This guide provides readers with a broad understanding of the potential benefits that current renewable energy technologies can offer rural microenterprises. It also introduces the institutional approaches that have been developed to make RE technologies accessible to microentrepreneurs and the challenges that these entrepreneurs have encountered.

This chapter describes ex situ bioremediation of the petroleum portion of radiologically co-contaminated soils using microorganisms isolated from a waste site and innovative bioreactor technology. Microorganisms first isolated and screened in the laboratory for bioremediation of petroleum were eventually used to treat soils in a bioreactor. The bioreactor treated soils contaminated with over 20,000 mg/kg total petroleum hydrocarbon and reduced the levels to less than 100 mg/kg in 22 months. After treatment, the soils were permanently disposed as low-level radiological waste. The petroleum and radiologically contaminated soil (PRCS) bioreactor operated using bioventing to control the supply of oxygen (air) to the soil being treated. The system treated 3.67 tons of PCRS amended with weathered compost, ammonium nitrate, fertilizer, and water. In addition, a consortium of microbes (patent pending) isolated at the Savannah River National Laboratory from a petroleum-contaminated site was added to the PRCS system. During operation, degradation of petroleum waste was accounted for through monitoring of carbon dioxide levels in the system effluent. The project demonstrated that co-contaminated soils could be successfully treated through bioventing and bioaugmentation to remove petroleum contamination to levels below 100 mg/kg while protecting workers and the environment from radiological contamination.

Fact sheet written for the Inventions and Innovation Program about a new composite-reinforced aluminum conductor for utility transmission and distribution. The millions of people affected by a blackout in the western US, Canada, and parts of Mexico in July 1996 had no idea the power outage was caused by overloaded transmission lines sagging low enough to touch trees. Millions of New Englanders affected by power outages during the 1997--98 winter probably weren't aware that accumulations of ice and snow on transmission lines had caused the lines to snap. Yet, these two examples illustrate the urgent need to begin upgrading this country's aging electrical-power distribution systems. A key step in this process lies in improving the weight and conductivity characteristics of utility transmission and distribution lines. Conventional conductors used for overhead transmission and distribution lines are comprised of aluminum strands of wire wrapped around a steel core. The aluminum serves as the electrical conductor, while the steel provides mechanical support. This hybrid design results in an excellent weight-to-conductivity ratio, but it also yields a heavier product, which requires stronger and more costly support structures and limits conductivity. W. Brandt Goldsworthy and Associates, Inc., of Torrance, California, is developing a new composite-reinforced …

The mathematical modeling of the transport and transformation of trace species in the atmosphere is one of the scientific tools currently used to assess atmospheric chemistry, air quality, and climatic conditions. From the scientific but also from the management perspectives accurate inventories of emissions of the trace species at the appropriate spatial, temporal, and species resolution are required. There are two general methodologies used to estimate regional to global emissions: bottom-up and top-down (also known as inverse modeling). Bottom-up methodologies to estimate industrial emissions are based on activity data, emission factors (amount of emissions per unit activity), and for some inventories additional parameters (such as sulfur content of fuels). Generally these emissions estimates must be given finer sectoral, spatial (usually gridded), temporal, and for some inventories species resolution. Temporal and spatial resolution are obtained via the use of surrogate information, such as population, land use, traffic counts, etc. which already exists in or can directly be converted to gridded form. Speciation factors have been and are being developed to speciate inventories of NO{sub x}, particulate matter, and hydrocarbons. Top-down (inverse modeling) methodologies directly invert air quality measurements in terms of poorly known but critical parameters to constrain the emissions needed …

Nanoporous open-cell foams are a rapidly growing class of high-porosity materials (porosity {ge} 70%). The research in this field is driven by the desire to create functional materials with unique physical, chemical and mechanical properties where the material properties emerge from both morphology and the material itself. An example is the development of nanoporous metallic materials for photonic and plasmonic applications which has recently attracted much interest. The general strategy is to take advantage of various size effects to introduce novel properties. These size effects arise from confinement of the material by pores and ligaments, and can range from electromagnetic resonances to length scale effects in plasticity. In this chapter we will focus on the mechanical properties of low density nanoporous metals and how these properties are affected by length scale effects and bonding characteristics. A thorough understanding of the mechanical behavior will open the door to further improve and fine-tune the mechanical properties of these sometimes very delicate materials, and thus will be crucial for integrating nanoporous metals into products. Cellular solids with pore sizes above 1 micron have been the subject of intense research for many years, and various scaling relations describing the mechanical properties have been developed.[4] …

General use fact sheet about geothermal energy in Idaho. Idaho holds enormous resources - among the largest in the United States - of this clean, reliable form of energy that to date have barely been tapped.

A tremendous amount of scientific insight has been garnered over the past half-century by using particle accelerators to study physical systems of sub-atomic dimensions. These giant instruments begin with particles at rest, then greatly increase their energy of motion, forming a narrow trajectory or beam of particles. In fixed-target accelerators, the particle beam impacts upon a stationary sample or target which contains or produces the sub-atomic system being studied. This is in distinction to colliders, where two beams are produced and are steered into each other so that their constituent particles can collide. The acceleration process always relies on the particle being accelerated having an electric charge; however, both the details of producing the beam and the classes of scientific investigations possible vary widely with the specific type of particle being accelerated. This article discusses fixed-target accelerators which produce beams of electrons, the lightest charged particle. As detailed in the report, the beam energy has a close connection with the size of the physical system studied. Here a useful unit of energy is a GeV, i.e., a giga electron-volt. (ne GeV, the energy an electron would have if accelerated through a billion volts, is equal to 1.6 x 10{sup -10} …

Newsletter for DOE Biofuels Program. Articles on recent DOE grants and contracts under Bioenergy Initiative and related programs; also on creation of National Bioenergy Center at NREL.

In 1998, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, a public transit agency in Dallas, Texas, began operating a large fleet of heavy-duty buses powered by liquefied natural gas. As part of a $16 million commitment to alternative fuels, DART operates 139 LNG buses serviced by two new LNG fueling stations.

Prokaryotic life on earth is manifested by its diversity and omnipresence. These microbes serve as natural sources of a large variety of compounds with the potential to serve the ever growing, medicinal, chemical and transportation needs of the human population. However, commercially viable production of these compounds can be realized only through significant improvement of the native production capacity of natural isolates. The most favorable way to achieve this goal is through the genetic manipulation of metabolic pathways that direct the production of these molecules. While random mutagenesis and screening have dominated the industrial production of such compounds in the past our increased understanding of microbial physiology over the last five decades has shifted this trend towards rational approaches for metabolic design. Major drivers of this trend include recombinant DNA technology, high throughput characterization of macromolecular cellular components, quantitative modeling for metabolic engine ring, targeted combinatorial engineering and synthetic biology. In this chapter we track the evolution of microbial engineering technologies from the black box era of random mutagenesis to the science and engineering-driven era of metabolic design.

This Photovoltaic Program Five-Year Plan is being published today, January 1, 2000. This five-year plan provides a strategy for research and development to advance the technology.

SolMaT works with manufacturers to lower the cost of manufacturing components for concentrating solar power systems.

This is the second issue of the third volume (Fall 2000) of a technical bulletin produced for the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP). It is intended for Federal solar energy champions, that is, energy officers, contracting officials, facility managers, and others who participate in projects in which solar and other renewable energy technologies are installed in Federal government facilities in order to meet the directives of Executive Order 13123 and the President's Million Solar Roofs Initiative. This issue recognizes the contributions of the Federal agencies and specific individuals who enabled the government to meet its goal of installing 2,000 solar energy systems (and related systems) on Federal roofs by the year 2000. Although only about 30 solar energy champions were given awards, they represent hundreds of government employees who are working to save energy, money, and the environment through energy efficiency and renewable energy.

With the advent of massively parallel computer systems, scientists are now able to simulate complex phenomena (e.g., explosions of a stars). Such scientific simulations typically generate large-scale data sets over the spatio-temporal space. Unfortunately, the sheer sizes of the generated data sets make efficient exploration of them impossible. Constructing queriable statistical models is an essential step in helping scientists glean new insight from their computer simulations. We define queriable statistical models to be descriptive statistics that (1) summarize and describe the data within a user-defined modeling error, and (2) are able to answer complex range-based queries over the spatiotemporal dimensions. In this chapter, we describe systems that build queriable statistical models for large-scale scientific simulation data sets. In particular, we present our Ad-hoc Queries for Simulation (AQSim) infrastructure, which reduces the data storage requirements and query access times by (1) creating and storing queriable statistical models of the data at multiple resolutions, and (2) evaluating queries on these models of the data instead of the entire data set. Within AQSim, we focus on three simple but effective statistical modeling techniques. AQSim's first modeling technique (called univariate mean modeler) computes the ''true'' (unbiased) mean of systematic partitions of the data. AQSim's …

This issue of Alternative Fuel News focuses on transit buses and refuse haulers. Many transit agencies and waste management companies are investigating alternatives to traditional diesel buses and refuse haulers.

Little Rock Air Force Base (LRAFB), in partnership with the local utility, Entergy Services, Inc., has reduced energy costs and used savings from investments in high-efficiency equipment to maintain and improve the condition of base housing and other facilities. Three projects were completed, with over $10 million invested. Major accomplishments include replacing air-to-air heat pumps with high-efficiency ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs) in more than 1,500 base housing units, lighting modifications to 10 buildings, upgrade of HVAC equipment in the base's enlisted club, and energy-efficient lighting retrofits for LRAFB's flight simulator.

Temperature and salinity are two of the key properties of ocean water masses. The distribution of these two independent but related characteristics reflects the interplay of incoming solar radiation (insolation) and the uneven distribution of heat loss and gain by the ocean, with that of precipitation, evaporation, and the freezing and melting of ice. Temperature and salinity to a large extent, determine the density of a parcel of water. Small differences in temperature and salinity can increase or decrease the density of a water parcel, which can lead to convection. Once removed from the surface of the ocean where 'local' changes in temperature and salinity can occur, the water parcel retains its distinct relationship between (potential) temperature and salinity. We can take advantage of this 'conservative' behavior where changes only occur as a result of mixing processes, to track the movement of water in the deep ocean (Figure 1). The distribution of density in the ocean is directly related to horizontal pressure gradients and thus (geostrophic) ocean currents. During the Quaternary when we have had systematic growth and decay of large land based ice sheets, salinity has had to change. A quick scaling argument following that of Broecker and Peng …

Building America houses in Las Vegas, Nevada, are using state-of-the-art building materials and systems to provide residents with much lower energy bills than standard construction. The houses use unvented roofs, high-performance windows, and combo domestic hot-water and air-conditioning units.

The goal of this article is to illustrate the use of synchrotron radiation for investigating surface chemical reactions by photoelectron spectroscopy. A brief introduction and background information is followed by examples of layer resolved spectroscopy, oxidation and sulfidation of metallic, semiconducting and oxide surfaces.

Weather-resistive barriers are a part of exterior wall systems that protect building materials from exterior water penetration. They perform like a protective shell for buildings, yet allow water vapor to escape. This fact sheet covers types and costs of weather-resistive barriers, when and how to use them, installation, details for windows and doors, and properties of weather-resistive barriers.

Advanced framing techniques for home construction have been researched extensively and proven effective. Both builders and home owners can benefit from advanced framing. Advanced framing techniques create a structurally sound home that has lower material and labor costs than a conventionally framed house. This fact sheet describes advanced framing techniques, design considerations, and framing.

Combustion appliances that use fuels like natural gas, propane, oil, kerosene, or wood can be more efficient and effective at heating than electricity. However, careful installation is required to ensure safe and efficient operation. This fact sheet addresses problems posed by combustion equipment and provides suggestions for furnaces and water heaters, unvented space heaters and fireplaces, and stoves and ovens. Installation, combustion closet design, causes of and prevention of backdrafting are also covered.

This publication addresses the need for energy in schools, primarily those schools that are not connected to the electric grid. This guide will apply mostly to primary and secondary schools located in non-electrified areas. In areas where grid power is expensive and unreliable, this guide can be used to examine other energy options to conventional power. The authors' goal is to help the reader to accurately assess a school's energy needs, evaluate appropriate and cost-effective technologies to meet those needs, and to implement an effective infrastructure to install and maintain the hardware.

Spin-polarized photoelectron spectroscopy has developed into a versatile tool for the study of surface and thin film magnetism. In this chapter, we examine the methodology of the technique and its recent application to a number of different problems. We first examine the photoemission process itself followed by a detailed review of spin-polarization measurement techniques and the related experimental requirements. We review studies of spin polarized surface states, interface states and quantum well states followed by studies of the technologically important oxide systems including half-metallic transition metal oxides, ferromagnet/oxide interfaces and the antiferromagnetic cuprates that exhibit high Tc Superconductivity. We also discuss the application of high-resolution photoemission with spin resolving capabilities to the study of spin dependent self energy effects.