Two Corning monoliths and a non-carbon-based material have been identified as potential additives for mercury capture in syngas at temperatures above 400°F and pressure of 600 psig. A new Corning monolith formulation, GR-F1-2189, described as an active sample appeared to be the best monolith tested to date. The Corning SR Liquid monolith concept continues to be a strong candidate for mercury capture. Both monolith types allowed mercury reduction to below 5-μg/m3 (~5 ppb), a current U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) goal for trace metal control. Preparation methods for formulating the SR Liquid monolith impacted the ability of the monolith to capture mercury. The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC)-prepared Noncarbon Sorbents 1 and 2 appeared to offer potential for sustained and significant reduction of mercury concentration in the simulated fuel gas. The Noncarbon Sorbent 1 allowed sustained mercury reduction to below 5-μg/m3 (~5 ppb). The non-carbon-based sorbent appeared to offer the potential for regeneration, that is, desorption of mercury by temperature swing (using nitrogen and steam at temperatures above where adsorption takes place). A Corning cordierite monolith treated with a Group IB metal offered limited potential as a mercury sorbent. However, a Corning carbon-based monolith containing prereduced metallic species similar …

SiOnyx has developed an enhanced thin film silicon photovoltaic device with improved efficiency. Thin film silicon solar cells suffer from low material absorption characteristics resulting in poor cell efficiencies. SiOnyx’s approach leverages Black Silicon, an advanced material fabricated using ultrafast lasers. The laser treated films show dramatic enhancement in optical absorption with measured values in excess of 90% in the visible spectrum and well over 50% in the near infrared spectrum. Thin film Black Silicon solar cells demonstrate 25% higher current generation with almost no impact on open circuit voltage as compared with representative control samples. The initial prototypes demonstrated an improvement of nearly 2 percentage points in the suns Voc efficiency measurement. In addition we validated the capability to scale this processing technology to the throughputs (< 5 min/m2) required for volume production using state of the art commercially available high power industrial lasers. With these results we clearly demonstrate feasibility for the enhancement of thin film solar cells with this laser processing technique.

This project was undertaken to demonstrate the viability of using hydrogen as a fuel in an internal combustion engine vehicle for use as a part of a mass transit system. The advantages of hydrogen as a fuel include renew-ability, minimal environmental impact on air quality and the environment, and potential to reduce dependence on foreign energy sources for the transportation sector. Recognizing the potential for the hydrogen fuel concept, the Southeast Michigan Congress of Governments (SEMCOG) determined to consider it in the study of a proposed regional mass transit rail system for southeast Michigan. SEMCOG wanted to evaluate the feasibility of using hydrogen fueled internal combustion engine (H2ICE) vehicles in shuttle buses to connect the Detroit Metro Airport to a proposed, nearby rail station. Shuttle buses are in current use on the airport for passenger parking and inter-terminal transport. This duty cycle is well suited to the application of hydrogen fuel at this time because of the ability to re-fuel vehicles at a single nearby facility, overcoming the challenge of restricted fuel availability in the undeveloped hydrogen fuel infrastructure. A cooperative agreement between SEMCOG and the DOE was initiated and two H2ICE buses were placed in regular passenger service on …

This report presents the results of an evaluation of overwintering summer steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) fallback and early out-migrating steelhead kelts downstream passage at The Dalles Dam (TDA) sluiceway and turbines during fall/winter 2009 through early spring 2010. The study was conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District (USACE). The goal of this study was to characterize adult steelhead spatial and temporal distributions and passage rates at the sluiceway and turbines for fisheries managers and engineers to use in decision-making relative to sluiceway operations. The study was from November 1, 2009 to April 10, 2010. The study was divided into three study periods: Period 1, November 1 - December 15, 2009 for a fall/winter sluiceway and turbine study; Period 2, December 16, 2009 - February 28, 2010 for a turbine only study; Period 3, March 1 - April 10, 2010 for a spring sluiceway and turbine study. Sluiceway operations were scheduled to begin on March 1 for this study; however, because of an oil spill cleanup near the sluice outfall, sluiceway operations were delayed until March 8, 2010, therefore the spring study period did not commence until March 8. The study …

This report summarizes technical progress achieved during the cooperative agreement between Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) and U.S. Department of Energy to address the need for a for low-cost monitoring and inspection sensor system as identified in the Department of Energy (DOE) National Gas Infrastructure Research & Development (R&D) Delivery Reliability Program Roadmap.. The Instrumented Pipeline Initiative (IPI) achieved the objective by researching technologies for the monitoring of pipeline delivery integrity, through a ubiquitous network of sensors and controllers to detect and diagnose incipient defects, leaks, and failures. This report is organized by tasks as detailed in the Statement of Project Objectives (SOPO). The sections all state the objective and approach before detailing results of work.

An experimental program was set forth to study fuel cell performance at pressure and under various compositions. Improvement in cathode electrode performance is on the order of 33-40% at pressures of 6.4 Bara compared to atmospheric pressure. Key cathode operational parameters are the concentration and partial pressure of O2, and temperature. The effect of partial pressure of oxygen (PO2) decreases the activation polarization, although there appears to be a secondary effect of absolute pressure as well. The concentration of oxygen impacts the diffusion component of the polarization, which is largely insensitive to absolute pressure. The effect of pressure was found to reduce the total polarization resistance of full fuel-cells beyond the reduction determined for the cathode alone. The total reduction in ASR was on the order of 0.10 ohm-cm2 for a pressure increase from 1 to 6.5 Bara, with about 70% of the improvement being realized from 1 to 4 Bara. An important finding was that there is an effect of steam on the cathode that is highly temperature dependent. The loss of performance at temperatures below 850 C was very large for the standard LSM + YSZ cathodes.

The project which extended from November 2005 to May of 2010 demonstrated the application of Low Temperature Combustion (LTC) with engine out NOx levels of 0.2 g/bhp-hr throughout the program target load of 12.6bar BMEP. The project showed that the range of loads could be extended to 16.5bar BMEP, therefore matching the reference lug line of the base 2007 MY Navistar 6.4L V8 engine. Results showed that the application of LTC provided a dramatic improvement over engine out emissions when compared to the base engine. Furthermore LTC improved thermal efficiency by over 5% from the base production engine when using the steady state 13 mode composite test as a benchmark. The key enablers included improvements in the air, fuel injection, and cooling systems made in Phases I and II. The outcome was the product of a careful integration of each component under an intelligent control system. The engine hardware provided the conditions to support LTC and the controller provided the necessary robustness for a stable combustion. Phase III provided a detailed account on the injection strategy used to meet the high load requirements. During this phase, the control strategy was implemented in a production automotive grade ECU to perform cycle-by-cycle …

Work is reported on nanopatterning of ceramic oxides; microstructure tailoring, control and versatility of nanopatterned oxides; and characterization and localized properties of nanopatterned oxides.

This report presents the results of the evaluation of three ultrasonic sensors for detecting critical velocity during slurry transfer between the Hanford tank farms and the WTP.

The GRC series on Membranes: Materials and Processes have gained significant international recognition, attracting leading experts on membranes and other related areas from around the world. It is now known for being an interdisciplinary and synergistic meeting. The next summer's edition will keep with the past tradition and include new, exciting aspects of material science, chemistry, chemical engineering, computer simulation with participants from academia, industry and national laboratories. This edition will focus on cutting edge topics of membranes for addressing several grand challenges facing our society, in particular, energy, water, health and more generally sustainability. During the technical program, we want to discuss new membrane structure and characterization techniques, the role of advanced membranes and membrane-based processes in sustainability/environment (including carbon dioxide capture), membranes in water processes, and membranes for biological and life support applications. As usual, the informal nature of the meeting, excellent quality of the oral presentations and posters, and ample opportunity to meet many outstanding colleagues make this an excellent conference for established scientists as well as for students. A Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on the weekend prior to the GRC meeting will provide young researchers an opportunity to present their work and network with outstanding experts. …

The objective of the Chemistry & Biology of Tetrapyrroles Gordon Conference is to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines that otherwise would not interact. By bringing biologists, chemists, engineers and clinicians with a common interest in tetrapyrroles the conference provides a forum for cross-disciplinary ideas and collaboration. The perspective provided by biologists, chemists, and clinicians working in fields such as newly discovered defects in human porphyrin metabolism, the myriad of strategies for light harvesting in photosynthetic organisms, novel tetrapyrroles that serve as auxiliary chromophores or enzyme cofactors, synthetic strategies in the design of novel tetrapyrrole scaffolds, and tetrapyrrole based cell signaling and regulatory systems, makes this conference unique in the field. Over the years the growing evidence for the role of tetrapyrroles and their reactive intermediates in cell signaling and regulation has been of increasing importance at this conference. The 2010 conference on Chemistry & Biology of Tetrapyrroles will focus on many of these new frontiers as outlined in the preliminary program listed. Speakers will emphasize unpublished results and new findings in the field. The oral sessions will be followed by the highly interactive afternoon poster sessions. The poster sessions provide all conferees with the opportunity to present their latest …

Over the past decades, it has been well established that the mechanical behavior of materials changes when they are confined geometrically at least in one dimension to small scale. It is the aim of the 2010 Gordon Conference on 'Thin Film and Small Scale Mechanical Behavior' to discuss cutting-edge research on elastic, plastic and time-dependent deformation as well as degradation mechanisms like fracture, fatigue and wear at small scales. As in the past, the conference will benefit from contributions from fundamental studies of physical mechanisms linked to material science and engineering reaching towards application in modern applications ranging from optical and microelectronic devices and nano- or micro-electrical mechanical systems to devices for energy production and storage. The conference will feature entirely new testing methodologies and in situ measurements as well as recent progress in atomistic and micromechanical modeling. Particularly, emerging topics in the area of energy conversion and storage, such as material for batteries will be highlighted. The study of small-scale mechanical phenomena in systems related to energy production, conversion or storage offer an enticing opportunity to materials scientists, who can provide new insight and investigate these phenomena with methods that have not previously been exploited.

Pyrolytic carbon (PyC) is one of the important structural materials in the TRISO fuel particles which will be used in the next generation of gas-cooled very-high-temperature reactors (VHTR). When the TRISO particles are under irradiation at high temperatures, creep of the PyC layers may cause radial cracking leading to catastrophic particle failure. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of the creep behavior of PyC during irradiation is required to predict the overall fuel performance.

None

An air and radon pathways analysis was conducted for the F-Area Tank Farm (FTF) to estimate the flux of volatile radionuclides and radon at the ground surface due to residual waste remaining in the tanks following closure. This analysis was used as the basis to estimate the dose to the maximally exposed individual (MEI) for the air pathway per Curie (Ci) of each radionuclide remaining in the combined FTF waste tanks. For the air pathway analysis, several gaseous radionuclides were considered. These included carbon-14 (C-14), chlorine-36 (Cl-36), iodine-129 (I-129), selenium-79 (Se-79), antimony-125 (Sb-125), tin-126 (Sn-126), tritium (H-3), and technetium-99 (Tc-99). The dose to the MEI was estimated at the SRS Boundary during the 100 year institutional control period. For the 10,000 year post closure compliance period, the dose to the MEI was estimated at the 100 m compliance point. Additionally, the dose to the MEI was estimated at a seepage outcrop located 1600 m from the facility. For the radon pathway analysis, five parent radionuclides and their progeny were analyzed. These parent radionuclides included uranium-238 (U-238), plutonium-238 (Pu-238), uranium-234 (U-234), thorium-230 (Th-230), and radium-226 (Ra-226). The peak flux of radon-222 due to each parent radionuclide was estimated for the simulation …

We performed direct calculations of carrier hopping rates in strongly disordered conjugated polymers based on the atomic structure of the system, the corresponding electronic states and their coupling to all phonon modes. We found that the dependence of hopping rates on distance and the dependence of the mobility on temperature are significantly different than the ones stemming from the simple Miller-Abrahams model, regardless of the choice of the parameters in the model. A model that satisfactorily describes the hopping rates in the system and avoids the explicit calculation of electron-phonon coupling constants was then proposed and verified. Our results indicate that, in addition to electronic density of states, the phonon density of states and the spatial overlap of the wavefunctions are the quantities necessary to properly describe carrier hopping in disordered conjugated polymers.

Fast muon beam six dimensional (6D) phase space cooling is essential for muon colliders. The Helical Cooling Channel (HCC) uses hydrogen-pressurized RF cavities imbedded in a magnet system with solenoid, helical dipole, and helical quadrupole components that provide the continuous dispersion needed for emittance exchange and effective 6D beam cooling. A series of HCC segments, each with sequentially smaller aperture, higher magnetic field, and higher RF frequency to match the beam size as it is cooled, has been optimized by numerical simulation to achieve a factor of 10{sup 5} emittance reduction in a 300 m long channel with only a 40% loss of beam. Conceptual designs of the hardware required for this HCC system and the status of the RF studies and HTS helical solenoid magnet prototypes are described.

We report time-resolved Kerr effect measurements of magnetization dynamics in ferromagnetic SrRuO{sub 3}. We observe that the demagnetization time slows substantially at temperatures within 15K of the Curie temperature, which is {approx} 150K. We analyze the data with a phenomenological model that relates the demagnetization time to the spin flip time. In agreement with our observations the model yields a demagnetization time that is inversely proportional to T-T{sub c}. We also make a direct comparison of the spin flip rate and the Gilbert damping coefficient showing that their ratio very close to k{sub B}T{sub c}, indicating a common origin for these phenomena.

Pumping power measurements have been made on a series of 40-nm boehmite (AlOOH) alumina ''bricks'' (2 - 8 vol. percent in water). The alumina nanoparticles were obtained from Sasol and are designated as ''Catapal-200''. The pH of all compositions was adjusted to 3.2{+-}0.5. A complete characterization of the particles and their nanofluid thermal properties has been published in Journal of Applied Physics 106, 014304 (2009). While the nanofluid doesn't show large enhancements, it nevertheless serves as good comparisons between the experimental results and calculated results.

Tapering the undulator parameter is a well-known method for maintaining the resonant condition past saturation, and increasing Free Electron Laser (FEL) efficiency. In this paper, we demonstrate that shifting the electron bunch phase relative to the radiation is equivalent to tapering the undulator parameter. Using discrete phase changes derived from optimized undulator tapers for the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) x-ray FEL, we show that appropriate phase shifts between undulator sections can reproduce the power enhancement of undulator tapers. Phase shifters are relatively easy to implement and operate, and could be used to aid or replace undulator tapers in optimizing FEL performance.

The U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory funded this research collaboration effort between NextEnergy and the University of Michigan, who successfully designed, built, and tested a reformer system, which produced highquality syngas for use in SOFC and other applications, and a novel reactor system, which allowed for facile illumination of photocatalysts. Carbon and raw biomass gasification, sulfur tolerance of non-Platinum Group Metals (PGM) based (Ni/CeZrO2) reforming catalysts, photocatalysis reactions based on TiO2, and mild pyrolysis of biomass in ionic liquids (ILs) were investigated at low and medium temperatures (primarily 450 to 850 C) in an attempt to retain some structural value of the starting biomass. Despite a wide range of processes and feedstock composition, a literature survey showed that, gasifier products had narrow variation in composition, a restriction used to develop operating schemes for syngas cleanup. Three distinct reaction conditions were investigated: equilibrium, autothermal reforming of hydrocarbons, and the addition of O2 and steam to match the final (C/H/O) composition. Initial results showed rapid and significant deactivation of Ni/CeZrO2 catalysts upon introduction of thiophene, but both stable and unstable performance in the presence of sulfur were obtained. The key linkage appeared to be the hydrodesulfurization activity of the …

We present experimental studies of the gain length and saturation power level from 1.5 nm to 1.5 {angstrom} at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). By disrupting the FEL process with an orbit kick, we are able to measure the X-ray intensity as a function of undulator length. This kick method is cross-checked with the method of removing undulator sections. We also study the FEL-induced electron energy loss after saturation to determine the optimal taper of the undulator K values. The experimental results are compared to theory and simulations.

The lower tuff confining unit (LTCU) in the Yucca Flat Corrective Action Unit (CAU) consists of a monotonous sequence of pervasively zeolitized volcanic tuff (i.e., mostly bedded with lesser nonwelded to poorly welded tuff; not fractured) (Bechtel Nevada, 2006). The LTCU is an important confining unit beneath Yucca Flat because it separates the alluvial and volcanic aquifers, where many underground nuclear tests were conducted, from the regional lower carbonate aquifer. Recent sub-CAU-scale modeling by Los Alamos National Laboratory in the Tuff Pile area of Yucca Flat (Boryta, et al., in review) includes postulated low-porosity, high-permeability zones (i.e., fractured welded-tuff aquifers) within the LTCU. This scenario indicates that such postulated low-porosity, high-permeability zones could provide fast-path lateral conduits to faults, and eventually to the lower carbonate aquifer. A fractured and faulted lower carbonate aquifer is postulated to provide a flow path(s) for underground test-derived contaminants to potential offsite receptors. The ramifications of such a scenario are obvious for groundwater flow and contaminant migration beneath Yucca Flat. This paper describes the reasoning for not including postulated low-porosity, high-permeability zones within the LTCU in the Tuff Pile area or within the LTCU in the Yucca Flat CAU-scale model. Both observational and analytical data …

None