The overall objective of this two phase program is to investigate the use of dry carbon-based sorbents for mercury control. This information is important to the utility industry in anticipation of pending regulations. During Phase I, a bench-scale field test device that can be configured as an electrostatic precipitator, a pulse-jet baghouse, or a reverse-gas baghouse has been designed, built and integrated with an existing pilot-scale facility at PSCo`s Comanche Station. Up to three candidate sorbents will be injected into the flue gas stream upstream of the test device to and mercury concentration measurements will be made to determine the mercury removal efficiency for each sorbent. During the Phase II effort, component integration for the most promising dry sorbent technology shall be tested at the 5000 acfm pilot-scale.

The Nevada Test Site became the nation`s continental nuclear weapons test site on January 11, 1951. Over the years, the Nevada Operations Office (Nevada) built an extensive infrastructure to support and conduct nuclear tests at the site and in Las Vegas. Roads, housing, test towers, electrical systems, and water systems are just a few of the construction projects that have been required by the Site`s nuclear testing mission. Nuclear testing continued through 1992. A presidential decision directive issued in October that year stopped testing but required Nevada to conduct and experimental program and maintain a readiness posture to resume nuclear testing within 6 months through fiscal year 1995. The directive further required that, beginning with fiscal year 1996, Nevada maintain a 2-3 year readiness posture. This change in Nevada`s mission coupled with Department downsizing requires that only cost effective projects with defined mission needs be undertaken. Although Nevada has changed and rescoped some construction projects in response to the changing Test Site mission, there are two projects, one underway and one planned, that contain unneeded overlap of capability. Specifically, the audit identified two electrical system projects that provided unnecessary duplicate capability at a cost of about $1.35 million. Management concurred …

We have used a two-step (low and high temperature) strain-annealing process to evolve the grain boundary character distribution (GBCD) in fully recrystallized oxygen-free electronic (OFE) Cu bar that was forged and rolled. Orientation imaging microscopy has been used to characterize the GBCD after each step in the processing. The fraction of special grain boundaries was {similar_to}70% in the starting recrystallized material. Three different processing conditions were employed: high, moderate, and low temperature. The high-temperature process resulted in a reduction in the fraction of special GBs while both the lower temperature processes resulted in an increase in special fraction up to 85%. Further, the lower temperature processes resulted in average deviation angles from exact misorientation, for special boundaries, that were significantly smaller than observed from the high temperature process. Results indicate the importance of the low temperature part of the two-step strain-annealing process in preparing the microstructure for the higher temperature anneal and commensurate increase in the special fraction.