A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "During its downsizing in the early 1990s, the Department of Defense (DOD) did not focus on strategically reshaping its civilian workforce. GAO was asked to address DOD's efforts to strategically plan for its future civilian workforce at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the military services' headquarters, and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). Specifically, GAO determined: (1) the extent to which civilian strategic workforce plans have been developed and implemented to address future civilian workforce requirements, and (2) the major challenges affecting the development and implementation of these plans."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government was involved in about 8.6 million contract actions, including new contract awards, worth over $250 billion in fiscal year 2002. Some of these contracts were awarded to tax haven contractors, that is, U.S. subsidiaries of corporate parents located in tax haven countries. Concerns have been raised that these contractors may have an unfair cost advantage when competing for federal contracts because they are better able to lower their U.S. tax liability by shifting income to the tax haven parent. GAO's objectives in this study were to (1) determine the conditions under which companies with tax haven parents have a tax cost advantage when competing for federal contracts and (2) estimate the number of companies that could have such an advantage. GAO matched federal contractor data with tax and location data for all large corporations, those with at least $10 million in assets, in 2000 and 2001, in order to identify those companies that could have an advantage."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the end of a court-ordered receivership overseeing medical services at the District of Columbia Jail in September 2000, the Department of Corrections (DoC) has contracted with the Center for Correctional Health and Policy Studies, Inc. (CCHPS) to provide inmate medical services. GAO was asked to provide information on (1) the medical services DoC contracted with CCHPS to provide, including CCHPS's monitoring of its services; (2) mechanisms DoC established to oversee CCHPS's services; (3) CCHPS's contract compliance and DoC's efforts to ensure compliance; and (4) the cost of medical services. To collect this information, GAO analyzed documents and interviewed officials from District agencies, CCHPS officials, and an independent reviewer hired by DoC to monitor medical services."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, as implemented by the Coast Guard, calls for owners and operators of about 3,150 port facilities (such as shipping terminals or factories with hazardous materials) and about 9,200 vessels (such as cargo ships, ferries, and tugs and barges) to develop and implement security plans by July 1, 2004. The Coast Guard intends to conduct on-site compliance inspections of all facilities by January 1, 2005, and all vessels by July 1, 2005, to ensure plans are adequately implemented. The Coast Guard estimated the act's security improvements would cost $7.3 billion over 10 years--most of it borne by facility and vessel owners and operators. GAO was asked to assess (1) the progress towards developing, reviewing, and approving plans by July 1, 2004, (2) the Coast Guard's monitoring and oversight strategy for ensuring that plans are implemented, and (3) the accuracy of the Coast Guard's cost estimate."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The transformation of the Government Printing Office (GPO) is under way. This report captures the results of our efforts over the past year to assess and help strengthen GPO's transformation and strategic planning efforts. It is the final part of GAO's response to both a mandate requiring GAO to examine the current state of printing and dissemination of public government information and a congressional request that we conduct a general management review of GPO focusing on that GPO's transformation and management."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Under section 1115 of the Social Security Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services may waive certain Medicaid requirements for states seeking to deliver services through demonstration projects. By policy, these demonstrations must not increase federal spending. GAO has previously reported concerns with HHS's approval process. GAO was asked to provide information on a new Medicaid section 1115 demonstration initiative called Pharmacy Plus, intended to allow states to cover prescription drugs for seniors not otherwise eligible for Medicaid. GAO reviewed the (1) approval status of state proposals, (2) extent to which HHS ensured that demonstrations are budget neutral, (3) basis for savings assumptions, and (4) federal and state steps to evaluate and monitor the demonstrations."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Passenger and freight traffic are expected to grow substantially in the future, generating additional congestion and requiring continued investment in the nation's surface transportation system. Over the past 12 years, the federal government has provided hundreds of billions of dollars for investment in surface transportation projects through the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 and its successor legislation, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. Reauthorization of this legislation is expected to provide hundreds of billions of dollars more in federal funding for surface transportation projects. For this investment to have the greatest positive effect, agencies at all levels of government need to select investments that yield the greatest benefits for a given level of cost. This report provides information about the processes that state and regional transportation decisionmakers use to analyze and select transportation infrastructure investments. GAO identified (1) key federal requirements for planning and deciding on such investments, (2) how benefit-cost analysis facilitates sound decisionmaking, and (3) other factors that decision-makers consider in evaluating and deciding on investments."

The primary accomplishments of the JOI Cooperative Agreement with DOE/NETL in this quarter were that: (1) post-cruise evaluation of the data, tools and measurement systems that were used during ODP Leg 204 continued in the preparation of deliverables under this agreement. Work continued on analyzing data collected during ODP Leg 204 and preparing reports on the outcomes of Phase 1 projects as well as developing plans for Phase 2.

The DOE-sponsored project at the East Binger Unit is an investigation into the benefits of reservoir characterization and horizontal wells in this particular setting of geologic and recovery method. The geologic setting is a tight (average porosity of 7% and average permeability of less than 1 millidarcy) Pennsylvanian-age sandstone at about 10,000 feet, and the recovery method is a miscible nitrogen flood. The projected oil recovery of the East Binger Unit, prior to the initiation of this project, was about 25%. Gravity segregation of nitrogen and crude oil was believed to be the principal cause of the poor sweep efficiency, and it was envisioned that with horizontal producing wells in the lower portion of the reservoir and horizontal injection wells near the top, the process could be converted from a lateral displacement process to a vertical displacement/gravity assisted process. Through the characterization and field development work completed in Budget Periods 1 and 2, Binger Operations, LLC (BOL) has developed a different interpretation of the sweep problem as well as a different approach to improving recovery. The sweep problem is now believed to be one of an areal nature, due to a combination of natural and hydraulic fracturing. Vertical wells have …

Monthly report written by the Texas Daily Newspaper Association's (TDNA's) office manager, Darla Thompson, to Phil Berkebile providing a summary of revenues and account balances, programs, meetings, and other activities in the office during the previous month.

None

This document reviews the work performed during the quarter April-June 2004. Task 1 (Site Preparation) had been completed 2003, along with three weeks of oxycombustion tests in Task 2 (experimental test performance) of the project. In current reporting period, the experimental testing has been completed: one additional week of tests has been performed to finalize the optimization of the combustion characteristics in O{sub 2}/CO{sub 2} environment ; two more days of testing were dedicated to mercury sampling in air-fired or O{sub 2}-fired conditions, and to characterization of heat transfer in O{sub 2} conditions vs. to air-blown conditions. Task 3 (Techno-Economic Study) has also been completed in current quarter: 250MWe, 500MWe and 1000MWe oxygen-fired PC unit have been simulated and quoted, and their performance and cost have been compared to same-capacity air-fired pulverized coal (PC) unit and IGCC. New and retrofit cases have been evaluated. The comparison has been completed in terms of capital cost, operating cost, cost of electricity and cost of CO{sub 2} avoided. The scope of task 4 (Conceptual Boiler Design) had been modified as per DOE request in previous quarter. Engineering calculations are currently in progress. Next steps include detail review of the experimental data collected during …

None

This is the first Quarterly report under DOE Cooperative Agreement No.: DE-FC26-03NT41730. Due a number of circumstances, mostly associated with subcontractor agreements, the actual beginning of the project has been delayed from its original award date of March 5, 2003. DOE's Project Manager has been kept informed (verbally) by PPL's Project Manager throughout this period. Because of this delay, this is the first quarterly report and it refers to the time period from the official project authorization date to June 2004. In addition, this report is essentially a review of the project objectives and approach, with a brief update on the recent ''kick-off'' and site visit activities in the Results and Discussion section.

The primary focus for the project during the quarter was shakedown testing of the large-scale coal preheater prototype in the CBTF with non-caking PRB coal. Additional pilot-scale tests were conducted in the PSCF in support of developing a preheating system design suitable for use with caking coals. Thirty-two additional pilot tests were conducted during the quarter with caking coal. These tests further evaluated the use of the air-bleed and indirect air-cooled liner designs to reduce or eliminate combustor plugging with caking coal. The air-bleed configurations tested used air injection holes perpendicular to the liner's longitudinal axis with the number, size and air flow though the air-bleed holes varied to determine the effect on combustor plugging. The indirect cooling configurations tested included a stainless steel liner with spiral fins in the annular space between the liner and the combustor wall, and a silicon carbide liner without fins. Continuous pilot operation was maintained for up to 30 minutes at a coal feed rate of 50 lb/h with the air-bleed liner. The best result achieved was for the stainless steel indirect air-cooled liner with 20 minutes of continuous operation at 126 lb/h of coal followed by an additional 20 minutes at 150 lb/h. …

During this reporting period, kickoff and planning meetings were held. Subcontracted experimental and modeling tasks were defined. Efforts to address the numerical stability problems that hamper FEM3A's applicability to low wind speed, stable atmospheric conditions were initiated. A detailed review of FEM3A code and its execution, required for development of an accessible user interface, was also begun. A one-day workshop on LNG safety models has been scheduled for September 2004. The goals of this project are to develop a national focal point for LNG safety research and technical dissemination and to develop the FEM3A dispersion model for application to general scenarios involving dispersion problems with obstacle and terrain features of realistic complexity. During this reporting period, the objectives and scope of the project and its constituent tasks were discussed at a project kickoff meeting in Morgantown. Details of the subcontracted experimental and modeling tasks were further defined at a separate meeting at the University of Arkansas. Researchers at the university have begun to modify the turbulence closure model used in FEM3A to insure numerical stability during simulation of low-wind-speed, stable atmospheric conditions. The university's wind tunnel is being prepared for upcoming experimental studies. GTI has begun a detailed review of …

Hydrogen can be produced from many feed stocks including coal. The objectives of this project are to establish and prove a hydrogen production pathway from coal-derived methanol for fuel cell applications. This progress report is the third report submitted to the DOE reporting on the status and progress made during the course of the project. This report covers the time period of April 1-June 30, 2004. This quarter saw progress in five areas. These areas are: (1) External evaluation of coal based methanol and the fuel cell grade baseline fuel, (2) Design, set up and initial testing of the autothermal reactor, (3) Experiments to determine the axial and radial thermal profiles of the steam reformers, (4) Catalyst degradation studies, and (5) Experimental investigations of heat and mass transfer enhancement methods by flow field manipulation. All of the projects are proceeding on or slightly ahead of schedule.

Research is being conducted under United States Department of Energy (DOE) Contract DEFC26-03NT41865 to develop a new technology to achieve very low levels of NOx emissions from pulverized coal fired boiler systems by employing a novel system level integration between the PC combustion process and the catalytic NOx reduction with CO present in the combustion flue gas. The combustor design and operating conditions will be optimized to achieve atypical flue gas conditions. This approach will not only suppress NOx generation during combustion but also further reduce NOx over a downstream catalytic reactor that does not require addition of an external reductant, such as ammonia. This report describes the work performed during the April 1 to June 30, 2004 time period.

None

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed a slurry molding technology for the manufacture of porous, high surface area, carbon fiber composites molecular sieves, and carbon-carbon composite preforms. Potentially, this technology could be applied to the manufacture of a host of novel carbon materials including porous adsorbent carbons, low-pressure drop adsorbent carbon composites, ultra-fine-grained graphite, and carbon fiber reinforced graphite. New opportunities for high surface carbon fiber composite molecular sieve (CFCMS) materials are now emerging. Many of these opportunities are driven by increasingly harsh environmental pressures. Traditional granular activated carbon (GAC) is not suitable for many of these applications because of the difficulties encountered with attrition and in forming ''structures'' which have the necessary mechanical and physical properties. In addition, the electrical desorption of adsorbed species is not possible with GAC due to its low bulk electrical conductivity. Activated carbon fibers have been found to be useful in some applications. Work by ORNL has shown, for example, that CFCMS materials are capable of adsorbing various gases and desorbing them under electrical stimulation. For some applications these fibers have to be formed into a structure that can offer the desired mechanical integrity and pressure drop characteristics. To date, the work …

A pilot carbon dioxide miscible flood was initiated in the Lansing Kansas City C formation in the Hall Gurney Field, Russell County, Kansas. Continuous carbon dioxide injection began on December 2, 2003. By the end of June 2004, 6.26 MM lb of carbon dioxide were injected into the pilot area. Carbon dioxide injection rates averaged about 250 MCFD. Carbon dioxide was detected in one production well near the end of May. The amount of carbon dioxide produced was small during this period. Wells in the pilot area produced 100% water at the beginning of the flood. Oil production began in February, increasing to an average of about 2.5 B/D in May and June. Operational problems encountered during the initial stages of the flood were identified and resolved.

This project develops a new and unique obstacle detection sensor for horizontal directional drilling (HDD) equipment. The development of this new technology will greatly improve the reliability and safety of natural gas HDD construction practices. This sensor utilizes a differential soil impedance measurement technique that will be sensitive to the presence of plastic and ceramic, as well as metallic obstacles. The use of HDD equipment has risen significantly in the gas industry because HDD provides a much more cost-effective and less disruptive method for gas pipe installation than older, trenching methods. However, there have been isolated strikes of underground utilities by HDD equipment, which may have been avoided if methods were available to detect other underground obstacles when using HDD systems. GTI advisors from the gas industry have ranked the value of solving the obstacle detection problem as the most important research and development project for GTI to pursue using Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) funds available through its industry partner, GRI. GTI proposes to develop a prototype down-hole sensor system that is simple and compact. The sensor utilizes an impedance measurement technique that is sensitive to the presence of metallic or nonmetallic objects in the proximity of the HDD …

In this project, now completing its third year of its second renewal period, a collaborative project involving Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the University of North Texas has been addressing outstanding questions regarding the separation of the bulk sodium constituents of alkaline tank waste. The principal potential benefit of this research is a major reduction in the volume of radioactive tank waste, obviating the building of expensive new tanks and reducing the costs of vitrification. As a general approach, principles of ion recognition are being explored toward discovery and basic understanding of liquid-liquid extraction systems that selectively separate sodium hydroxide and sodium salts from waste-like matrices. Questions being addressed pertain to applicable extraction equilibria and how extraction properties relate to extractant structure. Progress has included the elucidation of the promising concept of pseudo hydroxide extraction (PHE), demonstration of crown-ether synergized PHE, demonstration of combined sodium hydroxide/sodium nitrate separation, and synthesis of novel ditopic receptors for ditopic PHE. In future efforts (pending renewal), a thermochemical study of PHE relating extractant acidity to extraction strength is proposed, and this study will be extended to systems containing crown ethers, including proton-ionizable ones. A series of crown ethers will be …

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the role of filtration in maintaining clean heat exchanger coils and overall performance. Combinations of 6 different levels of filtration (MERV 14, 11, 8, 6, 4, and no filter) and 4 different coils (an eight-row lanced-fin coil, HX8L), (an eight-row wavy-fin coil, HX8W), (a four-row lanced-fin coil, HX4L) and (a two-row lanced-fin coil, HX2L) were tested at 4 different air velocities (1.52, 2.03, 2.54,3.05 m/s (300, 400, 500, 600 ft/min)). The fouled conditions were obtained after injection of 600 grams of ASHRAE standard dust upstream of the filter/coil combination. This magnitude of dust is representative of a year of normal operation for an air conditioning system. The air-side pressure drops of the coils and filters and air-side heat transfer coefficients of the coils were determined from the measurements under the clean and fouled conditions. Depending upon the filter and coil test, the coil pressure drops increased in the range of 6%-30% for an air velocity at 2.54 m/s (500 ft/min). The impact was significantly greater for tests performed without a filter. The largest relative effect of fouling on pressure drop occurs for coils with fewer rows and having lanced fins. Coils …