This second Quarterly Technical Progress Report presents the results of work accomplished during the period July 25 through October 30, 1988. The overall objective of the program is the development of a pulsed atmospheric fluidized-bed combustion (PAFBC) technology to burn coal and to provide heat and steam to commercial, institutional, and small industrial applications at a reasonable price in environmentally acceptable manner. Progress during this period accelerated rapidly. The site for the installation of the PAFBC was completed. All of the system components, including the fabrication of the furnace, were also completed. Additional component testing and inspection was also completed. By the end of this period the AFBC was completely assembled and installed at the site adjacent to the MTCI facility and shakedown tests were initiated. 20 figs., 2 tabs.

The purpose of this document is to present an overview of the planning, facilitation, and evaluation process used to conduct the Geothermal Program Review VI (PR VI) conference. This document was also prepared to highlight lessons learned from PR VI and, by utilizing the evaluation summaries and recommendations, be used as a planning tool for PR VII. The conference, entitled Beyond Goals and Objectives,'' was sponsored by the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Geothermal Technology Division (GTD), PR VI was held in San Francisco, California on April 19--21, 1988 and was attended by 127 participants. PR VI was held in conjunction with the National Geothermal Association's (NGA) Industry Round Table. This document presents a brief summary of the activities, responsibilities, and resources for implementing the PR VI meeting and provides recommendations, checklists, and a proposed schedule for assisting in planning PR VII.

The CFAR (compact fusion advanced Rankine) cycle concept for a tokamak reactor involves the use of a high-temperature Rankine cycle in combination with microwave superheaters and nonequilibrium MHD disk generators to obtain a compact, low-capital-cost power conversion system which fits almost entirely within the reactor vault. The significant savings in the balance-of-plant costs are expected to result in much lower costs of electricity than previous concepts. This paper describes the unique features of the CFAR cycle and a high- temperature blanket designed to take advantage of it as well as the predicted performance of the MHD disk generators using mercury seeded with cesium. 40 refs., 8 figs., 3 tabs.

This first Quarterly Technical Progress Report presents the results of work accomplished during the period April 19 through July 24,1988. The overall objective of the program is the development of a pulsed atmospheric fluidized-bed combustion (PAFBC) technology to burn coal and to provide heat and steam to commercial, institutional, and small industrial applications at a reasonable price in an environmentally acceptable manner. the program scope consisted of two tasks; the first was to establish preliminary feasibility by the use of theoretical and state-of-the-art information. This task was completed during the first quarter of the contract period and a topical report entitled, Pulsed Atmospheric Fluidized Bed combustion (PAFBC) - Preliminary Feasibility Study'' was prepared as a decision point to proceed'' deliverable in accordance with the terms of the contract. This first quarterly progress report therefore covers the contract activities subsequent to the approval of the feasibility study and the decision to proceed with the Task 2 effort. As the initial quarterly technical progress report, this document includes a subsection on background which will be omitted in subsequent reports. All effort during this period was devoted to the design and analysis of the PAFBC. Design drawings were prepared and fabrication and procurement …

The objective of this program is to provide an overall evaluation of a novel process concept for mild gasification by completing work in three major tasks: (1) Laboratory-Scale Experiments, (2) Bench-Scale Tests, and (3) Proof-of-Concept Tests and Evaluation (optional). During this quarter, experimental work involving potential recirculating catalysts for coal, initiated in the previous quarter, was continued. The construction and shakedown of an all quartz laboratory-scale isothermal free-fall reactor was completed. Three free-fall experiments were performed in an existing stainless-steel free-fall reactor with untreated and ammonia treated Illinois No. 6 high-voltatile bituminous coal, and the analyzed data are presented herein. A survey of available literature on catalyzed devolatilization of coal, coal pretreatment methods, and related topics was made. Based on the results of this survey, two potential recirculating catalysts, in addition to the already selected zinc chloride, were selected for study: ferrous chloride (FeCl{sub 2}) and ferric chloride (FeCl{sub 3}). Also, based on the survey, two coal pretreatment/chemical comminution methods were selected for study, in addition to methanol treatment: ammonia and n-butylamine pretreatment. A matrix of experiments was formulated to study the three catalysts and three pretreatment methods selected. 2 refs., 2 tabs.

Investigators are studying hydrogen purification by membrane technology as a means to make the coal-to-hydrogen route economically attractive. To allow prediction of membrane performance and to facilitate comparisons between membrane and other technologies (cryogenic distillation, pressure swing adsorption), they developed a mathematical model to describe the permeation process inside a membrane module. The results of this model were compared with available experimental data (separation of CO{sub 2}/O{sub 2}/N{sub 2} mixtures). The model was first used to calculate the gas permeabilities from one set of mixed-gas experiments; the resulting permeabilities were then used to predict the results of the other mixed-gas experiments. The agreement between these predictions and the experimental data was good. However, model predictions using gas permeabilities obtained in pure gas experiments did not agree with the mixed gas experimental data. This disagreement is believed to be due to plasticization of the membrane by contact with CO{sub 2}. These results indicate that data obtained from experiments with mixed-gas feeds are necessary to adequately predict membrane performance when CO{sub 2} is present. The performance of different system configurations, including one and two stages of membrane modules, was examined. The different configurations examined were single module (SM), single module with recycle …

This is the fourth quarterly report of DOE Contract No. DE-AC22-87PC79864, entitled Modeling of Integrated Environmental Control Systems for Coal-Fired Power Plants.'' This report summarizes accomplishments during the period July 1, 1988 to September 30, 1988. Our efforts during the last quarter focused primarily on the completion, testing and documentation of the NO{sub x}SO process model. The sections below present the details of these developments.

The initial design of a microwave calorimeter for the Microwave Tokamak Experiment is presented. The design is optimized to measure the refraction and absorption of millimeter rf microwaves as they traverse the toroidal plasma of the Alcator C tokamak. Techniques utilized can be adapted for use in measuring high intensity pulsed output from a microwave device in an environment of ultra high vacuum, intense fields of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation and intense magnetic fields. 16 refs.

Federal monitoring and enforcement action is dependent on technical capability to detect pesticides. A major concern is that Federal regulatory agencies cannot practically monitor food for all pesticides of health concern. OTA was asked to assess whether existing and emerging technologies could improve Federal monitoring of pesticide residues in food. In addition, OTA examined the Federal research programs dedicated to improving Federal analytical capabilities for the detection of pesticides in food.

A report on open-angle glaucoma (OAG), whcich is the second largest single cause of blindness in the elderly, afflicting an estimated 2 to 3 percent of this age group at any time. the report discusses epidemiology of OAG, treatment, screening technology available, and medicare coverage for OAG.

This report addresses the opportunities to improve the dissemination of Federal information. It also highlights two major problems: maintaining equity in public access to Federal information in electronic formats, and defining the respective roles of Federal agencies and the private sector in the electronic dissemination process. The report focuses on current and future roles of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and Superintendent of Documents, the Depository Library Program (administered by GPO), and the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). In addition, this report examines electronic dissemination of congressional information, the Freedom of Information Act in an electronic environment, and electronic dissemination of government information to the press.

This report contains viewgraphs on the following topics: rare and forbidden K decays; CP violation in the K system; the status of current experiments at BNL, CERN, FNAL, and KEK; and future experiments and facilities.

Prony analysis is an emerging method that extends Fourier analysis by directly estimating the frequency, damping, strength, and relative phase of modal components present in a given signal. This is precisely the kind of information that power system engineers would like to extract from transient stability program (TSP) simulations and from large-scale system tests or disturbances. A tool of this sort would be particularly valuable for TSP output analysis, where it promises to provide: parametric summaries for damping studies (data compression), quantified information for adjusting remedial controls (sensitivity analysis and performance evaluation), insight into modal interaction mechanisms (modal analysis), reduced simulation times for damping evaluation (prediction). These considerations lead BPA to produce the interactive FORTRAN programs TRANSCIENT and DTRANSCIENT. The objectives are to evaluate the method, to revise the code for utility applications, and to fortify both for use with larger models. Polynomial rooting, a critical and numerically demanding task, is now accomplished by a routine (QPOLY) that was extracted from the NASA program SAMSAN and converted to quadruple precision. The revised DTRANSCIENT is now accessed as a subroutine, PRSPAK. For batch use PRSPAK has been converted to a more comprehensive program, SIGPAKZ. This report presents early results in the …

A variety of TeV scale Higgs and flavor sectors are discussed. Key questions are addressed: how can we tell if there is a light Higgs boson or if the Higgs sector is strongly interacting. What new signatures can be used to search for supersymmetry. Can flavor physics be described at a TeV without Yukawa couplings. Ideas are reviewed and some new developments mentioned. 51 refs., 13 figs.

Two-dimensional and axially-symmetric problems in electrostatics, magnetostatics or potential fluid flow frequently are solved numerically by means of relaxation techniques -- employing, for example, the finite-difference program POISSON. In many such problems, the ''sources'' (charges or currents, vorticity, and regions of permeable material) lie exclusively within a finite closed boundary curve and the relaxation process, in principle, then can be confined to the region interior to such a boundary -- provided that a suitable boundary condition is imposed on the solution at the boundary. This paper is a review and illustration of a computational method that uses a boundary condition of such a nature as to avoid the inaccuracies and more extensive meshes present when, alternatively, a simple Dirichlet or Neumann boundary condition is specified on a somewhat more remote outer boundary. 2 refs., 5 figs., 1 tab.

The purpose of this work is to develop a method of sizing sub-micron particles using small-angle soft x-ray diffraction. Solid poly-styrene spheres of known sizes were used as scattering samples, with C-K..cap alpha.. (44.8/angstrom/) and V-L..cap alpha.. (24.3/angstrom/) radiation from a conventional x-ray source. Two devices were used to diffract the x-rays. One collimates the radiation using a series of pinholes immediately preceding the sample, and directs the unfocussed radiation onto film placed far from the sample. The other utilizes radiation from a single pinhole above the source onto the sample and a spherical multilayer mirror in series, so that the radiation passes twice through the sample and is focused onto film immediately above the pinhole assembly to increase the effective sample area. Using the latter device, two types of diffraction patterns were obtained: a sharp, relatively small pattern from spheres which form a hexagonal lattice structure, and a diffuse, larger pattern from an unordered, or random, array of spheres. Both patterns are presented in this work, along with the calculations, based upon light scattering from an unordered and an ordered array of particles, of the scattering patterns. 9 refs., 32 figs., 2 tabs.

In order to fill the PEP and SPEAR storage rings with beams from the SLC linac and damping rings, precise control of the linac subharmonic buncher and the damping ring RF is required. Recently several companies have developed resettable GaAs master/slave D-type flip-flops which are capable of operating at frequencies of 3 GHz and higher. Using these digital devices as frequency dividers, one can phase shift the SLAC CW-RF systems to optimize the timing for filling the storage rings. We have evaluated the performance of integrated circuits from two vendors for our particular application. Using microstrip circuit techniques, we have built and operated in the accelerator several chassis to synchronize a reset signal from the storage rings to the SLAC 2.856 GHz RF and to phase shift divide-by-four and divide-by-sixteen frequency dividers to the nearest 350 psec bucket required for filling. 4 refs., 4 figs., 2 tabs.

Our current efforts to develop clean coal technology, emphasize the advantages of enzymatic desulfurization techniques and have specifically addressed the potential of using partially-purified extracellular microbial enzymes or commercially available enzymes. Our work is focused on the treatment of model'' organic sulfur compounds such as dibenzothiophene (DBT) and ethylphenylsulfide (EPS). Furthermore, we are designing experiments to facilitate the enzymatic process by means of a hydrated organic solvent matrix.

In the ten years that beams of intermediate energy ({approx}50 MeV/amu{le}E{le}{approx}2 GeV/amu) heavy ions (Z{le}92) have been available, an increasing number of new research areas have been opened up. Pioneering work at the Bevalac at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, still the world's only source of the heaviest beams in this energy range, has led to the establishment of active programs in nuclear physics, atomic physics, cosmic ray physics, as well as biology and medicine, and industrial applications. The great promise for growth of these research areas has led to serious planning for new facilities capable of delivering such beams; several such facilities are now in construction around the world. 20 refs., 5 figs., 1 tab.

A key objective of the US Inertial Confinement Fusion Program is to obtain high yield (100-1000 MJ) implosions in a laboratory environment. This requires high grain from an inertial fusion target from a driver capable of delivering about 10 MJ. Recent results have been sufficiently encouraging that the US Department of Energy is planning for such a capability called the Laboratory Microfusion Facility (LMF). In the past two years, we have conducted implosion-related experiments with approximately 20 kJ of 0.35-{mu}m laser light in 1-ns temporally flat-topped pulses. These experiments were done with the Nova laser, the primary US facility devoted to radiatively driven inertial confinement fusion. Our results show that we can accurately model a significant fraction of the phenomena required to obtain the fuel conditions needed for high gain. Both the x-ray conversion efficiency and the growth of Rayleigh-Taylor hydrodynamic instabilities are shown to be at acceptable levels. Targets designed so that the shape of the stagnated fuel can be imaged show that the x-ray drive in our hohlraums can be made isotropic to better than 3%. With this optimized drive and temporally unshaped laser pulses many critical implosion parameters are measured on targets designed for higher density. Good …

The augmented fish health monitoring project is funded by the Bonneville Power Administration with the mandate to collect fish health data on anadromous fish stocks of the Columbia River Basin in a standardized manner. The project began in 1986 and the data reported here was collected in the third year. This segment of the project was carried out by the Washington Department of Wildlife and summarizes fish health findings at anadromous game hatcheries in Washington State operated by the BPA. Information gathered to date has provided impetus to alter facility design and management practices for improved fish health through prevention. Treatment efficacy can be better assessed due to the monthly monitoring of fish stocks and insight is being gained into disease prevention and control. The ultimate goal, of course, is to improve fish health for better survival in the wild. Tagged returns at index hatcheries within this project area will indicate the impact of improving fish health on providing greater adult returns as well as an improved product for the fishery. 2 refs., 3 figs., 15 tabs.

The laser working group considered several options to deliver synchronized laser pulses of the required energy to the photocathode and laser triggered switches. These requirements actually decreased during the course of the workshop, and the values finally settled upon (<10 {mu}J in 100 fs at {approximately}250 nm for the photocathode and {approximately}20 mJ in 2 ps near either 250 nm or 1 {mu}m for the switches) were considered to be well within the state of the art. Some development work may be required, however, to provide a system that has the desirable characteristics of stability, ease of use and low maintenance. The baseline concept, which is similar to a number of existing systems, utilizes doubled Nd:YAG-pumped dye oscillator/amplifiers to produce an upconverted picosecond pulse that can be amplified to tens of mJ in a KrF excimer laser. A fraction of the dye oscillator output is also compressed by means of a fiber-grating compressor and further amplified in a dye amplifier before being upconverted to produce the synchronized pulse for the photocathode. 9 refs., 1 fig.

This is a summary describing research projects and other activities undertaken by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, lists of publications from the year, and a calendar of upcoming events.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) is now beginning to depend upon dedicated gas analyzers in their collider and large fixed target experiment areas. In the past one or two gas samples were taken and sent off to Argonne National Laboratory for gas analysis, for even a basic check of ratios for Ar (Argon) C{sub 2}H{sub 6} (Ethane) 50/50% mixtures. This paper discusses the measuring techniques.