The objective of this research is to optimize the design and operation of the bench scale batch reactor for coal liquefaction at short contact times (0.01 to 10 minutes or longer). Additional objectives are to study the kinetics of direct coal liquefaction particularly at short reaction times, and to investigate the role of the organic oxygen components of coal and their reaction pathways during liquefaction. Experimental progress is reported for uncatalyzed liquefactions, catalyzed liquefactions, liquefaction in the presence of solvents other than tetralin, and kinetics of gas formation during coal liquefaction. Analytical methods were developed for the determination of the boiling range of coal liquids by thermogravimetric analysis and the determination of phenolic hydroxyl in coal, coal liquids, and coal residues.

Type B radioactive material transport packages must meet strict Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations specified in 10 CFR 71. Type B containers include impact limiters, radiation or thermal shielding layers, and one or more containment vessels. In the past, each component was typically designed separately based on its driving constraint and the expertise of the designer. The components were subsequently assembled and the design modified iteratively until all of the design criteria were met. This approach neglects the fact that components may serve secondary purposes as well as primary ones. For example, an impact limiter`s primary purpose is to act as an energy absorber and protect the contents of the package, but can also act as a heat dissipater or insulator. Designing the component to maximize its performance with respect to both objectives can be accomplished using numerical optimization techniques.

Most routing problems depend on several important variables: transport distance, population exposure, accident rate, mandated roads (e.g., HM-164 regulations), and proximity to emergency response resources are typical. These variables may need to be minimized or maximized, and often are weighted. `Objectives` to be satisfied by the analysis are thus created. The resulting problems can be approached by combining spatial analysis techniques from geographic information systems (GIS) with multiobjective analysis techniques from the field of operations research (OR); we call this hybrid multiobjective spatial analysis` (MOSA). MOSA can be used to discover, display, and compare a range of solutions that satisfy a set of objectives to varying degrees. For instance, a suite of solutions may include: one solution that provides short transport distances, but at a cost of high exposure; another solution that provides low exposure, but long distances; and a range of solutions between these two extremes.

The effort of the second quarter of calendar year 1995 continued the work on task 5, {open_quotes}Site Demonstration{close_quotes}, with emphasis on installation of the 20 MMBtu/hr combustor and auxiliary equipment at the Philadelphia test site. The task 5 effort involves testing the combustor over extended periods under conditions that fully simulate commercial operation and that meet the combustion and environmental specifications for this project. To meet this project objective within the current work scope requires 500 hours of testing. Operation beyond this period is dependent on recovering the added costs by placing the steam production from the boiler to beneficial use. During the present quarterly reporting period, most of the major components needed to implement the initial 100 hours of testing under task 5 were installed at the test site. The only major remaining work at the end of this reporting period was the installation of power to the components and the installation of the controls and diagnostics. This work will be performed in the next quarter.

Finite Element Modeling (FEM) is becoming more important as industry drives toward concurrent engineering. A fundamental hindrance to fully exploiting the power of FEM is the human effort required to acquire complex part geometry, particularly as-built geometry, as a FEM mesh. Many Quantitative Non Destructive Evaluation (QNDE) techniques that produce three-dimensional (3D) data sets provide a substantial reduction in the effort required to apply FEM to as-built parts. This paper describes progress at LLNL on the application of 3D X-ray computed tomography (CT) data sets to more rapidly produce high-quality FEM meshes of complex, as-built geometries. Issues related to the volume segmentation of the 3D CT data as well as the use of this segmented data to tailor generic hexahedral FEM meshes to part specific geometries are discussed. The application of these techniques to FEM analysis in the medical field is reported here.

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Reactor power supplies offer many attractive characteristics for lunar surface applications. The Topaz II reactor resulted from an extensive development program in the former Soviet Union. Flight quality reactor units remain from this program and are currently under evaluation in the United States. This paper examines the potential for applying the Topaz II, originally developed to provide spacecraft power, as a lunar surface power supply.

This report presents results on a preliminary assessment of accelerating a projectile by a sequence of timed explosions. Computerized simulations were performed with CALE, a two-dimensional Arbitrary Language Eulerian program to examine principles and preferred operating parameters.

Many DOE facilities are situated in areas of sand and gravel which have become polluted with dense, non-aqueous phase liquids or DNAPLs, such as chlorinated solvents, from the various industrial operations at these facilities. The presence of such DNAPLs in sand and gravel aquifers is now recognized as the principal factor in the failure of standard ground-water remediation methods, i.e., {open_quotes}pump-and-treat{close_quotes} operations, to decontaminate such systems. The principal objective of this study is to demonstrate that multi-component DNAPLs can be readily solubilized in sand and gravel aquifers by dilute surfactant solutions.

The BOA system is a mobile pipe-external robotic crawler used to remotely strip and bag asbestos-containing lagging and insulation materials (ACLIM) from various diameter pipes in (primarily) industrial installations. Steam and process lines within the DOE weapons complex warrant the use of a remote device due to the high labor costs and high level of radioactive contamination, making manual removal extremely costly and highly inefficient. Currently targeted facilities for demonstration and remediation are Fernald in Ohio and Oak Ridge in Tennessee.

In accordance with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulation regarding groundwater travel times at geologic repositories, various models of unsaturated flow in fractured tuff have been developed and implemented to assess groundwater travel times at the potential repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Kaplan used one-dimensional models to describe the uncertainty and sensitivity of travel times to various processes at Yucca Mountain. Robey and Arnold et al. used a two-dimensional equivalent continuum model (ECM) with inter- and intra-unit heterogeneity in an attempt to assess fast-flow paths through the unsaturated, fractured tuff at Yucca Mountain (GWTT-94). However, significant flow through the fractures in previous models was not simulated due to the characteristics of the ECM, which requires the matrix to be nearly saturated before flow through the fractures is initiated. In the current study (GWTT-95), four two-dimensional cross-sections at Yucca Mountain are simulated using both the ECM and dual-permeability (DK) models. The properties of both the fracture and matrix domains are geostatistically simulated, yielding completely heterogeneous continua. Then, simulations of flow through the four cross-sections are performed using spatially nonuniform infiltration boundary conditions. Steady-state groundwater travel times from the potential repository to the water table are calculated.

Many chemical analysis problems exist that encourage the development of small, low-cost, low power, chemical sensors in many of these applications, while speciation of the sample is unnecessary due to prior knowledge of the sample constituents, it is necessary to monitor, in near real-time, the concentration of a Particular species of interest, An example of this of problem would be the monitoring of a chemical process such as steam reforming of chemical waste or ground water monitoring where prior laboratory analysis has determined the constituents. In applications such as these, it is worthwhile to trade off the sensitivity and speciation that can be obtained by taking individual samples and analyzing them in a laboratory for the near real-time, low-cost measurements that can be achieved using a solid-state transducer. In this paper, several different types of sensor platforms and applications that require CSFs bonded to the platform will be discussed. Among these are surface acoustic wave (SAW) based sensors, optical fiber-based sensors, and Si-based sensors. Each will be described and applications will be discussed.

The purpose of this project was to produce accurate cross sections for collisionally induced reactions from the ground stated and excited states of species of ions and at present in a hot fusion plasma. The collisional constituents may be divided into two categories for the purpose of calculations: Those in which a bare projectile excites a one electron or two electron ion or atom from its ground state, or excited states to higher excited states or ionized states. Those in which the projectile has one or more electrons attached to it and excites a one electron or two electron ion or atom from its ground state, or excited states to higher excited states or ionized states. During the collision the projectile itself may change its state being simultaneously excited or ionized. Cross sections are needed typically over the whole energy range from low velocities where molecular, orbitals begin to form to high velocities where first Born or more sophisticated asymptotic theories can be used. These high energy cross sections are very useful for experimentalists to check the absolute normalization of their cross sections. The theoretical tools used were therefore both analytical and numerical in character. Numerical calculations were restricted to …

The focus of the research was to investigate the fundamental aerodynamics of the base flow of a tractor trailer that would prove useful in fluid flow management. Initially, industry design needs and constraints were defined. This was followed by an evaluation of state-of-the-art Navier-Stokes based computational fluid dynamics tools. Analytical methods were then used in combination with computational tools in a design process. Several geometries were tested at 1:8 scale in a low speed wind tunnel. In addition to the baseline geometry, base add-on devices of the class of ogival boattails and slants were analyzed.

Three traditional importance measures, risk reduction, partial derivative, nd variance reduction, have been extended to permit analyses of the relative importance of groups of underlying failure rates to the frequencies of resulting top events. The partial derivative importance measure was extended by assessing the contribution of a group of events to the gradient of the top event frequency. Given the moments of the distributions that characterize the uncertainties in the underlying failure rates, the expectation values of the top event frequency, its variance, and all of the new group importance measures can be quantified exactly for two familiar cases: (1) when all underlying failure rates are presumed independent, and (2) when pairs of failure rates based on common data are treated as being equal (totally correlated). In these cases, the new importance measures, which can also be applied to assess the importance of individual events, obviate the need for Monte Carlo sampling. The event group importance measures are illustrated using a small example problem and demonstrated by applications made as part of a major reactor facility risk assessment. These illustrations and applications indicate both the utility and the versatility of the event group importance measures.

In response to challenges from technologies such as IGCC and PFBC, the ABB LEBS Team has proposed removing the barrier to very large advances in environmental and thermal performance of pulverized coal plants. Pulverized coal will continue to be the source of more than half of our electric generation well into the next century and we must develop low-risk low-cost advances that will compete with the claimed performance of other technologies. This paper describes near-term PC technologies for new and retrofit applications which will accomplish this.

Some of the most efficient heat-exchanger designs for direct-cooled optics consist of two or more pieces of silicon single crystal bonded to each other and attached to a coolant manifold. Therefore, achieving successful silicon-to-silicon and silicon-to-metal bonds has become one of the goals of the high heat load (HHL) optics program. A viable bond for a cooled silicon optic has to satisfy the following requirements: strain free; compatible with the coolant used; radiation resistant; coefficient of thermal expansion of the bonding agent must be close to that of silicon. The techniques that have been pursued by XFD-OP members are: Si-Si direct bonding; Si-Si die attach paste bonding; Si-Si and Si-metal epoxy bonding; Si-Si and Si-metal glass frit bonding; and Si-metal gold-based solder. A description of each of these techniques and their performance are described in this report.

This report describes activities and reports on progress for the first quarter (July--September) of the fourth year of the grant to support the Environmental Hazards Assessment Program (EHAP) at the Medical University of South Carolina. It reports progress against the grant objectives and the Program Implementation Plan published at the end of the first year of the grant. The objectives of EHAP stated in the proposal to DOE are to: (1) develop a holistic, national basis for risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication that recognizes the direct impact of environmental hazards on the health and well-being of all; (2) develop a pool of talented scientists and experts in cleanup activities, especially in human health aspects; and (3) identify needs and develop programs addressing the critical shortage of well-educated, highly-skilled technical and scientific personnel to address the health-oriented aspects of environmental restoration and waste management.

Continental Shelf Associates, Inc. (CSA) was contracted to conduct a three-year study of the environmental and health related impacts of produced water and sand discharges from oil and gas operations. Data on naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM), heavy metals, and hydrocarbons in water, sediment, and biota will be collected and evaluated. Health related impacts will be studied through field collections and analyses of commercially- and recreationally-important fish and shellfish tissues. Additionally, information on seafood catch, consumption, and use patterns for the Gulf of Mexico will be gathered and analyzed. The facilities to be studied will include both offshore and coastal facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. Coastal sites will be additionally studied to determine ecological recovery of impacted wetland and open bay areas. The economic impact of existing and proposed effluent federal and state regulations will also be evaluated. This report represents the thirteenth quarterly technical summary for the study ``Environmental and Economic Assessment of Discharges from Gulf of Mexico Region Oil and Gas Operations.`` Activities associated with Tasks 3 through 8 are discussed in this report.

Federal regulations allow package designers to use analysis, testing, or a combination of analysis and testing to support certification of packages used to transport hazardous or radioactive materials. In recent years, many certified packages were subjected to a combination of analysis and testing. A major part of evaluating structural or thermal package response is the collection, reduction and presentation of instrumentation measurement data. Sandia National Laboratories, under the sponsorship of the US Department of Energy, has developed a comprehensive analysis and plotting package (known as KAPP) that performs digital signal processing of both transient structural and thermal data integrated with a comprehensive plotting package designed to support radioactive material package testing.

Department of Energy (DOE) sites such as the Hanford site, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL), Savannah River site, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have large quantities of sodium-nitrate based liquid wastes. At INEL alone there are 800,000 gallons. The largest quantity of these wastes is the 149 single shell tanks (SSTs) tanks at Hanford which can hold 1 million gallons each. The nitrate to ammonia ceramic (NAC) process has been developed to remove a majority of the nitrate content from the wastes.

The integral equation describing the nucleation and growth of bubbles in a supersaturated binary liquid mixture under constant expansion rate is considered. In case of macroscopically large number of microscopic nucleation sites, the solution is shown to exhibit weak dependence on the expansion rate in contradiction with experimental data. With few nucleation sites, the supersaturation extremum agrees with experimental data.

A high-frequency, high-resolution, electromagnetic (EM) imaging system has been developed for environmental geophysics surveys. Some key features of this system include: (1) rapid surveying to allow dense spatial sampling over a large area, (2) high-accuracy measurements which are used to produce a high-resolution image of the subsurface, (3) measurements which have excellent signal-to-noise ratio over a wide bandwidth (31 kHz to 32 MHz), (4) large-scale physical modeling to produce accurate theoretical responses over targets of interest in environmental geophysics surveys, (5) rapid neural network interpretation at the field site, and (6) visualization of complex structures during the survey.

The Department of Energy is currently remediating several sites that have been contaminated over the years with hazardous, mixed waste and radioactive materials. Regulatory guidelines require strict compliance demonstrating public safety during remediation and the transport of these hazardous, mixed waste and radioactive materials. The compatibility of the metallic transportation containers with the contents they are designed to transport is an ultimate concern that must be satisfied to ensure public safety. The transportation issue is inherently complicated due to the complex, varied, and unknown composition of the hazardous, mixed and radioactive waste that is being, considered for transport by the DOE facilities. Never before have the interactions between the waste being transported and the materials that comprise the transportation packages been more important. Therefore, evaluation of material performance when subjected to a simulated waste will ensure that all regulatory issues and requirements for transportation of hazardous, mixed, and radioactive wastes are satisfied. The tasks encompassed by this study include defining criteria for candidate material selection, defining a test matrix that will provide pertinent information on the material compatibility with the waste stimulant, and evaluation of material performance when subjected to a stimulant waste. Our goal is to provide package design …