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At least 19 records

An “EPIIC” Vision to Evolve Project Integration, Innovation, and Collaboration with Broad Impact for How NASA Executes Complex Projects

Evolving Project Integration, Innovation, and Collaboration (EPIIC) is a vision defined to transform the way projects manage information to support real-time decisions, capture best practices and lessons learned, perform assessments, and manage risk across a portfolio of projects. The foundational project management needs for data and information will be revolutionized through innovations on how we manage and access that data, implement configuration control, and certify compliance. The embedded intelligence of new interactive data interfaces integrate technical and programmatic data such that near real time analytics can be accomplished to more efficiently and accurately complete systems engineering and project management tasks. The system-wide data analytics that are integrated into customized data interfaces allows the growing team of engineers and managers required to develop and implement major NASA missions the ability to access authoritative source(s) of system information while greatly reducing the labor required to complete system assessments. This would allow, for example, much of what is accomplished in a scheduled design review to take place as needed, between any team members, at any time. An intelligent data interface that rigorously integrates systems engineering and project management information in near real time can provide substantially greater insight for systems engineers, project managers, and the large diverse teams required to complete a complex project. System engineers, programmatic personnel (those who focus on cost, schedule, and risk), the technical engineering disciplines, and project management can realize immediate benefit from the shared vision described herein. Implementation of the vision also enables significant improvements in the performance of the engineered system being developed.

Moreland, Robert J.↗

Airspace Systems Program: Next Generation Air Transportation System Concepts and Technology Development FY2010 Project Plan Version 3.0

This document describes the FY2010 plan for the management and execution of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) Concepts and Technology Development (CTD) Project. The document was developed in response to guidance from the Airspace Systems Program (ASP), as approved by the Associate Administrator of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), and from guidelines in the Airspace Systems Program Plan. Congress established the multi-agency Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) in 2003 to develop a vision for the 2025 Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and to define the research required to enable it. NASA is one of seven agency partners contributing to the effort. Accordingly, NASA's ARMD realigned the Airspace Systems Program in 2007 to "directly address the fundamental research needs of the Next Generation Air Transportation System...in partnership with the member agencies of the JPDO." The Program subsequently established two new projects to meet this objective: the NextGen-Airspace Project and the NextGen-Airportal Project. Together, the projects will also focus NASA s technical expertise and world-class facilities to address the question of where, when, how and the extent to which automation can be applied to moving aircraft safely and efficiently through the NAS and technologies that address optimal allocation of ground and air technologies necessary for NextGen. Additionally, the roles and responsibilities of humans and automation influence in the NAS will be addressed by both projects. Foundational concept and technology research and development begun under the NextGen-Airspace and NextGen-Airportal projects will continue. There will be no change in NASA Research Announcement (NRA) strategy, nor will there be any change to NASA interfaces with the JPDO, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Research Transition Teams (RTTs), or other stakeholders

Kopardekar, Parimal H.↗

Towards precise and accurate calculations of neutrinoless double-beta decay

We present the results of a National Science Foundation Project Scoping Workshop, the purpose of which was to assess the current status of calculations for the nuclear matrix elements governing neutrinoless double-beta decay and determine if more work on them is required. After reviewing important recent progress in the application of effective field theory, lattice quantum chromodynamics, and ab initio nuclear-structure theory to double-beta decay, we discuss the state of the art in nuclear-physics uncertainty quantification and then construct a roadmap for work in all these areas to fully complement the increasingly sensitive experiments in operation and under development. The roadmap includes specific projects in theoretical and computational physics as well as the use of Bayesian methods to quantify both intra- and inter-model uncertainties. Here, the goal of this ambitious program is a set of accurate and precise matrix elements, in all nuclei of interest to experimentalists, delivered together with carefully assessed uncertainties. Such calculations will allow crisp conclusions from the observation or non-observation of neutrinoless double-beta decay, no matter what new physics is at play.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

RADIANCE Cybersecurity Plan: Generic Version

Under its Grid Modernization Initiative, the U.S. Department of Energy(DOE),in collaboration with energy industry stakeholders developed a multi-year research plan to support modernizing the electric grid. One of the foundational projects for accelerating modernization efforts is information and communications technology interoperability. A key element of this project has been the development of a methodology for engaging ecosystems related to grid integration to create roadmaps that advance the ease of integration of related smart technology. This document is the product of activities undertaken in 2017 through 2019.It provides a Cybersecurity Plan describing the technology to be adopted in the project with details as per the GMLC Call document.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

RADIANCE Cybersecurity Plan: Generic Version

Under its Grid Modernization Initiative, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in collaboration with energy industry stakeholders developed a multi-year research plan to support modernizing the electric grid. One of the foundational projects for accelerating modernization efforts is information and communications technology interoperability. A key element of this project has been the development of a methodology for engaging ecosystems related to grid integration to create roadmaps that advance the ease of integration of related smart technology. This document is the product of activities undertaken in 2017 through 2019. It provides a Cybersecurity Plan describing the technology to be adopted in the project with details as per the GMLC Call document.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

RADIANCE: Cyber Vulnerabilities and Mitigations Related to Communication Protocols Found in Energy Delivery Systems

Under its Grid Modernization Initiative, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in collaboration with energy industry stakeholders, developed a multi-year research plan to support modernizing the electric grid. One of the foundational projects for accelerating modernization efforts is information and communications technology interoperability. A key element of this project has been the development of a methodology for engaging ecosystems related to grid integration to create roadmaps that advance the ease of integration of related smart technology. This document provides an overview of cybersecurity issues and mitigations available for communications protocols used in energy delivery systems.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Experiences with SYCL on AMD GPUs with Kokkos

With the recent diversification of the hardware landscape in the high-performance computing (HPC) community, performance-portability solutions are becoming more and more important. One of the most popular choices is Kokkos, which recently became a Linux Foundation project. Most of its development is supported by the US Department of Energy and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. Kokkos is implemented as a C++ library with multiple backends to support CPUs as well as various GPU architectures. These backends include OpenMP, CUDA, HIP, and also SCYL. This approach enables users to leverage the preferred vendor toolchain for the respective platform (e.g. CUDA, ROCm, OneAPI). The SYCL backend is used to target Intel GPUs, in particular to support the Aurora exascale supercomputer. However, SYCL itself also offers a large degree of portability, and in fact Kokkos’ CI for SYCL has been running on NVIDIA hardware due to a lack of access to Intel GPUs. In this report, we describe our experience with using Kokkos SYCL backend on AMD GPUs targeting the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The two major SYCL implementations are DPC++ and AdaptiveCpp. While the Kokkos SYCL backend has been implemented using the former, the latter was the first implementation to target AMD GPUs. We will discuss the experience with both of these SYCL implementations in terms of functionality and performance. Using Kokkos to evaluate SYCL toolchains has a number of benefits. Kokkos’ use of SYCL is fairly complex, exercising features such as graphs, relocatable device functions, atomics – including for non-arithmetic types, as well as pinned and page migratable memory allocations. Kokkos also needs to implement capabilities such as Kokkos’ hierarchical parallelism that are not a straight-forward mapping to SYCL capabilities. Furthermore, a large number of libraries and applications that represent diverse use cases are implemented in Kokkos, providing readily available test cases for a toolchain evaluation. Preliminary results show that support for AMD GPUs in DPC++ is much less mature than for NVIDIA GPUs or Intel GPUs. While the situation has improved significantly over the last year, we still encounter many runtime failures, dispatching problems, and code generation issues. With AdaptiveCpp the challenges arise even earlier in the evaluation process. Since Kokkos’ SYCL implementation is largely focused on supporting Intel GPUs, we opted to leverage SYCL extensions which are available in DPC++ but not in AdaptiveCpp. Furthermore, AdaptiveCpp appears to be less conformant with the SYCL2020 standard which Kokkos relies on. In some cases, we are able to work around the lack of feature support, in other cases we have to disable certain Kokkos capabilities to evaluate the toolchain. Our evaluation will leverage Kokkos’ unit tests to establish basic functionality and feature completeness. We then use simple benchmarks for components of a CG implementation as a measure of usability and performance of the SYCL toolchains.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

CERES S’COOL Project Update: The Evolution and Value of a Long-Running Education Project With a Foundation in NASA Earth Science Missions

In January 1997, the Students’ Cloud Observations On-Line (S’COOL; http://scool.larc.nasa.gov) Project began with NASA scientists visiting rural Gloucester, Virginia to observe clouds with middle school students. In the 19 years since, this educational outreach component of NASA’s Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) mission has collected ~141,000 observations from every continent and ocean basin around the world. Thousands of students and teachers have directly engaged in S’COOL. Beginning in 2008 we invited citizen scientists to participate as well. Over time S’COOL has added more components that engage participants directly with science data analysis, continuing direct ties to CERES research. Whenever possible, the S’COOL team extracts corresponding subsets of CERES data, which are sent to the participant to analyze. Observations can now be matched to images and cloud retrievals from MODIS and measurements from CALIPSO. To date, more than half of S'COOL observation reports correspond to one (or more) CERES overpasses. Comparisons with CERES geostationary satellite cloud retrievals were recently added, making cloud observations at almost any time of day over non-polar regions useful for validation. A thorough analysis of co-located S’COOL and satellite data was conducted during summer 2015. Results show that the S’COOL community provides high quality observations offering useful insights on the strengths and shortcomings of passive cloud remote sensing from space. This reconfirmed the utility of S’COOL observations to the scientific community and provides observers with deeper insight into the challenges associated with validation of space-based cloud property retrievals.

Lin H Chambers↗

TPCpp-10M: Simulated proton-proton collisions in a time projection chamber for AI foundation models

Scientific foundation models hold great promise for advancing nuclear and particle physics by improving analysis precision and accelerating discovery. Yet, progress in this field is often limited by the lack of openly available large scale datasets, as well as standardized evaluation tasks and metrics. Furthermore, the specialized knowledge and software typically required to process particle physics data pose significant barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration with the broader machine learning community. This work introduces a large, openly accessible dataset of 10 million simulated proton-proton collisions, designed to support self-supervised training of foundation models. To facilitate ease of use, the dataset is provided in a common NumPy format. In addition, it includes 70,000 labeled examples spanning three well defined downstream tasks: track finding, particle identification, and noise tagging, to enable systematic evaluation of the foundation model's adaptability. The simulated data are generated using the Pythia Monte Carlo event generator at a center of mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV and processed with Geant4 to include realistic detector conditions and signal emulation in the sPHENIX Time Projection Chamber at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, located at Brookhaven National Laboratory. This dataset resource establishes a common ground for interdisciplinary research, enabling machine learning scientists and physicists alike to explore scaling behaviors, assess transferability, and accelerate progress toward foundation models in nuclear and high energy physics. The complete simulation and reconstruction chain is reproducible with the sPHENIX software stack. All data and code locations are provided under Data Accessibility.

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability (physics↗

Project Integration Architecture as a Foundation for Autonomous Solution Systems: The Postulation of a Meaningful "SolveYourself" Method

The Project Integration Architecture (PIA) uses object-oriented technology to implement self-revelation and semantic infusion through class derivation. That is, the kind of an object can be discovered through program inquiry and the well-known, well-defined meaning of that object can be utilized as a result of that discovery. This technology has already been demonstrated by the PIA effort in its parameter object classes. It is proposed that, by building on this technology, an autonomous, automatic, goal-seeking, solution system may be devised.

Jones, William Henry↗

Electronic document distribution: Design of the anonymous FTP Langley Technical Report Server

An experimental electronic dissemination project, the Langley Technical Report Server (LTRS), has been undertaken to determine the feasibility of delivering Langley technical reports directly to the desktops of researchers worldwide. During the first six months, over 4700 accesses occurred and over 2400 technical reports were distributed. This usage indicates the high level of interest that researchers have in performing literature searches and retrieving technical reports at their desktops. The initial system was developed with existing resources and technology. The reports are stored as files on an inexpensive UNIX workstation and are accessible over the Internet. This project will serve as a foundation for ongoing projects at other NASA centers that will allow for greater access to NASA technical reports.

Nelson, Michael L.↗

Final Technical Report for DE-SC0022206

This project developed foundational genetic, genomic, and epigenetic tools for anaerobic fungi (Neocallimastigomycota), a group of microorganisms with exceptional natural abilities to deconstruct lignocellulosic biomass. Efficient biomass deconstruction remains a major barrier to economical production of renewable fuels, chemicals, and materials from agricultural and forestry residues. The project sought to enable mechanistic studies and future engineering of anaerobic fungi by improving genomic resources, establishing methods for gene expression, and investigating epigenetic regulation of biomass-degrading pathways. Major accomplishments included generation of the first chromosome-scale genome assemblies for multiple anaerobic fungal species, providing publicly available genomic resources that support both engineering and fundamental biological research. The project established the first reproducible system for heterologous gene expression in anaerobic fungi and identified genomic features and mobile genetic elements that may support future development of stable transformation technologies. In parallel, the project demonstrated direct conversion of untreated lignocellulosic biomass into fuels and specialty chemicals through a fungal-yeast bioprocess and identified anaerobic fungal enzymes with utility for metabolic engineering. The research also revealed that epigenetic regulation plays an important role in controlling fungal gene expression and enzyme production, identifying potential strategies for enhancing biomass degradation. Collectively, this work established anaerobic fungi as a tractable emerging platform for bioenergy and biomanufacturing research, generated valuable public resources, trained the next generation of researchers, and advanced DOE-BER goals related to predictive biology, sustainable bioprocessing, and the circular bioeconomy.

Solomon, Kevin [University of Delaware] (ORCID:000↗

Phylogenomic discovery and engineering of nitrogen fixation into the bioenergy woody crop poplar

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is a key process enabling plants in specific lineages to convert atmospheric dinitrogen (N₂) into bioavailable ammonia through symbioses with diazotrophic microbes. Expanding this capability beyond native nitrogen-fixing clades into non-nodulating crops would reduce synthetic fertilizer use, lowering energy inputs and environmental impacts in agriculture. Supported by DOE Funding Award DE-SC0018247, the NitFix project advanced foundational knowledge required to engineer root-nodule symbioses in new host species. The team generated the most comprehensive phylogenomic analysis to date of all known nodulating lineages, resolving the evolutionary history of nitrogen-fixing symbiosis and identifying core gene suites retained across nodulating taxa. Through multimodal genomics, transcriptomics, and functional analyses in Medicago truncatula and related species, the project mapped regulatory networks underlying nodule organogenesis, bacterial infection, and nitrogen-fixation efficiency. Key discoveries include the identification of conserved signaling modules for rhizobial recognition, transcription factors controlling nodule differentiation, and metabolic pathways integrating fixed nitrogen into plant growth. The project also developed enabling tools—including optimized transformation pipelines, gene-editing workflows, and imaging-based phenotyping—to accelerate engineering efforts in emerging models. Together, these results refine the mechanistic framework of symbiotic nitrogen fixation and highlight transferable components essential for rewiring these traits into non-nodulating crops.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Hydropower Geotechnical Foundations: Current Practice and Innovation Opportunities for Low-Head Applications

Hydropower is a renewable energy resource that produces electricity from flowing water under pressure. Engineered hydropower structures, such as dams, are used to create a hydraulic head, enabling a turbinegenerator unit to convert pressurized flow into electricity. While hydropower has been a source of renewable energy since antiquity, new development in the United States has slowed in recent decades. Based on recent resource assessments, the largest opportunity to expand hydropower in the United States is from new stream-reach development (i.e., new hydropower development along stream-reaches that do not currently have hydroelectric facilities or other forms of infrastructure, such as dams). Roughly 75% of identified new stream-reach development potential is from low-head sites (less than 30 ft of head), which typically suffer from smaller power densities and higher normalized costs, given economies of scale. Hydropower developers and other stakeholders are thus interested in strategies to reduce initial capital costs while practicing sustainable development to maximize environmental compatibility with minimal disruption to natural aquatic life, sediment, and water flows. Historically, civil works have represented a significant cost driver for new hydropower development, with the foundation system representing a major cost component and source of uncertainty. The foundation system is the collection of engineered structural features (e.g. cutoff trenches, walls, grouting, anchors) constructed at or below the preconstruction ground surface that interfaces between the overlying structures (superstructures) and the bed material below (subsurface). Development of a hydropower foundation system must consider the various characteristics of the surrounding stream environment and subsurface while adhering to the engineering requirements of the superstructure that it supports. The care of water, excavation, and other construction activities are important features of foundation design and construction. The design and construction cost of the foundation system is largely dependent on the site geology and riverbed composition and is influenced by the level of geotechnical assessment required and conducted. Thus, a hydropower facility’s geotechnical foundation is often highly site-specific, with proper site selection and assessment being important to project success. The foundation system is designed to provide structural stability (of the foundation and dam), limit seepage, ensure public safety, and maintain functionality for the project life, during both construction and facility operations. Inadequate foundation or dam design can result in dam failure and the uncontrolled release of significant volumes of water, which could cause a high number of casualties and extensive property damage downstream of the failure. According to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, approximately 30% of all historical dam failures in the United States are attributed to foundation or abutment defects, and another 20% are attributed to piping or seepage through the embankment, foundation, or abutment. To ameliorate these safety considerations, foundations often require massive amounts of construction material (e.g., grout, concrete, engineered dam fill) and long construction times. Foundation design also requires significant analysis prior to construction because the initial in-stream and abutment subsurface conditions are site-specific, and sufficient data for them often are lacking. Current practice requires on-site assessment, using expensive drilling and invasive and non-invasive investigation methods, to determine the expected cost of foundation material and treatment. Additionally, foundation construction often requires site dewatering (and other care of water activities), which involves constructing temporary diversion structures upstream and often downstream, called cofferdams, and water diversion systems that route water around the construction site. Cofferdams and water diversion systems can drastically increase construction costs and contribute to environmental disruption, including modification of flow patterns and benthic habitats. Given the technical, economic, and environmental challenges associated with hydropower foundations, opportunities exist to improve the current state of practice and to develop new and innovative solutions to Hydropower is a renewable energy resource that produces electricity from flowing water under pressure. Engineered hydropower structures, such as dams, are used to create a hydraulic head, enabling a turbinegenerator unit to convert pressurized flow into electricity. While hydropower has been a source of renewable energy since antiquity, new development in the United States has slowed in recent decades. Based on recent resource assessments, the largest opportunity to expand hydropower in the United States is from new stream-reach development (i.e., new hydropower development along stream-reaches that do not currently have hydroelectric facilities or other forms of infrastructure, such as dams). Roughly 75% of identified new stream-reach development potential is from low-head sites (less than 30 ft of head), which typically suffer from smaller power densities and higher normalized costs, given economies of scale. Hydropower developers and other stakeholders are thus interested in strategies to reduce initial capital costs while practicing sustainable development to maximize environmental compatibility with minimal disruption to natural aquatic life, sediment, and water flows. Historically, civil works have represented a significant cost driver for new hydropower development, with the foundation system representing a major cost component and source of uncertainty. The foundation system is the collection of engineered structural features (e.g. cutoff trenches, walls, grouting, anchors) constructed at or below the preconstruction ground surface that interfaces between the overlying structures (superstructures) and the bed material below (subsurface). Development of a hydropower foundation system must consider the various characteristics of the surrounding stream environment and subsurface while adhering to the engineering requirements of the superstructure that it supports. The care of water, excavation, and other construction activities are important features of foundation design and construction. The design and construction cost of the foundation system is largely dependent on the site geology and riverbed composition and is influenced by the level of geotechnical assessment required and conducted. Thus, a hydropower facility’s geotechnical foundation is often highly site-specific, with proper site selection and assessment being important to project success. The foundation system is designed to provide structural stability (of the foundation and dam), limit seepage, ensure public safety, and maintain functionality for the project life, during both construction and facility operations. Inadequate foundation or dam design can result in dam failure and the uncontrolled release of significant volumes of water, which could cause a high number of casualties and extensive property damage downstream of the failure. According to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, approximately 30% of all historical dam failures in the United States are attributed to foundation or abutment defects, and another 20% are attributed to piping or seepage through the embankment, foundation, or abutment. To ameliorate these safety considerations, foundations often require massive amounts of construction material (e.g., grout, concrete, engineered dam fill) and long construction times. Foundation design also requires significant analysis prior to construction because the initial in-stream and abutment subsurface conditions are site-specific, and sufficient data for them often are lacking. Current practice requires on-site assessment, using expensive drilling and invasive and non-invasive investigation methods, to determine the expected cost of foundation material and treatment. Additionally, foundation construction often requires site dewatering (and other care of water activities), which involves constructing temporary diversion structures upstream and often downstream, called cofferdams, and water diversion systems that route water around the construction site. Cofferdams and water diversion systems can drastically increase construction costs and contribute to environmental disruption, including modification of flow patterns and benthic habitats. Given the technical, economic, and environmental challenges associated with hydropower foundations, opportunities exist to improve the current state of practice and to develop new and innovative solutions to challenges frequently encountered with traditional approaches. With this understanding, it is critically important to understand and document the current state of practice for hydropower geotechnical foundations, identify key challenges, and define opportunities for innovative solutions. To this end, this report documents the current state of practice across the three main phases of geotechnical foundation development: (1) geotechnical site assessment, (2) design, and (3) construction for hydropower systems. It also describes the major challenges with conventional approaches and identifies opportunities for innovation to reduce hydropower foundations costs, timelines, and risks. Key takeaways from this report include the following: Approximately 80% of available low-head sites are expected to have foundations on soil beds rather than rock beds, suggesting that rockfill and earthfill dams may be the most cost-effective conventional dam type for new projects.; Geotechnical and geologic investigation activities are time-consuming and expensive but are essential to define the parameters and criteria needed for foundation design.; Certain riverbed soil and bedrock types present significant technical challenges or require expensive foundation construction, which can prove financially prohibitive for low-head project development.; Modular hydropower design and prefabricated modular foundations represent a promising but unproven paradigm for new hydropower development. Design and construction approaches using optimized and highly repeatable, reliable components would benefit project cost, time, and risk but require additional research and development.; Temporary construction features for foundations, including cofferdams, water diversion, and water control systems, can prove costly and have inherent construction risk.; For economically viable development, hydropower geotechnical foundations should be limited to 4 to 15% of the project’s total initial capital costs. Many proposed projects have experienced cost overruns attributable to foundation difficulties or surprises during construction. These overruns may have been due to inadequate investigations, lack of adequate engineering effort to tailor the structures to site geology and topography, and/or contractual terms, among other considerations.; Challenges for hydropower foundations and opportunities for innovative technology solutions are identified in the following areas (consistent with the three main phases of foundation development): Geotechnical site assessment, Foundation design and materials, Construction methods and technology. Ultimately, this report aims to provide information about geotechnical foundations for low-head hydropower and to motivate transformative technologies to support hydropower growth.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Benzene polycarboxylic acids, lignin and hydrolysable lipids data from the whole-soil warming experiment at Blodgett Forest, CA, 2018, from: "Rapid loss of complex polymers and pyrogenic carbon in subsoils under whole soil warming"

This data package contains benzene polycarboxylic acids, lignin and hydrolysable lipids data used for the paper: “Rapid loss of subsoil plant-derived polymers and pyrogenic carbon with whole-soil warming”.On April 2018 (after 4.5 years of warming), we collected soil cores down to 90 cm depth from the whole soil profile warming experiment at the University of California Blodgett Forest Research Station, in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Georgetown, CA at 1370 m above sea level. Cores were collected from 6 experimental plots (three replicated blocks); samples were collected in 10 cm increments from 0 to 90 cm depth. This data package includes a file in .csv format and a file in .xlsx format, which can be accessed and processed using MS Excel or R. Benzene polycarboxylic acid, lignin and hydrolysable lipid concentrations are provided as processed data files.The aim of the measurements was to assess how +4°C of whole-soil warming for 4.5 years will affect structurally complex polymeric compounds at different soil depths. The research was supported by Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) project 172744 (DEEP C) and U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research under contract number DE-AC02-05CH11231.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Energy Efficiency and Performance Evaluation of Self-Contained, Medium Temperature, Reach-In Refrigerated Display Cases

This project was part of an effort by Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) to evaluate the energy and peak demand saving potential of emerging technologies in the Chicago area. This document focuses on the assessment of energy-efficient, medium-temperature, self-contained refrigerated display cases utilizing environmentally friendly refrigerants. The results of this evaluation will be considered by CLEAResult to develop a new energy efficiency rebate measure for ComEd's incentive programs. This rebate measure will become an addition to the Technical Reference Manual (TRM). In 2016, the United Nations passed the Kigali Montreal Protocol Amendment which placed restrictions on certain types of refrigerants. In compliance with this amendment, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed a ban on the manufacture of refrigeration systems using hydrofluorocarbons including R134a starting in January 2020. Although the ban has halted manufacture, the EPA continues to allow the use of these refrigerants. Therefore, it is critical to provide incentives for replacing these refrigerants with other environmentally friendly and energy-efficient alternatives. The energy-efficient refrigerator cases evaluated here (referred to as EE Case A and B) contain environmentally-friendly refrigerants in compliance with the EPA hydrofluorocarbon ban. These consist of natural refrigerant propane (R290), and HFC drop-in hydrofluoroolefin R513a, respectively. These cases also contain other energy-efficient components including efficient lighting, more robust evaporator and condenser fans and different-sized heat exchangers. EE Case A is also built with materials that better insulate the case, which improves energy efficiency. To ascertain the energy efficiency contribution of these design components, the consumption of the evaporator and condenser fan motors, compressor, and lighting/controller were evaluated individually. The medium-temperature, self-contained reach-in refrigerated display case was selected due to its widespread use in convenience stores and small supermarkets. Self-contained refrigeration has also seen increased use in restaurants due to curbside pickup during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this study, the refrigerated display cases' performance was evaluated in a controlled environmental chamber at representative indoor dry-bulb and humidity conditions found in supermarkets within ComEd's service territory climate zone. The test method used in this project was foundationally inspired by the ANSI/ASHRAE 72-2018 method of testing. However, modifications to the ANSI/ASHRAE test methodology were implemented to better represent customer operation of the units. In addition to the indoor supermarket conditions, the cases were also evaluated at the "upper target," or environmental conditions used in ANSI/ASHRAE 72-2018. The case total power and case components were metered to obtain their daily power (kW) and energy consumption(kWh). The cases were filled with thermal filler mass to replicate thermal mass of product loading. Additionally, product simulators were used to provide product temperature information. Door actuators were mounted to each of the cases' three doors to replicate regular door openings and effects of shopper traffic.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Singlet Fission

This report summarizes key findings from DOE Award DE‑SC0007004 – Singlet Fission, documenting more than a decade of research led by Professor Josef Michl. The project advanced foundational understanding of singlet fission (SF) through integrated synthetic, spectroscopic, crystallographic, and computational studies. Across a diverse set of chromophores—including tetracenes, cibalackrot derivatives, BODIPY dimers, TDPPs, and fluorinated isobenzofurans—the team identified structural and packing features that enable or inhibit SF, clarified the roles of charge‑transfer intermediates and excimer formation, and developed simplified theoretical models and computational screening tools for predicting optimal geometries and excited‑state-energetics. The work significantly broadened design principles for SF‑active materials and provided insights relevant to next‑generation solar energy conversion and molecular photophysics.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗