None

This experimental research project investigated protein-based biocatalysis in supercritical fluid solvents as an integrated process approach to catalyze the removal of sulfur atoms from crude oils and fuels. The work focused on the oxidation of model sulfur-containing compounds in supercritical reaction media and included three major tasks: microbiological induction experiments, proteincatalyzed biooxidation in supercritical solvents, and a work-in-kind cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA). This work demonstrated that the biooxidation reaction could be improved by an order-of-magnitude by carrying out the reaction in emulsions in supercritical fluids.

Several DOE sites have been contaminated by transuranicradionuclide (TRU) discharges including neptunium and plutonium. Theirinteraction with the surrounding geological media can affect thetransport and remediation of these radionuclides in the environment.Manganese based minerals, present as minor phases in the vadose zone, canpreferentially sequester TRU over other minerals present in largerquantities. The objective of this project is to understand theinteractions between plutonium and neptunium and manganese oxyhydroxideminerals to predict potential hazards they represent to the environment,as well as to provide important scientific information for the design ofeffective remediation strategies for contaminated DOE sites.

The Nuclear Materials Focus Area (NMFA) held its annual mid-year review on February 12 and 14, 2002, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The purpose of this review was to examine both the technical aspects and the programmatic aspects of its technology development program. The focus area activities were reviewed by a panel consisting of personnel representing the end users of the technologies, and technical experts in nuclear materials. This year's review was somewhat different than in the past, as the stress was on how well the various projects being managed through the NMFA aligned with the two thrust areas and nine key goals and priorities recently issued by the Deputy Assistant Secretary for DOE's Office of Environmental Management (EM).

This report addresses the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory's portion of a collaborative effort with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories on a borehole seismic project called Single Well Seismic Imaging. The INEEL's role was to design, fabricate, deploy, and test a number of passive devices to suppress the energy within the borehole. This energy is generally known as tube waves. Heretofore, tube waves precluded acquisition of meaningful single-well seismic data. This report addresses the INEEL tests, theories, observations, and test results.

ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999 was developed in an effort to set minimum requirements for energy efficienty design and construction of new commercial buildings. This report assesses the benefits and costs of adopting this standard as the building energy code in Illinois. Energy and economic impacts are estimated using BLAST combined with a Life-Cycle Cost approach to assess corresponding economic costs and benefits.

This summer workshop successfully exposed beginning graduate students, research technicians from industry, and other scientists to modern concepts and experimental protocols in an area that both DOE and NSF perceived to be lacking in U.S. science. 70 students participated in this workshop over 5 summers. Each summer, 12-16 students spent 2-4 weeks at The Ohio State University covering four distinct modules through lectures, laboratory sessions, and interaction with internationally recognized eminent scientists.

Semi-volatile compounds present special analytical challenges not met by conventional methods for analysis of ambient particulate matter (PM). Accurate quantification of PM-associated organic compounds requires validation of the laboratory procedures for recovery over a wide volatility and polarity range. To meet these challenges, solutions of n-alkanes (nC{sub 12} to nC{sub 40}) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs (naphthalene to benzo[ghi]perylene) were reduced in volume from a solvent mixture (equal volumes of hexane, dichloromethane and methanol), to examine recovery after reduction in volume. When the extract solution volume reached 0.5 mL the solvent was entirely methanol, and the recovery averaged 60% for n-alkanes nC{sub 12} to nC{sub 25} and PAHs from naphthalene to chrysene. Recovery of higher MW compounds decreased with MW, because of their insolubility in methanol. When the walls of the flasks were washed with 1 mL of equal parts hexane and dichloromethane (to reconstruct the original solvent composition), the recovery of nC{sub 18} and higher MW compounds increased dramatically, up to 100% for nC{sub 22}-nC{sub 32} and then slowly decreasing with MW due to insolubility. To examine recovery during extraction of the components of the High Capacity Integrated Gas and Particle Sampler, the same standards were used to spike …

None

If the vector glueball {Omicron} exists in the mass range that theory suggests, its resonant production cross section can be detected in e{sup +}e{sup -} annihilation only if the decay width is very narrow ({le} a few MeV). Otherwise {Omicron} will be observed only indirectly through its mixing with {psi}{prime}. We propose a few tests of the {Omicron}-{psi}{prime} mixing for future charm factories.

None

The objective of this study was to develop a predictive experimentally verified computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for gas-liquid-solid flow. A three dimensional transient computer code for the coupled Navier-Stokes equations for each phase was developed and is appended in this report. The principal input into the model is the viscosity of the particulate phase which was determined from a measurement of the random kinetic energy of the 800 micron glass beads and a Brookfield viscometer. The details are presented in the attached paper titled ''CFD Simulation of Flow and Turbulence in a Slurry Bubble Column''. This phase of the work is in press in a referred journal (AIChE Journal, 2002) and was presented at the Fourth International Conference on Multiphase Flow (ICMF 2001) in New Orleans, May 27-June 1, 2001 (Paper No. 909). The computed time averaged particle velocities and concentrations agree with Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements of velocities and concentrations, obtained using a combination of gamma-ray and X-ray densitometers, in a slurry bubble column, operated in the bubbly-coalesced fluidization regime with continuous flow of water. Both the experiment and the simulation show a down-flow of particles in the center of the column and up-flow near the walls …

None

Gamma-ray spectroscopy is a valuable tool of science and technology. Many applications for this tool are in need of a detector technology capable of achieving excellent energy resolution and efficient detection while operating at room temperature. Detectors based on the material cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe) could potentially meet this need if certain material deficiencies are addressed. The coplanar-grid as well as other electron-only detection techniques are effective in overcoming some of the material problems of CdZnTe and, consequently, have led to efficient gamma-ray detectors with good energy resolution while operating at room temperature. At the present time, the performance of these detectors is mainly limited by the degree of uniformity in electron generation and transport. Despite recent progress in the growth of CdZnTe material, small variations in these properties remain a barrier to the widespread success of such detectors. Alpha-particle response characterization of Cd ZnTe crystals fabricated into simple planar detectors provides an effective tool to accurately study such variations. We have used a finely collimated alpha source to produce two-dimensional maps of detector response. For a number of crystals, a clear correlation has been observed between their alpha response maps and the distribution of tellurium inclusions inside the crystals. …

The goal of this proposed work is to directly address the need for rapid on-line characterization of the physical properties of HLW slurries during all phases of the remediation process, from in-tank characterization of sediments to monitoring of the concentration, particle size, and degree of agglomeration and gelation of slurries during transport. This will be done with both optical and ultrasonic methods. There are three tasks: (1) develop optical and acoustic measurements to provide the fundamental science needed for successful device development and implementation, (2) develop theories that describe the interrelationship between wave propagation and the physical properties of the slurry, and (3) solve, in the framework of these theories, the inversion problem and compare them with the experimental measurements to non-intrusively characterize slurries.

Technetium, as pertechnetate (TcO4 -), is a mobile species in the environment. This characteristic, along with its long half-life, (99Tc, t1/2 = 213,000 a) makes technetium a major contributor to the long-term hazard associated with low level waste (LLW) disposal. Technetium partitioning from the nuclear waste at DOE sites will be required so that the LLW forms meet DOE performance assessment criteria. Technetium separations assume that technetium exists as TcO4 - in the waste. However, years of thermal, chemical, and radiolytic digestion in the presence of organic material, has transformed much of the TcO4 - into unidentified, stable, reduced, technetium complexes. To successfully partition technetium from tank wastes, it will be necessary to either remove these technetium species with a new process, or reoxidize them to TcO4 - so that conventional pertechnetate separation schemes will be successful.

Recent advances in solid-state switches have made it feasible to design programmable, high-repetition-rate pulsers for induction accelerators. These switches could lower the cost of recirculating induction accelerators, such as the ''small recirculator'' at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), by substantially reducing the number of induction modules. Numerical work is reported here to determine what effects the use of fewer pulsers at higher voltage would have on the beam quality of the LLNL small recirculator. Lattices with different numbers of pulsers are examined using the fluid/envelope code CIRCE, and several schedules for acceleration and compression are compared for each configuration. For selected schedules, the phase-space dynamics is also studied using the particle-in-cell code WARP3d.

The Next Generation Turbine (NGT) Program's technological development focused on a study of the feasibility of turbine systems greater than 30 MW that offer improvement over the 1999 state-of-the-art systems. This program targeted goals of 50 percent turndown ratios, 15 percent reduction in generation cost/kW hour, improved service life, reduced emissions, 400 starts/year with 10 minutes to full load, and multiple fuel usage. Improvement in reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM), while reducing operations, maintenance, and capital costs by 15 percent, was pursued. This program builds on the extensive low emissions stationary gas turbine work being carried out by Pratt & Whitney (P&W) for P&W Power Systems (PWPS), which is a company under the auspices of the United Technologies Corporation (UTC). This study was part of the overall Department of Energy (DOE) NGT Program that extends out to the year 2008. A follow-on plan for further full-scale component hardware testing is conceptualized for years 2002 through 2008 to insure a smooth and efficient transition to the marketplace for advanced turbine design and cycle technology. This program teamed the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), P&W, United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), kraftWork Systems Inc., a subcontractor on-site at UTRC, and Multiphase Power and …

None

In prior studies of the current Shuttle Spacesuit (SSA), where basic fabric lay-ups were tested for shielding capabilities, it was found that the fabric portions of the suit give far less protection than previously estimated due to porosity and non-uniformity of fabric and LCVG components. In addition, overall material transmission properties were less than optimum. A number of alternate approaches are being tested to provide more uniform coverage and to use more efficient materials. We will discuss in this paper, recent testing of new material lay-ups/configurations for possible use in future spacesuit designs.

The field of relativistic heavy ion physics entered a new era with the start of the physics program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York. This dedicated facility allows extensive studies of the nuclear matter phase diagram at the highest temperatures so far available in the laboratory. The goal of the program is to conclusively establish the existence of the deconfined state of nuclear matter predicted by QCD, the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), and study its properties.

Advocates of renewable energy have long argued that wind power and other renewable technologies can mitigate fuel price risk within a resource portfolio. Such arguments--made with renewed vigor in the wake of unprecedented natural gas price volatility during the winter of 2000/2001--have mostly been qualitative in nature, however, with few attempts to actually quantify the price stability benefit that wind and other renewables provide. This paper attempts to quantify this benefit by equating it with the cost of achieving price stability through other means, particularly gas-based financial derivatives (futures and swaps). We find that over the past two years, natural gas consumers have had to pay a premium of roughly 0.50 cents/kWh over expected spot prices to lock in natural gas prices for the next 10 years. This incremental cost is potentially large enough to tip the scales away from new investments in natural gasfired generation and in favor of investments in wind power and other renewable technologies.

In this paper, we report on a relatively new cerium doped scintillator - LaCl3 for gamma ray spectroscopy. Crystals of this scintillator have been grown using Bridgman method. This material when doped with 10 percent cerium has high light output ({approx} 50,000 photons/MeV) and fast principal decay time constant ({approx}20 ns). Furthermore, it shows excellent energy resolution for gamma ray detection. For example, energy resolution as low as 3.2 percent (FWHM) has been achieved with 662 keV photons (137Cs source) at room temperature. Also high timing resolution (264 ps - FWHM) has been recorded with LaCl3-PMT and BaF2-PMT detectors operating in coincidence using 511 keV positron annihilation gamma ray pairs. Details of crystal growth, scintillation properties, and variation of these properties with cerium concentration are also reported.

None