The potential for solr process heat applications for federal buildings in Texas is assessed. The three sites considered are Reese Air Force Base, Lubbock; Fort Bliss, El Paso; and Dyess Air Force Base, Abilene. The application at Lubbock is an electroplating and descaling facility for aircraft maintenance. The one at El Paso is a laundry facility. The Abilene system would use solar heat to preheat boiler feedwater makeup for the base hospital boiler plant. The Lubbock site is found to be the most appropriate one for a demonstration plant, with the Abilene site as an alternate. The processes at each site are described. A preliminary evaluation of the potential contribution by solar energy to the electroplating facility at Reese AFB is included. (LEW)

On September 8-9, 2005, representatives of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), the Commodity Credit Corporation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (CCC/USDA), and Argonne National Laboratory met at the KDHE's offices in Topeka to review the status of the CCC/USDA's environmental activities in Kansas. As a result of this meeting, the KDHE recommended several additional activities to augment the CCC/USDA's investigations at Everest, Kansas, and assist in the selection of remedial approaches to be evaluated as part of a Corrective Action Study (CAS) for this site. The requested actions included the following: (1) Construction of several additional interpretive cross sections illustrating the hydrogeologic setting along the apparent main plume migration pathway to the north-northwest of the former CCC/USDA facility, as well as in the vicinity of the Nigh property. (2) Installation of additional permanent monitoring wells, to better constrain the apparent western, northern, and northwestern margins of the existing groundwater plume. (3) Development of technical recommendations for a phased pumping study of the Everest aquifer unit in the area near and to the north of the Nigh property.

This research grant supported the creation and initial development of a new kind of chemical detector; one that can detect species at part per trillion levels because it does not rely on the direct measurement of a species presence; rather, it uses an indirect measurement of the effect of the trace species on the condensation nucleation of a supersaturated vapor. Since this nucleation process is extremely sensitive to the concentrations of certain types of impurities, this nucleation-based detection can be made more sensitive than any current spectroscopic detector.

This quarterly report summarizes work on the following tasks as of September 30, 1982: (1) OTEC pilot plant conceptual design review; (2) OTEC methanol; (3) financial and legal considerations in OTEC implementation; (4) GEOTEC resource exploration at Adak, Alaska, and Lualualei, Hawaii; (5) preliminary GEOTEC plant cost estimates; and (6) supervision of testing of pneumatic wave energy conversion system.

This project addressed two main goals and one much smaller one. The main goals were (1) to improve the significance, reliability and information content in high-resolution NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) characterization of coal samples and (2) to develop chemically informative NMR imaging techniques for coal. The minor goal was to explore advanced features of dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) as a technique for coal characterization; this included the development of two DNP probes and the examination of DNP characteristics of various carbonaceous samples, including coals. {sup 13}C NMR advances for coal depended on large-sample MAS devices, employing either cross-polarization (CP) or direct polarization (DP) approaches. CP and DP spin dynamics and their relationships to quantitation and spin counting were elucidated. {sup 1}H NMR studies, based on CRAMPS, dipolar dephasing and saturation with perdeuteropyridine, led to a {sup 1}H NMR-based elucidation of chemical functionality in coal. {sup 1}H and {sup 13}C NMR imaging techniques, based on magic-angle spinning and rotating magnetic field gradients, were developed for introducing chemical shift information (hence, chemical detail) into the spatial imaging of coal. The TREV multiple-pulse sequence was found to be useful in the {sup 1}H CRAMPS imaging of samples like coal.

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Tundra lakes on the North Slope, Alaska, are an important resource for energy development and petroleum field operations. A majority of exploration activities, pipeline maintenance, and restoration activities take place on winter ice roads that depend on water availability at key times of the winter operating season. These same lakes provide important fisheries and ecosystem functions. In particular, overwintering habitat for fish is one important management concern. This study focused on the evaluation of winter water use in the current field operating areas to provide a better understanding of the current water use practices. It found that under the current water use practices, there were no measurable negative effects of winter pumping on the lakes studied and current water use management practices were appropriately conservative. The study did find many areas where improvements in the understanding of tundra lake hydrology and water usage would benefit industry, management agencies, and the protection of fisheries and ecosystems.

The main objectives of the proposed study are as follows: (1) To understand and evaluate an unusual primary oil production mechanism which results in decreasing (retrograde) oil cut (ROC) behavior as reservoir pressure declines. (2) To improve calculations of initial oil in place so as to determine the economic feasibility of completing and producing a well. (3) To optimize the location of new wells based on understanding of geological and petrophysical properties heterogeneities. (4) To evaluate various secondary recovery techniques for oil reservoirs producing from fractured formations. (5) To enhance the productivity of producing wells by using new completion techniques. These objectives are important for optimizing field performance from West Carney Field located in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. The field, which was discovered in 1980, produces from Hunton Formation in a shallow-shelf carbonate reservoir. The early development in the field was sporadic. Many of the initial wells were abandoned due to high water production and constraints in surface facilities for disposing excess produced water. The field development began in earnest in 1995 by Altex Resources. They had recognized that production from this field was only possible if large volumes of water can be disposed. Being able to dispose large amounts of …