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DOE OSTI2017

Building America Case Study: Construction Guidelines for High R-Value Walls without Exterior Rigid Insulation, Cold Climate Region

High-R wall assemblies (R-40 and above) are gaining popularity in the market due to programs like the DOE's Zero Energy Ready Home program, Passive House (PH), Net Zero Energy Home (NZEH) challenges in several states, and highly incentivized retrofit programs. In response to this demand, several builders have successfully used 'double wall' systems to more practically achieve higher R-values in thicker, framed walls. To builders of conventional stick-framed homes, often one of the most appealing features of double wall systems is that there are very few new exterior details. Exterior sheathing, structural bracing, house wrap or building paper, window and door flashing, and siding attachment are usually identical to good details in conventional framed wall systems. The information presented in this guide is intended to reduce the risk of failure in these types of assemblies, increase durability, and result in a reduction of material brought to landfills due to failures and resulting decay. While this document focuses on double wall framing techniques, the majority of the information on how to properly construct and finish high R-value assemblies is applicable to all wall assemblies that do not have foam insulation installed on the exterior of the structural sheathing. The techniques presented have been shown through field studies to reduce the likelihood of mold growth and moisture related damage and are intended for builders, framing contractors, architects, and consultants involved in designing and building super insulated homes.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2018

Is Every kWh the Same? How Do Energy Efficiency Measures Stack Up Across Regions?

The U.S. residential building sector is responsible for thirty-eight percent of electricity use, as well as for 49%, 8%, 19% and 2% of U.S. SO2, NOx, CO2 and PM2.5 emissions, respectively. The residential building sector is also a key target of customer funded energy efficiency programs, which have typically been designed to reduce energy consumption (kWh). Today, energy efficiency is also being used to meet air emissions goals. However, not every kWh saved has the same mitigation potential. The goal of this work is to evaluate energy efficiency potential in the U.S. residential building sector and determine how energy conservation measures (ECMs) that reduce electricity consumption correlate to air emissions reductions. To assess energy efficiency potential, this analysis uses Scout, a software program developed by the U.S. Department of Energy that estimates the energy and CO2 impact potential of various ECMs on the U.S. residential and commercial building sectors. Here, Scout is first used to assess the total long term national energy (electricity, gas, and oil), CO2, and cost savings of deploying residential ECM portfolios. Then, electricity savings results from Scout in 2021 are used to assess the regional differences in emissions reductions with the Avoided Emissions and geneRation Tool (AVERT) model from different end uses. Better understanding the relationship between ECMs and cost-effective emission reductions will enable states, municipalities and other interested parties to meet multiple policy objectives through energy efficiency.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2026

2020 Can Do Colorado E-Bike Mini Pilot Program Study

### The Colorado Energy Office conducted a mini pilot program study as part of the Can Do Colorado initiative, providing e-bikes to 13 low-income participants. The program aimed to encourage energy-efficient transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic as transit services were reduced and people were concerned about exposure. The insights garnered from this small-scale pilot study informed the design of a full-scale, 2-year pilot in locations across Colorado. For more information about the mini pilot program, see NLR's [Preliminary Results Report](https://www.nlr.gov/docs/fy21osti/79657.pdf). Micromobility options such as e-bikes offer a solution for improving energy efficiency for short-distance trips, especially in urban areas. Pedal-assist e-bikes use an electric motor and battery to help power the bike. The motor amplifies the power behind each pedal stroke, augmenting the energy you put into the bike. #### Data Collection Agency The Colorado Energy Office conducted the survey. #### Survey Methodology Participants in the program received a Momentum LaFree E+ e-bike (Class 1) and accessories at no cost and manually submitted travel data and feedback for 3 months using the CanBikeCo App. The smartphone app, developed in partnership with NLR, used a customized version of the [NLR OpenPATH platform](https://www.nlr.gov/transportation/openpath.html). #### Survey Records and Data Survey records include a total of 13 participants. This dataset contains 3 months of end-to-end, multimodal travel data manually submitted via smartphone app by 13 low-income essential workers in the greater Denver area. The data includes distance, mode (e.g., e-bike, car, transit), trip purpose, and demographic information.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2019

The Potential Role of Concentrating Solar Power within the Context of DOE's 2030 Solar Cost Targets

For solar electricity generating technologies to be cost competitive at a large scale with conventionally generated electricity, cost reductions are needed for both concentrating solar power (CSP) and solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) established solar cost targets that corresponded to reducing CSP and PV prices by approximately 75% in order to achieve a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of $0.06 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for both utility-scale PV and high-capacity factor CSP-TES systems in 2020. Utility-scale PV achieved its 2020 cost target in 2017, and recent estimates for the LCOE of CSP-TES with a molten-salt power tower system are approximately $0.10/kWh for projects that are expected to come online in 2020, which represents a substantial reduction since 2010 - when the LCOE for CSP-TES was around $0.21/kWh. To continue the momentum for cost reductions in solar technologies, DOE recently established cost targets for 2030 that would make solar one of the lowest-cost sources of new electricity in the United States. For CSP-based systems, the new targets correspond to an LCOE in 2030 of $0.05/kWh for a dispatchable, high-capacity factor CSP-TES plant configuration. This aggressive target would have been unimaginable a decade ago. However, building on the previously described reduction in CSP-TES costs over the past decade, recent announcements suggest the next phase of projects will continue this downward trend through lower installation costs, attractive financing, longer-duration PPAs, and the ability to capitalize on the value that the flexibility of storage brings CSP. This presentation summarizes a recent report that evaluates the potential impacts of simultaneously achieving the 2030 cost targets for PV and CSP-TES, and it includes a detailed evaluation of the role that CSP-TES could play in realizing those impacts. The scenarios in this analysis are designed to isolate and assess the potential impacts of achieving DOE's 2030 cost targets for CSP-TES and PV, and they do not reflect the potential benefits or system impacts associated with success in other DOE research programs. The low-cost solar scenarios include DOE's 2030 solar cost targets--which are represented via a roughly 50% reduction in LCOE by 2030 (from current levels) with additional cost reductions thereafter representing technology learning and/or improvements that could result from innovation - coupled with a variety of market, technology, and demand assumptions. With these assumptions, the evolution of the contiguous U.S. electricity system is evaluated with NREL's Renewable Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) model, which was specifically designed to represent the temporal and locational value of renewable generation technologies in the U.S. power system. ReEDS relies on system-wide least-cost optimization to estimate the type and location of future generation and transmission capacity. In addition, it accounts for the locational and temporal variations in variable renewable technologies, including the need for new transmission, curtailment, dynamic capacity value, and the need to hold operating reserves to account for the uncertainty and variability of these technologies. This presentation summarizes the key findings that arise from a detailed evaluation of the impacts of achieving DOE's 2030 cost targets for CSP-TES and PV systems, noting again the inherent challenges associated with modeling future scenarios of the large, complex system electricity system in the contiguous United States within the context of various market features.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2016

Infrastructure for Multiphysics Software Integration in High Performance Computing-Aided Science and Engineering

The project described in this report constructed and exercised an innovative multiphysics coupling toolkit called the Illinois Rocstar MultiPhysics Application Coupling Toolkit (IMPACT). IMPACT is an open source, flexible, natively parallel infrastructure for coupling multiple uniphysics simulation codes into multiphysics computational systems. IMPACT works with codes written in several high-performance-computing (HPC) programming languages, and is designed from the beginning for HPC multiphysics code development. It is designed to be minimally invasive to the individual physics codes being integrated, and has few requirements on those physics codes for integration. The goal of IMPACT is to provide the support needed to enable coupling existing tools together in unique and innovative ways to produce powerful new multiphysics technologies without extensive modification and rewrite of the physics packages being integrated. There are three major outcomes from this project: 1) construction, testing, application, and open-source release of the IMPACT infrastructure, 2) production of example open-source multiphysics tools using IMPACT, and 3) identification and engagement of interested organizations in the tools and applications resulting from the project. This last outcome represents the incipient development of a user community and application echosystem being built using IMPACT. Multiphysics coupling standardization can only come from organizations working together to define needs and processes that span the space of necessary multiphysics outcomes, which Illinois Rocstar plans to continue driving toward. The IMPACT system, including source code, documentation, and test problems are all now available through the public gitHUB.org system to anyone interested in multiphysics code coupling. Many of the basic documents explaining use and architecture of IMPACT are also attached as appendices to this document. Online HTML documentation is available through the gitHUB site. There are over 100 unit tests provided that run through the Illinois Rocstar Application Development (IRAD) lightweight testing infrastructure that is also supplied along with IMPACT. The package as a whole provides an excellent base for developing high-quality multiphysics applications using modern software development practices. To facilitate understanding how to utilize IMPACT effectively, two multiphysics systems have been developed and are available open-source through gitHUB. The simpler of the two systems, named ElmerFoamFSI in the repository, is a multiphysics, fluid-structure-interaction (FSI) coupling of the solid mechanics package Elmer with a fluid dynamics module from OpenFOAM. This coupling illustrates how to combine software packages that are unrelated by either author or architecture and combine them into a robust, parallel multiphysics system. A more complex multiphysics tool is the Illinois Rocstar Rocstar Multiphysics code that was rebuilt during the project around IMPACT. Rocstar Multiphysics was already an HPC multiphysics tool, but now that it has been rearchitected around IMPACT, it can be readily expanded to capture new and different physics in the future. In fact, during this project, the Elmer and OpenFOAM tools were also coupled into Rocstar Multiphysics and demonstrated. The full Rocstar Multiphysics codebase is also available on gitHUB, and licensed for any organization to use as they wish. Finally, the new IMPACT product is already being used in several multiphysics code coupling projects for the Air Force, NASA and the Missile Defense Agency, and initial work on expansion of the IMPACT-enabled Rocstar Multiphysics has begun in support of a commercial company. These initiatives promise to expand the interest and reach of IMPACT and Rocstar Multiphysics, ultimately leading to the envisioned standardization and consortium of users that was one of the goals of this project.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2013

Single-faced GRAYQB™: a radiation mapping device

GrayQb{trademark} is a novel technology that has the potential to characterize radioactively contaminated areas such as hot cells, gloveboxes, small and large rooms, hallways, and waste tanks. The goal of GrayQb{trademark} is to speed the process of decontaminating these areas, which reduces worker exposures and promotes ALARA considerations. The device employs Phosphorous Storage Plate (PSP) technology as its primary detector material. PSPs, commonly used for medical applications and non-destructive testing, can be read using a commercially available scanner. The goal of GrayQb{trademark} technology is to locate, quantify, and identify the sources of contamination. The purpose of the work documented in this report was to better characterize the performance of GrayQb{trademark} in its ability to present overlay images of the PSP image and the associated visual image of the location being surveyed. The results presented in this report are overlay images identifying the location of hot spots in both controlled and field environments. The GrayQb{trademark} technology has been mainly tested in a controlled environment with known distances and source characteristics such as specific known radionuclides, dose rates, and strength. The original concept for the GrayQb{trademark} device involved utilizing the six faces of a cube configuration and was designed to be positioned in the center of a contaminated area for 3D mapping. A smaller single-faced GrayQb{trademark}, dubbed GrayQb SF, was designed for the purpose of conducting the characterization testing documented in this report. This lighter 2D version is ideal for applications where entry ports are too small for a deployment of the original GrayQb™ version or where only a single surface is of interest. The shape, size, and weight of these two designs have been carefully modeled to account for most limitations encountered in hot cells, gloveboxes, and contaminated areas. GrayQb{trademark} and GrayQb{trademark} SF share the same fundamental detection system design (e.g., pinhole and PSPs). Therefore, performance tests completed on the single face GrayQB in this report is also applicable to the six- faced GrayQB (e.g., ambient light sensitivity and PSP response). This report details the characterization of the GrayQb{trademark} SF in both an uncontrolled environment; specifically, the Savannah River Site (SRS) Plutonium Fuel Form Facility in Building 235-F (Metallurgical Building) and controlled testing at SRS’s Health Physics Instrument Calibration Facility and SRS’s R&D Engineering Imaging and Radiation Systems Building. In this report, the resulting images from the Calibration Facility were obtained by overlaying the PSP and visual images manually using ImageJ. The resulting images from the Building 235-F tests presented in this report were produced using ImageJ and applying response trends developed from controlled testing results. The GrayQb{trademark} technology has been developed in two main stages at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL): 1) the GrayQb{trademark} development was supported by SRNL’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program and 2) the GrayQb{trademark} SF development and its testing in Building 235-F were supported by the Office of Deactivation and Decommissioning and Facility Engineering (EM-13), U.S. Department of Energy – Office of Environmental Management.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2016

Construction Guidelines for High R-Value Walls without Exterior Rigid Insulation

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2019

Multi-Physics Simulations of Heat Pipe Micro Reactor

System Analysis Module (SAM) is under development at Argonne National Laboratory as a modern system-level modeling and simulation tool for advanced non-light water reactor safety analyses. It utilizes the object-oriented application framework MOOSE to leverage the modern software environment and advanced numerical methods. The capabilities of SAM are being extended to enable the transient modeling, analysis, and design of various advanced nuclear reactor systems. This report presents the development of new capabilities for modeling the heat pipe type reactor systems. The need for power at remote locations away from a reliable electrical grid is an important niche for nuclear energy. Heat pipe-cooled fast-spectrum nuclear reactors are well suited for these applications. The key feature of the heat pipe reactors is the use of heat pipes for heat removal from the reactor core. The heat pipe makes use of the phase change of the working fluid and transports a large amount of heat from the evaporator to the condensation end with very small temperature drops. In contrast to the traditional nuclear reactor system that makes use of pumped loop for extracting the thermal power, the heat pipe reactors make use of hundreds of heat pipes for removing the thermal power (including the decay heat) passively. This could potentially significantly improve the reliability and safety of the reactor systems. The essential part in the analysis of a heat pipe type reactor is the modeling of heat transport inside the heat pipe. The capability of SAM was extended to enable the modeling of the conventional heat pipe. The full suite of non-LWR codes for confirmatory analysis at NRC is known as the Comprehensive Reactor Analysis Bundle (CRAB). It makes use of existing NRC codes, and integrates them with several codes developed through the DOE-NE’s Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program. In this report, the heat pipe micro reactor is simulated using three submodules under CRAB. The MAMMOTH module is used to simulate the reactor kinetics behavior of the micro reactor; the SAM module is used to simulate the heat conduction in the reactor core and heat removal through the heat pipe heat exchangers and Reactor Cavity Cooling System (RCCS); and the MOOSE Tensor Mechanics module is used to simulate the thermal expansion of the reactor cores. The different sub-models are coupled together using MOOSE’s MultiApp system and executed using the BlueCrab application. The new capability has been demonstrated by a steady-state operation analysis, a failure of a single central heat pipe transient analysis, and a loss of heat sink transient analysis. The fully coupled model is shown to work well.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

DOE OSTI2026

Mauka Energy FEVER Tool Dataset

Mauka Energy’s dataset, developed under the Forestry Electric Vehicle Energy Routing (FEVER) project and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Small Business Innovation Research program, is a high-resolution geospatial resource designed to support energy modeling for electric log trucks in complex forestry environments. The dataset integrates detailed spatial and road network data to enable accurate simulation of vehicle performance across varied terrain. At its core, the dataset incorporates lidar-derived elevation models, road alignments, and surface classifications from Oregon State University’s McDonald-Dunn Research Forest. These data capture fine-scale variations in slope, curvature, and surface conditions across forest road systems, allowing for vehicle-level analysis of energy consumption and recovery. The dataset also includes data collected on the surrounding public and private road networks in Benton County, Oregon, used in real-world haul routes. These connecting segments provide critical context for modeling transitions between forest operations and regional transportation infrastructure, incorporating attributes such as grade profiles, elevation change, and speed constraints. This combined dataset underpins the development of Mauka Energy’s rolldown tool, which quantifies energy use and regenerative braking potential on downhill and variable-grade segments. By leveraging high-resolution terrain and road data, the FEVER project enables more accurate assessment of electric vehicle feasibility and performance in forestry applications.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2015

Building a Bright Future. The Hydro Research Foundation's Fellowship Program

The Hydro Fellowship Program (program) began as an experiment to discover whether the hydropower industry could find mechanisms to attract new entrants through conducting relevant research to benefit the industry. This nationwide, new-to-the-world program was started through funding from the Wind and Water Power Technologies Office of the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Office of the Department of Energy (DOE). Between 2010-2015, the Hydro Research Foundation (HRF) designed and implemented a program to conduct valuable research and attract new entrants to the hydro workforce. This historic grant has empowered and engaged industry members from 25 organizations by working with 91 students and advisors at 24 universities in 19 states. The work funded answered pressing research needs in the fields of civil, mechanical, environmental, and electrical engineering, as well as law, energy engineering and materials innovation. In terms of number of individuals touched through funding, 148 individuals were supported by this work through direct research, mentorship, oversight of the work, partnerships and the day-to-day program administration. Based on the program results, it is clear that the funding achieved the hoped-for outcomes and has the capacity to draw universities into the orbit of hydropower and continue the conversation about industry research and development needs. The Foundation has fostered unique partnerships at the host universities and has continued to thrive with the support of the universities, advisors, industry and the DOE. The Foundation has demonstrated industry support through mentorships, partnerships, underwriting the costs and articulating the universities’ support through in-kind cost sharing. The Foundation recommends that future work be continued to nurture these graduate level programs using the initial work and improvements in the successor program, the Research Awards Program, while stimulating engagement of academia at the community college level for operations and maintenance workforce development.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2023

The Design and Implementation of a Secure Datastore Based on Ethereum Smart Contract

In this paper, we present a secure datastore based on an Ethereum smart contract. Our research is guided by three research questions. First, we will explore to what extend a smart-contract-based datastore should resemble a traditional database system. Second, we will investigate how to store the data in a smart-contract-based datastore for maximum flexibility while minimizing the gas consumption. Third, we seek answers regarding whether or not a smart-contract-based datastore should incorporate complex processing such as data encryption and data analytic algorithms. The proposed smart-contract-based datastore aims to strike a good balance between several constraints: (1) smart contracts are publicly visible, which may create a confidentiality concern for the data stored in the datastore; (2) unlike traditional database systems, the Ethereum smart contract programming language (i.e., Solidity) offers very limited data structures for data management; (3) all operations that mutate the blockchain state would incur financial costs and the developers for smart contracts must make sure sufficient gas is provisioned for every smart contract call, and ideally, the gas consumption should be minimized. Our investigation shows that although it is essential for a smart-contract-based datastore to offer some basic data query functionality, it is impractical to offer query flexibility that resembles that of a traditional database system. Furthermore, we propose that data should be structured as tag-value pairs, where the tag serves as a non-unique key that describes the nature of the value. We also conclude that complex processing should not be allowed in the smart contract due to the financial burden and security concerns. The tag-based secure datastore designed this way also defines its applicative perimeter, i.e., only applications that align with our strategy would find the proposed datastore a good fit. Those that would rather incur higher financial cost for more data query flexibility and/or less user burden on data pre- and post-processing would find the proposed database too restrictive.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2022

Verification and Validation of START: A Spent Nuclear Fuel Routing and Decision Support Tool

The Stakeholder Tool for Assessing Radioactive Transportation (START) is a web-based geospatial decision-support tool being developed by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Integrated Waste Management (IWM) to support federal interim storage for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and associated transportation. START provides many functions for the IWM program including: serving as a communications tool for conveying geospatial data and information, an options analysis tool for exploring potential transport modes and routes for transporting SNF from nuclear power plants to future federal interim storage facilities, an emergency response planning tool for Tribes and States to identify training needs along potential SNF transport corridors, an environmental analysis tool for estimating potential radiation dose exposure from incident-free and incident-case SNF transport conditions, and a systems analysis support tool providing route-related inputs for system throughput analysis. As part of the START development process, a verification and validation (V&V) effort is being undertaken. In the initial V&V phase, several outputs of the START tool were checked such as the total distance, population and population densities within the buffer zone, and incident free dose. The V&V process is fluid as it will be utilized after each version change to ensure that the core functionalities of the tool are maintained and the results are consistent with the previous versions. Efforts have also been put into developing scripts to aid in the process of automating certain sections of the V&V work. As some of the V&V efforts use Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI) tools upon which the START framework is built, the START data were compared against outputs from tools like Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS) for buffer zone populations and route lengths to ensure independence of the V&V process. Good agreement was observed between the START results and the independent V&V studies with the majority of the differences falling between 1% and 5% for populations within the buffer zone and route distance. This presentation describes the development and design of the START tool, V&V methods employed for various metrics of interest and their respective results, and future plans.

START, transportation, GIS, V&V↗

DOE OSTI2016

My Green Car: Painting Motor City Green (Ep. 2) – DOE Lab-Corps Video Series

The Lab’s MyGreenCar team kicks off its customer discovery process in Detroit with a business boot camp designed for scientists developing energy-related technologies. Customer interviews lead to late night discussions and insights on less-than-receptive consumers. Back in Berkeley, the team decides to fine tune targeted customer segments. What makes a new technology compelling enough to transition out of the lab and become a consumer product? That’s the question Berkeley Lab researchers Samveg Saxena, Nihar Shah, and Dana Hansen plus industry mentor Russell Carrington set out to answer for MyGreenCar, an app providing personalized fuel economy or electric vehicle range estimates for consumers researching new cars. DOE’s Lab-Corps program offered the technology team some answers. The EERE-funded program, based on the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps™ model for entrepreneurial training, provides tools and training to move energy-related inventions to the marketplace. During Lab-Corp’s intensive six-week session, technology teams interview 100 customer and value chain members to discover which potential products based on their technologies will have significant market pull. A six video series follows the MyGreenCar team’s Lab-Corps experience, from pre-training preparation with the Lab’s Innovation and Partnerships Office through the ups and downs of the customer discovery process. Will the app make it to the marketplace? You’ll just have to watch.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2017

Exploration of PG&E Auto DR Incentive Options (Final Project Report)

Demand Response programs offer incentives to customers to modify energy use during times of peak demand. There is a growing trend toward automating demand response. The market benefits from the use of common communication standards to facilitate automation because it allows communication and control companies to build technology using common protocols that reduces the cost of integrating ADR technologies into buildings. Common communication standards also allow electricity providers to build common platforms to communicate with customer or aggregator end-use equipment. This report considers strategies for increasing the use of automated DR technology for residential and small and medium business (SMB) customers within the Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) service territory. PG&E is interested in designing new incentive structures for automated DR equipment. In developing these new structures, it is important to understand the incremental cost of the automated demand response (ADR) communication technology. This technology is usually imbedded in end-use controls to communicate with an end-use device. Standards based ADR technologies require that the control system have the ability to communicate using an open standard communication protocol, usually either Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR, certification for which is available through the OpenADR Alliance) or Smart Energy Profile.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2023

Coso Geothermal Spectral Library for Rocks and Minerals

An integrated open mineral spectral library designed to enhance the utility and precision of mineral spectral data for geothermal exploration, developed from a reliable and comprehensive digital dataset for seamless sharing by integrating field data, the USGS spectral library, and pertinent information obtained from Coso geothermal field (Coso) in California. The ASD FieldSpec portable spectrometer was utilized for collecting spectral data, which was subsequently analyzed using the THOR Material Identification tool in ENVI, The Spectral Geologist (TSG) software by CSIRO, and the Fully Constrained Linear Spectral Unmixing algorithm (FCLSU) in MATLAB. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with a mineralogy-analyzing function was employed to assess the mineral composition of samples, ensuring precise mineralogical analysis. A portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer was also utilized to gather information on elemental enrichment. A framework for developing spectra data and establishing spectral libraries for various geological cases was proposed within this study. The characteristic spectra of six alteration minerals - alunite, chalcedony, epidote, hematite, kaolinite, and opal - were acquired from Coso samples. The spectral library for the Coso alteration minerals was introduced for further application in academic study or industrial exploration. To browse the Coso Geothermal Spectral data and related figures from spreadsheets: #1 Unzip and store the following items in the same folder. 'Contact Probe Data.zip', 'Sample Photos.zip', and 'Coso spectra of higher-certainity minerals.xlsx'. #2 Open 'Coso spectra of higher-certainity minerals.xlsx'. The hyperlinks in the spreadsheet lead to the folders or figures of: spectra .asd file, spectra ASC II file, spectra plots, and sample photos. The spectra data is raw data without splice correction. Spectra .asd files require particular software to open. (These cannot be opened in GIS software such as ArcGIS.) Spectra ASC II files can be opened in a text editor or spread sheet program.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2013

Framework For Human-Automation Collaboration: Project Status Report

The Human-Automation Collaboration (HAC) research project within the Department of Energy’s Advanced Small Modular Reactor (AdvSMR) program is investigating how advanced technologies that are planned for AdvSMRs might affect the performance and the reliability of the plant from a human factors and human performance perspective. The HAC research effort investigates the consequences of allocating functions between the operators and automated systems. More specifically, the research team is addressing how to best design the collaboration between the operators and the automated systems in a manner that has the greatest positive impact on overall plant performance and reliability. As one step to accomplish this goal, the research team reviewed available information on AdvSMR designs and identified plant functions and operator tasks that might impact the design of the HAC. The identified functions and tasks will later be vetted against insights learned from the current fleet of Light Water Reactors (LWR), other industries where humans are collaborating with highly automated systems, and the results from the activities in the AdvSMR Concepts of Operations project to inform a high-level generic design model. This generic model will be used as a basis for experimental studies to study the effects of different HAC concepts as well as evaluating new human-system interface (HSI) solutions to support a well-functioning HAC. Another important part needed to accomplish the research goal is a model of the collaboration between the human operator and the automated system. The team has developed a model of HAC that defines: (1) the important design dimensions of automation that impact automation’s use by personnel and integrated human-automation performance, (2) what aspects of human cognition, behavior, and performance mediate automation’s use by personnel, and (3) when and how the above factors affect the use of automation and the overall performance of the HAC system. The HAC model is utilized to identify areas in need of additional research, which forms the basis for planned HAC research activities. By detailing the relationships between characteristics of HAC, automation, and human cognition, the HAC model identifies what aspects of the human-automation interaction are important to consider in developing automation for AdvSMR systems. Three analytical studies have been initiated to address questions related to the HAC model. These studies are 1) Models of Teamwork, 2) Standardized HAC Performance Measurement Battery, and 3) Initiators and Triggering Conditions for Adaptive Automation. Additionally, a number of field studies have been identified and are in progress, and a set of experimental studies that are on schedule to be conducted later in the project to address the main research question. This report consists of three main parts: the preliminary identification of AdvSMR functions and tasks, a description of the updates and extensions to the HAC model, and a description of ongoing and planned analytical, field, and experimental research efforts that the research team has developed to accomplish the project’s overall goal of establishing a technical basis for designing the collaboration of personnel and automation.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2014

Measured Performance of Residential Dehumidifiers Under Cyclic Operation

Residential construction practices are progressing toward higher levels of energy efficiency. A proven strategy to save energy is to simultaneously increase building insulation levels and reduce outdoor air infiltration. Tight homes require intentional mechanical ventilation to ensure healthy indoor air. Overall, this strategy results in a shift in the mix of latent and sensible space conditioning loads, requiring proportionally more moisture to be removed compared to standard homes. There is currently not sufficient information available at a wide enough range of operating points to design dehumidification systems for high performance homes in hot-humid climates. The only industry information available on dehumidifier moisture removal and energy consumption are performance ratings conducted at a single test condition, which does not provide a full representation of dehumidifier operation under real-world conditions. Winkler et al. (2011) developed steady state performance maps to predict dehumidifier performance at a variety of indoor conditions. However, installed heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment rarely operates at steady state. Part load performance testing of residential dehumidifiers is not mandated by current test standards. Therefore, we tested the part load performance of four residential dehumidifiers in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Advanced HVAC Systems Laboratory . The part load efficiency of each dehumidifier was measured under 13 cycling scenarios, and combined with NREL field data to develop part load fraction (PLF) performance curves under realistic cycling scenarios.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2022

Study of a Proposed fissionTPC Measurement of 233 U(n,f)/ 235 U(n,f) Cross Section Ratio

A review of the available 233 U( n, f )/ 235 U( n, f ) cross section ratio data compared to the ENDF evaluation in the fast neutron energy range, 0.1–20 MeV, shows that discrepancies exist between some of the various measurements and the evaluation. The discrepancies vary and a function of incident neutron energy and range between 1–5%. In this document we review two potential options for performing new measurements of the cross section ratio to potentially resolve these discrepancies. The two options are compared and contrasted in terms of measurement accuracy and cost. The first option would utilize the fissionTPC, which was designed specifically to achieve measurement uncertainties of better than 1% to resolve a similar data–evaluation discrepancy in the 239 Pu( n, f ) cross section. While this would seem to be an ideal option in this case also, there are challenges. The fissionTPC is a complex instrument and the cost of maintenance and operations are significant. Furthermore, some of the fissionTPC equipment is nearing the end of its useful life which presents a risk to completion of a measurement campaign. The second option is to use a dual-fission chamber, which is the more traditional approach to these types of measurements. The cost is estimated to be about half that of a fissionTPC measurement, while the much simpler design of the detector reduces overall risk. The trade-off is the measurement uncertainty, which would be on order of 1–3% with a careful measurement and analysis. This uncertainty however may not be good enough to fully resolve the discrepancies. The objective of a new measurement would be the improvement in the ENDF evaluation with the end goal of improving the accuracy of models and simulations at the end of the nuclear data pipeline. An understanding of the sensitivity of these models to the data uncertainties would help guide the choice of measurement techniques.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗