This case study enhances the understanding of open automated demand response opportunities in municipal wastewater treatment facilities. The report summarizes the findings of a 100 day submetering project at the San Luis Rey Wastewater Treatment Plant, a municipal wastewater treatment facility in Oceanside, California. The report reveals that key energy-intensive equipment such as pumps and centrifuges can be targeted for large load reductions. Demand response tests on the effluent pumps resulted a 300 kW load reduction and tests on centrifuges resulted in a 40 kW load reduction. Although tests on the facility?s blowers resulted in peak period load reductions of 78 kW sharp, short-lived increases in the turbidity of the wastewater effluent were experienced within 24 hours of the test. The results of these tests, which were conducted on blowers without variable speed drive capability, would not be acceptable and warrant further study. This study finds that wastewater treatment facilities have significant open automated demand response potential. However, limiting factors to implementing demand response are the reaction of effluent turbidity to reduced aeration load, along with the cogeneration capabilities of municipal facilities, including existing power purchase agreements and utility receptiveness to purchasing electricity from cogeneration facilities.

Policy makers and program designers in the U.S. and abroad are deeply concerned with the question of how to scale up energy efficiency to a level that is commensurate both to the scale of the energy and climate challenges we face, and to the potential for energy savings that has been touted for decades. When policy makers ask what energy efficiency can do, the answers usually revolve around the technical and economic potential of energy efficiency - they rarely hone in on the element of energy demand that matters most for changing energy usage in existing homes: the consumer. A growing literature is concerned with the behavioral underpinnings of energy consumption. We examine a narrower, related subject: How can millions of Americans be persuaded to divert valued time and resources into upgrading their homes to eliminate energy waste, avoid high utility bills, and spur the economy? With hundreds of millions of public dollars flowing into incentives, workforce training, and other initiatives to support comprehensive home energy improvements, it makes sense to review the history of these programs and begin gleaning best practices for encouraging comprehensive home energy improvements. Looking across 30 years of energy efficiency programs that targeted the residential …

The threats of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction add urgency to the development of new techniques for surveillance and intelligence collection. For example, the United States faces a serious and growing threat from adversaries who locate key facilities underground, hide them within other facilities, or otherwise conceal their location and function. Reconnaissance photographs are one of the most important tools for uncovering the capabilities of adversaries. However, current imaging technology provides only infrequent static images of a large area, or occasional video of a small area. We are attempting to add a new dimension to reconnaissance by introducing a capability for large area video surveillance. This capability would enable tracking of all vehicle movements within a very large area. The goal of our project is the development of a gigapixel video surveillance camera for high altitude aircraft or balloon platforms. From very high altitude platforms (20-40 km altitude) it would be possible to track every moving vehicle within an area of roughly 100 km x 100 km, about the size of the San Francisco Bay region, with a gigapixel camera. Reliable tracking of vehicles requires a ground sampling distance (GSD) of 0.5 to 1 m and a …

The focus of the workshop was on higher education facilities because college and university campuses are an important market for lighting products and they use almost every kind of luminaire on the market. This workshop was seen as a chance for SSL manufacturers large and small to get the inside scoop from a group of people that specify, pay for, install, use, maintain, and dispose of lighting systems for nearly every type of application. Workshop attendees explored the barriers to SSL adoption, the applications where SSL products could work better than existing technologies, and where SSL luminaires are currently falling short. This report summarizes the Workshop activities and presentation highlights.

This report provides a critical review of existing literature and modeling tools related to life-cycle assessment (LCA) applied to pavements. The review finds that pavement LCA is an expanding but still limited research topic in the literature, and that the existing body of work exhibits methodological deficiencies and incompatibilities that serve as barriers to the widespread utilization of LCA by pavement engineers and policy makers. This review identifies five key issues in the current body of work: inconsistent functional units, improper system boundaries, imbalanced data for asphalt and cement, use of limited inventory and impact assessment categories, and poor overall utility. This review also identifies common data and modeling gaps in pavement LCAs that should be addressed in future work. These gaps include: the use phase (rolling resistance, albedo, carbonation, lighting, leachate, and tire wear and emissions), asphalt fumes, feedstock energy of bitumen, traffic delay, the maintenance phase, and the end-of-life phase. This review concludes with a comprehensive list of recommendations for future research, which shed light on where improvements in knowledge can be made that will benefit the accuracy and comprehensiveness of pavement LCAs moving forward.

In 1992-1993, Argonne National Laboratory investigated potential carbon tetrachloride contamination that might be linked to the former grain storage facility operated by the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) at Utica, Nebraska. These initial studies identified carbon tetrachloride in a plume of contaminated groundwater, extending approximately 3,500 ft southeastward from the former CCC/USDA facility, within a shallow upper aquifer that had been used previously as a municipal water source by the town (Figure 1.1). A deeper aquifer used as the current municipal water source was found to be free of carbon tetrachloride contamination. Although the shallow aquifer was no longer being used as a source of drinking water at Utica, additional studies indicated that the carbon tetrachloride could pose an unacceptable health threat to potential future residents who might install private wells along the expected downgradient migration pathway of the plume. On the basis of these findings, corrective action was recommended to decrease the carbon tetrachloride concentrations in the upper aquifer to acceptable levels (Argonne 1993a,b, 1995). Initial discussions with the Utica village board indicated that any restoration strategies involving nonbeneficial discharge of treated groundwater in the immediate vicinity of Utica would be unacceptable to …

This final report details the components, functionality, costs, schedule and benefits of developing an Integrated Distribution Management System (IDMS) for power distribution system operation. The Distribution Automation (DA) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems used by electric power companies to manage the distribution of electric power to retail energy consumers are vital components of the Nation’s critical infrastructure. Providing electricity is an essential public service and a disruption in that service, if not quickly restored, could threaten the public safety and the Nation’s economic security. Our Nation’s economic prosperity and quality of life have long depended on the essential services that utilities provide; therefore, it is necessary to ensure that electric utilities are able to conduct their operations safely and efficiently. A fully integrated technology of applications is needed to link various remote sensing, communications and control devices with other information tools that help guide Power Distribution Operations personnel. A fully implemented IDMS will provide this, a seamlessly integrated set of applications to raise electric system operating intelligence. IDMS will enhance DA and SCADA through integration of applications such as Geographic Information Systems, Outage Management Systems, Switching Management and Analysis, Operator Training Simulator, and other Advanced Applications, including …

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and a number of professional organizations have established a target of zero net energy (ZNE) in buildings by 2030. One definition of ZNE is a building with greatly reduced needs for energy through efficiency gains with the balance of energy needs supplied by renewable technologies. The push to ZNE is a response to research indicating that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased sharply since the eighteenth century, resulting in a gradual warming of the Earth?s climate. A review of ZNE policies reveals that the organizations involved frame the ZNE issue in diverse ways, resulting in a wide variety of myths and a divergent set of epistemologies. With federal and state money poised to promote ZNE, it is timely to investigate how epistemologies, meaning a belief system by which we take facts and convert them into knowledge upon which to take action, and the propagation of myths might affect the outcome of a ZNE program. This paper outlines myths commonly discussed in the energy efficiency and renewable energy communities related to ZNE and describes how each myth is a different way of expressing"the truth." The paper continues by …

Seed storage reserves represent one of the most important sources of renewable fixed carbon and nitrogen found in nature. Seeds are well-adapted for diverting metabolic resources to synthesize storage proteins as well as enzymes and structural proteins needed for their transport and packaging into membrane bound storage protein bodies. Our underlying hypothesis is that the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response provides the critical cellular control of metabolic flux required for optimal accumulation of storage reserves in seeds. This highly conserved response is a cellular mechanism to monitor the protein folding environment of the ER and restore homeostasis in the presence of unfolded or misfolded proteins. In seeds, deposition of storage proteins in protein bodies is a highly specialized process that takes place even in the presence of mutant proteins that no longer fold and package properly. The capacity of the ER to deposit these aberrant proteins in protein bodies during a period that extends several weeks provides an excellent model for deconvoluting the ER stress response of plants. We have focused in this project on the means by which the ER senses and responds to functional perturbations and the underlying intracellular communication that occurs among biosynthetic, trafficking and degradative pathways …

The partially DOE funded International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will produce massive amounts of energetic charged alpha particles, which are imperfectly confined by a strong magnetic field. The wall of the experiment is designed to withstand an estimated wall load from these fusion alpha particles, but the accuracy of this estimate needs to be improved to avoid potentially catastrophic surprises when the experiment becomes operational. We have added a more accurate, gyro-dynamic model of particle motion to the existing drift-dynamic model in the DELTA5D simulation software used for the project. We have also added the ability to load a detailed engineering model of the wall and use it in the simulations.

The developers of the Paharpur Business Center (PBC) and Software Technology Incubator Park in New Delhi, India offer an environmentally sustainable building with a strong emphasis on energy conservation, waste minimization and superior indoor air quality (IAQ). To achieve the IAQ goal, the building utilizes a series of air cleaning technologies for treating the air entering the building. These technologies include an initial water wash followed by ultraviolet light treatment and biolfiltration using a greenhouse located on the roof and numerous plants distributed throughout the building. Even with the extensive treatment of makeup air and room air in the PBC, a recent study found that the concentrations of common volatile organic compounds and aldehydes appear to rise incrementally as the air passes through the building from the supply to the exhaust. This finding highlights the need to consider the minimization of chemical sources in buildings in combination with the use of advanced air cleaning technologies when seeking to achieve superior IAQ. The goal of this project was to identify potential source materials for indoor chemicals in the PBC. Samples of building materials, including wood paneling (polished and unpolished), drywall, and plastic from a hydroponic drum that was part of the …

Spectral reflectance was used to determine the thickness of thin glue layers in a study of the effect of the glue on radiance and reflectance measurements of shocked-tin substrates attached to lithium fluoride windows. Measurements based on profilometry of the components were found to be inaccurate due to flatness variations and deformation of the tin substrate under pressure during the gluing process. The accuracy of the spectral reflectance measurements were estimated to be ±0.5 μm, which was sufficient to demonstrate a convincing correlation between glue thickness and shock-generated light.

The first real-time detection of surface dust inside a tokamak was made using an electrostatic dust detector. A fine grid of interlocking circuit traces was installed in the NSTX vessel and biased to 50 v. Impinging dust particles created a temporary short circuit and the resulting current pulse was recorded by counting electronics. The techniques used to increase the detector sensitivity by a factor of x10,000 to match NSTX dust levels while suppressing electrical pickup are presented. The results were validated by comparison to lab measurements, by the null signal from a covered detector that was only sensitive to pickup, and by the dramatic increase in signal when Li particles were introduced for wall conditioning purposes.

The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) has been requested to perform analyses on samples of the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) decon frit slurry (i.e., supernate samples and sump solid samples). Four 1-L liquid slurry samples were provided to SRNL by Savannah River Remediation (SRR) from the 'front-end' decon activities. Additionally, two 1-L sump solids samples were provided to SRNL for compositional and physical analysis. In this report, the physical and chemical characterization results of the slurry solids and sump solids are reported. Crawford et al. (2010) provide the results of the supernate analysis. The results of the sump solids are reported on a mass basis given the samples were essentially dry upon receipt. The results of the slurry solids were converted to a volume basis given approximately 2.4 grams of slurry solids were obtained from the {approx}4 liters of liquid slurry sample. Although there were slight differences in the analytical results between the sump solids and slurry solids the following general summary statements can be made. Slight differences in the results are also captured for specific analysis. (1) Physical characterization - (a) SEM/EDS analysis suggested that the samples were enriched in Li and Si (B and Na not detectable …

This report discusses a workshop on strategies for knowledge management for the 2013 NCA that was held in Reston, Virginia in September 2010.

The chemical stability, sulfur dioxide transport, ionic conductivity, and electrolyzer performance have been measured for several commercially available and experimental proton exchange membranes (PEMs) for use in a sulfur dioxide depolarized electrolyzer (SDE). The SDE's function is to produce hydrogen by using the Hybrid Sulfur (HyS) Process, a sulfur based electrochemical/thermochemical hybrid cycle. Membrane stability was evaluated using a screening process where each candidate PEM was heated at 80 C in 63.5 wt. % H{sub 2}SO{sub 4} for 24 hours. Following acid exposure, chemical stability for each membrane was evaluated by FTIR using the ATR sampling technique. Membrane SO{sub 2} transport was evaluated using a two-chamber permeation cell. SO{sub 2} was introduced into one chamber whereupon SO{sub 2} transported across the membrane into the other chamber and oxidized to H{sub 2}SO{sub 4} at an anode positioned immediately adjacent to the membrane. The resulting current was used to determine the SO{sub 2} flux and SO{sub 2} transport. Additionally, membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) were prepared from candidate membranes to evaluate ionic conductivity and selectivity (ionic conductivity vs. SO{sub 2} transport) which can serve as a tool for selecting membranes. MEAs were also performance tested in a HyS electrolyzer measuring current density versus …

The funds from this DOE grant were used to help cover the travel costs of five students and postdoctoral fellows who attended a symposium on 'Hydration: From Clusters to Aqueous Solutions' held at the Fall 2007 American Chemical Society Meeting in Boston, MA, August 19-23. The Symposium was sponsored by the Physical Chemistry Division, ACS. The technical program for the meeting is available at http://phys-acs.org/fall2007.html.

Lignocellulosic biomass is a promising feedstock for producing renewable chemicals and transportation fuels as petroleum substitutes. Fermentation of the cellulose in biomass in an SSF process requires that the properties of the microbial biocatalyst match the fungal cellulase activity optima for cost-effective production of products. Fermentation of the pentose sugars derived from hemicellulose in biomass is an additional asset of an ideal biocatalyst. The microbial biocatalyst used by the industry, yeast, lacks the ability to ferment pentose sugars. The optimum temperature for growth and fermentation of yeast is about 35°C. The optimum temperature for commercially available cellulase enzymes for depolymerization of cellulose in biomass to glucose for fermentation is 50-55 °C. Because of the mismatch in the temperature optima for the enzyme and yeast, SSF of cellulose to ethanol (cellulosic ethanol) with yeast is conducted at a temperature that is close to the optimum for yeast. We have shown that by increasing the temperature of SSF to 50-55 °C using thermotolerant B. coagulans, the amount of cellulase required for SSF of cellulose to products can be reduced by 3-4 –fold compared to yeast-based SSF at 35°C with a significant cost savings due to lower enzyme loading. Thermotolerant Bacillus coagulans strains …

This report documents testing funded by CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation and performed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in collaboration with Fauske and Associates, LLC (FAI) to determine the behavior of vessel spanning bubbles. The shear strengths of four samples of kaolin/water mixtures obtained by PNNL from FAI were measured and are reported here. The measured shear strengths of these samples were then used to determine how the Rassat correlation fit these new measurements or if a new correlation was needed. These results were then compared with previously reported data.

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The Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PSNS&IMF) and Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton (Shipyard) located in Bremerton, WA are committed to a culture of continuous process improvement for all aspects of Shipyard operations, including reducing the releases of hazardous materials and waste in discharges from the Shipyard. Under the Project ENVVEST Final Project Agreement, a cooperative project among PSNS&IMF, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology), and local stakeholders (US Navy, EPA and Ecology 2002) has been helping to improve the environmental quality of the Sinclair and Dyes Inlet Watershed (ENVVEST 2006). An ambient monitoring program for sediment, water, and indigenous mussels began in 2009 to assess the status and trend of ecological resources, assess the effectiveness of cleanup and pollution control measures, and determine if discharges from all sources are protective of beneficial uses including aquatic life. This document presents the 2010 chemical residue data and stable isotopes of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) for the regional mussel watch stations located in Sinclair Inlet, Dyes Inlet, Port Orchard Passage, Rich Passage, Agate Passage, Liberty Bay, and Keyport Lagoon. Indigenous bivalves were collected from a small boat and/or from along the shoreline, measured, …

Operating a fusion-class laser to its full potential requires a balance of operating constraints. On the one hand, the total laser energy delivered must be high enough to give an acceptable probability for ignition success. On the other hand, the laser-induced optical damage levels must be low enough to be acceptably handled with the available infrastructure and budget for optics recycle. Our research goal was to develop the models, database structures, and algorithmic tools (which we collectively refer to as ''Loop Tools'') needed to successfully maintain this balance. Predictive models are needed to plan for and manage the impact of shot campaigns from proposal, to shot, and beyond, covering a time span of years. The cost of a proposed shot campaign must be determined from these models, and governance boards must decide, based on predictions, whether to incorporate a given campaign into the facility shot plan based upon available resources. Predictive models are often built on damage ''rules'' derived from small beam damage tests on small optics. These off-line studies vary the energy, pulse-shape and wavelength in order to understand how these variables influence the initiation of damage sites and how initiated damage sites can grow upon further exposure to …

The paper by H.R. Strauss presents numerical simulations, which pretend to describe the disruption instability in ITER device. The simulations were performed with numerical code M3D, described in Ref.[7] of the paper.