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With the Nation's coal-burning utilities facing tighter controls on mercury pollutants, the U.S. Department of Energy is supporting projects that could offer power plant operators better ways to reduce these emissions at much lower costs. Sorbent injection technology represents one of the simplest and most mature approaches to controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired boilers. It involves injecting a solid material such as powdered activated carbon into the flue gas. The gas-phase mercury in the flue gas contacts the sorbent and attaches to its surface. The sorbent with the mercury attached is then collected by a particle control device along with the other solid material, primarily fly ash. We Energies has over 3,200 MW of coal-fired generating capacity and supports an integrated multi-emission control strategy for SO{sub 2}, NO{sub x} and mercury emissions while maintaining a varied fuel mix for electric supply. The primary goal of this project is to reduce mercury emissions from three 90 MW units that burn Powder River Basin coal at the We Energies Presque Isle Power Plant. Additional goals are to reduce nitrogen oxide (NO{sub x}), sulfur dioxide (SO{sub 2}), and particulate matter (PM) emissions, allow for reuse and sale of fly ash, demonstrate a reliable …

We present the concept for a ''smart'' highly efficient dynamic window that maximizes solar heat gain during the heating season and minimizes solar heat gain during the cooling season in residential buildings. We describe a prototype dynamic window that relies on an internal shade, which deploys automatically in response to solar radiation and temperature. This prototype was built at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from commercially available ''off-the-shelf'' components. It is a stand-alone, standard-size product, so it can be easily installed in place of standard window products. Our design shows promise for near-term commercialization. Improving thermal performance of this prototype by incorporating commercially available highly efficient glazing technologies could result in the first window that could be suitable for use in zero-energy homes. The unit's predictable deployment of shading could help capture energy savings that are not possible with manual shading. Installation of dynamically shaded windows in the field will allow researchers to better quantify the energy effects of shades, which could lead to increased efficiency in the sizing of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment for residences.

Gas Technology Institute is developing a novel concept of membrane gasifier for high efficiency, clean and low cost production of hydrogen from coal. The concept incorporates a hydrogen-selective membrane within a gasification reactor for direct extraction of hydrogen from coal-derived synthesis gases. The objective of this project is to determine the technical and economic feasibility of this concept by screening, testing and identifying potential candidate membranes under high temperature, high pressure, and harsh environments of the coal gasification conditions. The best performing membranes will be selected for preliminary reactor design and cost estimates. To evaluate the performances of the candidate membranes under the gasification conditions, a high temperature/high pressure hydrogen permeation unit has been constructed in this project. The unit is designed to operate at temperatures up to 1100 C and pressures to 60 atm for evaluation of ceramic membranes such as mixed ionic conducting membrane. The unit was fully commissioned and is operational. Several perovskite membranes based on the formulations of BCN (BaCe{sub 0.8}Nd{sub 0.2}O{sub 3-x}) and BCY (BaCe{sub 0.8}Y{sub 0.2}O{sub 3-x}) were prepared by GTI and tested in the new permeation unit. These membranes were fabricated by either uniaxial pressing or tape casting technique with thickness ranging from …

Brief introduction to Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing The Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing is an international, multidisciplinary conference covering current research in the theory and the application of computational methods in problems of biological significance. Researchers from the United States, the Asian Pacific nations and around the world gather each year at PSB to exchange research results and discuss open issues in all aspects of computational biology. PSB provides a forum for work on databases, algorithms, interfaces, visualization, modeling and other computational methods, as applied to biological problems. The data-rich areas of molecular biology are emphasized. PSB is the only meeting in the bioinformatics field with sessions defined dynamically each year in response to specific proposals from the participants. Sessions are organized by leaders in emerging areas to provide forums for publication and for discussion of research in biocomputing ''hot topics''. PSB therefore enables discussion of emerging methods and approaches in this rapidly changing field. PSB has been designated as one of the major meetings in this field by the recently established International Society for Computational Biology (see www.iscb.org). Papers and presentations are peer reviewed typically with 3 reviews per paper plus editorial oversight from the conference organizers. The accepted papers …

During the funding period from August 15, 2000 to August 14, 2004, the main foci of my research have been implications of abundances in metal-poor stars for nucleosynthetic yields of supernovae and chemical evolution of the universe, effects of neutrino oscillations and neutrino-nucleus interactions on r-process nucleosynthesis, physical conditions in neutrino-driven winds from proto-neutron stars, neutrino driven mechanism of supernova explosion, supernova neutrino signals in terrestrial detectors, and constraints on variations of fundamental couplings and astrophysical conditions from properties of nuclear reactions. Personnel (three graduate students and a postdoctoral research associate) involved in my research are listed in section 2. Completed research projects are discussed in section 3. Publications during the funding period are listed in section 4 and oral presentations in section 5. Remarks about the budget are given in section 6.

It is proposed here to continue their program in the development of theories and models capable of describing the varied phenomena expected to influence the propagation of ultra-intense, ultra-short laser pulses with particular emphasis on guided propagation. This program builds upon expertise already developed over the years through collaborations with the NSF funded experimental effort lead by Professor Howard Milchberg here at Maryland, and in addition the research group at the Ecole Polytechnique in France. As in the past, close coupling between theory and experiment will continue. The main effort of the proposed research will center on the development of computational models and analytic theories of intense laser pulse propagation and guiding structures. In particular, they will use their simulation code WAKE to study propagation in plasma channels, in dielectric capillaries and in gases where self focusing is important. At present this code simulates the two-dimensional propagation (radial coordinate, axial coordinate and time) of short pulses in gas/plasma media. The plasma is treated either as an ensemble of particles which respond to the ponderomotive force of the laser and the self consistent electric and magnetic fields created in the wake of pulse or as a fluid. the plasma particle motion …

This paper summarizes a methodology used by the Underground Analysis and Planning System (UGAPS) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for the derivation of probabilistic damage curves for US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM). UGAPS uses high fidelity finite element and discrete element codes on the massively parallel supercomputers to predict damage to underground structures from military interdiction scenarios. These deterministic calculations can be riddled with uncertainty, especially when intelligence, the basis for this modeling, is uncertain. The technique presented here attempts to account for this uncertainty by bounding the problem with reasonable cases and using those bounding cases as a statistical sample. Probability of damage curves are computed and represented that account for uncertainty within the sample and enable the war planner to make informed decisions. This work is flexible enough to incorporate any desired damage mechanism and can utilize the variety of finite element and discrete element codes within the national laboratory and government contractor community.

The results from two surrogate reaction experiments using the STARS (Silicon Telescope Array for Reaction Studies) spectrometer are presented. The surrogate method involves measuring the particle and/or {gamma}-ray decay probabilities of excited nuclei populated via a direct reaction. These probabilities can then be used to deduce neutron-induced reaction cross sections that lead to the same compound nuclei. In the first experiment STARS coupled to the GAMMASPHERE {gamma}-ray spectrometer successfully reproduce surrogate (n,{gamma}), (n,n'{gamma}) and (n,2n{gamma}) cross sections on {sup 155,156}Gd using Gd {sup 3}He-induced reactions. In the second series of experiments an energetic deuteron beam from the ESTU tandem at the Wright Nuclear Structure Lab at Yale University was used to obtain the ratio of fission probabilities for {sup 238}U/ {sup 236}U and {sup 237}U/ {sup 239}U populated using the {sup 236,238}U(d,d'f) and {sup 236,238}U(d,pf) reactions. Results from these experiments are presented and the implications for the surrogate reaction technique are discussed.