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The Pennsylvania State University, utilizing funds furnished by the U.S. Department of Energy's Biomass Power Program, investigated the installation of a state-of-the-art circulating fluidized bed boiler at Penn State's University Park campus for cofiring multiple biofuels and other wastes with coal, and developing a test program to evaluate cofiring biofuels and coal-based feedstocks. The study was performed using a team that included personnel from Penn State's Energy Institute, Office of Physical Plant, and College of Agricultural Sciences; Foster Wheeler Energy Services, Inc.; Foster Wheeler Energy Corporation; Parsons Energy and Chemicals Group, Inc.; and Cofiring Alternatives. The activities included assessing potential feedstocks at the University Park campus and surrounding region with an emphasis on biomass materials, collecting and analyzing potential feedstocks, assessing agglomeration, deposition, and corrosion tendencies, identifying the optimum location for the boiler system through an internal site selection process, performing a three circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boiler design and a 15-year boiler plant transition plan, determining the costs associated with installing the boiler system, developing a preliminary test program, determining the associated costs for the test program, and exploring potential emissions credits when using the biomass CFB boiler.

Metals that can sustain plastic deformation homogeneously throughout their bulk tend to be tough and malleable. Often, however, if a metal has been hardened it will no longer deform uniformly. Instead, the deformation occurs in narrow bands on a microscopic scale wherein stresses and strains become concentrated in localized zones. This strain localization degrades the mechanical properties of the metal by causing premature plastic instability failure or by inducing the formation of cracks. Irradiation with neutrons hardens a metal and makes it more prone to deformation by strain localization. Although this has been known since the earliest days of radiation damage studies, a full measure of the connection between neutron irradiation hardening and strain localization is wanting, particularly in commercial alloys used in the construction of nuclear reactors. Therefore, the goal of this project is to systematically map the extent of involvement of strain localization processes in plastic deformation of three reactor alloys that have been neutron irradiated. The deformation processes are to be identified and related to changes in the tensile properties of the alloys as functions of neutron fluence (dose) and degree of plastic strain. The intent is to define the role of strain localization in radiation embrittlement …