover with Arm-Mounted Percussive Coring Tool, Microimager, and Sample-Handling Encapsulation Containerization Subsystem; Fault-Tolerant, Real-Time, Multi-Core Computer System; Water Detection Based on Object Reflections; SATPLOT for Analysis of SECCHI Heliospheric Imager Data; Plug-in Plan Tool v3.0.3.1; Frequency Correction for MIRO Chirp Transformation Spectroscopy Spectrum; Nonlinear Estimation Approach to Real-Time Georegistration from Aerial Images; Optimal Force Control of Vibro-Impact Systems for Autonomous Drilling Applications; Low-Cost Telemetry System for Small/Micro Satellites; Operator Interface and Control Software for the Reconfigurable Surface System Tri-ATHLETE; and Algorithms for Determining Physical Responses of Structures Under Load.

Source record↗

DOE OSTI2025

Analysis of outgassing from natural fibers VIP core to improve their long-term performance

Buildings are the largest consumers of energy accounting for 40% of the total energy use in the US. The use of vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) with large R/in. values offers unique benefits in reducing building energy consumption such as providing excellent thermal insulation with significantly less thickness compared to convention insulation materials. Natural fibers are promising VIP core material because of their low cost and offer good thermal performance. However, the long-term thermal performance of the VIPs with natural fiber core can be compromised because of off-gassing from natural fibers. In this study, we utilize a mass spectrometer based analytical technique to investigate the composition of off-gassing from natural fibers. The result can be used to determine the optimal getters to help maintain the vacuum and improve the long-term thermal performance of the VIP for building insulation.

Tamraparni, Achutha [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000299658544↗

DOE OSTI2026

HfTi_BCC_SolidSolution_128atoms_VASP6

We performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations for body-centered-cubic (BCC) structures with 128 lattices sites of solid solution binary alloys hafnium-titanium (Hf-Ti). The electronic structures of alloys have been calculated using Vienna Ab initio Simulation Package (VASP). Within this package the DFT approach is used to reduce many-body Schrodinger equation to set of single particle Kohn-Sham (KS) equations. The generalized electronic exchange-correlation functional is described by generalized gradient approximation with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof parametrization. The electron-ion interactions is described by pseudopotentials developed within the plane-wave basis projector augmented-wave (PAW) approach. These pseudopotentials are available at the VASP portal (http://cms.mpi.univie.ac.at/vasp/). Our calculations have been run with the pseudopotentials treating s and p semi-core states as valence in case for the elements Hf and Ti. The electronic densities and potentials are expanded over plane-waves with energy cutoff of 350 eV. 2x2x2 k-mesh and normal precision were used. The alloys were modeled by supercell containing 128 randomly distributed atoms. At initial step the atoms occupy perfect bcc lattice cites. This initial structure was optimized until energy changes less than 1e-6 eV, while forces acting on atoms don't exceed 1e-2 eV/angstrom. The electron-ion interaction is described by PAW pseudopotentials. The calculations have been collected by sampling chemical compositions across the entire compositional range. The chemical compositions have been sampled by progressively changing the number of atoms per constituent by 4. For each chemical composition of binaries and ternaries, the first-principle calculations have been run for 100 randomized arrangements of the constituents on the BCC lattice sites. We collected data for a total of 3,100 randomized atomic structures over 31 chemical compositions. The calculations have been collected on Air Force HPC11 cluster using the VASP 6.5.1. Additional methodology and file structure information is available in the dataset README.txt file.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2026

TiV_BCC_SolidSolution_128atoms_VASP6

We performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations for body-centered-cubic (BCC) structures with 128 lattices sites of solid solution binary alloys titanium-vanadium (Ti-V). The electronic structures of alloys have been calculated using Vienna Ab initio Simulation Package (VASP). Within this package the DFT approach is used to reduce many-body Schrodinger equation to set of single particle Kohn-Sham (KS) equations. The generalized electronic exchange-correlation functional is described by generalized gradient approximation with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof parametrization. The electron-ion interactions is described by pseudopotentials developed within the plane-wave basis projector augmented-wave (PAW) approach. These pseudopotentials are available at the VASP portal (http://cms.mpi.univie.ac.at/vasp/). Our calculations have been run with the pseudopotentials treating s and p semi-core states as valence in case for the elements Ti and V. The electronic densities and potentials are expanded over plane-waves with energy cutoff of 350 eV. 2x2x2 k-mesh and normal precision were used. The alloys were modeled by supercell containing 128 randomly distributed atoms. At initial step the atoms occupy perfect bcc lattice cites. This initial structure was optimized until energy changes less than 1e-6 eV, while forces acting on atoms don't exceed 1e-2 eV/angstrom. The electron-ion interaction is described by PAW pseudopotentials. The calculations have been collected by sampling chemical compositions across the entire compositional range. The chemical compositions have been sampled by progressively changing the number of atoms per constituent by 4. For each chemical composition of binaries and ternaries, the first-principle calculations have been run for 100 randomized arrangements of the constituents on the BCC lattice sites. We collected data for a total of 3,100 randomized atomic structures over 31 chemical compositions. The calculations have been collected on Air Force HPC11 cluster using the VASP 6.5.1. Additional methodology and file structure information is available in the dataset README.txt file.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2026

NbTi_BCC_SolidSolution_128atoms_VASP6

We performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations for body-centered-cubic (BCC) structures with 128 lattices sites of solid solution binary alloys niobium-titanium (Nb-Ti). The electronic structures of alloys have been calculated using Vienna Ab initio Simulation Package (VASP), https://github.com/ORNL/ScalableWorkflow_VASP_Calculations. Within this package the DFT approach is used to reduce many-body Schrodinger equation to set of single particle Kohn-Sham (KS) equations. The generalized electronic exchange-correlation functional is described by generalized gradient approximation with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof parametrization. The electron-ion interactions is described by pseudopotentials developed within the plane-wave basis projector augmented-wave (PAW) approach. These pseudopotentials are available at the VASP portal (http://cms.mpi.univie.ac.at/vasp/). Our calculations have been run with the pseudopotentials treating s and p semi-core states as valence in case for the elements Nb and Ti. The electronic densities and potentials are expanded over plane-waves with energy cutoff of 350 eV. 2x2x2 k-mesh and normal precision were used. The alloys were modeled by supercell containing 128 randomly distributed atoms. At initial step the atoms occupy perfect bcc lattice cites. This initial structure was optimized until energy changes less than 1e-6 eV, while forces acting on atoms don't exceed 1e-2 eV/angstrom. The electron-ion interaction is described by PAW pseudopotentials. The calculations have been collected by sampling chemical compositions across the entire compositional range. The chemical compositions have been sampled by progressively changing the number of atoms per constituent by 4. For each chemical composition of binaries and ternaries, the first-principle calculations have been run for 100 randomized arrangements of the constituents on the BCC lattice sites. We collected data for a total of 3,100 randomized atomic structures over 31 chemical compositions. The calculations have been collected on Air Force HPC11 cluster using the VASP 6.5.1. Additional methodology and file structure information is available in the dataset README.txt file.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2016

Understanding Hydraulic Fracturing: A Multi-Scale Problem

Despite the impact that hydraulic fracturing has had on the energy sector, the physical mechanisms that control its efficiency and environmental impacts remain poorly understood in part because the length scales involved range from nano-meters to kilo-meters. We characterize flow and transport in shale formations across and between these scales using integrated computational, theoretical, and experimental efforts. At the field scale, we use discrete fracture network modeling to simulate production at a well site whose fracture network is based on a site characterization of a shale formation. At the core scale, we use triaxial fracture experiments and a finite-element discrete-element fracture propagation model with a coupled fluid solver to study dynamic crack propagation in low permeability shale. We use lattice Boltzmann pore-scale simulations and microfluidic experiments in both synthetic and real micromodels to study pore-scale flow phenomenon such as multiphase flow and mixing. A mechanistic description and integration of these multiple scales is required for accurate predictions of production and the eventual optimization of hydrocarbon extraction from unconventional reservoirs.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

DOE OSTI2019

A performance analysis of the first generation of HPC‐optimized Arm processors

Summary In this paper, we present performance results from Isambard, the first production supercomputer to be based on Arm CPUs that have been optimized specifically for HPC. Isambard is the first Cray XC50 “Scout” system, combining Cavium ThunderX2 Arm‐based CPUs with Cray's Aries interconnect. The full Isambard system will be delivered in the summer of 2018, when it will contain over 10 000 Arm cores. In this work, we present node‐level performance results from eight early‐access nodes that were upgraded to B0 beta silicon in March 2018. We present node‐level benchmark results comparing ThunderX2 with mainstream CPUs, including Intel Skylake and Broadwell, as well as Xeon Phi. We focus on a range of applications and mini‐apps important to the UK national HPC service, ARCHER, as well as to the Isambard project partners and the wider HPC community. We also compare performance across three major software toolchains available for Arm: Cray's CCE, Arm's version of Clang/Flang/LLVM, and GNU.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2018

Generalized 3D beam dynamics model for industrial traveling wave linacs design and simulations

Beam dynamics simulations in traveling wave (TW) accelerating structures with significant beam loading is a challenging problem. Some codes are capable of calculating the TW electromagnetic fields, and some can track particles through such fields, but most cannot treat both self-consistently. A few commercial codes can model the physics correctly at the expense of many processor-hour computations to obtain converged self-consistent solutions. However, simple, accurate equations of motion for intensive beam dynamics in TW accelerating structure analysis have been previously obtained by Masunov and subsequently implemented in the Hellweg code, which was developed at the Moscow Engineering-Physics Institute. Hellweg is based on equations that allow fast simulations of beam dynamics while taking into account such effects as beam loading, space charge, and external magnetic fields. In this paper, we describe in detail some recent improvements to the Hellweg physics kernel. We have generalized the Masunov results into a 3D set of equations of motion, which include all spatial components of the radiofrequency (RF) and external magnetic fields. We have also improved the Lapostolle space charge model to the general 3D ellipsoid form for any dimensions’ ratio, consideration for the particles outside the beam core, and the fields from the neighboring bunches that can exist in the real machine. These modifications allow approaching the Hellweg accuracy to the self-consistent commercial codes while keeping the simulation time short, which is essential during the linac design and optimization stage. The implementation of these new capabilities in Hellweg is carefully benchmarked against other codes and analytical calculations. The code is freely available with an open source license.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2018

Alkyl Chain End Group Engineering of Small Molecule Acceptors for Non-Fullerene Organic Solar Cells

Alkyl chain engineering is widely used to prepare high-performance donor materials. However, relatively few studies have been focused on the alkyl chain optimization of acceptor materials. Herein, a series of new A-D-A (acceptor-donor-acceptor) type small molecule acceptors (ITBTR-C2, ITBTR-C4, ITBTR-C6, and ITBTR-C8) with indacenodithieno[3,2-b]thiophene (IDTT) as the core, benzothiadiazole (BT) as the π bridge, and ethyl-, butyl-, hexyl-, and octyl-substituted 2-(1,1-dicyanomethylene) rhodanine as the end groups, respectively, are successfully synthesized to systematically investigate the alkyl substituent effects on the physical, chemical, and electronic properties of A-D-A type small molecule acceptors. All molecules exhibit a strong and broad absorption from 600 to 800 nm as well as similar HOMO and LUMO energy levels. ITBTR-C6 with hexyl substitution showed the highest electron mobility and better phase separation morphology after blending with a donor polymer (PBDB-T). Therefore, inverted bulk heterojunction organic solar cells based on ITBTR-C6:PBDB-T blends exhibit the highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.26% with an open-circuit voltage ( V OC ) of 0.89 V, a high short-circuit current density ( J SC ) of 15.80 mA/cm2, and a fill factor (FF) of 58.21%, while the PCEs of ITBTR-C2-, ITBTR-C4-, and ITBTR-C8-based devices are 7.04%, 7.43%, and 7.93%, respectively. After solvent vapor and thermal annealing, both the J SC and FF values of the ITBTR-C6-based device further increased, leading to a PCE of 9.29%. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the alkyl chain substitution of A-D-A type small molecule acceptors is critical, and an appropriate adjustment of the alkyl chains can effectively enhance device performance.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DOE OSTI2022

Analysis of Distributed Energy Storage as a Core Grid Infrastructure via Production Cost Modeling

Energy storage plays a pivotal role in enabling power system operation with more flexibility and resilience. Unlike current practice that considers energy storages as attached ancillary devices, this paper focuses on storages as a core infrastructure by looking at their spatial distribution in the system. A sensitivity analysis based on production cost modeling is conducted to demonstrate the benefits of distributed energy storages. First, the modeling of energy storages in production cost modeling is presented. Second, potential optimal locations of distributed energy storages in a power system are discussed. Finally, multiple scenarios with various numbers and locations of additional distributed energy storages in the WECC 2030 model are created. The production cost modeling results of these scenarios show that distributed energy storages have higher utilization compared to the centralized ES units and therefore provide significantly more benefits in terms of reduction in generation cost, emission cost, and volatility of location marginal prices. A saturation effect is observed suggesting the selection of optimal locations will further improve the benefits.

Nguyen, Quan H.↗

DOE OSTI2025

Low-Cost, Scalable Sorbents with Balanced Capacity-Kinetics-Thermodynamics for H2 Storage

The goal of this project is to utilize cutting-edge materials science, chemistry, and process engineering to demonstrate the feasibility of a new class of scalable sorbents with unprecedented balance of capacity-kinetics-thermodynamics for H 2 storage in fossil fuel power plants . The core fabrication leverages the unique exotic properties (e.g., high H 2 affinity, ultrahigh surface area, and exceptional thermal, mechanical and chemical stability) of the emerging 2D materials i.e. hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) followed by strategic coupling with alkali metals (Li, Na) dopants and optimal interlayer distance to deliver a stable, long-term energy storage for the grid. Figure 1 shows how this technology works.

08 HYDROGEN↗