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

This work was carried out to achieve a better understanding of how SOFC anodes work with real fuels. The motivation was to improve the fuel flexibility of SOFC anodes, thereby allowing simplification and cost reduction of SOFC power plants. The work was based on prior results indicating that Ni-YSZ anode-supported SOFCs can be operated directly on methane and natural gas, while SOFCs with novel anode compositions can work with higher hydrocarbons. While these results were promising, more work was clearly needed to establish the feasibility of these direct-hydrocarbon SOFCs. Basic information on hydrocarbon-anode reactions should be broadly useful because reformate fuel gas can contain residual hydrocarbons, especially methane. In the Phase I project, we have studied the reaction mechanisms of various hydrocarbons--including methane, natural gas, and higher hydrocarbons--on two kinds of Ni-containing anodes: conventional Ni-YSZ anodes and a novel ceramic-based anode composition that avoid problems with coking. The effect of sulfur impurities was also studied. The program was aimed both at achieving an understanding of the interactions between real fuels and SOFC anodes, and providing enough information to establish the feasibility of operating SOFC stacks directly on hydrocarbon fuels. A combination of techniques was used to provide insight into the …

The rate and amplitude of pressure transmission of various drilling fluids--particularly aphron drilling fluids--are measured in a long conduit and in sand packs to determine how pressure transmissibility can affect fluid invasion.

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

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

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

Semiweekly newspaper from Boerne, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

A parametric air dispersion analysis has been conducted to define the range of tank vapor concentrations from the Hanford Site underground tanks that can potentially occur in the worker breathing zones from active and passive releases from the waste tanks. The potential influences of tank farm specific release characteristics, ambient meteorological conditions, local farm surface roughness, and topographical influences are considered. The parametric approach allows consideration of the full range venting configurations and potential vapor concentration over the range of meteorological conditions at the Hanford Site. The results indicate that occasional short duration exposures of up to several seconds to relatively undiluted headspace air can be expected in the immediate vicinity of the tank vents. Average concentrations which represent diffusion, as well as spatial averaging, fall off rapidly with distance for the passive vents and to a lesser extent for the forced-air stacks. The addition of the influence of the surface roughness elements on the tank farms will result in a faster decrease of concentrations with downwind distance.

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The principle research research effort for Year 1 of the project in data compilation and the determination of the tectonic and depositional histories of the North Lousiana Salt Basin..

Article discussing the random growth of interfaces as a subordinated process.

New thermoelectric materials using Quantum Well (QW) technology are expected to increase the energy conversion efficiency to more than 25% from the present 5%, which will allow for the low cost conversion of waste heat into electricity. Hi-Z Technology, Inc. has been developing QW technology over the past six years. It will use Caterpillar, Inc., a leader in the manufacture of large scale industrial equipment, for verification and life testing of the QW films and modules. Other members of the team are Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who will sputter large area QW films. The Scope of Work is to develop QW materials from their present proof-of-principle technology status to a pre-production level over a proposed three year period. This work will entail fabricating the QW films through a sputtering process of 50 {micro}m thick multi layered films and depositing them on 12 inch diameter, 5 {micro}m thick Si substrates. The goal in this project is to produce a basic 10-20 watt module that can be used to build up any size generator such as: a 5-10 kW Auxiliary Power Unit (APU), a multi kW Waste Heat Recovery Generator (WHRG) for a class 8 truck or as small as a 10-20 …

Semiweekly newspaper from Sealy, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The observed flavor structure of the standard model arises naturally in ''split fermion'' models which localize fermions at different places in an extra dimension. It has, until now, been assumed that the bulk masses for such fermions can be chosen to be flavor diagonal simultaneously at every point in the extra dimension, with all the flavor violation coming from the Yukawa couplings to the Higgs. We consider the more natural possibility in which the bulk masses cannot be simultaneously diagonalized, that is, that they are twisted in flavor space. We show that, in general, this does not disturb the natural generation of hierarchies in the flavor parameters. Moreover, it is conceivable that all the flavor mixing and CP-violation in the standard model may come only from twisting, with the five-dimensional Yukawa couplings taken to be universal.

Concert presented at the Lyric Theater at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

Venoco Inc, intends to re-develop the Monterey Formation, a Class III basin reservoir, at South Ellwood Field, Offshore Santa Barbara, California. Well productivity in this field varies significantly. Cumulative Monterey production for individual wells has ranged from 260 STB to 8,700,000 STB. Productivity is primarily affected by how well the well path connects with the local fracture system and the degree of aquifer support. Cumulative oil recovery to date is a small percentage of the original oil in place. To embark upon successful re-development and to optimize reservoir management, Venoco intends to investigate, map and characterize field fracture patterns and the reservoir conduit system. State of the art borehole imaging technologies including FMI, dipole sonic and cross-well seismic, interference tests and production logs will be employed to characterize fractures and micro faults. These data along with the existing database will be used for construction of a novel geologic model of the fracture network. Development of an innovative fracture network reservoir simulator is proposed to monitor and manage the aquifer's role in pressure maintenance and water production. The new fracture simulation model will be used for both planning optimal paths for new wells and improving ultimate recovery. In the second phase …

The general goal of the project is to develop and implement computer codes and input files to compute nuclear densities of state. Such densities are important input into calculations of statistical neutron capture, and are difficult to access experimentally. In particular, we will focus on calculating densities for nuclides in the mass range A ?????? 50 - 100. We use statistical spectroscopy, a moments method based upon a microscopic framework, the interacting shell model. In this report we present our progress for the past year.

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 3,700 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 …

This report identifies and evaluates viable alternatives for the accelerated processing of Hanford Site transuranic (TRU) and mixed low-level wastes (MLLW) that cannot be processed using existing site capabilities. Accelerated processing of these waste streams will lead to earlier reduction of risk and considerable life-cycle cost savings. The processing need is to handle both oversized MLLW and TRU containers as well as containers with surface contact dose rates greater than 200 mrem/hr. This capability is known as the ''M-91'' processing capability required by the Tri-Party Agreement milestone M-91--01. The new, phased approach proposed in this evaluation would use a combination of existing and planned processing capabilities to treat and more easily manage contact-handled waste streams first and would provide for earlier processing of these wastes.

The National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) High Harmonic Fast Wave (HHFW) current-drive discharges will require density control for acceptable efficiency. In NSTX, this involves primarily controlling impurity influxes and recycling. We have compared boronization on hot and cold surfaces, varying helium glow discharge conditioning (HeGDC) durations, helium discharge cleaning, brief daily boronization, and between discharge boronization to reduce and control spontaneous density rises. Access to Ohmic H-modes was enabled by boronization on hot surfaces, however, the duration of the effectiveness of hot and cold boronization was comparable. A 15 minute HeGDC between discharges was needed for reproducible L-H transitions. Helium discharge conditioning yielded slower density rises than 15 minutes of HeGDC. Brief daily boronization followed by a comparable duration of applied HeGDC restored and enhanced good conditions. Additional brief boronizations between discharges did not improve plasma performance (reduced recycling, reduced impurity luminosities, earlier L-H transitions, longer plasma current flattops, higher stored energies) if conditions were already good. Between discharge boronization required increases in the NSTX duty cycle due to the need for additional HeGDC to remove codeposited D.

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The overall program objective is to develop and evaluate environmentally benign agents or products that are effective in the prevention, inhibition, and mitigation of microbially influenced corrosion (MIC) in the internal surfaces of metallic natural gas pipelines. The goal is to develop one or more environmentally benign (a.k.a. ''green'') products that can be applied to maintain the structure and dependability of the natural gas infrastructure. Previous testing indicated that the growth, and the metal corrosion caused by pure cultures of sulfate reducing bacteria were inhibited by hexane extracts of some pepper plants. This quarter tests were performed with mixed bacterial cultures obtained from natural gas pipelines. Treatment with the pepper extracts affected the growth and metabolic activity of the microbial consortia. Specifically, the growth and metabolism of sulfate reducing bacteria was inhibited. The demonstration that pepper extracts can inhibit the growth and metabolism of sulfate reducing bacteria in mixed cultures is a significant observation validating a key hypothesis of the project. Future tests to determine the effects of pepper extracts on mature/established biofilms will be performed next.