The State Heating Oil and Propane Price (SHOPP) survey for the 1993--1994 heating season was conducted by the Pennsylvania Energy Office (PEO) in conjunction with the US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (DOE/EIA). The objective of the program was to collect price information for residential No. 2 heating oil and propane. Prices were to be collected on the first and third Mondays of each month, starting on October 4, 1993, and extending through March 21, 1994. When the survey started on October 4, 1993, the average No. 2 charge price for residential customers was 85.0 cents per gallon. On January 31, the DOE requested that the survey be conducted on a weekly basis. An extended period of extremely cold weather had increased demand for petroleum products. The seasonal high of 94.7 cents was reached on February 14, 1994. The price average declined to 91.8 cents on March 21, at the conclusion of the survey. This was an increase of 8.0 percent for the season. The results of the October 4, 1993, price survey indicated an average unweighted price of 108.9 cents per gallon for a residential customer. The average price rose to 116.2 cents on March 21, for a …

Five diaphragm seal specimens for the W79 retrofit program were welded and burst tested to meet requirements for the Engineering Evaluation (EE). The average burst pressure for these five diaphragm specimens was 11500 psi. All failures greatly exceeded the drawing requirements placed upon the system. After burst testing the specimens, the authors performed scanning electron microscopy on all five specimens to ensure ductile failure and cross-sectioned two specimens to characterize the weld morphology. The metallographic analysis showed these parts to be typical of high quality thin-section weldments. Analysis of heat flow during welding also has been included in this report. Thermal profiles easily meet those required by assembly specifications. Maximum temperatures achieved during welding were 520{degrees}C in the diaphragm area and 80{degrees}C on the bottom of the block.

As fossil fuel reserves run lower and lower, and as their continued widespread use leads toward numerous environmental problems, the need for clean and sustainable energy alternatives becomes ever clearer. Hydrogen fuel holds promise as such as energy source, as it burns cleanly and can be extracted from a number of renewable materials such as municipal solid waste (MSW), which can be considered largely renewable because of its high content of paper and biomass-derived products. A computer model is being developed using ASPEN Plus flow sheeting software to simulate a process which produces hydrogen gas from MSW; the model will later be used in studying the economics of this process and is based on an actual Texaco coal gasification plant design. This paper gives an overview of the complete MSW gasification process, and describes in detail the way in which MSW is modeled by the computer as a process material. In addition, details of the gasifier unit model are described; in this unit modified MSW reacts under pressure with oxygen and steam to form a mixture of gases which include hydrogen.

The ionospheric phenomenon called Equatorial Spread F encompasses a variety of effects associated with plasma irregularities occurring in the post-sunset and nighttime ionosphere near the magnetic equator. These irregularities can seriously degrade the performance of systems which involve either of necessity or inadvertently radio propagation through the equatorial ionosphere. One such system is Over-the-Horizon (OTH) radars which operate in the high-frequency (hf) band and use ionospheric reflection for forward and backscatter propagation to ranges of thousands of kilometers. When such radars are directed towards the equator, Spread F irregularities can cause scintillation effects which may be aliased into the ranges of interest and have the effect of causing, excess clutter in which targets may be hidden. In January, 1994 Los Alamos participated in a campaign to measure Spread F effects on OTH propagation from the United States looking towards South America in conjunction with local diagnostics in Peru. During the campaign Los Alamos fielded a 1600 km bistatic path between Piura, Peru, and Arequipa, Peru-, the one-hop reflection region for this path was near the magnetic equator, We obtained four types of measurements: an oblique ionogram between Piura and Arequipa every three minutes; Doppler spread and spatial correlation for a …

Urban summer daytime temperatures often exceed those of the surrounding rural areas. Summer ``urban heat islands`` are caused by dark roofs and paved surfaces as well as the lack of vegetation. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory are interested in studying the effects of increasing the albedo of roof tops and paved surfaces in order to reduce the impacts of summer urban heat islands. Increasing the albedo of urban surfaces may reduce this heat island effect in two ways, directly and indirectly. The direct effect involves reducing surface temperature and, therefore, heat conduction through the building envelope. This effect of surface albedo on surface temperatures is better understood and has been quantified in several studies. The indirect effect is the impact of high albedo surfaces on the near surface air temperatures. Although the indirect effect has been modeled for the Los Angeles basin by Sailor, direct field observations are required. The objective of this report is to investigate the meso-scale climate of a large high albedo area and identify the effects of albedo on the near surface air temperature. To accomplish this task, data from several surface weather stations at White Sands, New Mexico were analyzed. This report is organized into …

This paper describes recent development of the UEDGE code in three important areas. (1) Non-orthogonal grids allow accurate treatment of experimental geometries in which divertor plates intersect flux surfaces at oblique angles. (2) Radating impurities are included by means of one or more continuity equations that describe transport and sources, and sinks due to ionization and recombination processes. (3) Advanced iterative methods that reduce storage and execution time allow us to find fully converged solutions of larger problems (i.e., finer grids). Sample calculations are presented to illustrate these development.

Under the sponsorship of the US Department of Energy`s (DOE`s) Transportation Management Division (EM-261), the Transportation Technologies Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has designed and developed an expert system prototype application of the hazardous materials transportation regulations. The objective of this task was to provide a proof-of-concept for developing a computerized expert system that will ensure straightforward, consistent, and error-free application of the hazardous materials transportation regulations. The expert system prototype entailed the analysis of what an expert in hazardous materials shipping information could/should do. From the analysis of the different features required for the expert system prototype, it was concluded that the developmental efforts should be directed to a Windows{trademark} 3.1 hypermedia environment. Hypermedia technology usually works as an interactive software system that gives personal computer users the ability to organize, manage, and present information in a number of formats--text, graphics, sound, and full-motion video.