The objective of proposed research is development of catalysts with enhanced slurry phase activity and better selectivity to fuel range products, through a more detailed understanding and systematic studies of the effects of pretreatment procedures and promoters/binders (silica) on catalyst performance.

In an effort to encourage the maximum cost-effective level of energy efficiency in new building design, energy-efficiency standards have become more location-specific and performance-based. As a result, standards often provide more than one path for ensuring and demonstrating that a design complies, but at the cost of increased complexity. In addition, the burden of remedying a noncompliant design rests on the designers' knowledge and experience, with only general guidance provided by the standards. As part of efforts in the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Advanced Energy Design and Operation Technologies (AEDOT) project, a team at DOE's Pacific Northwest Laboratory is developing a computer program known as the Energy Standards Intelligent Design Tool (ES-IDT). The ES-IDT is one component of a prototype computer-based building design environment. It performs automatic compliance checking for parts of ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-1989 and provides designers assistance in bringing noncomplying designs into compliance. This paper describes the ES-IDT, the functions it provides, and how it is integrated into the design process via the AEDOT prototype building design environment. 9 refs.

The Refrigerant Database consolidates and facilitates access to information to assist industry in developing equipment using alternative refrigerants. The underlying purpose is to accelerate phase out of chemical compounds of environmental concern. The database provides bibliographic citations and abstracts for publications that may be useful in research and design of air- conditioning and refrigeration equipment. The complete documents are not included, though some may be added at a later date. The database identifies sources of specific information on R-32, R-123, R-124, R- 125, R-134a, R-141b, R142b, R-143a, R-152a, R-290 (propane), R-717 (ammonia), ethers, and others as well as azeotropic and zeotropic blends of these fluids. It addresses polyalkylene glycol (PAG), ester, and other lubricants. It also references documents addressing compatibility of refrigerants and lubricants with metals, plastics, elastomers, motor insulation, and other materials used in refrigerant circuits.

The experimental high energy physics program is directed toward the execution of experiments that probe the basic constituents of matter and the forces between them. These experiments are carried out at national and international accelerator facilities. At the current time, we are primarily concentrating on the following projects: Direct photon production in hadronic reactions (Fermilab E706); Production of hybrid mesons in the nuclear Coulomb field; The D-Zero experiment at the Tevatron collider; Deep inelastic neutrino- and electron-nucleon scattering at FNAL and SLAC; Nonlinear QED at critical field strengths at SLAC; The Experiments at KEK (AMY, 17keV neutrino); The CDF experiment at the Tevatron collider; and SSC-related detector R D on scintillating tile- and diamond-based calorimetry and microstrip tracking detectors.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Energy's (DOE) efforts to clean up nuclear waste at DOE's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, focusing on: (1) the factors causing the project's delays and cost growth; (2) the effect of the in-tank precipitation process project's suspension on the Savannah River Site's cleanup plans and costs; and (3) DOE's plans for developing an alternative technology for separating high-level waste from the liquid."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the contribution of federal programs and policies to urban sprawl, focusing on: (1) the origins and implications of urban sprawl; (2) evidence that exists on the influence of federal programs and policies on urban sprawl; and (3) regulatory review and coordination mechanisms evaluating and mitigating the effects of federal actions on urban sprawl."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO recommended actions it believes the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) should take to improve its efforts to develop and deploy its Automated Land and Mineral Record System (ALMRS)."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the audit report covering the financial statements of the Retired Enlisted Association, Incorporated, for the fiscal years ended December 31, 1995, 1996, and 1997, focusing on whether the audit report complied with the financial reporting requirements of the law."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Postal Service's Preliminary Performance Plan for fiscal year (FY) 2000."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the audit report covering the financial statements of the Reserve Officers Association of the United States for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1998, focusing on whether the audit report complied with the financial reporting requirements of the law."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the audit report covering the financial statements of the National Ski Patrol System, Incorporated, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1998, focusing on whether the audit report complied with the financial reporting requirements of the law."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) 10-year business plan, focusing on whether the 10-year plan: (1) addresses key issues facing TVA; (2) takes into consideration all applicable costs and revenue sources; (3) contains goals and assumptions that are achievable or reasonable and in line with industry estimates and expectations; and (4) has been updated to reflect significant changes in key goals and assumptions or actual experience."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the readiness of the insurance industry to meet the year 2000 date change, focusing on: (1) what state regulators were doing to oversee the year 2000 readiness of the insurance industry; (2) how the regulatory oversight of the insurance industry's year 2000 readiness compared with the oversight of the banking and securities industries; (3) the status of the insurance industry's year 2000 readiness; and (4) the nature and extent of year 2000 liability exposures that insurers face and the mitigation efforts taken to address such exposures."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) modernization investment management approach as carried out through the Acquisition Management System (AMS), focusing on the extent to which FAA, through AMS: (1) has established a structured approach for selecting and controlling its investments; (2) incorporates all investments, including those in operation, in the agency's portfolio; and (3) selects, controls, and evaluates its investments with complete and reliable information."

This project involves the design, synthesis and photophysical study of complex molecular systems engineered to achieve long lived charge separated states by a biomimetic, photoinitiated multistep electron transfer process. The use of these artificial systems to investigate different electron and energy transfer strategies will allow the evolution of more efficient molecular devices for the gathering of light energy and its transformation into chemical potential energy. The three major aspects of the work emphasized in the initial proposal are: design and synthesis of molecular devices incorporating new quinone moieties, synthesis and spectroscopic studies of molecular tetrads and pentads featuring modified porphyrin-diquinone linkages, and new photochemical and photophysical investigations of tetrads and pentads, including the development of methods for harvesting the energy stored in long-lived charge separated states.

Conformal field theory is a natural tool for understanding two- dimensional critical systems. This work presents results in the lagrangian approach to conformal field theory. The first sections are chiefly about a particular class of field theories called coset constructions and the last part is an exposition of the connection between two-dimensional conformal theory and a three-dimensional gauge theory whose lagrangian is the Chern-Simons density.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO determined whether the Department of Energy's (DOE) expenses to close out its participation in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project were reasonable."

A 5cm SSC superconducting dipole that develops 6.6 tesla at 5790 A is proposed. The two layer magnet has 12% more transfer function than the present design as a result of using thin collars and close in'' iron. The thin collars provide precise positioning of the coils; they also provide minimum prestress (perhaps 2000 psi) as aid for magnet assembly. A welded skin around the iron provides the final prestress and shapes and the coil geometry. A prestressed aluminum bar placed between the vertically split iron yokes provides precise control of the gap between yokes halves and is designed to allow gap to close tightly during cooldown so that there is no decrease of prestress. In order to reduce the effect of iron saturation on the field multipoles the iron ID has been optimized to an elliptical shape. The coil inner layer is a 30 strand cable with 1.3:1 cu/sc. The outer layer is a 36 strand cable wit 1.8:1 cu/sc. At the operating field of 6.6 tesla the current density in the copper is 666 A/mm{sup 2} and 760 A/mm{sup 2} in the inner and outer layers respectively. The magnet short sample performance is limited by the inner layer. …

Project Objectives are to develop hydrogen-permselective ceramic membranes for water-gas shift membrane-reactor suitable for hydrogen production from coal gas and evaluate the technical and economic potential of the membrane-reactor. During the reporting period exploratory experiments begun on a membrane preparation technique aimed at providing higher membrane permeance. The new preparation technique involves two stages. The first stage is the formation of a layer of silica gel by a two-phase interfacial reaction within the pores of the substrate. The gel is then dried and calcined yielding a microporous (pore diameter below 10 [Angstrom]) silica layer within the pores of the substrate tube. The second stage involves one-sided chemical vapor deposition using the SiCl[sub 4]-H[sub 2]O reaction to close up the micropores of the gel layer and produce the final hydrogen permselective membrane. Chemical reactions involved are described.

The following studies are described that were either completed during this 3-year period or are well underway: XAFS study of pressure-induced transition in Rb-W bronze (Rb[sub 0.31]WO[sub 3]); XAFS study of bcc-hcp transition in Fe; XAFS search for valence change in thallium perhenate (TlReO[sub 4]) at high pressure; XANES analysis of alkali halides; pair potentials in alkali halides studied via EXAFS; EXAFS determination of bond angles in ReO[sub 3]; XAFS study of mixed-valence transition in SmSe; Moessbauer studies of Fe hydride at high pressure; and Moessbauer and x-ray studies of Fe silicate spinel at high pressure. (DLC)

The effort is divided into the following: high pressure transitions (Fe, RbCl), XAFS studies of perovskites under pressure (ReO[sub 3], high-[Tc] superconductors), studies of XANES of alkali halides, and Moessbauer studies (iron silicate spinel).

The research is divided among several topics: wetting of thin liquid polyethylene-propylene films, Fourier reconstruction of density profiles of thin films using anomalous x-ray reflectivity, and temperature and concentration effects on grafted polymers in the melt. 3 figs.

This research project designed to investigate how atmospheric remote sensing technology can best be applied to the characterization of the cloudy atmosphere. Our research program addresses basic atmospheric remote sensing questions, but at the same time is clearly directed toward providing information crucial to the ARM (Atmospheric Remote Sensing) program and for application to the Clouds and Radiation Testbed (CART). The instrumentation that is being brought into play includes a variety of art-of-the-art sensors. Available at NOAA WPL are polarization Doppler K{sub a}-band (0.86 mm) and X-band (3.2 cm) radars, a C0{sub 2}(10.6 {mu}m) Doppler lidar with sequential ' polarization measurement capabilities, a three-channel (20.6, 31.65 and 90 GHz) microwave radiometer, and variety of visible and infrared radiometers. Instrumentation at the University of Utah Facility for Atmospheric Remote Sensing (FARS) includes a polarization ruby (0.643 {mu}m) lidar, a narrow-beam (0.14{degree}) mid-infrared (9.5--11.5 {mu}m) radiometer coaligned with the lidar, several other radiometers in the visible and infrared spectral regions, and an advanced two-color (1.06 and 0.532 {mu}m), four-channel Polarization Diversity Lidar (PDL) and all-sky video imaging system that have only recently been developed under the ARM IDP.

Work this quarter focused on the development of the engineering design specifications for the ET Test Circuit. Process flowsheets and detailed equipment specifications were finalized. Based on this information, bid packages were assembled and purchase orders were issued for all of the necessary process equipment. The design and procurement information is summarized in the ET Circuit Design Report submitted to the DOE's COR this quarter. Final drafts of the ET Circuit - System Safety Analysis, Nuclear Density Gauge - System Safety Analysis and Operating Manual/SOP were also completed and submitted to the COR this quarter. Preliminary characterization studies were also initiated this quarter. Tests were conducted to determine the grinding conditions required to achieve the desired particle size distributions for the characterization work. Flotation release analysis tests were conducted on both the Pittsburgh [number sign]8 and Illinois [number sign]6 seam coals as a function of grind size. The primary objective of the proposed work is to design, install, and operate an advanced fine coal processing circuit combining the Microcel and Multi-Gravity-Separator (MGS) technologies. Both of these processes have specific advantages as stand-alone units. For example, the Microcel column effectively removes ash-bearing mineral matter, while the MGS efficiently removes coal-pyrite composites. …