In partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory, B&W and Air Liquide are developing and optimizing the oxy-combustion process for retrofitting existing boilers as well as new plants. The main objectives of the project is to: (1) demonstrate the feasibility of the oxy-combustion technology with flue gas recycle in a 5-million Btu/hr coal-fired pilot boiler, (2) measure its performances in terms of emissions and boiler efficiency while selecting the right oxygen injection and flue gas recycle strategies, and (3) perform technical and economic feasibility studies for application of the technology in demonstration and commercial scale boilers. This document summarizes the work performed during the period of performance of the project (Oct 2002 to June 2007). Detailed technical results are reported in corresponding topical reports that are attached as an appendix to this report. Task 1 (Site Preparation) has been completed in 2003. The experimental pilot-scale O{sub 2}/CO{sub 2} combustion tests of Task 2 (experimental test performance) has been completed in Q2 2004. Process simulation and cost assessment of Task 3 (Techno-Economic Study) has been completed in Q1 2005. The topical report on Task 3 has been finalized and submitted to DOE in Q3 2005. The calculations …

To summarize the content: we presented the results of laboratory experiments designed to quantify the relationship between plant tissue δ13C and δ13CO2 values under varying environmental conditions, including differential pCO2 ranging from 1 to 3 times today’s levels. As predicted, plants grown under elevated pCO2 showed increased average biomass compared to controls grown at the same temperature. Across a very large range in δ13Ca (≈ 24 ‰) and pCO2 (≈ 740 ppmv) we observed a consistent correlation between δ13Ca and δ13Cp (p<0.001). We show an average isotopic depletion of −25.4 ‰ for above-ground tissue and −23.2 ‰ for below-ground tissue of Raphanus sativus L. relative to the composition of the atmosphere under which it formed. For both above- and below-ground tissue, grown at both ~23 ˚C and ~29 ˚C, correlation was strong and significant (r2 ≥ 0.98, p<0.001); variation in pCO2 level had little or no effect on this relationship.

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This report summarizes Year 1 results of a research program designed to use multi-scale experimental studies and fundamental theoretical models to characterize and predict the impacts of retrofit of existing coal-fired utility boilers for oxy-combustion. Through the course of Year 1 activities, great progress was made toward understanding the issues associated with oxy-combustion retrofit of coal-fired boilers. All four Year 1 milestones and objectives have been, or will be, completed on schedule and within budget. Progress in the four milestone areas may be summarized as follows: • University of Utah has performed size segregated ash composition measurements in the Oxy-Fuel Combustor (OFC). These experiments indicate that oxy-combustion retrofit may impact ash aerosol mineral matter composition. Both flame temperature and flue gas composition have been observed to influence the concentration of calcium, magnesium and iron in the fine particulate. This could in turn impact boiler fouling and slagging. • Sandia National Labs has shown that char oxidation rate is dependent on particle size (for sizes between 60 and 100 microns) by performing fundamental simulations of reacting char particles. These predictions will be verified by making time-resolved optical measurements of char particle temperature, velocity and size in bench-scale experiments before the end …

From 1958, General Atomics maintain a hot cell facility in support of government-funded research into reactor fuels. As the use of the facility declined, General Atomics entered into an agreement with DOE to dismantle the facility and decontaminate and decommission (D&amp;D) the site so that it could made available for unrestricted use. The Environmental Survey and Site Assessment Program (ESSAP) was requested to verify the final radiological status of the D&amp;D effort. This is the report of ESSAP survey and verification activities conducted at the San Diego site from November 1999 through March 2000.

A computational model for supersonic flows of compressible gases in an aerodynamic lens with several lenses and in a supersonic/hypersonic impactor was developed. Airflow conditions in the aerodynamic lens were analyzed and contour plots for variation of Mach number, velocity magnitude and pressure field in the lens were evaluated. The nano and micro-particle trajectories in the lens and their focusing and transmission efficiencies were evaluated. The computational model was then applied to design of a aerodynamic lens that could generate focus particle beams while operating under atmospheric conditions. The computational model was also applied to airflow condition in the supersonic/hypersonic impactor. Variations of airflow condition and particle trajectories in the impactor were evaluated. The simulation results could provide understanding of the performance of the supersonic and hypersonic impactors that would be helpful for the design of such systems.

A Compton scattering {gamma}-ray source, capable of producing photons with energies ranging from 0.1 MeV to 0.9 MeV has been commissioned and characterized, and then used to perform nuclear resonance fluorescence (NRF) experiments. The key source parameters are the size (0.01 mm{sup 2}), horizontal and vertical divergence (6 x 10 mrad{sup 2}), duration (10 ps), spectrum and intensity (10{sup 5} photons/shot). These parameters are summarized by the peak brightness, 1.5 x 10{sup 15} photons/mm{sup 2}/mrad{sup 2}/s/0.1%bandwidth, measured at 478 keV. Additional measurements of the flux as a function of the timing difference between the drive laser pulse and the relativistic photoelectron bunch, {gamma}-ray beam profile, and background evaluations are presented. These results are systematically compared to theoretical models and computer simulations. NRF measurements performed on {sup 7}Li in LiH demonstrate the potential of Compton scattering photon sources to accurately detect isotopes in situ.

This is a comparison of the measured throughput of STIS on HST versus what we might expect from the spectrograph on SNAP. The principle reference is Woodgate et al. (1998) PASP, 110, 1183. Additional material was taken from the STIS Handbook, available on-line at www.stsci.edu. The goal is to demonstrate that there are sound reasons to expect better performance for a SNAP spectrograph (even one with a grating) than would be expected by scaling from HST+STIS.

This project will use proton irradiation to further understand the microstructural stability of ceramics being considered as matrix material for advanced nuclear fuels.

The six coal-fired power plants located in the Colorado Plateau and southern Rocky Mountain region of the U.S. produce 100 million tons of CO{sub 2} per year. Thick sequences of collocated sedimentary rocks represent potential sites for sequestration of the CO{sub 2}. Field and laboratory investigations of naturally occurring CO{sub 2}-reservoirs are being conducted to determine the characteristics of potential seal and reservoir units and the extent of the interactions that occur between the host rocks and the CO{sub 2} charged fluids. The results are being incorporated into a series of two-dimensional numerical models that represent the major chemical and physical processes induced by injection. During reporting period covered here (March 30 to June 30, 2003), the main achievements were: Presentation of three papers at the Second Annual Conference on Carbon Sequestration (May 5-8, Alexandria, Virginia); Presentation of a poster at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists meeting; Co-PI organized and chaired a special session on Geologic Carbon Dioxide Sequestration at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists annual convention in Salt Lake City (May 12-15).

Gas reservoirs developed within the Colorado Plateau and Southern Rocky Mountains region are natural laboratories for studying the factors that promote long-term storage of CO{sub 2}. They also provide sites for storing additional CO{sub 2} if it can be separated from the flue gases of coal-fired power plants in this part of the U.S.A. These natural reservoirs are developed primarily in sandstones and dolomites; shales, mudstones and anhydrite form seals. In many fields, stacked reservoirs are present, indicating that the gas has migrated up through the section. There are also geologically young travertine deposits at the surface, and CO{sub 2}-charged groundwater and springs in the vicinity of known CO{sub 2} occurrences. These near-surface geological and hydrological features also provide examples of the environmental effects of leakage of CO{sub 2} from reservoirs, and justify further study. During reporting period covered here (the second quarter of Year 2 of the project, i.e. January 1-March 31, 2002), the main achievements were: (1) Field trips to the central Utah and eastern Arizona travertine areas to collect data and water samples to support study of surface CO{sub 2}-rich fluid leakage in these two areas. (2) Partial completion of a manuscript on natural analogues CO{sub 2} …

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Generally, federal agencies tasked to oversee power grid reliability are dependent on data from grid infrastructure owners and operators in order to obtain a basic level of situational awareness. Since there are many owners and operators involved in the day-to-day functioning of the power grid, the task of accessing, aggregating and analyzing grid information from these sources is not a trivial one. Seemingly basic tasks such as synchronizing data timestamps between many different data providers and sources can be difficult as evidenced during the post-event analysis of the August 2003 blackout. In this project we investigate the efficacy and cost effectiveness of deploying a network of wireless power line monitoring devices as a method of independently monitoring key parts of the power grid as a complement to the data which is currently available to federal agencies from grid system operators. Such a network is modeled on proprietary power line monitoring technologies and networks invented, developed and deployed by Genscape, a Louisville, Kentucky based real-time energy information provider. Genscape measures transmission line power flow using measurements of electromagnetic fields under overhead high voltage transmission power lines in the United States and Europe. Opportunities for optimization of the commercial power line monitoring …

The performance tests at E.C. Gaston showed how the Advanced ElectroCore field prototype performance changed as a function of the gas flow, inlet loading and the voltage applied to the central electrode in the separator. With the optimum voltage applied to the electrode, the unit achieved a maximum efficiency of 96.38 percent and a minimum outlet loading of 0.0021 grains/dscf while operating with a specific separating area (SSA) of 100 square feet per thousand acfm. The minimum outlet loading translates to about 0.00575 lb{sub m}/million Btu or less than one fifth of the current NSPS standard of 0.03 lb{sub m}/million Btu. The highest efficiency for the upstream ESP was about 99.75 percent. Together these two systems are capable of removing 99.991 percent of the particulate matter coming from the uncontrolled boiler. This efficiency is higher than the target efficiency of 99.99 percent and the outlet loading of 0.00575 lb{sub m}/million Btu is almost half of the target emission rate of 0.01 lb{sub m}/million stated in the program objectives. In terms of efficiency and outlet concentration, the tests showed that the Advanced ElectroCore can meet or exceed the program goals. The mercury capture tests were conducted using the Ontario Hydro method. …

The research objective of this project is to analyze the resolution of two different geophysical imaging techniques (electrical resistivity tomography and cross-borehole ground penetrating radar) for monitoring subsurface flow and transport processes within the vadose zone. This is being accomplished through a coupled approach involving large scale unsaturated flow modeling, petrophysical conversion of the resulting hydrologic properties to a geophysical property model and generation of synthetic geophysical data, followed by the inversion of the synthetic geophysical data. The resolution, benefits, and limitations of the geophysical techniques will then be ascertained through analysis and comparison of the images to the original hydrologic model. In addition, increasing levels of complexity will be added to the models as the project progresses through the addition of heterogeneity in the original hydrologic property model, and through uncertainty in the petrophysical relationship that couples the geophysical model to the hydrologic simulation.

As part of a cooperative agreement with the United States Department of Energy (DOE) ‐‐ entitled Technology’s Impact on Production: Developing Environmental Solutions at the State and National Level ‐ ‐ the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) has been tasked with assisting state governments in the effective, efficient, and environmentally sound regulation of the exploration and production of natural gas and crude oil, specifically in relation to orphaned and abandoned wells and wells nearing the end of productive life. Project goals include: Developing (a) a model framework for prioritization and ranking of orphaned or abandoned well sites; (b) a model framework for disbursement of Energy Policy Act of 2005 funding; and (c) a research study regarding the current status of orphaned wells in the nation. Researching the impact of new technologies on environmental protection from a regulatory perspective. Research will identify and document (a) state reactions to changing technology and knowledge; (b) how those reactions support state environmental conservation and public health; and (c) the impact of those reactions on oil and natural gas production. Assessing emergent technology issues associated with wells nearing the end of productive life. Including: (a) location of orphaned and abandoned well sites; (b) …

We describe the work performed in the context of a Franco-Berkeley funded project between NERSC-LBNL located in Berkeley (USA) and CERFACS-ENSEEIHT located in Toulouse (France). We discuss both the tuning and performance analysis of two distributed memory sparse solvers (superlu from Berkeley and mumps from Toulouse) on the 512 processor Cray T3E from NERSC (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). This project gave us the opportunity to improve the algorithms and add new features to the codes. We then quite extensively analyze and compare the two approaches on a set of large problems from real applications. We further explain the main differences in the behavior of the approaches on artificial regular grid problems. As a conclusion to this activity report, we mention a set of parallel sparse solvers on which this type of study should be extended.

We are developing a new balloon-borne instrument (PoGO), to measure polarization of soft gamma rays (30-200 keV) using asymmetry in azimuth angle distribution of Compton scattering. PoGO is designed to detect 10% polarization in 100mCrab sources in a 6-8 hour observation and bring a new dimension to studies on gamma ray emission/transportation mechanism in pulsars, AGNs, black hole binaries, and neutron star surface. The concept is an adaptation to polarization measurements of well-type phoswich counter consisting of a fast plastic scintillator (the detection part), a slow plastic scintillator (the active collimator) and a BGO scintillator (the bottom anti-counter). PoGO consists of close-packed array of 217 hexagonal well-type phoswich counters and has a narrow field-of-view ({approx} 5 deg{sup 2}) to reduce possible source confusion. A prototype instrument has been tested in the polarized soft gamma-ray beams at Advanced Photon Source (ANL) and at Photon Factory (KEK). On the results, the polarization dependence of EGS4 has been validated and that of Geant4 has been corrected.

This project was awarded under U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) Program Solicitation DE-PS26-02NT41422 and specifically addresses Technical Topical Area 2 - Gasification Technologies. The project team includes Enertechnix, Inc. as the main contractor and ConocoPhillips Company as a technical partner, who also provides access to the SG Solutions Gasification Facility (formerly Wabash River Energy Limited), host for the field-testing portion of the research. The objective of this project was to adapt acoustic pyrometer technology to make it suitable for measuring gas temperature inside a coal gasifier, to develop a prototype sensor based on this technology, and to demonstrate its performance through testing on a commercial gasifier. The project was organized in three phases, each of approximately one year duration. The first phase consisted of researching a variety of sound generation and coupling approaches suitable for use with a high pressure process, evaluation of the impact of gas composition variability on the acoustic temperature measurement approach, evaluation of the impact of suspended particles and gas properties on sound attenuation, evaluation of slagging issues and development of concepts to deal with this issue, development and testing of key prototype components to allow selection of the best approaches, …

This document presents data from Savannah River Site routine effluent monitoring and environmental surveillance programs.

The purpose of this report is to present summary environmental data that characterize site environmental management performance, confirm compliance with environmental standards and requirements, highlight significant programs and efforts, and assess the impact of SRS operations on the public and the environment.

We report on a search for the rare decay {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} D*{sup 0}{gamma}, which in the standard model is dominated by W-exchange. The analysis is based on a data sample comprising 87.8 x 10{sup 6} B{bar B} pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC. No significant signal is observed, and an upper limit on the branching fraction of 2.5 x 10{sup -5} at the 90% confidence level is obtained.

This report details the information related to budget proposals for FY 2009. The contents include Budget actions, outlay, receipts, deficits, and surpluses, etc.

The report on the final phase of the project describes improvements in the ice and liquid cloud retrieval algorithms due to the use of three-parameter particle size distributions in which all three parameters may vary with height, testing of the improved retrievals by comparisons of measured and calculated fluxes, and further improvement in liquid retrievals obtained by adding liquid water path information from the microwave radiometer to radar and visible optical depth information.