SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Final Technical Report”

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.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

453 records · Page 9

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

DOE OSTI2026

Multi-purpose quantum laboratories from superconducting circuits

Superconducting circuits (SCs) are the cornerstone of modern quantum technology, enabling scalable computing through coherent control of macroscopic quantum states. Through a legacy that predates modern quantum computing, SCs have emerged as high-precision instruments for discovery. In this review, we highlight the role of SCs as general-purpose quantum laboratories, outlining the emerging landscape of correlated matter-circuit science. We review and unify the capabilities of superconducting quantum hardware across condensed matter, high energy and quantum information sciences. We trace the technical evolution of these architectures, illustrating how their foundational development has culminated in a toolkit for resolving the complexities of macroscopic quantum states.

Arora, Arpit [UCLA, Los Angeles (main); UCLA; Haim↗

DOE OSTI2026

Aerosol Can Fireball Tests: Commodity Hazards in the Transportation Environment Phase 1 Report

This report describes a series of tests performed at Sandia’s burn site to better understand the behavior of aerosol commodities and their hazards in the transportation environment. This comes on the tail of a prior study on the use cases and historical hazards associated with aerosol commodities in the shipping environment (Cambridge Systematics Incorporated, CSI, 2020). It is also mindful of the National Fire Protection Agency NFPA30B standard for safe warehousing of aerosol commodities. Warehousing is different from transit because warehousing typically involves active suppression and mitigation measures not practical or relevant to the shipping environment. Transit also typically involves tighter packing and smaller enclosure spaces. The transportation hazard space has not been heavily studied in prior testing specifically aimed towards the ground, rail, and nautical shipping environments.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2026

Progress Report on SFR Metallic Fuel Data Qualification

This report summarizes the progress of SFR metallic fuel qualification related activities, which are focused on providing quality assurance relevant information applicable to experiments irradiated during the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) program. An overview of the metallic fuel performance data and the associated databases, including the EBR-II Fuels Irradiation & Physics Database (FIPD), Out-of-Pile Transient Database (OPTD), and TREAT Experimental Relational Database (TREXR) is included. The legacy data in the databases, including as-built, post-irradiation examination (PIE), operating parameters, and out-of-pile experiment post-test data are introduced. The SFR metallic fuel Quality Assurance Program Plan (QAPP) and its implementation to qualify these legacy data is described in detail. Important PIE data QA documents and the specifications of seven types of PIE measurements (contact profilometry, laser profilometry, neutron radiography, gamma scan, fission gas release fission gas chemistry, and metallography) are provided. Examples of the implementation of the QAPP to qualify each of those types of PIE data are provided.

Mo, Kun [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonn↗

DOE OSTI2026

Financial Analysis of the Smallmouth Bass Flows implemented at the Glen Canyon Dam during 2025

The Glen Canyon Dam (GCD) is a Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) power resource that is a component of the Salt Lake City Area Integrated Projects (SLCA/IP). The 2016 record of decision (ROD) for the GCD long-term experimental and management plan (LTEMP) final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) specifies criteria for GCD monthly water releases, daily and hourly operating limits, and experimental releases.

Ploussard, Quentin [Argonne National Laboratory (A↗

DOE OSTI2026

ORNL Report of Analysis for the Verification of NRMP CRM U030A

In support of the Certified Reference Material (CRM) program managed by the Nuclear Reference Material Program (NRMP), the Material Signatures and Isotopic Standards (MSIS) group of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was asked to prepare a set of CRM U030A units for use as standards for isotopic analysis using multicollector thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) instruments. This report documents the results of the verification measurements performed on three randomly selected units by the MSIS group’s ISO/IEC 17025:2017 accredited operating procedure CSD-AM-CIMS-IN20, Determination of Uranium and Plutonium Isotopic Composition using Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry [1], and in accordance with the quality assurance plan as described in QAP-X-96-CSD/RML-001, Nuclear Analytical Chemistry Laboratory Section Quality Assurance Plan [2].

Mathew, Kattathu [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (O↗

DOE OSTI1991

Physical and Operational Status of the Photovoltaic Systems in the Municipality of Pinotepa de Don Luis, Oaxaca, One Year after Their Installation [Estado fisico y operativo de los sistemas fotovoltaicos en el municipio de Pinotepa de Don Luis, Oaxaca un ano despues de su instalacion]

In November 1990, an inspection visit was made to the residential lighting photovoltaic systems that had been installed approximately one year before in the rural communities of the Municipality of Pinotepa de Don Luis, in the State of Oaxaca. The main purpose of the visit was to evaluate the physical and operational status of these systems. The systems typically consist of a photovoltaic module with a capacity of 30 or 35 Watts, an automotive type battery, an indicator of the status of charge of the battery, 3 fluorescent lamps and the corresponding installation, including cables, connection or outlet box and switches. It can be seen that the systems are in good physical condition and do not show any signs of intentionally caused damage. However, the incidence of failures is higher than what had been expected; therefore the operational status of these systems is considered to be below a level that could be accepted, with a tendency to getting worse. The main problem that has been detected is the lack of automatic charge controllers. This problem has caused other important failures. Serious deficiencies were appreciated in the installations, which show evidence of the poor workmanship of the installers. The lack of system standardization is evident, both regarding the components and the installation. As a consequence, there are technical factors which indicate that the installed systems will keep deteriorating at a rate faster than normal, and will stop operating in a short time unless urgent preventive and corrective measures are taken. The attitude of the users with respect to the systems is generally positive. However, there are elements that make the correct operation and maintenance of these systems a very difficult task. The users did not receive any training regarding the best way to operate and take care of their systems, nor any other information in relation to their technical limitations.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2026

Influence of microstructure and temperature on impact toughness of H13 steel produced by binder jet additive manufacturing

Binder Jet Additive Manufacturing (BJAM) is a promising manufacturing pathway to produce H13 steel dies and tooling with complex geometries for applications in high pressure aluminum die casting, hot stamping, and injection molding. While fully dense H13 coupons produced using BJAM have been subjected to detailed microstructure characterization, properties which are critical and relevant to the aforementioned applications, such as impact toughness, have not been reported. Here, this work evaluated the influence of microstructural characteristics and test temperature on the impact toughness of H13 produced by BJAM. Coupons were produced from three different powder size distributions (PSDs), with nominal powder size ranges of −22 μm, 10-32 μm, and 15-53 μm. Coupons were printed, sintered, hot isostatically pressed (HIPed), and heat treated by quenching and tempering. After HIPing, the measured porosities of the different PSDs were all less than 0.015 vol%. The −22 μm PSD BJAM material exhibited the best impact toughness of all three PSDs across the entire test temperature range from 25 to 400 °C, and also exhibited an ambient temperature impact toughness of 10.9 J at a hardness of 46 HRC, equivalent to minimum threshold requirements for premium grade H13. However, all three BJAM PSDs exhibited moderately lower impact toughness than premium grade wrought H13 from RT to 400 °C. We attribute this in part due to the very large prior-austenite grain (PAG) sizes near 400 μm and segregation from former liquid channels leading to greater amounts of carbide precipitation on PAG boundaries. Technical pathways for optimizing processing and chemistry of BJAM H13 to further improve impact toughness are discussed.

Binder jet additive manufacturing↗

DOE OSTI2025

What is the Quark-Gluon Plasma made of?

This article surveys our present understanding of the internal structure of the fully developed quark-gluon plasma at temperatures outside the crossover region. The theoretical part of the review covers perturbative and nonperturbative approaches to quark-gluon plasma structure, in particular, hard-thermal loop effective theory, lattice QCD and the functional renormalization group. The phenomenological part of the review scrutinizes the information that has been derived from bulk observables and hard probes in relativistic heavy ion collisions in terms of how it informs our knowledge about the structure of the quark-gluon plasma. The final section lists possible avenues for future progress.

FOS: Physical sciences↗

DOE OSTI2026

Techno-Economic Evaluation of a 600MW Pumped Storage Hydropower Plant using the Pumped Storage Hydropower Valuation Tool

This paper presents a techno-economic evaluation of the proposed 600 MW, 8-hour Craig – Hayden pumped storage hydropower project using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pumped Storage Hydropower Valuation Tool. The analysis integrates plant technical characteristics, regional grid conditions, and market-based operating assumptions to quantify stacked value streams from energy arbitrage, capacity, ancillary services, transmission congestion relief, and reliability. Both price taker and price influencer frameworks are applied to examine the impact of market participation and system interactions on lifecycle economic performance using Benefit - Cost Analysis and Multi - Criteria Decision Analysis. The results show that the price taker approach provides higher revenue estimates based on exogenous price signals, while the price influencer approach captures production cost savings, renewable curtailment reduction, and market price formation, yielding more conservative but system-representative outcomes. The study demonstrates the strategic value of long-duration PSH for enhancing operational flexibility, resource adequacy, and grid reliability in a high-renewable Western Interconnection.

Bhattacharyya, Arjun [ORNL] (ORCID:000900060976046↗

DOE OSTI2026

Divergent carbon use efficiency-growth rate tradeoff in popular biological growth models

Carbon use efficiency (CUE) is an important trait emerging from processes regulating biological growth. CUE can be computed either based on the growth of structural biomass or total biomass divided by substrate uptake rate. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics and observations suggest that, for an exponentially growing population of cells, structural biomass CUE should first increase, then peak, and finally decrease with specific growth rate; meanwhile, total biomass CUE increases asymptotically with specific growth rate. We compared predictions from six popular models that are often used for plant and microbial growth in existing ecosystem models. We found that, for an exponentially growing population of biological cells, (1) the source-driven Pirt and Compromise models predict that structural biomass CUE increase asymptotically with growth rate; (2) the apparent sink-driven modified Droop model predicts that structural biomass CUE decreases with growth rate; and (3) the sink-driven variable internal storage model and two dynamic energy budget models predict that structural biomass CUE first increases, then peaks, and finally decreases with growth rate. Moreover, the modified Droop model predicts that total biomass CUE is constant with growth rate, while all other five models predict that total biomass CUE increases with growth rate asymptotically. For non-exponential biological growth, we show that there is no static relationship between total biomass CUE or structural biomass CUE with respect to either growth rate or temperature. Therefore, we contend that biological growth models should explicitly represent interactions between substrate acquisition, substate transformation, and maintenance respiration to better capture observed CUE dynamics, and the sink-driven model should be preferred for general ecosystem biogeochemistry modeling.

Tang, Jinyun [Lawrence Berkeley National Laborator↗

DOE OSTI2026

Laser–plasma amplification of an ultrabroadband laser pulse to 0.3 TW

Producing on-target laser intensities much greater than 10 23 W cm −2 with current laser technologies is a roadblock to accessing new regimes of physics such as strong-field quantum electrodynamics. Laser–plasma amplifiers show promise to realize these intensities by augmenting the final amplifier and compressor in traditional chirped-pulse-amplification architectures with a plasma-based amplification and compression stage that operates at a much higher damage threshold. Here we demonstrate amplification of an ultrabroadband (>60 nm) pulse in a laser–plasma Raman amplifier. We directly amplified seed intensities up to 3.7 × 10 15 W cm −2 and measured efficiencies up to 8.7%. Single-shot SPIDER measurements show a factor-of-2 reduction in the amplified pulse duration with final powers up to 0.3 TW, a 10× improvement over previous results. Final pulse durations of 64 fs are measured. Energy transfers greater than 220 mJ from the picosecond pump into the seed result in a 30× energy amplification of a 7.6 mJ seed. These results set the stage for a compact plasma afterburner based on Raman amplification that could extend the scientific capability of existing petawatt-class laser facilities to enable experiments at the intensity frontier.

Shaw, J. L. [Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States↗

DOE OSTI2026

Control Room of the Future Testbed Workshop – After-Action Report

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity is supporting a one-year, multi-laboratory effort to define the needs and requirements for a Control Room of the Future testbed, or CROFT. The effort responds to increasing grid complexity driven by large new loads, dynamic generation resources, and the growing adoption of advanced technologies and tools, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). To support safe, secure, and effective grid modernization, CROFT will focus on how emerging technologies and tools can be rigorously evaluated in realistic operational settings, with attention to human-machine interaction, cognitive load, and workforce readiness. The project team includes Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, National Laboratory of the Rockies, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. As part of the scoping effort, the team conducted two industry-focused workshops: one at DTECH on February 5, 2026, informed by prior industry interviews, and a second on May 4, 2026, adjacent to IEEE T&D. These engagements brought together utilities, vendors, consultants, national laboratories, academia, and government stakeholders to identify and prioritize use cases, barriers, validation needs, data-sharing constraints, and near- and longer-term requirements. This feedback will directly inform CROFT’s architecture and research focus areas, ensuring the testbed is grounded in real-world operational needs and designed to evaluate emerging technologies and tools in realistic control-room environments.

artificial intelligence↗

DOE OSTI2026

Power Lane County Electric Grid Handbook

In 2024, Lane Couty was selected to participate in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy to Community program. Through the program, National Laboratory researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the National Laboratory of the Rockies provide three years of technical assistance to Lane County and their project partners: the Center for Rural Livelihoods, Springfield Utility Board, and Emerald People’s Utility District. The project, named Power Lane County, aims to improve local electric system affordability, reliability and resilience in the face of natural hazards and potentially rising loads. The Power Lane County Electric Grid Handbook establishes a foundational understanding of the energy landscape and electric grid in Lane County to inform community engagement, education, and analysis in future project phases. This document synthesizes public data and utility and stakeholder engagement, including utility interviews to give the reader a comprehensive view of the challenges facing Lane County's electric system and the opportunities to address them

Electricity↗

DOE OSTI2021

Tradeoffs and Synergies in Tropical Forest Root Traits and Dynamics for Nutrient and Water Acquisition: Field and Modeling Advances

Vegetation processes are fundamentally limited by nutrient and water availability, the uptake of which is mediated by plant roots in terrestrial ecosystems. While tropical forests play a central role in global water, carbon, and nutrient cycling, we know very little about tradeoffs and synergies in root traits that respond to resource scarcity. Tropical trees face a unique set of resource limitations, with rock-derived nutrients and moisture seasonality governing many ecosystem functions, and nutrient versus water availability often separated spatially and temporally. Root traits that characterize biomass, depth distributions, production and phenology, morphology, physiology, chemistry, and symbiotic relationships can be predictive of plants’ capacities to access and acquire nutrients and water, with links to aboveground processes like transpiration, wood productivity, and leaf phenology. In this review, we identify an emerging trend in the literature that tropical fine root biomass and production in surface soils are greatest in infertile or sufficiently moist soils. We also identify interesting paradoxes in tropical forest root responses to changing resources that merit further exploration. For example, specific root length, which typically increases under resource scarcity to expand the volume of soil explored, instead can increase with greater base cation availability, both across natural tropical forest gradients and in fertilization experiments. Also, nutrient additions, rather than reducing mycorrhizal colonization of fine roots as might be expected, increased colonization rates under scenarios of water scarcity in some forests. Efforts to include fine root traits and functions in vegetation models have grown more sophisticated over time, yet there is a disconnect between the emphasis in models characterizing nutrient and water uptake rates and carbon costs versus the emphasis in field experiments on measuring root biomass, production, and morphology in response to changes in resource availability. Closer integration of field and modeling efforts could connect mechanistic investigation of fine-root dynamics to ecosystem-scale understanding of nutrient and water cycling, allowing us to better predict tropical forest-climate feedbacks.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2026

Scan‐Path‐ and Initial‐State‐Dependent Superdomain Switching in (111)‐Oriented PZT

Polarization switching in ferroelectric materials arises from the collective evolution of complex domain hierarchies, yet deterministic control over these processes remains challenging. Here, we investigate scan-path- and initial-state-dependent switching in epitaxial (111)-oriented PbZr 0.2 Ti 0.8 O 3 thin films using automated AFM-based writing combined with quantitative 3D piezoresponse force microscopy. We show that the scan trajectory acts as an experimentally accessible control parameter for superdomain formation. Box-in-box raster scans reproducibly stabilize ordered stripe superdomains with a reduced subset of symmetry-allowed variants, whereas spiral trajectories generate frustrated mixed-variant states with a broader distribution of final microstructures. Automated pulsing experiments further show that the local superdomain configuration at the nucleation site strongly influences the final written morphology. Phase-field modeling qualitatively reproduces the contrast between representative initial-state geometries and supports the role of compatibility constraints among competing ferroelastic pathways. These findings establish scan-path and initial-state engineering as practical handles to program ferroic order in hierarchical ferroelectric domain structures.

Vasudevan, Rama K. [Oak Ridge National Laboratory ↗

DOE OSTI2026

SENTRA: A Modular Computational Graph Framework for Critical Mineral and Materials Supply Chains: Part I: Network Construction Latent-Quantity Estimation, and Temporal Graph Forecasting

Global supply chains for critical minerals and materials are complex, evolving networks of countries, products, production stages, and trade relationships. Existing analytical approaches are limited by fragmented data and static network representations that do not capture the dynamic production dependencies linking raw materials, intermediate products, and final goods across multiple countries. Trade and production statistics provide only a partial view of domestic production, inventories, and material flows, making it difficult to identify indirect sourcing pathways, hidden dependencies, and embedded foreign exposures. This paper introduces the Supply Chain Exposure Network Tracking and Risk Assessment (SENTRA) framework, a modular graph-based computational framework for constructing, analyzing, and forecasting dynamic supply chain networks. As the first paper in a three-part methodological series, it establishes the computational foundation of SENTRA by constructing a temporal attributed multi-relational graph whose nodes represent product–country pairs and whose edges encode observed trade and within-country value-chain relationships. Statistical estimation and constrained optimization recover latent production, final demand, and product input dependency coefficients while enforcing economic accounting constraints. Graph-derived exposure measures quantify direct, transshipment, value-chain, and multi-hop supply chain dependencies independently of the forecasting model. A temporal graph forecasting architecture based on a relational graph neural network then forecasts the evolution of the graph under mass-balance constraints with distribution-free conformal uncertainty quantification. Validation on the global aluminum supply chain shows that the learned graph representations recover economically meaningful supply chain structure, accurately forecast out-of-sample trade relationships, and produce well-calibrated prediction intervals. Subsequent papers apply this computational foundation to exposure assessment, disruption analysis, and scenario-based policy analysis, and extend the framework to multimaterial supply chain modeling and decision support.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2026

Biochemical approaches for synthesis of performance-advantaged polymers from lignocellulosic biomass

Lignocellulose is an abundant renewable feedstock for production of sustainable fuels, chemicals, and materials. The structural complexity of lignocellulose provides key material properties and inspires the design of advanced materials. However, this same complexity also presents challenges for conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into new materials with consistent properties. Conventional physical and chemical strategies for valorization of biomass to new materials are often limited by the technical challenges of precisely manipulating complex feedstocks, sensitivity to feedstock variability, and associated costs. In contrast, biological approaches are capable of selectively manipulating complex architectures under mild conditions. Recent advances demonstrate the potential of biological and hybrid biochemical methods to tailor biomass-derived polymers and generate new materials. This review provides an overview of biological strategies to valorize lignocellulosic biomass into novel materials, highlighting approaches for in planta engineering, biochemical modification of natural biomass polymers, microbial funneling of deconstructed biomass, and direct biosynthesis of novel polymers. In combination, these approaches open new avenues for the synthesis of performance-advantaged materials from lignocellulosic biomass.

Qian, Liangyu [ORNL] (ORCID:0009000212029938)↗

DOE OSTI2026

Scalable slot-die coating of phyllosilicate membranes for selective ion separations

Abstract Two-dimensional (2D) materials have recently drawn attention as candidate materials for molecular-scale membrane separations due to their tunable nanoscale interlayer properties. Phyllosilicates, a broad class of naturally abundant 2D clay minerals, offer significant advantages over synthetic 2D materials, including low cost, stability, and environmental compatibility. While these properties make phyllosilicates attractive for industrial-scale nanofiltration applications, phyllosilicate-based membranes have, to date, only been fabricated at the lab scale via vacuum filtration. Scalable fabrication methods are essential to advance the technical maturity of phyllosilicate membranes and bring these promising materials closer to large-scale adoption. Herein, we have successfully scaled up phyllosilicate (vermiculite) membrane fabrication via slot-die coating and roll-to-roll coating of an ethylenediamine–vermiculite (EDAVM) mixture onto nylon. The coated membranes are 1–2 μm $ \unicode{x03BC} \mathrm{m} $ mu m in thickness and exhibit similar structure and performance to vacuum-filtered EDAVM membranes. The membranes also show selectivity for monovalent ions over multivalent ions in binary salt mixtures. This work represents a major step toward scaling up phyllosilicate membranes for industrial ion separation applications such as resource recovery from water.

Booth, Austin [Princeton University]↗