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A novel high-heat transfer low NO(sub x) natural gas combustion system. The objectives of this program are to research, develop, test, and commercialize a novel high-heat transfer low-NO{sub x} natural gas combustion system for oxygen-, oxygen-enriched air, and air-fired furnaces. This technology will improve the process efficiency (productivity and product quality) and the energy efficiency of high-temperature industrial furnaces by at least 20%. GTI's high-heat transfer burner has applications in high-temperature air, oxygen-enriched air, and oxygen furnaces used in the glass, metals, cement, and other industries. Development work in this program is focused on using this burner to improve the energy efficiency and productivity of glass melting furnaces that are major industrial energy consumers. The following specific project objectives are defined to provide a means of achieving the overall project objectives. (1) Identify topics to be covered, problems requiring attention, equipment to be used in the program, and test plans to be followed in Phase II and Phase III. (2) Use existing codes to develop models of gas combustion and soot nucleation and growth as well as a thermodynamic and parametric description of furnace heat transfer issues. (3) Conduct a parametric study to confirm the increase in process and energy …

The main objective of the research program has been to improve the rate-of-penetration in deep hostile environments by improving the life cycle and performance of coiled-tubing, an important component of a deep well drilling system for oil and gas exploration, by utilizing the latest developments in the microwave materials technology. This is being accomplished by developing an efficient and economically viable continuous microwave process to sinter continuously formed/extruded steel powder for the manufacture of seamless coiled tubing and other tubular products. The entire program has been spread over three phases with the following goals: Phase I--Demonstration of the feasibility concept of continuous microwave sintering process for tubular steel products. Phase II--Design, building and testing of a prototype microwave system which shall be combined with a continuous extruder for steel tubular objects. Phase III--Execution of the plan for commercialization of the technology by one of the industrial partners. The criteria for the success of the program is based on the performance of coiled tubing made by the microwave process. It is expected that this product will have superior quality and performance to the standard product, and will be economically viable.

We report our conclusions in support of the FY 2003 Science and Technology Milestone ST03-3.5. The goal of the milestone was to develop a research plan for expanding Sandia's capabilities in materials modeling and simulation. From inquiries and discussion with technical staff during FY 2003 we conclude that it is premature to formulate the envisioned coordinated research plan. The more appropriate goal is to develop a set of computational tools for making scale transitions and accumulate experience with applying these tools to real test cases so as to enable us to attack each new problem with higher confidence of success.

The quantitative analysis of ammonia binding sites in the Davison (Type 3A) zeolite desiccant using solid-state {sup 15}N MAS NMR spectroscopy is reported. By utilizing 15N enriched ammonia ({sup 15}NH{sub 3}) gas, the different adsorption/binding sites within the zeolite were investigated as a function of NH{sub 3} loading. Using {sup 15}N MAS NMR multiple sites were resolved that have distinct cross-polarization dynamics and chemical shift behavior. These differences in the {sup 15}N NMR were used to characterize the adsorption environments in both the pure 3A zeolite and the silicone-molded forms of the desiccant.

This report summarizes the results of research and economic analysis on a biological water-gas shift process for the production of hydrogen. The organism Rubrivivax gelatinosus CBS is a photosynthetic bacteria which can perform the water-gas shift reaction under anaerobic conditions. The report describes some of the technical issues regarding the process, addresses some claimed benefits of the process and presents some results from economic studies of different process configurations.

This report updates the 1999 economic analysis of NREL's photobiological hydrogen production from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The previous study had looked mainly at incident light intensities, batch cycles and light adsorption without directly attempting to model the saturation effects seen in algal cultures. This study takes a more detailed look at the effects that cell density, light adsorption and light saturation have on algal hydrogen production. Performance estimates based on actual solar data are also included in this study. Based on this analysis, the estimated future selling price of hydrogen produced from algae ranges $0.57/kg to $13.53/kg.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The percentage of fine roots colonized by arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi varied with season and with species in the co-dominant shrubs Lurreu tridentutu and Ambrosia dumosu at a site adjacent to the Nevada Desert FACE (Free-Air CO{sub 2} Enrichment) Facility (NDFF) in the Mojave Desert. We excavated downward and outward from the shrub bases in both species to collect and examine fine roots (< 1.0 mm diameter) at monthly intervals throughout 2001 and from October 2002 to September 2003. Fungal structures became visible in cleared roots stained with trypan blue. We quantified the percent colonization of roots by AM fungi via the line intercept method. In both years and for both species, colonization was highest in fall, relatively low in spring when root growth began, increased in late spring, and decreased during summer drought periods. Increases in colonization during summer and fall reflect corresponding increases in precipitation. Spring mycorrhizal colonization is low despite peaks in soil water availability and precipitation, indicating that precipitation is not the only factor influencing mycorrhizal colonization. Because the spring decrease in mycorrhizal colonization occurs when these shrubs initiate a major flush of fine root growth, other phenological events such as competing demands for carbon by …

Hydropower development within the Columbia and Snake River Basins has significantly affected riparian, riverine, and adjacent upland habitats and the fish and wildlife species dependent upon them. Hydroelectric dams played a major role in the extinction or major loss of both anadromous and resident salmonid populations and altered instream and adjacent upland habitats, water quality, and riparian/riverine function. Hydroelectric facility construction and inundation directly affected fish and wildlife species and habitats. Secondary and tertiary impacts including road construction, urban development, irrigation, and conversion of native habitats to agriculture, due in part to the availability of irrigation water, continue to affect wildlife and fish populations throughout the Columbia and Snake River Basins. Fluctuating water levels resulting from facility operations have created exposed sand, cobble, and/or rock zones. These zones are generally devoid of vegetation with little opportunity to re-establish riparian plant communities. To address the habitat and wildlife losses, the United States Congress in 1980 passed the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act (Act) (P.L. 96-501), which authorized the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington to create the Northwest Power Planning Council (Council). The Act directed the Council to prepare a program in conjunction with federal, state, and …

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We have made a preliminary study of a dimuon sample corresponding to 114 pb{sup -1} of data taken in Run II at the Tevatron. From this sample we have selected 157 {+-} 20 B{sub d} {yields} J/{psi}K{sub S}{sup 0} and 133 {+-} 17 B{sub s} {yields} J/{psi}{phi} decays. In a subset of the data we have measured the B{sup {+-}} lifetime in the J/{psi}K{sup {+-}} channel to be 1.76 {+-} 0.24 ps. We have implemented a jet-charge initial-flavor tag as well as a soft-muon tag, and we have measured the respective tagging powers to be (2.4 {+-} 1.7)% and (3.3 {+-} 1.8)%. Our conclusion from these studies is that we have made good progress towards understanding all ingredients required to make CP violation measurements in the B{sub d} and B{sub s} systems.

This document presents results of experiments conducted to measure release fractions during certain tank retrieval processes. The tests were performed in a 1/4 scale model of a waste storage tank. The retrieval processes simulated were: (1) Discharging liquid or slurry from the mouth of a vertically oriented two-in. Schedule 40 pipe. The discharging material was in free-fall from the mouth of the pipe near the top of the tank into a liquid or slurry pool at the bottom of the tank. (2) The jet from a 9/16-in.-diameter nozzle transferring liquid or slurry waste from one side of the tank to the other. The discharging liquid was aimed at the opposite side of the tank from the nozzle and either impacted the tank wall or fell into a liquid or slurry pool in the bottom of the tank. (3) A high pressure fan jet of liquid striking a steel plate or simulated waste from a stand-off distance of a few inches. For each process, a water-soluble fluorescent dye was added to the liquid fraction as a tracer. Kaolin clay was used to represent the solids. The tank was covered and there was no forced ventilation in the tank during the tests. …

Ductile fracture in metals has been observed to result from the nucleation, growth, and coalescence of voids. The evolution of this damage is inherently history dependent, affected by how time-varying stresses drive the formation of defect structures in the material. At some critically damaged state, the softening response of the material leads to strain localization across a surface that, under continued loading, becomes the faces of a crack in the material. Modeling localization of strain requires introduction of a length scale to make the energy dissipated in the localized zone well-defined. In this work, a cohesive zone approach is used to describe the post-bifurcation evolution of material within the localized zone. The relations are developed within a thermodynamically consistent framework that incorporates temperature and rate-dependent evolution relationships motivated by dislocation mechanics. As such, we do not prescribe the evolution of tractions with opening displacements across the localized zone a priori. The evolution of tractions is itself an outcome of the solution of particular, initial boundary value problems. The stress and internal state of the material at the point of bifurcation provides the initial conditions for the subsequent evolution of the cohesive zone. The models we develop are motivated by in-situ …

Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) is a proton accelerator that produces high energy particle beams for experiments. These beams include neutrons and protons for diverse uses including radiography, isotope production, small feature study, lattice vibrations and material science. The Drift Tube Linear Accelerator (DTL) is the first portion of a half mile long linear section of accelerator that raises the beam energy from 750 keV to 100 MeV. In its 31st year of operation (2003), the DTL experienced serious issues. The first problem was the inability to maintain resonant frequency at full power. The second problem was increased occurrences of over-temperature failure of cooling hoses. These shortcomings led to an investigation during the 2003 yearly preventative maintenance shutdown that showed evidence of excessive heating: discolored interior tank walls and coper oxide deposition in the cooling circuits. Since overheating was suspected to be caused by compromised heat transfer, improving that was the focus of the repair effort. Investigations revealed copper oxide flow inhibition and iron oxide scale build up. Acid cleaning was implemented with careful attention to protection of the base metal, selection of components to clean and minimization of exposure times. The effort has been very successful in bringing …

A mine dog evaluation project initiated by the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining is evaluating the capability and reliability of mine detection dogs. The performance of field-operational mine detection dogs will be measured in test minefields in Afghanistan containing actual, but unfused landmines. Repeated performance testing over two years through various seasonal weather conditions will provide data simulating near real world conditions. Soil samples will be obtained adjacent to the buried targets repeatedly over the course of the test. Chemical analysis results from these soil samples will be used to evaluate correlations between mine dog detection performance and seasonal weather conditions. This report documents the analytical chemical methods and results from the fifth batch of soils received. This batch contained samples from Kharga, Afghanistan collected in June 2003.

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The authors examine a mechanism which can lead to flavor transformation of neutrino-antineutrino asymmetries in the early universe, a process which is unavoidable when the neutrino mixing angles are large. This sets the best limit on the lepton number of the universe, and hence on the relic neutrino abundance. They also consider the consequences for the relic neutrino abundance if extra neutrino interactions are allowed, e.g., the coupling of the neutrinos to a light (compared to m{sub {nu}}) boson. For a wide range of couplings not excluded by other considerations, the relic neutrinos would annihilate to bosons at late times, and thus make a negligible contribution to the matter density today. This mechanism evades the neutrino mass limits arising from large scale structure.

Slag attack of refractory materials used to line the hot face of slagging gasifiers limits their service life to between 3 and 24 months. These gasifiers use coal, petroleum coke, or combinations of them as raw materials to produce chemicals, liquid fuel, and/or electricity; with future consideration being given to the use of other abundant, low cost feedstock such as biomass. The ash from these materials generate liquid slags during gasification at temperature between 1300 - 1575 C and pressures up to 1000 psi, leading to severe slag attack of a vessel lining and causing unacceptable gasifier reliability and on-line availability. To maximize refractory life and provide protection of the gasifier metal shell, the best liners have contained a minimum of 60-70 pct chromia in combination with alumina, alumina/zirconia, or magnesia. The Albany Research Center of DOE has developed a phosphate containing high chrome oxide refractory liner that indicates potential for increased service life over currently used materials. This new liner has been produced commercially by a refractory company and installed in a gasifier for performance evaluation. Refractory issues in slagging gasifiers, the development and properties of the phosphate containing high chrome oxide material, and the preliminary results from the …

Most gasifiers are operated for refining, chemical production, and power generation. They are also considered a possible future source of H2 for future power systems under consideration. A gasifier fulfills these roles by acting as a containment vessel to react carbon-containing raw materials with oxygen and water using fluidized-bed, moving-bed, or entrained-flow systems to produce CO and H2, along with other gaseous by-products including CO2, CH4, SOx, HS, and/or NOx. The gasification process provides the opportunity to produce energy more efficiently and with less environmental impact than more conventional combustion processes. Because of these advantages, gasification is viewed as one of the key processes in the U.S. Department of Energy?s vision of an advanced power system for the 21st Century. However, issues with both the reliability and the economics of gasifier operation will have to be resolved before gasification will be widely adopted by the power industry. Central to both enhanced reliability and economics is the development of materials with longer service lives in gasifier systems that can provide extended periods of continuous, trouble-free gasifier operation. The focus of the Advanced Refractories for Gasification project at the Albany Research Center (ARC) is to develop improved refractory liner materials capable of …

The success of captive broodstock programs depends on high in-culture survival, appropriate development of the reproductive system, and the behavior and survival of cultured salmon after release, either as adults or juveniles. Continuing captive broodstock research designed to improve technology is being conducted to cover all major life history stages of Pacific salmon. Current velocity in rearing vessels had little if any effect on reproductive behavior of captively reared steelhead. However, males and females reared in high velocity vessels participated a greater number of spawning events than siblings reared in low velocity tanks. Observations of nesting females and associated males in a natural stream (Hamma Hamma River) were consistent with those observed in a controlled spawning channel. DNA pedigree analyses did not reveal significant differences in the numbers of fry produced by steelhead reared in high and low velocity vessels. To determine the critical period(s) for imprinting for sockeye salmon, juvenile salmon are being exposed to known odorants at key developmental stages. Subsequently they will be tested for development of long-term memories of these odorants. In 2002-2003, the efficacy of EOG analysis for assessing imprinting was demonstrated and will be applied in these and other behavioral and molecular tools in …

Simulation-based life-cycle-engineering and the ASCI program have resulted in models of unprecedented size and fidelity. The validation of these models requires high-resolution, multi-parameter diagnostics. Within the thermal-fluids disciplines, the need for detailed, high-fidelity measurements exceeds the limits of current engineering sciences capabilities and severely tests the state of the art. The focus of this LDRD is the development and application of filtered Rayleigh scattering (FRS) for high-resolution, nonintrusive measurement of gas-phase velocity and temperature. With FRS, the flow is laser-illuminated and Rayleigh scattering from naturally occurring sources is detected through a molecular filter. The filtered transmission may be interpreted to yield point or planar measurements of three-component velocities and/or thermodynamic state. Different experimental configurations may be employed to obtain compromises between spatial resolution, time resolution, and the quantity of simultaneously measured flow variables. In this report, we present the results of a three-year LDRD-funded effort to develop FRS combustion thermometry and Aerosciences velocity measurement systems. The working principles and details of our FRS opto-electronic system are presented in detail. For combustion thermometry we present 2-D, spatially correlated FRS results from nonsooting premixed and diffusion flames and from a sooting premixed flame. The FRS-measured temperatures are accurate to within {+-}50 K …

Wetlands are valuable resources that are disappearing at an alarming rate. Land development has resulted in the destruction of wetlands for approximately 200 years. To combat this destruction, the federal government passed legislation that requires no net loss of wetlands. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is responsible for regulating wetland disturbances. In 1991, the USACE determined that the construction of the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory would damage three wetlands that had a total area of one acre. Argonne was required to create a wetland of equal acreage to replace the damaged wetlands. For the first five years after this wetland was created (1992-1996), the frequency of plant species, relative cover, and water depth was closely monitored. The wetland was not monitored again until 2002. In 2003, the vegetation cover data were again collected with a similar methodology to previous years. The plant species were sampled using quadrats at randomly selected locations along transects throughout the wetland. The fifty sampling locations were monitored once in June and percent cover of each of the plant species was determined for each plot. Furthermore, the extent of standing water in the wetland was measured. In 2003, 21 species …

The Seldon software toolkit combines concepts from agent-based modeling and social science to create a computationally social dynamic model for group recruitment. The underlying recruitment model is based on a unique three-level hybrid agent-based architecture that contains simple agents (level one), abstract agents (level two), and cognitive agents (level three). This uniqueness of this architecture begins with abstract agents that permit the model to include social concepts (gang) or institutional concepts (school) into a typical software simulation environment. The future addition of cognitive agents to the recruitment model will provide a unique entity that does not exist in any agent-based modeling toolkits to date. We use social networks to provide an integrated mesh within and between the different levels. This Java based toolkit is used to analyze different social concepts based on initialization input from the user. The input alters a set of parameters used to influence the values associated with the simple agents, abstract agents, and the interactions (simple agent-simple agent or simple agent-abstract agent) between these entities. The results of phase-1 Seldon toolkit provide insight into how certain social concepts apply to different scenario development for inner city gang recruitment.