Method for operating a combustor in a fuel cell system

DOEpatents

Chalfant, Robert W.; Clingerman, Bruce J.

2002-01-01

A method of operating a combustor to heat a fuel processor in a fuel cell system, in which the fuel processor generates a hydrogen-rich stream a portion of which is consumed in a fuel cell stack and a portion of which is discharged from the fuel cell stack and supplied to the combustor, and wherein first and second streams are supplied to the combustor, the first stream being a hydrocarbon fuel stream and the second stream consisting of said hydrogen-rich stream, the method comprising the steps of monitoring the temperature of the fuel processor; regulating the quantity of the first stream to the combustor according to the temperature of the fuel processor; and comparing said quantity of said first stream to a predetermined value or range of predetermined values.

A self-sustained, complete and miniaturized methanol fuel processor for proton exchange membrane fuel cell

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Mei; Jiao, Fengjun; Li, Shulian; Li, Hengqiang; Chen, Guangwen

2015-08-01

A self-sustained, complete and miniaturized methanol fuel processor has been developed based on modular integration and microreactor technology. The fuel processor is comprised of one methanol oxidative reformer, one methanol combustor and one two-stage CO preferential oxidation unit. Microchannel heat exchanger is employed to recover heat from hot stream, miniaturize system size and thus achieve high energy utilization efficiency. By optimized thermal management and proper operation parameter control, the fuel processor can start up in 10 min at room temperature without external heating. A self-sustained state is achieved with H2 production rate of 0.99 Nm3 h-1 and extremely low CO content below 25 ppm. This amount of H2 is sufficient to supply a 1 kWe proton exchange membrane fuel cell. The corresponding thermal efficiency of whole processor is higher than 86%. The size and weight of the assembled reactors integrated with microchannel heat exchangers are 1.4 L and 5.3 kg, respectively, demonstrating a very compact construction of the fuel processor.

Fuel processors for fuel cell APU applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aicher, T.; Lenz, B.; Gschnell, F.; Groos, U.; Federici, F.; Caprile, L.; Parodi, L.

The conversion of liquid hydrocarbons to a hydrogen rich product gas is a central process step in fuel processors for auxiliary power units (APUs) for vehicles of all kinds. The selection of the reforming process depends on the fuel and the type of the fuel cell. For vehicle power trains, liquid hydrocarbons like gasoline, kerosene, and diesel are utilized and, therefore, they will also be the fuel for the respective APU systems. The fuel cells commonly envisioned for mobile APU applications are molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFC), solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), and proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC). Since high-temperature fuel cells, e.g. MCFCs or SOFCs, can be supplied with a feed gas that contains carbon monoxide (CO) their fuel processor does not require reactors for CO reduction and removal. For PEMFCs on the other hand, CO concentrations in the feed gas must not exceed 50 ppm, better 20 ppm, which requires additional reactors downstream of the reforming reactor. This paper gives an overview of the current state of the fuel processor development for APU applications and APU system developments. Furthermore, it will present the latest developments at Fraunhofer ISE regarding fuel processors for high-temperature fuel cell APU systems on board of ships and aircrafts.

Portable parallel stochastic optimization for the design of aeropropulsion components

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sues, Robert H.; Rhodes, G. S.

1994-01-01

This report presents the results of Phase 1 research to develop a methodology for performing large-scale Multi-disciplinary Stochastic Optimization (MSO) for the design of aerospace systems ranging from aeropropulsion components to complete aircraft configurations. The current research recognizes that such design optimization problems are computationally expensive, and require the use of either massively parallel or multiple-processor computers. The methodology also recognizes that many operational and performance parameters are uncertain, and that uncertainty must be considered explicitly to achieve optimum performance and cost. The objective of this Phase 1 research was to initialize the development of an MSO methodology that is portable to a wide variety of hardware platforms, while achieving efficient, large-scale parallelism when multiple processors are available. The first effort in the project was a literature review of available computer hardware, as well as review of portable, parallel programming environments. The first effort was to implement the MSO methodology for a problem using the portable parallel programming language, Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM). The third and final effort was to demonstrate the example on a variety of computers, including a distributed-memory multiprocessor, a distributed-memory network of workstations, and a single-processor workstation. Results indicate the MSO methodology can be well-applied towards large-scale aerospace design problems. Nearly perfect linear speedup was demonstrated for computation of optimization sensitivity coefficients on both a 128-node distributed-memory multiprocessor (the Intel iPSC/860) and a network of workstations (speedups of almost 19 times achieved for 20 workstations). Very high parallel efficiencies (75 percent for 31 processors and 60 percent for 50 processors) were also achieved for computation of aerodynamic influence coefficients on the Intel. Finally, the multi-level parallelization strategy that will be needed for large-scale MSO problems was demonstrated to be highly efficient. The same parallel code instructions were used on both platforms, demonstrating portability. There are many applications for which MSO can be applied, including NASA's High-Speed-Civil Transport, and advanced propulsion systems. The use of MSO will reduce design and development time and testing costs dramatically.

Methanol Fuel Cell

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Voecks, G. E.

1985-01-01

In proposed fuel-cell system, methanol converted to hydrogen in two places. External fuel processor converts only part of methanol. Remaining methanol converted in fuel cell itself, in reaction at anode. As result, size of fuel processor reduced, system efficiency increased, and cost lowered.

75 FR 77758 - Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Delaware; Limiting Emissions of...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-12-14

... (VOC) from Consumer and Commercial Products, Section 3.0--Portable Fuel Containers. This amendment will... Organic Compounds from Consumer and Commercial Products, Section 3.0--Portable Fuel Containers). I... Products, Section 3.0--Portable Fuel Containers is concerned specifically with the use of portable fuel...

Method for operating a combustor in a fuel cell system

DOEpatents

Clingerman, Bruce J.; Mowery, Kenneth D.

2002-01-01

In one aspect, the invention provides a method of operating a combustor to heat a fuel processor to a desired temperature in a fuel cell system, wherein the fuel processor generates hydrogen (H.sub.2) from a hydrocarbon for reaction within a fuel cell to generate electricity. More particularly, the invention provides a method and select system design features which cooperate to provide a start up mode of operation and a smooth transition from start-up of the combustor and fuel processor to a running mode.

Performance of a natural gas fuel processor for residential PEFC system using a novel CO preferential oxidation catalyst

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Echigo, Mitsuaki; Shinke, Norihisa; Takami, Susumu; Tabata, Takeshi

Natural gas fuel processors have been developed for 500 W and 1 kW class residential polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) systems. These fuel processors contain all the elements—desulfurizers, steam reformers, CO shift converters, CO preferential oxidation (PROX) reactors, steam generators, burners and heat exchangers—in one package. For the PROX reactor, a single-stage PROX process using a novel PROX catalyst was adopted. In the 1 kW class fuel processor, thermal efficiency of 83% at HHV was achieved at nominal output assuming a H 2 utilization rate in the cell stack of 76%. CO concentration below 1 ppm in the product gas was achieved even under the condition of [O 2]/[CO]=1.5 at the PROX reactor. The long-term durability of the fuel processor was demonstrated with almost no deterioration in thermal efficiency and CO concentration for 10,000 h, 1000 times start and stop cycles, 25,000 cycles of load change.

Self-sustained operation of a kW e-class kerosene-reforming processor for solid oxide fuel cells

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yoon, Sangho; Bae, Joongmyeon; Kim, Sunyoung; Yoo, Young-Sung

In this paper, fuel-processing technologies are developed for application in residential power generation (RPG) in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). Kerosene is selected as the fuel because of its high hydrogen density and because of the established infrastructure that already exists in South Korea. A kerosene fuel processor with two different reaction stages, autothermal reforming (ATR) and adsorptive desulfurization reactions, is developed for SOFC operations. ATR is suited to the reforming of liquid hydrocarbon fuels because oxygen-aided reactions can break the aromatics in the fuel and steam can suppress carbon deposition during the reforming reaction. ATR can also be implemented as a self-sustaining reactor due to the exothermicity of the reaction. The kW e self-sustained kerosene fuel processor, including the desulfurizer, operates for about 250 h in this study. This fuel processor does not require a heat exchanger between the ATR reactor and the desulfurizer or electric equipment for heat supply and fuel or water vaporization because a suitable temperature of the ATR reformate is reached for H 2S adsorption on the ZnO catalyst beds in desulfurizer. Although the CH 4 concentration in the reformate gas of the fuel processor is higher due to the lower temperature of ATR tail gas, SOFCs can directly use CH 4 as a fuel with the addition of sufficient steam feeds (H 2O/CH 4 ≥ 1.5), in contrast to low-temperature fuel cells. The reforming efficiency of the fuel processor is about 60%, and the desulfurizer removed H 2S to a sufficient level to allow for the operation of SOFCs.

Real-time 3D adaptive filtering for portable imaging systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bockenbach, Olivier; Ali, Murtaza; Wainwright, Ian; Nadeski, Mark

2015-03-01

Portable imaging devices have proven valuable for emergency medical services both in the field and hospital environments and are becoming more prevalent in clinical settings where the use of larger imaging machines is impractical. 3D adaptive filtering is one of the most advanced techniques aimed at noise reduction and feature enhancement, but is computationally very demanding and hence often not able to run with sufficient performance on a portable platform. In recent years, advanced multicore DSPs have been introduced that attain high processing performance while maintaining low levels of power dissipation. These processors enable the implementation of complex algorithms like 3D adaptive filtering, improving the image quality of portable medical imaging devices. In this study, the performance of a 3D adaptive filtering algorithm on a digital signal processor (DSP) is investigated. The performance is assessed by filtering a volume of size 512x256x128 voxels sampled at a pace of 10 MVoxels/sec.

Performance Analysis and Portability of the PLUM Load Balancing System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Oliker, Leonid; Biswas, Rupak; Gabow, Harold N.

1998-01-01

The ability to dynamically adapt an unstructured mesh is a powerful tool for solving computational problems with evolving physical features; however, an efficient parallel implementation is rather difficult. To address this problem, we have developed PLUM, an automatic portable framework for performing adaptive numerical computations in a message-passing environment. PLUM requires that all data be globally redistributed after each mesh adaption to achieve load balance. We present an algorithm for minimizing this remapping overhead by guaranteeing an optimal processor reassignment. We also show that the data redistribution cost can be significantly reduced by applying our heuristic processor reassignment algorithm to the default mapping of the parallel partitioner. Portability is examined by comparing performance on a SP2, an Origin2000, and a T3E. Results show that PLUM can be successfully ported to different platforms without any code modifications.

Development of compact fuel processor for 2 kW class residential PEMFCs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seo, Yu Taek; Seo, Dong Joo; Jeong, Jin Hyeok; Yoon, Wang Lai

Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has been developing a novel fuel processing system to provide hydrogen rich gas to residential polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) cogeneration system. For the effective design of a compact hydrogen production system, the unit processes of steam reforming, high and low temperature water gas shift, steam generator and internal heat exchangers are thermally and physically integrated into a packaged hardware system. Several prototypes are under development and the prototype I fuel processor showed thermal efficiency of 73% as a HHV basis with methane conversion of 81%. Recently tested prototype II has been shown the improved performance of thermal efficiency of 76% with methane conversion of 83%. In both prototypes, two-stage PrOx reactors reduce CO concentration less than 10 ppm, which is the prerequisite CO limit condition of product gas for the PEMFCs stack. After confirming the initial performance of prototype I fuel processor, it is coupled with PEMFC single cell to test the durability and demonstrated that the fuel processor is operated for 3 days successfully without any failure of fuel cell voltage. Prototype II fuel processor also showed stable performance during the durability test.

Compact propane fuel processor for auxiliary power unit application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dokupil, M.; Spitta, C.; Mathiak, J.; Beckhaus, P.; Heinzel, A.

With focus on mobile applications a fuel cell auxiliary power unit (APU) using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is currently being developed at the Centre for Fuel Cell Technology (Zentrum für BrennstoffzellenTechnik, ZBT gGmbH). The system is consisting of an integrated compact and lightweight fuel processor and a low temperature PEM fuel cell for an electric power output of 300 W. This article is presenting the current status of development of the fuel processor which is designed for a nominal hydrogen output of 1 k Wth,H2 within a load range from 50 to 120%. A modular setup was chosen defining a reformer/burner module and a CO-purification module. Based on the performance specifications, thermodynamic simulations, benchmarking and selection of catalysts the modules have been developed and characterised simultaneously and then assembled to the complete fuel processor. Automated operation results in a cold startup time of about 25 min for nominal load and carbon monoxide output concentrations below 50 ppm for steady state and dynamic operation. Also fast transient response of the fuel processor at load changes with low fluctuations of the reformate gas composition have been achieved. Beside the development of the main reactors the transfer of the fuel processor to an autonomous system is of major concern. Hence, concepts for packaging have been developed resulting in a volume of 7 l and a weight of 3 kg. Further a selection of peripheral components has been tested and evaluated regarding to the substitution of the laboratory equipment.

Control apparatus and method for efficiently heating a fuel processor in a fuel cell system

DOEpatents

Doan, Tien M.; Clingerman, Bruce J.

2003-08-05

A control apparatus and method for efficiently controlling the amount of heat generated by a fuel cell processor in a fuel cell system by determining a temperature error between actual and desired fuel processor temperatures. The temperature error is converted to a combustor fuel injector command signal or a heat dump valve position command signal depending upon the type of temperature error. Logic controls are responsive to the combustor fuel injector command signals and the heat dump valve position command signal to prevent the combustor fuel injector command signal from being generated if the heat dump valve is opened or, alternately, from preventing the heat dump valve position command signal from being generated if the combustor fuel injector is opened.

Forensic Analysis of the Sony Playstation Portable

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Conrad, Scott; Rodriguez, Carlos; Marberry, Chris; Craiger, Philip

The Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a popular portable gaming device with features such as wireless Internet access and image, music and movie playback. As with most systems built around a processor and storage, the PSP can be used for purposes other than it was originally intended - legal as well as illegal. This paper discusses the features of the PSP browser and suggests best practices for extracting digital evidence.

Autothermal and partial oxidation reformer-based fuel processor, method for improving catalyst function in autothermal and partial oxidation reformer-based processors

DOEpatents

Ahmed, Shabbir; Papadias, Dionissios D.; Lee, Sheldon H. D.; Ahluwalia, Rajesh K.

2013-01-08

The invention provides a fuel processor comprising a linear flow structure having an upstream portion and a downstream portion; a first catalyst supported at the upstream portion; and a second catalyst supported at the downstream portion, wherein the first catalyst is in fluid communication with the second catalyst. Also provided is a method for reforming fuel, the method comprising contacting the fuel to an oxidation catalyst so as to partially oxidize the fuel and generate heat; warming incoming fuel with the heat while simultaneously warming a reforming catalyst with the heat; and reacting the partially oxidized fuel with steam using the reforming catalyst.

Design of an integrated fuel processor for residential PEMFCs applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seo, Yu Taek; Seo, Dong Joo; Jeong, Jin Hyeok; Yoon, Wang Lai

KIER has been developing a novel fuel processing system to provide hydrogen rich gas to residential PEMFCs system. For the effective design of a compact hydrogen production system, each unit process for steam reforming and water gas shift, has a steam generator and internal heat exchangers which are thermally and physically integrated into a single packaged hardware system. The newly designed fuel processor (prototype II) showed a thermal efficiency of 78% as a HHV basis with methane conversion of 89%. The preferential oxidation unit with two staged cascade reactors, reduces, the CO concentration to below 10 ppm without complicated temperature control hardware, which is the prerequisite CO limit for the PEMFC stack. After we achieve the initial performance of the fuel processor, partial load operation was carried out to test the performance and reliability of the fuel processor at various loads. The stability of the fuel processor was also demonstrated for three successive days with a stable composition of product gas and thermal efficiency. The CO concentration remained below 10 ppm during the test period and confirmed the stable performance of the two-stage PrOx reactors.

Advances in Materials and System Technology for Portable Fuel Cells

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Narayanan, Sekharipuram R.

2007-01-01

This viewgraph presentation describes the materials and systems engineering used for portable fuel cells. The contents include: 1) Portable Power; 2) Technology Solution; 3) Portable Hydrogen Systems; 4) Direct Methanol Fuel Cell; 5) Direct Methanol Fuel Cell System Concept; 6) Overview of DMFC R&D at JPL; 7) 300-Watt Portable Fuel Cell for Army Applications; 8) DMFC units from Smart Fuel Cell Inc, Germany; 9) DMFC Status and Prospects; 10) Challenges; 11) Rapid Screening of Well-Controlled Catalyst Compositions; 12) Screening of Ni-Zr-Pt-Ru alloys; 13) Issues with New Membranes; 14) Membranes With Reduced Methanol Crossover; 15) Stacks; 16) Hybrid DMFC System; 17) Small Compact Systems; 18) Durability; and 19) Stack and System Parameters for Various Applications.

High performance 3D adaptive filtering for DSP based portable medical imaging systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bockenbach, Olivier; Ali, Murtaza; Wainwright, Ian; Nadeski, Mark

2015-03-01

Portable medical imaging devices have proven valuable for emergency medical services both in the field and hospital environments and are becoming more prevalent in clinical settings where the use of larger imaging machines is impractical. Despite their constraints on power, size and cost, portable imaging devices must still deliver high quality images. 3D adaptive filtering is one of the most advanced techniques aimed at noise reduction and feature enhancement, but is computationally very demanding and hence often cannot be run with sufficient performance on a portable platform. In recent years, advanced multicore digital signal processors (DSP) have been developed that attain high processing performance while maintaining low levels of power dissipation. These processors enable the implementation of complex algorithms on a portable platform. In this study, the performance of a 3D adaptive filtering algorithm on a DSP is investigated. The performance is assessed by filtering a volume of size 512x256x128 voxels sampled at a pace of 10 MVoxels/sec with an Ultrasound 3D probe. Relative performance and power is addressed between a reference PC (Quad Core CPU) and a TMS320C6678 DSP from Texas Instruments.

Method for fast start of a fuel processor

DOEpatents

Ahluwalia, Rajesh K [Burr Ridge, IL; Ahmed, Shabbir [Naperville, IL; Lee, Sheldon H. D. [Willowbrook, IL

2008-01-29

An improved fuel processor for fuel cells is provided whereby the startup time of the processor is less than sixty seconds and can be as low as 30 seconds, if not less. A rapid startup time is achieved by either igniting or allowing a small mixture of air and fuel to react over and warm up the catalyst of an autothermal reformer (ATR). The ATR then produces combustible gases to be subsequently oxidized on and simultaneously warm up water-gas shift zone catalysts. After normal operating temperature has been achieved, the proportion of air included with the fuel is greatly diminished.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell technology for transportation applications

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Swathirajan, S.

1996-04-01

Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells are extremely promising as future power plants in the transportation sector to achieve an increase in energy efficiency and eliminate environmental pollution due to vehicles. GM is currently involved in a multiphase program with the US Department of Energy for developing a proof-of-concept hybrid vehicle based on a PEM fuel cell power plant and a methanol fuel processor. Other participants in the program are Los Alamos National Labs, Dow Chemical Co., Ballard Power Systems and DuPont Co., In the just completed phase 1 of the program, a 10 kW PEM fuel cell power plantmore » was built and tested to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating a methanol fuel processor with a PEM fuel cell stack. However, the fuel cell power plant must overcome stiff technical and economic challenges before it can be commercialized for light duty vehicle applications. Progress achieved in phase I on the use of monolithic catalyst reactors in the fuel processor, managing CO impurity in the fuel cell stack, low-cost electrode-membrane assembles, and on the integration of the fuel processor with a Ballard PEM fuel cell stack will be presented.« less

A light hydrocarbon fuel processor producing high-purity hydrogen

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Löffler, Daniel G.; Taylor, Kyle; Mason, Dylan

This paper discusses the design process and presents performance data for a dual fuel (natural gas and LPG) fuel processor for PEM fuel cells delivering between 2 and 8 kW electric power in stationary applications. The fuel processor resulted from a series of design compromises made to address different design constraints. First, the product quality was selected; then, the unit operations needed to achieve that product quality were chosen from the pool of available technologies. Next, the specific equipment needed for each unit operation was selected. Finally, the unit operations were thermally integrated to achieve high thermal efficiency. Early in the design process, it was decided that the fuel processor would deliver high-purity hydrogen. Hydrogen can be separated from other gases by pressure-driven processes based on either selective adsorption or permeation. The pressure requirement made steam reforming (SR) the preferred reforming technology because it does not require compression of combustion air; therefore, steam reforming is more efficient in a high-pressure fuel processor than alternative technologies like autothermal reforming (ATR) or partial oxidation (POX), where the combustion occurs at the pressure of the process stream. A low-temperature pre-reformer reactor is needed upstream of a steam reformer to suppress coke formation; yet, low temperatures facilitate the formation of metal sulfides that deactivate the catalyst. For this reason, a desulfurization unit is needed upstream of the pre-reformer. Hydrogen separation was implemented using a palladium alloy membrane. Packed beds were chosen for the pre-reformer and reformer reactors primarily because of their low cost, relatively simple operation and low maintenance. Commercial, off-the-shelf balance of plant (BOP) components (pumps, valves, and heat exchangers) were used to integrate the unit operations. The fuel processor delivers up to 100 slm hydrogen >99.9% pure with <1 ppm CO, <3 ppm CO 2. The thermal efficiency is better than 67% operating at full load. This fuel processor has been integrated with a 5-kW fuel cell producing electricity and hot water.

Metal membrane-type 25-kW methanol fuel processor for fuel-cell hybrid vehicle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Han, Jaesung; Lee, Seok-Min; Chang, Hyuksang

A 25-kW on-board methanol fuel processor has been developed. It consists of a methanol steam reformer, which converts methanol to hydrogen-rich gas mixture, and two metal membrane modules, which clean-up the gas mixture to high-purity hydrogen. It produces hydrogen at rates up to 25 N m 3/h and the purity of the product hydrogen is over 99.9995% with a CO content of less than 1 ppm. In this fuel processor, the operating condition of the reformer and the metal membrane modules is nearly the same, so that operation is simple and the overall system construction is compact by eliminating the extensive temperature control of the intermediate gas streams. The recovery of hydrogen in the metal membrane units is maintained at 70-75% by the control of the pressure in the system, and the remaining 25-30% hydrogen is recycled to a catalytic combustion zone to supply heat for the methanol steam-reforming reaction. The thermal efficiency of the fuel processor is about 75% and the inlet air pressure is as low as 4 psi. The fuel processor is currently being integrated with 25-kW polymer electrolyte membrane fuel-cell (PEMFC) stack developed by the Hyundai Motor Company. The stack exhibits the same performance as those with pure hydrogen, which proves that the maximum power output as well as the minimum stack degradation is possible with this fuel processor. This fuel-cell 'engine' is to be installed in a hybrid passenger vehicle for road testing.

Portable multi-node LQCD Monte Carlo simulations using OpenACC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bonati, Claudio; Calore, Enrico; D'Elia, Massimo; Mesiti, Michele; Negro, Francesco; Sanfilippo, Francesco; Schifano, Sebastiano Fabio; Silvi, Giorgio; Tripiccione, Raffaele

This paper describes a state-of-the-art parallel Lattice QCD Monte Carlo code for staggered fermions, purposely designed to be portable across different computer architectures, including GPUs and commodity CPUs. Portability is achieved using the OpenACC parallel programming model, used to develop a code that can be compiled for several processor architectures. The paper focuses on parallelization on multiple computing nodes using OpenACC to manage parallelism within the node, and OpenMPI to manage parallelism among the nodes. We first discuss the available strategies to be adopted to maximize performances, we then describe selected relevant details of the code, and finally measure the level of performance and scaling-performance that we are able to achieve. The work focuses mainly on GPUs, which offer a significantly high level of performances for this application, but also compares with results measured on other processors.

A natural-gas fuel processor for a residential fuel cell system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Adachi, H.; Ahmed, S.; Lee, S. H. D.; Papadias, D.; Ahluwalia, R. K.; Bendert, J. C.; Kanner, S. A.; Yamazaki, Y.

A system model was used to develop an autothermal reforming fuel processor to meet the targets of 80% efficiency (higher heating value) and start-up energy consumption of less than 500 kJ when operated as part of a 1-kWe natural-gas fueled fuel cell system for cogeneration of heat and power. The key catalytic reactors of the fuel processor - namely the autothermal reformer, a two-stage water gas shift reactor and a preferential oxidation reactor - were configured and tested in a breadboard apparatus. Experimental results demonstrated a reformate containing ∼48% hydrogen (on a dry basis and with pure methane as fuel) and less than 5 ppm CO. The effects of steam-to-carbon and part load operations were explored.

Development and Testing of a Portable Vocal Accumulator

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheyne, Harold A.; Hanson, Helen M.; Genereux, Ronald P.; Stevens, Kenneth N.; Hillman, Robert E.

2003-01-01

This research note describes the design and testing of a device for unobtrusive, long-term ambulatory monitoring of voice use, named the Portable Vocal Accumulator (PVA). The PVA contains a digital signal processor for analyzing input from a neck-placed miniature accelerometer. During its development, accelerometer recordings were obtained from 99…

40 CFR 59.660 - Exemption from the standards.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Special Compliance Provisions § 59.660 Exemption from the standards. In certain circumstances, we may exempt portable fuel.... Submit your request for an exemption to the Designated Compliance Officer. (a) Portable fuel containers...

Automated collection and processing of environmental samples

DOEpatents

Troyer, Gary L.; McNeece, Susan G.; Brayton, Darryl D.; Panesar, Amardip K.

1997-01-01

For monitoring an environmental parameter such as the level of nuclear radiation, at distributed sites, bar coded sample collectors are deployed and their codes are read using a portable data entry unit that also records the time of deployment. The time and collector identity are cross referenced in memory in the portable unit. Similarly, when later recovering the collector for testing, the code is again read and the time of collection is stored as indexed to the sample collector, or to a further bar code, for example as provided on a container for the sample. The identity of the operator can also be encoded and stored. After deploying and/or recovering the sample collectors, the data is transmitted to a base processor. The samples are tested, preferably using a test unit coupled to the base processor, and again the time is recorded. The base processor computes the level of radiation at the site during exposure of the sample collector, using the detected radiation level of the sample, the delay between recovery and testing, the duration of exposure and the half life of the isotopes collected. In one embodiment, an identity code and a site code are optically read by an image grabber coupled to the portable data entry unit.

Diesel fuel to dc power: Navy & Marine Corps Applications

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bloomfield, D.P.

1996-12-31

During the past year Analytic Power has tested fuel cell stacks and diesel fuel processors for US Navy and Marine Corps applications. The units are 10 kW demonstration power plants. The USN power plant was built to demonstrate the feasibility of diesel fueled PEM fuel cell power plants for 250 kW and 2.5 MW shipboard power systems. We designed and tested a ten cell, 1 kW USMC substack and fuel processor. The complete 10 kW prototype power plant, which has application to both power and hydrogen generation, is now under construction. The USN and USMC fuel cell stacks have beenmore » tested on both actual and simulated reformate. Analytic Power has accumulated operating experience with autothermal reforming based fuel processors operating on sulfur bearing diesel fuel, jet fuel, propane and natural gas. We have also completed the design and fabrication of an advanced regenerative ATR for the USMC. One of the significant problems with small fuel processors is heat loss which limits its ability to operate with the high steam to carbon ratios required for coke free high efficiency operation. The new USMC unit specifically addresses these heat transfer issues. The advances in the mill programs have been incorporated into Analytic Power`s commercial units which are now under test.« less

77 FR 75868 - Regulation of Fuels and Fuel Additives: Modifications to the Transmix Provisions Under the Diesel...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-12-26

...EPA is amending the requirements under EPA's diesel sulfur program related to the sulfur content of locomotive and marine (LM) diesel fuel produced by transmix processors and pipeline facilities. These amendments will reinstate the ability of locomotive and marine diesel fuel produced from transmix by transmix processors and pipeline operators to meet a maximum 500 parts per million (ppm) sulfur standard outside of the Northeast Mid-Atlantic Area and Alaska and expand this ability to within the Northeast Mid-Atlantic Area provided that: the fuel is used in older technology locomotive and marine engines that do not require 15 ppm sulfur diesel fuel, and the fuel is kept segregated from other fuel. These amendments will provide significant regulatory relief for transmix processors and pipeline operators to allow the petroleum distribution system to function efficiently while continuing to transition the market to virtually all ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel (ULSD, i.e. 15 ppm sulfur diesel fuel) and the environmental benefits it provides.

40 CFR 59.622 - What are the general requirements for obtaining a certificate of conformity and producing...

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... obtaining a certificate of conformity and producing portable fuel containers under it? 59.622 Section 59.622... Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families § 59.622 What are the general requirements for obtaining a certificate of conformity and producing portable fuel containers...

Dynamic behavior of gasoline fuel cell electric vehicles

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mitchell, William; Bowers, Brian J.; Garnier, Christophe; Boudjemaa, Fabien

As we begin the 21st century, society is continuing efforts towards finding clean power sources and alternative forms of energy. In the automotive sector, reduction of pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions from the power plant is one of the main objectives of car manufacturers and innovative technologies are under active consideration to achieve this goal. One technology that has been proposed and vigorously pursued in the past decade is the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell, an electrochemical device that reacts hydrogen with oxygen to produce water, electricity and heat. Since today there is no existing extensive hydrogen infrastructure and no commercially viable hydrogen storage technology for vehicles, there is a continuing debate as to how the hydrogen for these advanced vehicles will be supplied. In order to circumvent the above issues, power systems based on PEM fuel cells can employ an on-board fuel processor that has the ability to convert conventional fuels such as gasoline into hydrogen for the fuel cell. This option could thereby remove the fuel infrastructure and storage issues. However, for these fuel processor/fuel cell vehicles to be commercially successful, issues such as start time and transient response must be addressed. This paper discusses the role of transient response of the fuel processor power plant and how it relates to the battery sizing for a gasoline fuel cell vehicle. In addition, results of fuel processor testing from a current Renault/Nuvera Fuel Cells project are presented to show the progress in transient performance.

Portable laser speckle perfusion imaging system based on digital signal processor.

PubMed

Tang, Xuejun; Feng, Nengyun; Sun, Xiaoli; Li, Pengcheng; Luo, Qingming

2010-12-01

The ability to monitor blood flow in vivo is of major importance in clinical diagnosis and in basic researches of life science. As a noninvasive full-field technique without the need of scanning, laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) is widely used to study blood flow with high spatial and temporal resolution. Current LSCI systems are based on personal computers for image processing with large size, which potentially limit the widespread clinical utility. The need for portable laser speckle contrast imaging system that does not compromise processing efficiency is crucial in clinical diagnosis. However, the processing of laser speckle contrast images is time-consuming due to the heavy calculation for enormous high-resolution image data. To address this problem, a portable laser speckle perfusion imaging system based on digital signal processor (DSP) and the algorithm which is suitable for DSP is described. With highly integrated DSP and the algorithm, we have markedly reduced the size and weight of the system as well as its energy consumption while preserving the high processing speed. In vivo experiments demonstrate that our portable laser speckle perfusion imaging system can obtain blood flow images at 25 frames per second with the resolution of 640 × 480 pixels. The portable and lightweight features make it capable of being adapted to a wide variety of application areas such as research laboratory, operating room, ambulance, and even disaster site.

Small Portable PEM Fuel Cell Systems for NASA Exploration Missions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Burke, Kenneth A.

2005-01-01

Oxygen-Hydrogen PEM-based fuel cell systems are being examined as a portable power source alternative in addition to advanced battery technology. Fuel cell power systems have been used by the Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle programs. These systems have not been portable, but have been integral parts of their spacecraft, and have used reactants from a separate cryogenic supply. These systems typically have been higher in power. They also have had significant ancillary equipment sections that perform the pumping of reactants and coolant through the fuel cell stack and the separation of the product water from the unused reactant streams. The design of small portable fuel cell systems will be a significant departure from these previous designs. These smaller designs will have very limited ancillary equipment, relying on passive techniques for reactant and thermal management, and the reactant storage will be an integral part of the fuel cell system. An analysis of the mass and volume for small portable fuel cell systems was done to evaluate and quantify areas of technological improvement. A review of current fuel cell technology as well as reactant storage and management technology was completed to validate the analysis and to identify technology challenges

Simulation of a 250 kW diesel fuel processor/PEM fuel cell system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Amphlett, J. C.; Mann, R. F.; Peppley, B. A.; Roberge, P. R.; Rodrigues, A.; Salvador, J. P.

Polymer-electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems offer a potential power source for utility and mobile applications. Practical fuel cell systems use fuel processors for the production of hydrogen-rich gas. Liquid fuels, such as diesel or other related fuels, are attractive options as feeds to a fuel processor. The generation of hydrogen gas for fuel cells, in most cases, becomes the crucial design issue with respect to weight and volume in these applications. Furthermore, these systems will require a gas clean-up system to insure that the fuel quality meets the demands of the cell anode. The endothermic nature of the reformer will have a significant affect on the overall system efficiency. The gas clean-up system may also significantly effect the overall heat balance. To optimize the performance of this integrated system, therefore, waste heat must be used effectively. Previously, we have concentrated on catalytic methanol-steam reforming. A model of a methanol steam reformer has been previously developed and has been used as the basis for a new, higher temperature model for liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Similarly, our fuel cell evaluation program previously led to the development of a steady-state electrochemical fuel cell model (SSEM). The hydrocarbon fuel processor model and the SSEM have now been incorporated in the development of a process simulation of a 250 kW diesel-fueled reformer/fuel cell system using a process simulator. The performance of this system has been investigated for a variety of operating conditions and a preliminary assessment of thermal integration issues has been carried out. This study demonstrates the application of a process simulation model as a design analysis tool for the development of a 250 kW fuel cell system.

Coupling of a 2.5 kW steam reformer with a 1 kW el PEM fuel cell

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mathiak, J.; Heinzel, A.; Roes, J.; Kalk, Th.; Kraus, H.; Brandt, H.

The University of Duisburg-Essen has developed a compact multi-fuel steam reformer suitable for natural gas, propane and butane. This steam reformer was combined with a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEM FC) and a system test of the process chain was performed. The fuel processor comprises a prereformer step, a primary reformer, water gas shift reactors, a steam generator, internal heat exchangers in order to achieve an optimised heat integration and an external burner for heat supply as well as a preferential oxidation step (PROX) as CO purification. The fuel processor is designed to deliver a thermal hydrogen power output from 500 W to 2.5 kW. The PEM fuel cell stack provides about 1 kW electrical power. In the following paper experimental results of measurements of the single components PEM fuel cell and fuel processor as well as results of the coupling of both to form a process chain are presented.

Increasing the electric efficiency of a fuel cell system by recirculating the anodic offgas

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Heinzel, A.; Roes, J.; Brandt, H.

The University of Duisburg-Essen and the Center for Fuel Cell Technology (ZBT Duisburg GmbH) have developed a compact multi-fuel steam reformer suitable for natural gas, propane and butane. Fuel processor prototypes based on this concept were built up in the power range from 2.5 to 12.5 kW thermal hydrogen power for different applications and different industrial partners. The fuel processor concept contains all the necessary elements, a prereformer step, a primary reformer, water gas shift reactors, a steam generator, internal heat exchangers, in order to achieve an optimised heat integration and an external burner for heat supply as well as a preferential oxidation step (PrOx) as CO purification. One of the built fuel processors is designed to deliver a thermal hydrogen power output of 2.5 kW according to a PEM fuel cell stack providing about 1 kW electrical power and achieves a thermal efficiency of about 75% (LHV basis after PrOx), while the CO content of the product gas is below 20 ppm. This steam reformer has been combined with a 1 kW PEM fuel cell. Recirculating the anodic offgas results in a significant efficiency increase for the fuel processor. The gross efficiency of the combined system was already clearly above 30% during the first tests. Further improvements are currently investigated and developed at the ZBT.

Configuring a fuel cell based residential combined heat and power system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahmed, Shabbir; Papadias, Dionissios D.; Ahluwalia, Rajesh K.

2013-11-01

The design and performance of a fuel cell based residential combined heat and power (CHP) system operating on natural gas has been analyzed. The natural gas is first converted to a hydrogen-rich reformate in a steam reformer based fuel processor, and the hydrogen is then electrochemically oxidized in a low temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cell to generate electric power. The heat generated in the fuel cell and the available heat in the exhaust gas is recovered to meet residential needs for hot water and space heating. Two fuel processor configurations have been studied. One of the configurations was explored to quantify the effects of design and operating parameters, which include pressure, temperature, and steam-to-carbon ratio in the fuel processor, and fuel utilization in the fuel cell. The second configuration applied the lessons from the study of the first configuration to increase the CHP efficiency. Results from the two configurations allow a quantitative comparison of the design alternatives. The analyses showed that these systems can operate at electrical efficiencies of ∼46% and combined heat and power efficiencies of ∼90%.

Multimedia architectures: from desktop systems to portable appliances

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bhaskaran, Vasudev; Konstantinides, Konstantinos; Natarajan, Balas R.

1997-01-01

Future desktop and portable computing systems will have as their core an integrated multimedia system. Such a system will seamlessly combine digital video, digital audio, computer animation, text, and graphics. Furthermore, such a system will allow for mixed-media creation, dissemination, and interactive access in real time. Multimedia architectures that need to support these functions have traditionally required special display and processing units for the different media types. This approach tends to be expensive and is inefficient in its use of silicon. Furthermore, such media-specific processing units are unable to cope with the fluid nature of the multimedia market wherein the needs and standards are changing and system manufacturers may demand a single component media engine across a range of products. This constraint has led to a shift towards providing a single-component multimedia specific computing engine that can be integrated easily within desktop systems, tethered consumer appliances, or portable appliances. In this paper, we review some of the recent architectural efforts in developing integrated media systems. We primarily focus on two efforts, namely the evolution of multimedia-capable general purpose processors and a more recent effort in developing single component mixed media co-processors. Design considerations that could facilitate the migration of these technologies to a portable integrated media system also are presented.

Design and optimization of a portable LQCD Monte Carlo code using OpenACC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bonati, Claudio; Coscetti, Simone; D'Elia, Massimo; Mesiti, Michele; Negro, Francesco; Calore, Enrico; Schifano, Sebastiano Fabio; Silvi, Giorgio; Tripiccione, Raffaele

The present panorama of HPC architectures is extremely heterogeneous, ranging from traditional multi-core CPU processors, supporting a wide class of applications but delivering moderate computing performance, to many-core Graphics Processor Units (GPUs), exploiting aggressive data-parallelism and delivering higher performances for streaming computing applications. In this scenario, code portability (and performance portability) become necessary for easy maintainability of applications; this is very relevant in scientific computing where code changes are very frequent, making it tedious and prone to error to keep different code versions aligned. In this work, we present the design and optimization of a state-of-the-art production-level LQCD Monte Carlo application, using the directive-based OpenACC programming model. OpenACC abstracts parallel programming to a descriptive level, relieving programmers from specifying how codes should be mapped onto the target architecture. We describe the implementation of a code fully written in OpenAcc, and show that we are able to target several different architectures, including state-of-the-art traditional CPUs and GPUs, with the same code. We also measure performance, evaluating the computing efficiency of our OpenACC code on several architectures, comparing with GPU-specific implementations and showing that a good level of performance-portability can be reached.

An Overview of Power Electronics Applications in Fuel Cell Systems: DC and AC Converters

PubMed Central

Ali, M. S.; Kamarudin, S. K.; Masdar, M. S.; Mohamed, A.

2014-01-01

Power electronics and fuel cell technologies play an important role in the field of renewable energy. The demand for fuel cells will increase as fuel cells become the main power source for portable applications. In this application, a high-efficiency converter is an essential requirement and a key parameter of the overall system. This is because the size, cost, efficiency, and reliability of the overall system for portable applications primarily depend on the converter. Therefore, the selection of an appropriate converter topology is an important and fundamental aspect of designing a fuel cell system for portable applications as the converter alone plays a major role in determining the overall performance of the system. This paper presents a review of power electronics applications in fuel cell systems, which include various topology combinations of DC converters and AC inverters and which are primarily used in fuel cell systems for portable or stand-alone applications. This paper also reviews the switching techniques used in power conditioning for fuel cell systems. Finally, this paper addresses the current problem encountered with DC converters and AC inverter. PMID:25478581

An overview of power electronics applications in fuel cell systems: DC and AC converters.

PubMed

Ali, M S; Kamarudin, S K; Masdar, M S; Mohamed, A

2014-01-01

Power electronics and fuel cell technologies play an important role in the field of renewable energy. The demand for fuel cells will increase as fuel cells become the main power source for portable applications. In this application, a high-efficiency converter is an essential requirement and a key parameter of the overall system. This is because the size, cost, efficiency, and reliability of the overall system for portable applications primarily depend on the converter. Therefore, the selection of an appropriate converter topology is an important and fundamental aspect of designing a fuel cell system for portable applications as the converter alone plays a major role in determining the overall performance of the system. This paper presents a review of power electronics applications in fuel cell systems, which include various topology combinations of DC converters and AC inverters and which are primarily used in fuel cell systems for portable or stand-alone applications. This paper also reviews the switching techniques used in power conditioning for fuel cell systems. Finally, this paper addresses the current problem encountered with DC converters and AC inverter.

Simulink/PARS Integration Support

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Vacaliuc, B.; Nakhaee, N.

2013-12-18

The state of the art for signal processor hardware has far out-paced the development tools for placing applications on that hardware. In addition, signal processors are available in a variety of architectures, each uniquely capable of handling specific types of signal processing efficiently. With these processors becoming smaller and demanding less power, it has become possible to group multiple processors, a heterogeneous set of processors, into single systems. Different portions of the desired problem set can be assigned to different processor types as appropriate. As software development tools do not keep pace with these processors, especially when multiple processors ofmore » different types are used, a method is needed to enable software code portability among multiple processors and multiple types of processors along with their respective software environments. Sundance DSP, Inc. has developed a software toolkit called “PARS”, whose objective is to provide a framework that uses suites of tools provided by different vendors, along with modeling tools and a real time operating system, to build an application that spans different processor types. The software language used to express the behavior of the system is a very high level modeling language, “Simulink”, a MathWorks product. ORNL has used this toolkit to effectively implement several deliverables. This CRADA describes this collaboration between ORNL and Sundance DSP, Inc.« less

Formulation of consumables management models. Development approach for the mission planning processor working model

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Connelly, L. C.

1977-01-01

The mission planning processor is a user oriented tool for consumables management and is part of the total consumables subsystem management concept. The approach to be used in developing a working model of the mission planning processor is documented. The approach includes top-down design, structured programming techniques, and application of NASA approved software development standards. This development approach: (1) promotes cost effective software development, (2) enhances the quality and reliability of the working model, (3) encourages the sharing of the working model through a standard approach, and (4) promotes portability of the working model to other computer systems.

Compact gasoline fuel processor for passenger vehicle APU

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Severin, Christopher; Pischinger, Stefan; Ogrzewalla, Jürgen

Due to the increasing demand for electrical power in today's passenger vehicles, and with the requirements regarding fuel consumption and environmental sustainability tightening, a fuel cell-based auxiliary power unit (APU) becomes a promising alternative to the conventional generation of electrical energy via internal combustion engine, generator and battery. It is obvious that the on-board stored fuel has to be used for the fuel cell system, thus, gasoline or diesel has to be reformed on board. This makes the auxiliary power unit a complex integrated system of stack, air supply, fuel processor, electrics as well as heat and water management. Aside from proving the technical feasibility of such a system, the development has to address three major barriers:start-up time, costs, and size/weight of the systems. In this paper a packaging concept for an auxiliary power unit is presented. The main emphasis is placed on the fuel processor, as good packaging of this large subsystem has the strongest impact on overall size. The fuel processor system consists of an autothermal reformer in combination with water-gas shift and selective oxidation stages, based on adiabatic reactors with inter-cooling. The configuration was realized in a laboratory set-up and experimentally investigated. The results gained from this confirm a general suitability for mobile applications. A start-up time of 30 min was measured, while a potential reduction to 10 min seems feasible. An overall fuel processor efficiency of about 77% was measured. On the basis of the know-how gained by the experimental investigation of the laboratory set-up a packaging concept was developed. Using state-of-the-art catalyst and heat exchanger technology, the volumes of these components are fixed. However, the overall volume is higher mainly due to mixing zones and flow ducts, which do not contribute to the chemical or thermal function of the system. Thus, the concept developed mainly focuses on minimization of those component volumes. Therefore, the packaging utilizes rectangular catalyst bricks and integrates flow ducts into the heat exchangers. A concept is presented with a 25 l fuel processor volume including thermal isolation for a 3 kW el auxiliary power unit. The overall size of the system, i.e. including stack, air supply and auxiliaries can be estimated to 44 l.

Fuel processing device

DOEpatents

Ahluwalia, Rajesh K [Burr Ridge, IL; Ahmed, Shabbir [Naperville, IL; Lee, Sheldon H. D. [Willowbrook, IL

2011-08-02

An improved fuel processor for fuel cells is provided whereby the startup time of the processor is less than sixty seconds and can be as low as 30 seconds, if not less. A rapid startup time is achieved by either igniting or allowing a small mixture of air and fuel to react over and warm up the catalyst of an autothermal reformer (ATR). The ATR then produces combustible gases to be subsequently oxidized on and simultaneously warm up water-gas shift zone catalysts. After normal operating temperature has been achieved, the proportion of air included with the fuel is greatly diminished.

40 CFR 59.664 - What are the requirements for importing portable fuel containers into the United States?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... STANDARDS FOR CONSUMER AND COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Special Compliance Provisions § 59.664 What are the requirements for importing portable... bond to cover any potential compliance or enforcement actions under the Clean Air Act if you cannot...

40 CFR 1060.801 - What definitions apply to this part?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... § 1045.801, which generally includes all nonroad equipment used as a means of transportation on water... line that is used or intended to be used to supply fuel to a marine engine during operation. This also.... Portable marine fuel tank means a portable fuel tank that is used or intended to be used to supply fuel to...

Fuel Cells Using the Protic Ionic Liquid and Rotator Phase Solid Electrolyte Principles

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-02-13

Talk “High temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (HT- PEMFCs ) for Portable Power in Large-Scale Energy Storage Devices”, Paper Number 195...Membrane Fuel Cells (HT- PEMFCs ) for Portable Power in Large-Scale Energy Storage Devices”, Paper Number 195, 212th Meeting of the Electrochemical

Design and Evaluation of a Personal Digital Assistant-based Research Platform for Cochlear Implants

PubMed Central

Ali, Hussnain; Lobo, Arthur P.; Loizou, Philipos C.

2014-01-01

This paper discusses the design, development, features, and clinical evaluation of a personal digital assistant (PDA)-based platform for cochlear implant research. This highly versatile and portable research platform allows researchers to design and perform complex experiments with cochlear implants manufactured by Cochlear Corporation with great ease and flexibility. The research platform includes a portable processor for implementing and evaluating novel speech processing algorithms, a stimulator unit which can be used for electrical stimulation and neurophysio-logic studies with animals, and a recording unit for collecting electroencephalogram/evoked potentials from human subjects. The design of the platform for real time and offline stimulation modes is discussed for electric-only and electric plus acoustic stimulation followed by results from an acute study with implant users for speech intelligibility in quiet and noisy conditions. The results are comparable with users’ clinical processor and very promising for undertaking chronic studies. PMID:23674422

Optics Program Modified for Multithreaded Parallel Computing

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lou, John; Bedding, Dave; Basinger, Scott

2006-01-01

A powerful high-performance computer program for simulating and analyzing adaptive and controlled optical systems has been developed by modifying the serial version of the Modeling and Analysis for Controlled Optical Systems (MACOS) program to impart capabilities for multithreaded parallel processing on computing systems ranging from supercomputers down to Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) personal computers. The modifications included the incorporation of OpenMP, a portable and widely supported application interface software, that can be used to explicitly add multithreaded parallelism to an application program under a shared-memory programming model. OpenMP was applied to parallelize ray-tracing calculations, one of the major computing components in MACOS. Multithreading is also used in the diffraction propagation of light in MACOS based on pthreads [POSIX Thread, (where "POSIX" signifies a portable operating system for UNIX)]. In tests of the parallelized version of MACOS, the speedup in ray-tracing calculations was found to be linear, or proportional to the number of processors, while the speedup in diffraction calculations ranged from 50 to 60 percent, depending on the type and number of processors. The parallelized version of MACOS is portable, and, to the user, its interface is basically the same as that of the original serial version of MACOS.

Technology assessment of portable energy RDT and P

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Vanston, J. H., Jr.; Frisbie, W. P.; Poston, D. L.

1975-01-01

Results are presented of a workshop conducted to assess portable energy technology. The results were evaluated and areas for future research were considered. Several research categories were studied: increasing presently available fuel supplies, developing new fuel sources, utilization of new transportation fuels, improving conservation practices, and equitable distribution of fuel supplies. Several research projects were proposed, and work statements were constructed for those considered suitable.

33 CFR 183.41 - Persons capacity: Outboard boats.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... § 183.35 for the boat minus the motor and control weight, battery weight (dry), and full portable fuel... control weight, battery weight, and full portable fuel tank weight, if any, shown in table 4 of subpart H of this part for the maximum horsepower capacity marked on the boat. Permanently installed fuel tanks...

Efficiency of a solid polymer fuel cell operating on ethanol

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ioannides, Theophilos; Neophytides, Stylianos

The efficiency of a solid polymer fuel cell (SPFC) system operating on ethanol fuel has been analyzed as a function of operating parameters focusing on vehicle and stationary applications. Two types of ethanol processors — employing either steam reforming or partial oxidation (POX) steps — have been considered and their performance has been investigated by thermodynamic analysis. SPFC operation has been analyzed by an available parametric model. It has been found that dilute ethanol-water mixtures (˜55% v/v EtOH) are the most suitable for stationary applications with a steam reformer (SR)-SPFC system. Regarding vehicle applications, pure ethanol (˜95% v/v EtOH) appears to be the best fuel with a POX-SPFC system. Efficiencies in the case of an ideal ethanol processor can be of the order of 60% under low load conditions and 30-35% at peak power, while efficiencies with an actual processor are 80-85% of the above values.

Fuel processor and method for generating hydrogen for fuel cells

DOEpatents

Ahmed, Shabbir [Naperville, IL; Lee, Sheldon H. D. [Willowbrook, IL; Carter, John David [Bolingbrook, IL; Krumpelt, Michael [Naperville, IL; Myers, Deborah J [Lisle, IL

2009-07-21

A method of producing a H.sub.2 rich gas stream includes supplying an O.sub.2 rich gas, steam, and fuel to an inner reforming zone of a fuel processor that includes a partial oxidation catalyst and a steam reforming catalyst or a combined partial oxidation and stream reforming catalyst. The method also includes contacting the O.sub.2 rich gas, steam, and fuel with the partial oxidation catalyst and the steam reforming catalyst or the combined partial oxidation and stream reforming catalyst in the inner reforming zone to generate a hot reformate stream. The method still further includes cooling the hot reformate stream in a cooling zone to produce a cooled reformate stream. Additionally, the method includes removing sulfur-containing compounds from the cooled reformate stream by contacting the cooled reformate stream with a sulfur removal agent. The method still further includes contacting the cooled reformate stream with a catalyst that converts water and carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide and H.sub.2 in a water-gas-shift zone to produce a final reformate stream in the fuel processor.

Portable power source needs of the future Army -- Batteries and fuel cells

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jacobs, R.; Christopher, H.; Hamlen, R.

This paper describes the US Army`s future needs for silent portable power in the area of batteries and fuel cells. These needs will continue to increase as a result of the introduction of newer types of equipment, the increasing digitization of the battlefield, and future integrated Soldier Systems. Current battery programs are aimed at improved, low-cost primary batteries, and rechargeable batteries with increased energy densities. The Army fuel cell program aimed at portable systems capable of the order of 150W is also described.

Microcombustor-thermoelectric power generator for 10-50 watt applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Marshall, Daniel S.; Cho, Steve T.

2010-04-01

Fuel-based portable power systems, including combustion and fuel cell systems, take advantage of the 80x higher energy density of fuel over lithium battery technologies and offer the potential for much higher energy density power sources - especially for long-duration applications, such as unattended sensors. Miniaturization of fuel-based systems poses significant challenges, including processing of fuel in small channels, catalyst poisoning, and coke and soot formation. Recent advances in micro-miniature combustors in the 200Watt thermal range have enabled the development of small power sources that use the chemical energy of heavy fuel to drive thermal-to-electric converters for portable applications. CUBE Technology has developed compact Micro-Furnace combustors that efficiently deliver high-quality heat to optimized thermal-to-electric power converters, such as advanced thermoelectric power modules and Stirling motors, for portable power generation at the 10-50Watt scale. Key innovations include a compact gas-gas recuperator, innovative heavy fuel processing, coke- & soot-free operation, and combustor optimization for low balance-of-plant power use while operating at full throttle. This combustor enables the development of robust, high energy density, miniature power sources for portable applications.

Carbonate and Bicarbonate Ion Transport in Alkaline Anion Exchange Membranes

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-06-25

membranes (AEMs) are being developed for potential use in fuel cell systems which include portable power applications. In a fuel cell , these membranes...Alkaline Anion Exchange Membranes Report Title ABSTRACT Anion exchange membranes (AEMs) are being developed for potential use in fuel cell systems which...include portable power applications. In a fuel cell , these membranes transport hydroxide ions from the cathode to the anode. If carbon dioxide is

A diesel fuel processor for fuel-cell-based auxiliary power unit applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Samsun, Remzi Can; Krekel, Daniel; Pasel, Joachim; Prawitz, Matthias; Peters, Ralf; Stolten, Detlef

2017-07-01

Producing a hydrogen-rich gas from diesel fuel enables the efficient generation of electricity in a fuel-cell-based auxiliary power unit. In recent years, significant progress has been achieved in diesel reforming. One issue encountered is the stable operation of water-gas shift reactors with real reformates. A new fuel processor is developed using a commercial shift catalyst. The system is operated using optimized start-up and shut-down strategies. Experiments with diesel and kerosene fuels show slight performance drops in the shift reactor during continuous operation for 100 h. CO concentrations much lower than the target value are achieved during system operation in auxiliary power unit mode at partial loads of up to 60%. The regeneration leads to full recovery of the shift activity. Finally, a new operation strategy is developed whereby the gas hourly space velocity of the shift stages is re-designed. This strategy is validated using different diesel and kerosene fuels, showing a maximum CO concentration of 1.5% at the fuel processor outlet under extreme conditions, which can be tolerated by a high-temperature PEFC. The proposed operation strategy solves the issue of strong performance drop in the shift reactor and makes this technology available for reducing emissions in the transportation sector.

Feasibility study of a microprocessor based oculometer system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Varanasi, M. R.

1981-01-01

The elimination of redundancy in data to maximize processing speed and minimize storage requirements were objectives in a feasibility study of a microprocessor based oculometer system that would be portable in size and flexible in use. The appropriate architectural design of the signal processor, improved optics, and the reduction of size, weight, and power to the system were investigated. A flow chart is presented showing the strategy of the design. The simulation for developing microroutines for the high speed algorithmic processor subsystem is discussed as well as the Karhunen-Loeve transform technique for data compression.

Computing NLTE Opacities -- Node Level Parallel Calculation

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Holladay, Daniel

Presentation. The goal: to produce a robust library capable of computing reasonably accurate opacities inline with the assumption of LTE relaxed (non-LTE). Near term: demonstrate acceleration of non-LTE opacity computation. Far term (if funded): connect to application codes with in-line capability and compute opacities. Study science problems. Use efficient algorithms that expose many levels of parallelism and utilize good memory access patterns for use on advanced architectures. Portability to multiple types of hardware including multicore processors, manycore processors such as KNL, GPUs, etc. Easily coupled to radiation hydrodynamics and thermal radiative transfer codes.

Analysis of DMFC/battery hybrid power system for portable applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Bong-Do; Jung, Doo-Hwan; Ko, Young-Ho

This study was carried out to develop a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC)/battery hybrid power system used in portable applications. For a portable power system, the DMFC was applied for the main power source at average load and the battery was applied for auxiliary power at overload. Load share characteristics of hybrid power source were analyzed by computational simulation. The connection apparatus between the DMFC and the battery was set and investigated in the real system. Voltages and currents of the load, the battery and the DMFC were measured according to fuel, air and load changes. The relationship between load share characteristic and battery capacity was surveyed. The relationship was also studied in abnormal operation. A DMFC stack was manufactured for this experiment. For the study of the connection characteristics to the fuel cell Pb-acid, Ni-Cd and Ni-MH batteries were tested. The results of this study can be applied to design the interface module of the fuel cell/battery hybrid system and to determine the design requirement in the fuel cell stack for portable applications.

Hybrid fuel cell/diesel generation total energy system, part 2

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blazek, C. F.

1982-11-01

Meeting the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (DGSCC) electrical and thermal requirements with the existing system was compared with using fuel cells. Fuel cell technology selection was based on a 1985 time frame for installation. The most cost-effective fuel feedstock for fuel cell application was identified. Fuels considered included diesel oil, natural gas, methanol and coal. These fuel feedstocks were considered not only on the cost and efficiency of the fuel conversion process, but also on complexity and integration of the fuel processor on system operation and thermal energy availability. After a review of fuel processor technology, catalytic steam reformer technology was selected based on the ease of integration and the economics of hydrogen production. The phosphoric acid fuel cell was selected for application at the GDSCC due to its commercial readiness for near term application. Fuel cell systems were analyzed for both natural gas and methanol feedstock. The subsequent economic analysis indicated that a natural gas fueled system was the most cost effective of the cases analyzed.

Hybrid fuel cell/diesel generation total energy system, part 2

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Blazek, C. F.

1982-01-01

Meeting the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (DGSCC) electrical and thermal requirements with the existing system was compared with using fuel cells. Fuel cell technology selection was based on a 1985 time frame for installation. The most cost-effective fuel feedstock for fuel cell application was identified. Fuels considered included diesel oil, natural gas, methanol and coal. These fuel feedstocks were considered not only on the cost and efficiency of the fuel conversion process, but also on complexity and integration of the fuel processor on system operation and thermal energy availability. After a review of fuel processor technology, catalytic steam reformer technology was selected based on the ease of integration and the economics of hydrogen production. The phosphoric acid fuel cell was selected for application at the GDSCC due to its commercial readiness for near term application. Fuel cell systems were analyzed for both natural gas and methanol feedstock. The subsequent economic analysis indicated that a natural gas fueled system was the most cost effective of the cases analyzed.

System and method for controlling a combustor assembly

DOEpatents

York, William David; Ziminsky, Willy Steve; Johnson, Thomas Edward; Stevenson, Christian Xavier

2013-03-05

A system and method for controlling a combustor assembly are disclosed. The system includes a combustor assembly. The combustor assembly includes a combustor and a fuel nozzle assembly. The combustor includes a casing. The fuel nozzle assembly is positioned at least partially within the casing and includes a fuel nozzle. The fuel nozzle assembly further defines a head end. The system further includes a viewing device configured for capturing an image of at least a portion of the head end, and a processor communicatively coupled to the viewing device, the processor configured to compare the image to a standard image for the head end.

35-We polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell system for notebook computer using a compact fuel processor

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Son, In-Hyuk; Shin, Woo-Cheol; Lee, Yong-Kul; Lee, Sung-Chul; Ahn, Jin-Gu; Han, Sang-Il; kweon, Ho-Jin; Kim, Ju-Yong; Kim, Moon-Chan; Park, Jun-Yong

A polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system is developed to power a notebook computer. The system consists of a compact methanol-reforming system with a CO preferential oxidation unit, a 16-cell PEMFC stack, and a control unit for the management of the system with a d.c.-d.c. converter. The compact fuel-processor system (260 cm 3) generates about 1.2 L min -1 of reformate, which corresponds to 35 We, with a low CO concentration (<30 ppm, typically 0 ppm), and is thus proven to be capable of being targetted at notebook computers.

Unmixed fuel processors and methods for using the same

DOEpatents

Kulkarni, Parag Prakash; Cui, Zhe

2010-08-24

Disclosed herein are unmixed fuel processors and methods for using the same. In one embodiment, an unmixed fuel processor comprises: an oxidation reactor comprising an oxidation portion and a gasifier, a CO.sub.2 acceptor reactor, and a regeneration reactor. The oxidation portion comprises an air inlet, effluent outlet, and an oxygen transfer material. The gasifier comprises a solid hydrocarbon fuel inlet, a solids outlet, and a syngas outlet. The CO.sub.2 acceptor reactor comprises a water inlet, a hydrogen outlet, and a CO.sub.2 sorbent, and is configured to receive syngas from the gasifier. The regeneration reactor comprises a water inlet and a CO.sub.2 stream outlet. The regeneration reactor is configured to receive spent CO.sub.2 adsorption material from the gasification reactor and to return regenerated CO.sub.2 adsorption material to the gasification reactor, and configured to receive oxidized oxygen transfer material from the oxidation reactor and to return reduced oxygen transfer material to the oxidation reactor.

Fiber optic sensors for gas turbine control

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shu, Emily Yixie (Inventor); Petrucco, Louis Jacob (Inventor); Daum, Wolfgang (Inventor)

2005-01-01

An apparatus for detecting flashback occurrences in a premixed combustor system having at least one fuel nozzle includes at least one photodetector and at least one fiber optic element coupled between the at least one photodetector and a test region of the combustor system wherein a respective flame of the fuel nozzle is not present under normal operating conditions. A signal processor monitors a signal of the photodetector. The fiber optic element can include at least one optical fiber positioned within a protective tube. The fiber optic element can include two fiber optic elements coupled to the test region. The optical fiber and the protective tube can have lengths sufficient to situate the photodetector outside of an engine compartment. A plurality of fuel nozzles and a plurality of fiber optic elements can be used with the fiber optic elements being coupled to respective fuel nozzles and either to the photodetector or, wherein a plurality of photodetectors are used, to respective ones of the plurality of photodetectors. The signal processor can include a digital signal processor.

Fiber optic sensors for gas turbine control

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shu, Emily Yixie (Inventor); Brown, Dale Marius (Inventor); Petrucco, Louis Jacob (Inventor); Lovett, Jeffery Allan (Inventor); Daum, Wolfgang (Inventor); Dunki-Jacobs, Robert John (Inventor)

2003-01-01

An apparatus for detecting flashback occurrences in a premixed combustor system having at least one fuel nozzle includes at least one photodetector and at least one fiber optic element coupled between the at least one photodetector and a test region of the combustor system wherein a respective flame of the fuel nozzle is not present under normal operating conditions. A signal processor monitors a signal of the photodetector. The fiber optic element can include at least one optical fiber positioned within a protective tube. The fiber optic element can include two fiber optic elements coupled to the test region. The optical fiber and the protective tube can have lengths sufficient to situate the photodetector outside of an engine compartment. A plurality of fuel nozzles and a plurality of fiber optic elements can be used with the fiber optic elements being coupled to respective fuel nozzles and either to the photodetector or, wherein a plurality of photodetectors are used, to respective ones of the plurality of photodetectors. The signal processor can include a digital signal processor.

Fiber optic sensors for gas turbine control

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shu, Emily Yixie (Inventor); Brown, Dale Marius (Inventor); Petrucco, Louis Jacob (Inventor); Lovett, Jeffery Allan (Inventor); Daum, Wolfgang (Inventor); Dunki-Jacobs, Robert John (Inventor)

1999-01-01

An apparatus for detecting flashback occurrences in a premixed combustor system having at least one fuel nozzle includes at least one photodetector and at least one fiber optic element coupled between the at least one photodetector and a test region of the combustor system wherein a respective flame of the fuel nozzle is not present under normal operating conditions. A signal processor monitors a signal of the photodetector. The fiber optic element can include at least one optical fiber positioned within a protective tube. The fiber optic element can include two fiber optic elements coupled to the test region. The optical fiber and the protective tube can have lengths sufficient to situate the photodetector outside of an engine compartment. A plurality of fuel nozzles and a plurality of fiber optic elements can be used with the fiber optic elements being coupled to respective fuel nozzles and either to the photodetector or, wherein a plurality of photodetectors are used, to respective ones of the plurality of photodetectors. The signal processor can include a digital signal processor.

Platform-Independence and Scheduling In a Multi-Threaded Real-Time Simulation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sugden, Paul P.; Rau, Melissa A.; Kenney, P. Sean

2001-01-01

Aviation research often relies on real-time, pilot-in-the-loop flight simulation as a means to develop new flight software, flight hardware, or pilot procedures. Often these simulations become so complex that a single processor is incapable of performing the necessary computations within a fixed time-step. Threads are an elegant means to distribute the computational work-load when running on a symmetric multi-processor machine. However, programming with threads often requires operating system specific calls that reduce code portability and maintainability. While a multi-threaded simulation allows a significant increase in the simulation complexity, it also increases the workload of a simulation operator by requiring that the operator determine which models run on which thread. To address these concerns an object-oriented design was implemented in the NASA Langley Standard Real-Time Simulation in C++ (LaSRS++) application framework. The design provides a portable and maintainable means to use threads and also provides a mechanism to automatically load balance the simulation models.

Fuel sensor-less control of a liquid feed fuel cell system under steady load for portable applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chang, C. L.; Chen, C. Y.; Sung, C. C.; Liou, D. H.

This study presents a novel fuel sensor-less control scheme for a liquid feed fuel cell system that does not rely on a fuel concentration sensor. The proposed approach simplifies the design and reduces the cost and complexity of a liquid feed fuel cell system, and is especially suited to portable power sources, of which the volume and weight are important. During the reaction of a fuel cell, the cell's operating characteristics, such as potential, current and power are measured to control the supply of fuel and regulate its concentration to optimize performance. Experiments were conducted to verify that the fuel sensor-less control algorithm is effective in the liquid feed fuel cell system.

Development and design of experiments optimization of a high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell auxiliary power unit with onboard fuel processor

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karstedt, Jörg; Ogrzewalla, Jürgen; Severin, Christopher; Pischinger, Stefan

In this work, the concept development, system layout, component simulation and the overall DOE system optimization of a HT-PEM fuel cell APU with a net electric power output of 4.5 kW and an onboard methane fuel processor are presented. A highly integrated system layout has been developed that enables fast startup within 7.5 min, a closed system water balance and high fuel processor efficiencies of up to 85% due to the recuperation of the anode offgas burner heat. The integration of the system battery into the load management enhances the transient electric performance and the maximum electric power output of the APU system. Simulation models of the carbon monoxide influence on HT-PEM cell voltage, the concentration and temperature profiles within the autothermal reformer (ATR) and the CO conversion rates within the watergas shift stages (WGSs) have been developed. They enable the optimization of the CO concentration in the anode gas of the fuel cell in order to achieve maximum system efficiencies and an optimized dimensioning of the ATR and WGS reactors. Furthermore a DOE optimization of the global system parameters cathode stoichiometry, anode stoichiometry, air/fuel ratio and steam/carbon ratio of the fuel processing system has been performed in order to achieve maximum system efficiencies for all system operating points under given boundary conditions.

PixonVision real-time video processor

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Puetter, R. C.; Hier, R. G.

2007-09-01

PixonImaging LLC and DigiVision, Inc. have developed a real-time video processor, the PixonVision PV-200, based on the patented Pixon method for image deblurring and denoising, and DigiVision's spatially adaptive contrast enhancement processor, the DV1000. The PV-200 can process NTSC and PAL video in real time with a latency of 1 field (1/60 th of a second), remove the effects of aerosol scattering from haze, mist, smoke, and dust, improve spatial resolution by up to 2x, decrease noise by up to 6x, and increase local contrast by up to 8x. A newer version of the processor, the PV-300, is now in prototype form and can handle high definition video. Both the PV-200 and PV-300 are FPGA-based processors, which could be spun into ASICs if desired. Obvious applications of these processors include applications in the DOD (tanks, aircraft, and ships), homeland security, intelligence, surveillance, and law enforcement. If developed into an ASIC, these processors will be suitable for a variety of portable applications, including gun sights, night vision goggles, binoculars, and guided munitions. This paper presents a variety of examples of PV-200 processing, including examples appropriate to border security, battlefield applications, port security, and surveillance from unmanned aerial vehicles.

MEMS-based fuel cells with integrated catalytic fuel processor and method thereof

DOEpatents

Jankowski, Alan F [Livermore, CA; Morse, Jeffrey D [Martinez, CA; Upadhye, Ravindra S [Pleasanton, CA; Havstad, Mark A [Davis, CA

2011-08-09

Described herein is a means to incorporate catalytic materials into the fuel flow field structures of MEMS-based fuel cells, which enable catalytic reforming of a hydrocarbon based fuel, such as methane, methanol, or butane. Methods of fabrication are also disclosed.

Phase-locked tracking loops for LORAN-C

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Burhans, R. W.

1978-01-01

Portable battery operated LORAN-C receivers were fabricated to evaluate simple envelope detector methods with hybrid analog to digital phase locked loop sensor processors. The receivers are used to evaluate LORAN-C in general aviation applications. Complete circuit details are given for the experimental sensor and readout system.

40 CFR 59.605 - What portable fuel containers are excluded from this subpart's requirements?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... this subpart's requirements? This section describes exclusions that apply to certain portable fuel containers. The prohibitions and requirements of this subpart do not apply for containers excluded under this....660 for exemptions that apply based on special circumstances. (a) Containers approved as safety cans...

Impact of Load Balancing on Unstructured Adaptive Grid Computations for Distributed-Memory Multiprocessors

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sohn, Andrew; Biswas, Rupak; Simon, Horst D.

1996-01-01

The computational requirements for an adaptive solution of unsteady problems change as the simulation progresses. This causes workload imbalance among processors on a parallel machine which, in turn, requires significant data movement at runtime. We present a new dynamic load-balancing framework, called JOVE, that balances the workload across all processors with a global view. Whenever the computational mesh is adapted, JOVE is activated to eliminate the load imbalance. JOVE has been implemented on an IBM SP2 distributed-memory machine in MPI for portability. Experimental results for two model meshes demonstrate that mesh adaption with load balancing gives more than a sixfold improvement over one without load balancing. We also show that JOVE gives a 24-fold speedup on 64 processors compared to sequential execution.

Integral Fast Reactor fuel pin processor

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Levinskas, D.

1993-01-01

This report discusses the pin processor which receives metal alloy pins cast from recycled Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) fuel and prepares them for assembly into new IFR fuel elements. Either full length as-cast or precut pins are fed to the machine from a magazine, cut if necessary, and measured for length, weight, diameter and deviation from straightness. Accepted pins are loaded into cladding jackets located in a magazine, while rejects and cutting scraps are separated into trays. The magazines, trays, and the individual modules that perform the different machine functions are assembled and removed using remote manipulators and master-slaves.

Integral Fast Reactor fuel pin processor

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Levinskas, D.

1993-03-01

This report discusses the pin processor which receives metal alloy pins cast from recycled Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) fuel and prepares them for assembly into new IFR fuel elements. Either full length as-cast or precut pins are fed to the machine from a magazine, cut if necessary, and measured for length, weight, diameter and deviation from straightness. Accepted pins are loaded into cladding jackets located in a magazine, while rejects and cutting scraps are separated into trays. The magazines, trays, and the individual modules that perform the different machine functions are assembled and removed using remote manipulators and master-slaves.

Recovery Act: Demonstration of a SOFC Generator Fueled by Propane to Provide Electrical Power to Real World Applications

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bessette, Norman

The objective of this project provided with funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) was to demonstrate a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) generator capable of operation on propane fuel to improve efficiency and reduce emissions over commercially available portable generators. The key objectives can be summarized as: Development of two portable electrical generators in the 1-3kW range utilizing Solid Oxide Fuel Cells and propane fuel; The development and demonstration of a proof-of-concept electro-mechanical propane fuel interface that provides a user friendly capability for managing propane fuel; The deployment and use of the fuel cell portablemore » generators to power media production equipment over the course of several months at multiple NASCAR automobile racing events; The deployment and use of the fuel cell portable generators at scheduled events by first responders (police, fire) of the City of Folsom California; and Capturing data with regard to the systems’ ability to meet Department of Energy (DOE) Technical Targets and evaluating the ease of use and potential barriers to further adoption of the systems.« less

Wireless augmented reality communication system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Devereaux, Ann (Inventor); Agan, Martin (Inventor); Jedrey, Thomas (Inventor)

2006-01-01

The system of the present invention is a highly integrated radio communication system with a multimedia co-processor which allows true two-way multimedia (video, audio, data) access as well as real-time biomedical monitoring in a pager-sized portable access unit. The system is integrated in a network structure including one or more general purpose nodes for providing a wireless-to-wired interface. The network architecture allows video, audio and data (including biomedical data) streams to be connected directly to external users and devices. The portable access units may also be mated to various non-personal devices such as cameras or environmental sensors for providing a method for setting up wireless sensor nets from which reported data may be accessed through the portable access unit. The reported data may alternatively be automatically logged at a remote computer for access and viewing through a portable access unit, including the user's own.

Wireless Augmented Reality Communication System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jedrey, Thomas (Inventor); Agan, Martin (Inventor); Devereaux, Ann (Inventor)

2014-01-01

The system of the present invention is a highly integrated radio communication system with a multimedia co-processor which allows true two-way multimedia (video, audio, data) access as well as real-time biomedical monitoring in a pager-sized portable access unit. The system is integrated in a network structure including one or more general purpose nodes for providing a wireless-to-wired interface. The network architecture allows video, audio and data (including biomedical data) streams to be connected directly to external users and devices. The portable access units may also be mated to various non-personal devices such as cameras or environmental sensors for providing a method for setting up wireless sensor nets from which reported data may be accessed through the portable access unit. The reported data may alternatively be automatically logged at a remote computer for access and viewing through a portable access unit, including the user's own.

Wireless Augmented Reality Communication System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Agan, Martin (Inventor); Devereaux, Ann (Inventor); Jedrey, Thomas (Inventor)

2016-01-01

The system of the present invention is a highly integrated radio communication system with a multimedia co-processor which allows true two-way multimedia (video, audio, data) access as well as real-time biomedical monitoring in a pager-sized portable access unit. The system is integrated in a network structure including one or more general purpose nodes for providing a wireless-to-wired interface. The network architecture allows video, audio and data (including biomedical data) streams to be connected directly to external users and devices. The portable access units may also be mated to various non-personal devices such as cameras or environmental sensors for providing a method for setting up wireless sensor nets from which reported data may be accessed through the portable access unit. The reported data may alternatively be automatically logged at a remote computer for access and viewing through a portable access unit, including the user's own.

Portable Parallel Programming for the Dynamic Load Balancing of Unstructured Grid Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Biswas, Rupak; Das, Sajal K.; Harvey, Daniel; Oliker, Leonid

1999-01-01

The ability to dynamically adapt an unstructured -rid (or mesh) is a powerful tool for solving computational problems with evolving physical features; however, an efficient parallel implementation is rather difficult, particularly from the view point of portability on various multiprocessor platforms We address this problem by developing PLUM, tin automatic anti architecture-independent framework for adaptive numerical computations in a message-passing environment. Portability is demonstrated by comparing performance on an SP2, an Origin2000, and a T3E, without any code modifications. We also present a general-purpose load balancer that utilizes symmetric broadcast networks (SBN) as the underlying communication pattern, with a goal to providing a global view of system loads across processors. Experiments on, an SP2 and an Origin2000 demonstrate the portability of our approach which achieves superb load balance at the cost of minimal extra overhead.

Burbank works on the EPIC in the Node 2

NASA Image and Video Library

2012-02-28

ISS030-E-114433 (29 Feb. 2012) --- In the International Space Station?s Destiny laboratory, NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, Expedition 30 commander, upgrades Multiplexer/Demultiplexer (MDM) computers and Portable Computer System (PCS) laptops and installs the Enhanced Processor & Integrated Communications (EPIC) hardware in the Payload 1 (PL-1) MDM.

40 CFR 59.624 - How do I amend my application for certification?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... portable fuel containers' lifetime. (b) To amend your application for certification, send the Designated... 40 Protection of Environment 5 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false How do I amend my application for... PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission...

40 CFR 59.653 - How do I test portable fuel containers?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission... container must be tested in their open condition unless they close automatically and are unlikely to be left open by the user during typical storage. All manual closures such as caps must be left off the...

75 FR 68177 - Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Model 757 and 767 Airplanes

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-11-05

... and FUEL CONFIG discrete signals from the fuel quantity processor unit, and alerts the flightcrew of a... the FUEL CONFIG discrete signal, which disables both the FUEL CONFIG and LOW FUEL messages. Such... depleted below the minimum of 2,200 pounds. The EICAS receives both the LOW FUEL and FUEL CONFIG discrete...

Messiah College Biodiesel Fuel Generation Project Final Technical Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Zummo, Michael M; Munson, J; Derr, A

Many obvious and significant concerns arise when considering the concept of small-scale biodiesel production. Does the fuel produced meet the stringent requirements set by the commercial biodiesel industry? Is the process safe? How are small-scale producers collecting and transporting waste vegetable oil? How is waste from the biodiesel production process handled by small-scale producers? These concerns and many others were the focus of the research preformed in the Messiah College Biodiesel Fuel Generation project over the last three years. This project was a unique research program in which undergraduate engineering students at Messiah College set out to research the feasibilitymore » of small-biodiesel production for application on a campus of approximately 3000 students. This Department of Energy (DOE) funded research program developed out of almost a decade of small-scale biodiesel research and development work performed by students at Messiah College. Over the course of the last three years the research team focused on four key areas related to small-scale biodiesel production: Quality Testing and Assurance, Process and Processor Research, Process and Processor Development, and Community Education. The objectives for the Messiah College Biodiesel Fuel Generation Project included the following: 1. Preparing a laboratory facility for the development and optimization of processors and processes, ASTM quality assurance, and performance testing of biodiesel fuels. 2. Developing scalable processor and process designs suitable for ASTM certifiable small-scale biodiesel production, with the goals of cost reduction and increased quality. 3. Conduct research into biodiesel process improvement and cost optimization using various biodiesel feedstocks and production ingredients.« less

Efficacy of Code Optimization on Cache-Based Processors

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

VanderWijngaart, Rob F.; Saphir, William C.; Chancellor, Marisa K. (Technical Monitor)

1997-01-01

In this paper a number of techniques for improving the cache performance of a representative piece of numerical software is presented. Target machines are popular processors from several vendors: MIPS R5000 (SGI Indy), MIPS R8000 (SGI PowerChallenge), MIPS R10000 (SGI Origin), DEC Alpha EV4 + EV5 (Cray T3D & T3E), IBM RS6000 (SP Wide-node), Intel PentiumPro (Ames' Whitney), Sun UltraSparc (NERSC's NOW). The optimizations all attempt to increase the locality of memory accesses. But they meet with rather varied and often counterintuitive success on the different computing platforms. We conclude that it may be genuinely impossible to obtain portable performance on the current generation of cache-based machines. At the least, it appears that the performance of modern commodity processors cannot be described with parameters defining the cache alone.

SkinScan©: A PORTABLE LIBRARY FOR MELANOMA DETECTION ON HANDHELD DEVICES

PubMed Central

Wadhawan, Tarun; Situ, Ning; Lancaster, Keith; Yuan, Xiaojing; Zouridakis, George

2011-01-01

We have developed a portable library for automated detection of melanoma termed SkinScan© that can be used on smartphones and other handheld devices. Compared to desktop computers, embedded processors have limited processing speed, memory, and power, but they have the advantage of portability and low cost. In this study we explored the feasibility of running a sophisticated application for automated skin cancer detection on an Apple iPhone 4. Our results demonstrate that the proposed library with the advanced image processing and analysis algorithms has excellent performance on handheld and desktop computers. Therefore, deployment of smartphones as screening devices for skin cancer and other skin diseases can have a significant impact on health care delivery in underserved and remote areas. PMID:21892382

Combustor air flow control method for fuel cell apparatus

DOEpatents

Clingerman, Bruce J.; Mowery, Kenneth D.; Ripley, Eugene V.

2001-01-01

A method for controlling the heat output of a combustor in a fuel cell apparatus to a fuel processor where the combustor has dual air inlet streams including atmospheric air and fuel cell cathode effluent containing oxygen depleted air. In all operating modes, an enthalpy balance is provided by regulating the quantity of the air flow stream to the combustor to support fuel cell processor heat requirements. A control provides a quick fast forward change in an air valve orifice cross section in response to a calculated predetermined air flow, the molar constituents of the air stream to the combustor, the pressure drop across the air valve, and a look up table of the orifice cross sectional area and valve steps. A feedback loop fine tunes any error between the measured air flow to the combustor and the predetermined air flow.

40 CFR 52.2020 - Identification of plan.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... Administration (NARA). For information on the availability of this material at NARA, call 202-741-6030, or go to... Subchapter A—Portable Fuel Containers Section 130.101 Applicability 10/5/02 12/8/04, 69 FR 70893 (c)(229... for portable fuel containers and spill-proof spouts 10/5/02 12/8/04, 69 FR 70893 (c)(229). Section 130...

76 FR 10249 - Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Texas; Revisions To Control...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-02-24

... Container rule as an ozone control strategy from the Texas SIP for the Control of Ozone Air Pollution. In the submittal, Texas demonstrates that Federal portable fuel container standards promulgated by EPA in... Portable Fuel Container Regulations IV. What is the effect of this action? V. Final Action VI. Statutory...

A Raman-Based Portable Fuel Analyzer

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Farquharson, Stuart

2010-08-01

Fuel is the single most import supply during war. Consider that the US Military is employing over 25,000 vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most fuel is obtained locally, and must be characterized to ensure proper operation of these vehicles. Fuel properties are currently determined using a deployed chemical laboratory. Unfortunately, each sample requires in excess of 6 hours to characterize. To overcome this limitation, we have developed a portable fuel analyzer capable of determine 7 fuel properties that allow determining fuel usage. The analyzer uses Raman spectroscopy to measure the fuel samples without preparation in 2 minutes. The challenge, however, is that as distilled fractions of crude oil, all fuels are composed of hundreds of hydrocarbon components that boil at similar temperatures, and performance properties can not be simply correlated to a single component, and certainly not to specific Raman peaks. To meet this challenge, we measured over 800 diesel and jet fuels from around the world and used chemometrics to correlate the Raman spectra to fuel properties. Critical to the success of this approach is laser excitation at 1064 nm to avoid fluorescence interference (many fuels fluoresce) and a rugged interferometer that provides 0.1 cm-1 wavenumber (x-axis) accuracy to guarantee accurate correlations. Here we describe the portable fuel analyzer, the chemometric models, and the successful determination of these 7 fuel properties for over 100 unknown samples provided by the US Marine Corps, US Navy, and US Army.

40 CFR 279.72 - On-specification used oil fuel.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 27 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false On-specification used oil fuel. 279.72... (CONTINUED) STANDARDS FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF USED OIL Standards for Used Oil Fuel Marketers § 279.72 On-specification used oil fuel. (a) Analysis of used oil fuel. A generator, transporter, processor/re-refiner, or...

Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Operating on Alternative and Renewable Fuels

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wang, Xiaoxing; Quan, Wenying; Xiao, Jing

2014-09-30

This DOE project at the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) initially involved Siemens Energy, Inc. to (1) develop new fuel processing approaches for using selected alternative and renewable fuels – anaerobic digester gas (ADG) and commercial diesel fuel (with 15 ppm sulfur) – in solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) power generation systems; and (2) conduct integrated fuel processor – SOFC system tests to evaluate the performance of the fuel processors and overall systems. Siemens Energy Inc. was to provide SOFC system to Penn State for testing. The Siemens work was carried out at Siemens Energy Inc. in Pittsburgh, PA. Themore » unexpected restructuring in Siemens organization, however, led to the elimination of the Siemens Stationary Fuel Cell Division within the company. Unfortunately, this led to the Siemens subcontract with Penn State ending on September 23rd, 2010. SOFC system was never delivered to Penn State. With the assistance of NETL project manager, the Penn State team has since developed a collaborative research with Delphi as the new subcontractor and this work involved the testing of a stack of planar solid oxide fuel cells from Delphi.« less

Low latency messages on distributed memory multiprocessors

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Rosing, Matthew; Saltz, Joel

1993-01-01

Many of the issues in developing an efficient interface for communication on distributed memory machines are described and a portable interface is proposed. Although the hardware component of message latency is less than one microsecond on many distributed memory machines, the software latency associated with sending and receiving typed messages is on the order of 50 microseconds. The reason for this imbalance is that the software interface does not match the hardware. By changing the interface to match the hardware more closely, applications with fine grained communication can be put on these machines. Based on several tests that were run on the iPSC/860, an interface that will better match current distributed memory machines is proposed. The model used in the proposed interface consists of a computation processor and a communication processor on each node. Communication between these processors and other nodes in the system is done through a buffered network. Information that is transmitted is either data or procedures to be executed on the remote processor. The dual processor system is better suited for efficiently handling asynchronous communications compared to a single processor system. The ability to send data or procedure is very flexible for minimizing message latency, based on the type of communication being performed. The test performed and the proposed interface are described.

Analysis of the energy efficiency of an integrated ethanol processor for PEM fuel cell systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Francesconi, Javier A.; Mussati, Miguel C.; Mato, Roberto O.; Aguirre, Pio A.

The aim of this work is to investigate the energy integration and to determine the maximum efficiency of an ethanol processor for hydrogen production and fuel cell operation. Ethanol, which can be produced from renewable feedstocks or agriculture residues, is an attractive option as feed to a fuel processor. The fuel processor investigated is based on steam reforming, followed by high- and low-temperature shift reactors and preferential oxidation, which are coupled to a polymeric fuel cell. Applying simulation techniques and using thermodynamic models the performance of the complete system has been evaluated for a variety of operating conditions and possible reforming reactions pathways. These models involve mass and energy balances, chemical equilibrium and feasible heat transfer conditions (Δ T min). The main operating variables were determined for those conditions. The endothermic nature of the reformer has a significant effect on the overall system efficiency. The highest energy consumption is demanded by the reforming reactor, the evaporator and re-heater operations. To obtain an efficient integration, the heat exchanged between the reformer outgoing streams of higher thermal level (reforming and combustion gases) and the feed stream should be maximized. Another process variable that affects the process efficiency is the water-to-fuel ratio fed to the reformer. Large amounts of water involve large heat exchangers and the associated heat losses. A net electric efficiency around 35% was calculated based on the ethanol HHV. The responsibilities for the remaining 65% are: dissipation as heat in the PEMFC cooling system (38%), energy in the flue gases (10%) and irreversibilities in compression and expansion of gases. In addition, it has been possible to determine the self-sufficient limit conditions, and to analyze the effect on the net efficiency of the input temperatures of the clean-up system reactors, combustion preheating, expander unit and crude ethanol as fuel.

Portable direct methanol fuel cell systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Narayanan, S. R.; Valdez, T. I.

2002-01-01

This article includes discussion of the specific power and power density requirements for various portable system applications, the status of stack technology, progress in the implementation of balance-of-plant designs, and a summary of the characteristics of various DMFC portable power source demonstrations.

Innovative Navigation Systems to Support Digital Geophysical Mapping, ESTCP #200129, Phase II Demonstrations

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-09-25

7 Figure 2-3 Blackhawk/ Applanix GPS/INS System...electro-mechanical system ms millisecond NP navigation processor OE ordnance and explosive POSLV Applanix Positioning and Orientation...demonstration GPS/INS positioning system. In Phase II, a man-portable modified version called the POSLV 310 UXO of the Applanix Positioning and

[Image processing system of visual prostheses based on digital signal processor DM642].

PubMed

Xie, Chengcheng; Lu, Yanyu; Gu, Yun; Wang, Jing; Chai, Xinyu

2011-09-01

This paper employed a DSP platform to create the real-time and portable image processing system, and introduced a series of commonly used algorithms for visual prostheses. The results of performance evaluation revealed that this platform could afford image processing algorithms to be executed in real time.

On-board diesel autothermal reforming for PEM fuel cells: Simulation and optimization

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Cozzolino, Raffaello, E-mail: raffaello.cozzolino@unicusano.it; Tribioli, Laura

2015-03-10

Alternative power sources are nowadays the only option to provide a quick response to the current regulations on automotive pollutant emissions. Hydrogen fuel cell is one promising solution, but the nature of the gas is such that the in-vehicle conversion of other fuels into hydrogen is necessary. In this paper, autothermal reforming, for Diesel on-board conversion into a hydrogen-rich gas suitable for PEM fuel cells, has investigated using the simulation tool Aspen Plus. A steady-state model has been developed to analyze the fuel processor and the overall system performance. The components of the fuel processor are: the fuel reforming reactor,more » two water gas shift reactors, a preferential oxidation reactor and H{sub 2} separation unit. The influence of various operating parameters such as oxygen to carbon ratio, steam to carbon ratio, and temperature on the process components has been analyzed in-depth and results are presented.« less

Infrared hyperspectral imaging sensor for gas detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hinnrichs, Michele

2000-11-01

A small light weight man portable imaging spectrometer has many applications; gas leak detection, flare analysis, threat warning, chemical agent detection, just to name a few. With support from the US Air Force and Navy, Pacific Advanced Technology has developed a small man portable hyperspectral imaging sensor with an embedded DSP processor for real time processing that is capable of remotely imaging various targets such as gas plums, flames and camouflaged targets. Based upon their spectral signature the species and concentration of gases can be determined. This system has been field tested at numerous places including White Mountain, CA, Edwards AFB, and Vandenberg AFB. Recently evaluation of the system for gas detection has been performed. This paper presents these results. The system uses a conventional infrared camera fitted with a diffractive optic that images as well as disperses the incident radiation to form spectral images that are collected in band sequential mode. Because the diffractive optic performs both imaging and spectral filtering, the lens system consists of only a single element that is small, light weight and robust, thus allowing man portability. The number of spectral bands are programmable such that only those bands of interest need to be collected. The system is entirely passive, therefore, easily used in a covert operation. Currently Pacific Advanced Technology is working on the next generation of this camera system that will have both an embedded processor as well as an embedded digital signal processor in a small hand held camera configuration. This will allow the implementation of signal and image processing algorithms for gas detection and identification in real time. This paper presents field test data on gas detection and identification as well as discuss the signal and image processing used to enhance the gas visibility. Flow rates as low as 0.01 cubic feet per minute have been imaged with this system.

A single FPGA-based portable ultrasound imaging system for point-of-care applications.

PubMed

Kim, Gi-Duck; Yoon, Changhan; Kye, Sang-Bum; Lee, Youngbae; Kang, Jeeun; Yoo, Yangmo; Song, Tai-kyong

2012-07-01

We present a cost-effective portable ultrasound system based on a single field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for point-of-care applications. In the portable ultrasound system developed, all the ultrasound signal and image processing modules, including an effective 32-channel receive beamformer with pseudo-dynamic focusing, are embedded in an FPGA chip. For overall system control, a mobile processor running Linux at 667 MHz is used. The scan-converted ultrasound image data from the FPGA are directly transferred to the system controller via external direct memory access without a video processing unit. The potable ultrasound system developed can provide real-time B-mode imaging with a maximum frame rate of 30, and it has a battery life of approximately 1.5 h. These results indicate that the single FPGA-based portable ultrasound system developed is able to meet the processing requirements in medical ultrasound imaging while providing improved flexibility for adapting to emerging POC applications.

Research and evaluation of biomass resources/conversion/utilization systems (market/experimental analysis for development of a data base for a fuels from biomass model. Volume I. Biomass allocation model. Technical progress report for the period ending September 30, 1980

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ahn, Y.K.; Chen, H.T.; Helm, R.W.

1980-01-01

A biomass allocation model has been developed to show the most profitable combination of biomass feedstocks thermochemical conversion processes, and fuel products to serve the seasonal conditions in a regional market. This optimization model provides a tool for quickly calculating the most profitable biomass missions from a large number of potential biomass missions. Other components of the system serve as a convenient storage and retrieval mechanism for biomass marketing and thermochemical conversion processing data. The system can be accessed through the use of a computer terminal, or it could be adapted to a portable micro-processor. A User's Manual for themore » system has been included in Appendix A of the report. The validity of any biomass allocation solution provided by the allocation model is dependent on the accuracy of the data base. The initial data base was constructed from values obtained from the literature, and, consequently, as more current thermochemical conversion processing and manufacturing costs and efficiencies become available, the data base should be revised. Biomass derived fuels included in the data base are the following: medium Btu gas low Btu gas, substitute natural gas, ammonia, methanol, electricity, gasoline, and fuel oil. The market sectors served by the fuels include: residential, electric utility, chemical (industrial), and transportation. Regional/seasonal costs and availabilities and heating values for 61 woody and non-woody biomass species are included. The study has included four regions in the United States which were selected because there was both an availability of biomass and a commercial demand for the derived fuels: Region I: NY, WV, PA; Region II: GA, AL, MS; Region III: IN, IL, IA; and Region IV: OR, WA.« less

40 CFR 279.72 - On-specification used oil fuel.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... of § 279.11 by performing analyses or obtaining copies of analyses or other information documenting...-specification used oil fuel. (a) Analysis of used oil fuel. A generator, transporter, processor/re-refiner, or... meets the specifications for used oil fuel under § 279.11, must keep copies of analyses of the used oil...

Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Power Supply For All-Day True Wireless Mobile Computing

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Brian Wells

PolyFuel has developed state-of-the-art portable fuel cell technology for the portable computing market. A novel approach to passive water recycling within the MEA has led to significant system simplification and size reduction. Miniature stack technology with very high area utilization and minimalist seals has been developed. A highly integrated balance of plant with very low parasitic losses has been constructed around the new stack design. Demonstration prototype systems integrated with laptop computers have been shown in recent months to leading OEM computer manufacturers. PolyFuel intends to provide this technology to its customers as a reference design as a means ofmore » accelerating the commercialization of portable fuel cell technology. The primary goal of the project was to match the energy density of a commercial lithium ion battery for laptop computers. PolyFuel made large strides against this goal and has now demonstrated 270 Wh/liter compared with lithium ion energy densities of 300 Wh/liter. Further, more incremental, improvements in energy density are envisioned with an additional 20-30% gains possible in each of the next two years given further research and development.« less

Fuel processing for PEM fuel cells: transport and kinetic issues of system design

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zalc, J. M.; Löffler, D. G.

In light of the distribution and storage issues associated with hydrogen, efficient on-board fuel processing will be a significant factor in the implementation of PEM fuel cells for automotive applications. Here, we apply basic chemical engineering principles to gain insight into the factors that limit performance in each component of a fuel processor. A system consisting of a plate reactor steam reformer, water-gas shift unit, and preferential oxidation reactor is used as a case study. It is found that for a steam reformer based on catalyst-coated foils, mass transfer from the bulk gas to the catalyst surface is the limiting process. The water-gas shift reactor is expected to be the largest component of the fuel processor and is limited by intrinsic catalyst activity, while a successful preferential oxidation unit depends on strict temperature control in order to minimize parasitic hydrogen oxidation. This stepwise approach of sequentially eliminating rate-limiting processes can be used to identify possible means of performance enhancement in a broad range of applications.

Writing Centers in 2020--Gone!

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bateman, Thomas L.

Technology brought the writing center to life because of the word processor, but new technology is actually going to create robotic life that thinks with us, for us, to us. It will offer portability all from a microchip stored in a coat pocket. Technology will continue to expedite today's hurry up world, and this will carry over into the writer's…

Method for improving catalyst function in auto-thermal and partial oxidation reformer-based processors

DOEpatents

Ahmed, Shabbir; Papadias, Dionissios D.; Lee, Sheldon H.D.; Ahluwalia, Rajesh K.

2014-08-26

The invention provides a method for reforming fuel, the method comprising contacting the fuel to an oxidation catalyst so as to partially oxidize the fuel and generate heat; warming incoming fuel with the heat while simultaneously warming a reforming catalyst with the heat; and reacting the partially oxidized fuel with steam using the reforming catalyst.

On the Efficacy of Source Code Optimizations for Cache-Based Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

VanderWijngaart, Rob F.; Saphir, William C.

1998-01-01

Obtaining high performance without machine-specific tuning is an important goal of scientific application programmers. Since most scientific processing is done on commodity microprocessors with hierarchical memory systems, this goal of "portable performance" can be achieved if a common set of optimization principles is effective for all such systems. It is widely believed, or at least hoped, that portable performance can be realized. The rule of thumb for optimization on hierarchical memory systems is to maximize temporal and spatial locality of memory references by reusing data and minimizing memory access stride. We investigate the effects of a number of optimizations on the performance of three related kernels taken from a computational fluid dynamics application. Timing the kernels on a range of processors, we observe an inconsistent and often counterintuitive impact of the optimizations on performance. In particular, code variations that have a positive impact on one architecture can have a negative impact on another, and variations expected to be unimportant can produce large effects. Moreover, we find that cache miss rates - as reported by a cache simulation tool, and confirmed by hardware counters - only partially explain the results. By contrast, the compiler-generated assembly code provides more insight by revealing the importance of processor-specific instructions and of compiler maturity, both of which strongly, and sometimes unexpectedly, influence performance. We conclude that it is difficult to obtain performance portability on modern cache-based computers, and comment on the implications of this result.

On the Efficacy of Source Code Optimizations for Cache-Based Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

VanderWijngaart, Rob F.; Saphir, William C.; Saini, Subhash (Technical Monitor)

1998-01-01

Obtaining high performance without machine-specific tuning is an important goal of scientific application programmers. Since most scientific processing is done on commodity microprocessors with hierarchical memory systems, this goal of "portable performance" can be achieved if a common set of optimization principles is effective for all such systems. It is widely believed, or at least hoped, that portable performance can be realized. The rule of thumb for optimization on hierarchical memory systems is to maximize temporal and spatial locality of memory references by reusing data and minimizing memory access stride. We investigate the effects of a number of optimizations on the performance of three related kernels taken from a computational fluid dynamics application. Timing the kernels on a range of processors, we observe an inconsistent and often counterintuitive impact of the optimizations on performance. In particular, code variations that have a positive impact on one architecture can have a negative impact on another, and variations expected to be unimportant can produce large effects. Moreover, we find that cache miss rates-as reported by a cache simulation tool, and confirmed by hardware counters-only partially explain the results. By contrast, the compiler-generated assembly code provides more insight by revealing the importance of processor-specific instructions and of compiler maturity, both of which strongly, and sometimes unexpectedly, influence performance. We conclude that it is difficult to obtain performance portability on modern cache-based computers, and comment on the implications of this result.

Fuel sensor-less control of a liquid feed fuel cell under dynamic loading conditions for portable power sources (II)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chang, C. L.; Chen, C. Y.; Sung, C. C.; Liou, D. H.; Chang, C. Y.; Cha, H. C.

This work presents a new fuel sensor-less control scheme for liquid feed fuel cells that is able to control the supply to a fuel cell system for operation under dynamic loading conditions. The control scheme uses cell-operating characteristics, such as potential, current, and power, to regulate the fuel concentration of a liquid feed fuel cell without the need for a fuel concentration sensor. A current integral technique has been developed to calculate the quantity of fuel required at each monitoring cycle, which can be combined with the concentration regulating process to control the fuel supply for stable operation. As verified by systematic experiments, this scheme can effectively control the fuel supply of a liquid feed fuel cell with reduced response time, even under conditions where the membrane electrolyte assembly (MEA) deteriorates gradually. This advance will aid the commercialization of liquid feed fuel cells and make them more adaptable for use in portable and automotive power units such as laptops, e-bikes, and handicap cars.

The Forest Method as a New Parallel Tree Method with the Sectional Voronoi Tessellation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yahagi, Hideki; Mori, Masao; Yoshii, Yuzuru

1999-09-01

We have developed a new parallel tree method which will be called the forest method hereafter. This new method uses the sectional Voronoi tessellation (SVT) for the domain decomposition. The SVT decomposes a whole space into polyhedra and allows their flat borders to move by assigning different weights. The forest method determines these weights based on the load balancing among processors by means of the overload diffusion (OLD). Moreover, since all the borders are flat, before receiving the data from other processors, each processor can collect enough data to calculate the gravity force with precision. Both the SVT and the OLD are coded in a highly vectorizable manner to accommodate on vector parallel processors. The parallel code based on the forest method with the Message Passing Interface is run on various platforms so that a wide portability is guaranteed. Extensive calculations with 15 processors of Fujitsu VPP300/16R indicate that the code can calculate the gravity force exerted on 105 particles in each second for some ideal dark halo. This code is found to enable an N-body simulation with 107 or more particles for a wide dynamic range and is therefore a very powerful tool for the study of galaxy formation and large-scale structure in the universe.

Comparison of the CENTRM resonance processor to the NITAWL resonance processor in SCALE

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hollenbach, D.F.; Petrie, L.M.

1998-01-01

This report compares the MTAWL and CENTRM resonance processors in the SCALE code system. The cases examined consist of the International OECD/NEA Criticality Working Group Benchmark 20 problem. These cases represent fuel pellets partially dissolved in a borated solution. The assumptions inherent to the Nordheim Integral Treatment, used in MTAWL, are not valid for these problems. CENTRM resolves this limitation by explicitly calculating a problem dependent point flux from point cross sections, which is then used to create group cross sections.

46 CFR 147.7 - Incorporation by reference.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

...) ABYC H-25-81, Portable Fuel Systems and Portable Containers for Flammable Liquids, (May 12, 1981..., telephone 617-770-3000, www.nfpa.org. (1) NFPA 2001, Standard on Clean Agent Fire Extinguishing Systems...

Portable Computer Technology (PCT) Research and Development Program Phase 2

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Castillo, Michael; McGuire, Kenyon; Sorgi, Alan

1995-01-01

The subject of this project report, focused on: (1) Design and development of two Advanced Portable Workstation 2 (APW 2) units. These units incorporate advanced technology features such as a low power Pentium processor, a high resolution color display, National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) video handling capabilities, a Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) interface, and Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) and ethernet interfaces. (2) Use these units to integrate and demonstrate advanced wireless network and portable video capabilities. (3) Qualification of the APW 2 systems for use in specific experiments aboard the Mir Space Station. A major objective of the PCT Phase 2 program was to help guide future choices in computing platforms and techniques for meeting National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission objectives. The focus being on the development of optimal configurations of computing hardware, software applications, and network technologies for use on NASA missions.

[A non-invasive portable blood-glucose monitoring system: sampling of suction effusion fluid].

PubMed

Arai, T; Kayashima, S; Kikuchi, M; Kaneyoshi, A; Itoh, N

1995-04-01

We developed a new portable transcutaneous blood glucose monitoring system using non-invasive collection of suction effusion fluid (SEF) from human skin. A ion sensitive field effect transistor (ISFET) sensor was employed to measure glucose concentration in a very small quantity of the SEF. The system was composed of a couple of portions. One structure was a suction cell, and the other was a main frame. The suction cell included the ISFET glucose sensor, a dilution mechanism, and a sucking interface to human skin. The main frame contained a dilution solution reservoir, a liquid waste reservoir, a fluid pump, a vacuum pump, a micro processor, batteries, and a user interface. The system is self-contained for portable usage during up to 6 hrs monitoring. This system may be the first blood glucose monitoring equipment which does not use blood sampling.

A configurable and low-power mixed signal SoC for portable ECG monitoring applications.

PubMed

Kim, Hyejung; Kim, Sunyoung; Van Helleputte, Nick; Artes, Antonio; Konijnenburg, Mario; Huisken, Jos; Van Hoof, Chris; Yazicioglu, Refet Firat

2014-04-01

This paper describes a mixed-signal ECG System-on-Chip (SoC) that is capable of implementing configurable functionality with low-power consumption for portable ECG monitoring applications. A low-voltage and high performance analog front-end extracts 3-channel ECG signals and single channel electrode-tissue-impedance (ETI) measurement with high signal quality. This can be used to evaluate the quality of the ECG measurement and to filter motion artifacts. A custom digital signal processor consisting of 4-way SIMD processor provides the configurability and advanced functionality like motion artifact removal and R peak detection. A built-in 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is capable of adaptive sampling achieving a compression ratio of up to 7, and loop buffer integration reduces the power consumption for on-chip memory access. The SoC is implemented in 0.18 μm CMOS process and consumes 32 μ W from a 1.2 V while heart beat detection application is running, and integrated in a wireless ECG monitoring system with Bluetooth protocol. Thanks to the ECG SoC, the overall system power consumption can be reduced significantly.

Increasing Efficiency by Maximizing Electrical Output

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-08-01

to electricity technology in a few limited areas, one being a geothermal flash plant at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. But, there are few...generation c) Increasing the efficiency of portable generators to reduce fuel needs. d) Bottom cycling on a geothermal flash plant like the one at Naval...portable generators to reduce fuel needs. d) Bottom cycling on a geothermal flash plant like the one at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

Polymer electrolyte fuel cell mini power unit for portable application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Urbani, F.; Squadrito, G.; Barbera, O.; Giacoppo, G.; Passalacqua, E.; Zerbinati, O.

This paper describes the design, realisation and test of a power unit based on a polymer electrolyte fuel cell, operating at room temperature, for portable application. The device is composed of an home made air breathing fuel cell stack, a metal hydride tank for H 2 supply, a dc-dc converter for power output control and a fan for stack cooling. The stack is composed by 10 cells with an active surface of 25 cm 2 and produces a rated power of 15 W at 6 V and 2 A. The stack successfully runs with end-off fed hydrogen without appreciable performance degradation during the time. The final assembled system is able to generate 12 W at 9.5 V, and power a portable DVD player for 3 h in continuous. The power unit has collected about 100 h of operation without maintenance.

A techno-economic comparison of fuel processors utilizing diesel for solid oxide fuel cell auxiliary power units

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nehter, Pedro; Hansen, John Bøgild; Larsen, Peter Koch

Ultra-low sulphur diesel (ULSD) is the preferred fuel for mobile auxiliary power units (APU). The commercial available technologies in the kW-range are combustion engine based gensets, achieving system efficiencies about 20%. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) promise improvements with respect to efficiency and emission, particularly for the low power range. Fuel processing methods i.e., catalytic partial oxidation, autothermal reforming and steam reforming have been demonstrated to operate on diesel with various sulphur contents. The choice of fuel processing method strongly affects the SOFC's system efficiency and power density. This paper investigates the impact of fuel processing methods on the economical potential in SOFC APUs, taking variable and capital cost into account. Autonomous concepts without any external water supply are compared with anode recycle configurations. The cost of electricity is very sensitive on the choice of the O/C ratio and the temperature conditions of the fuel processor. A sensitivity analysis is applied to identify the most cost effective concept for different economic boundary conditions. The favourite concepts are discussed with respect to technical challenges and requirements operating in the presence of sulphur.

MPF: A portable message passing facility for shared memory multiprocessors

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Malony, Allen D.; Reed, Daniel A.; Mcguire, Patrick J.

1987-01-01

The design, implementation, and performance evaluation of a message passing facility (MPF) for shared memory multiprocessors are presented. The MPF is based on a message passing model conceptually similar to conversations. Participants (parallel processors) can enter or leave a conversation at any time. The message passing primitives for this model are implemented as a portable library of C function calls. The MPF is currently operational on a Sequent Balance 21000, and several parallel applications were developed and tested. Several simple benchmark programs are presented to establish interprocess communication performance for common patterns of interprocess communication. Finally, performance figures are presented for two parallel applications, linear systems solution, and iterative solution of partial differential equations.

Fuel Cell Power Plant Initiative. Volume 2; Preliminary Design of a Fixed-Base LFP/SOFC Power System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Veyo, S.E.

1997-01-01

This report documents the preliminary design for a military fixed-base power system of 3 MWe nominal capacity using Westinghouse's tubular Solid Oxide Fuel Cell [SOFC] and Haldor Topsoe's logistic fuels processor [LFP]. The LFP provides to the fuel cell a methane rich sulfur free fuel stream derived from either DF-2 diesel fuel, or JP-8 turbine fuel. Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that directly convert the chemical energy contained in fuels such as hydrogen, natural gas, or coal gas into electricity at high efficiency with no intermediate heat engine or dynamo. The SOFC is distinguished from other fuel cell types by its solid state ceramic structure and its high operating temperature, nominally 1000'C. The SOFC pioneered by Westinghouse has a tubular geometry closed at one end. A power generation stack is formed by aggregating many cells in an ordered array. The Westinghouse stack design is distinguished from other fuel cell stacks by the complete absence of high integrity seals between cell elements, cells, and between stack and manifolds. Further, the reformer for natural gas [predominantly methane] and the stack are thermally and hydraulically integrated with no requirement for process water. The technical viability of combining the tubular SOFC and a logistic fuels processor was demonstrated at 27 kWe scale in a test program sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency [ARPA) and carried out at the Southern California Edison's [SCE] Highgrove generating station near San Bernardino, California in 1994/95. The LFP was a breadboard design supplied by Haldor Topsoe, Inc. under subcontract to Westinghouse. The test program was completely successful. The LFP fueled the SOFC for 766 hours on JP-8 and 1555 hours of DF-2. In addition, the fuel cell operated for 3261 hours on pipeline natural gas. Over the 5582 hours of operation, the SOFC generated 118 MVVH of electricity with no perceptible degradation in performance. The LFP processed military specification JP-8 and DF-2 removing the sulfur and reforming these liquid fuels to a methane rich gaseous fuel. Results of this program are documented in a companion report titled 'Final Report-Solid Oxide Fuel Cell/ Logistic Fuels Processor 27 kWe Power System'.

Hydrogen peroxide oxidant fuel cell systems for ultra-portable applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Valdez, T. I.; Narayanan, S. R.

2001-01-01

This paper will address the issues of using hydrogen peroxide as an oxidant fuel in a miniature DMFC system. Cell performance for DMFC based fuel cells operating on hydrogen peroxide will be presented and discussed.

Portable vibro-acoustic testing system for in situ microstructure characterization and metrology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, James A.; Nichol, Corrie I.; Zuck, Larry D.; Fatemi, Mostafa

2018-04-01

There is a need in research reactors like the one at INL to inspect irradiated materials and structures. The goal of this work is to develop a portable scanning infrastructure for a material characterization technique called vibro-acoustography (VA) that has been developed by the Idaho National laboratory for nuclear applications to characterize fuel, cladding materials, and structures. The proposed VA technology is based on ultrasound and acoustic waves; however, it provides information beyond what is available from the traditional ultrasound techniques and can expand the knowledge on nuclear material characterization and microstructure evolution. This paper will report on the development of a portable scanning system that will be set up to characterize materials and components in open water reactors and canals in situ. We will show some initial laboratory results of images generated by vibro-acoustics of surrogate fuel plates and graphite structures and discuss the design of the portable system.

Dry, portable calorimeter for nondestructive measurement of the activity of nuclear fuel

DOEpatents

Beyer, Norman S.; Lewis, Robert N.; Perry, Ronald B.

1976-01-01

The activity of a quantity of heat-producing nuclear fuel is measured rapidly, accurately and nondestructively by a portable dry calorimeter comprising a preheater, an array of temperature-controlled structures comprising a thermally guarded temperature-controlled oven, and a calculation and control unit. The difference between the amounts of electric power required to maintain the oven temperature with and without nuclear fuel in the oven is measured to determine the power produced by radioactive disintegration and hence the activity of the fuel. A portion of the electronic control system is designed to terminate a continuing sequence of measurements when the standard deviation of the variations of the amount of electric power required to maintain oven temperature is within a predetermined value.

Parallel computation for biological sequence comparison: comparing a portable model to the native model for the Intel Hypercube.

PubMed

Nadkarni, P M; Miller, P L

1991-01-01

A parallel program for inter-database sequence comparison was developed on the Intel Hypercube using two models of parallel programming. One version was built using machine-specific Hypercube parallel programming commands. The other version was built using Linda, a machine-independent parallel programming language. The two versions of the program provide a case study comparing these two approaches to parallelization in an important biological application area. Benchmark tests with both programs gave comparable results with a small number of processors. As the number of processors was increased, the Linda version was somewhat less efficient. The Linda version was also run without change on Network Linda, a virtual parallel machine running on a network of desktop workstations.

The Introduction of Keyboarding to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders with Handwriting Difficulties: A Help or a Hindrance?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ashburner, Jill; Ziviani, Jenny; Pennington, Ana

2012-01-01

This study explored the utility of using keyboarding as an alternative to handwriting for students with ASD who experience handwriting difficulties. Participants included 22 students with ASD (M age = 10.83 plus or minus 1.4 years) who had been using portable word processors in mainstream classrooms for at least 6 months to circumvent handwriting…

Stability of lanthanum oxide-based H 2S sorbents in realistic fuel processor/fuel cell operation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Valsamakis, Ioannis; Si, Rui; Flytzani-Stephanopoulos, Maria

We report that lanthana-based sulfur sorbents are an excellent choice as once-through chemical filters for the removal of trace amounts of H 2S and COS from any fuel gas at temperatures matching those of solid oxide fuel cells. We have examined sorbents based on lanthana and Pr-doped lanthana with up to 30 at.% praseodymium, having high desulfurization efficiency, as measured by their ability to remove H 2S from simulated reformate gas streams to below 50 ppbv with corresponding sulfur capacity exceeding 50 mg S g sorbent -1 at 800 °C. Intermittent sorbent operation with air-rich boiler exhaust-type gas mixtures and with frequent shutdowns and restarts is possible without formation of lanthanide oxycarbonate phases. Upon restart, desulfurization continues from where it left at the end of the previous cycle. These findings are important for practical applications of these sorbents as sulfur polishing units of fuel gases in the presence of small or large amounts of water vapor, and with the regular shutdown/start-up operation practiced in fuel processors/fuel cell systems, both stationary and mobile, and of any size/scale.

Multi-fuel reformers for fuel cells used in transportation. Phase 1: Multi-fuel reformers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

1994-05-01

DOE has established the goal, through the Fuel Cells in Transportation Program, of fostering the rapid development and commercialization of fuel cells as economic competitors for the internal combustion engine. Central to this goal is a safe feasible means of supplying hydrogen of the required purity to the vehicular fuel cell system. Two basic strategies are being considered: (1) on-board fuel processing whereby alternative fuels such as methanol, ethanol or natural gas stored on the vehicle undergo reformation and subsequent processing to produce hydrogen, and (2) on-board storage of pure hydrogen provided by stationary fuel processing plants. This report analyzes fuel processor technologies, types of fuel and fuel cell options for on-board reformation. As the Phase 1 of a multi-phased program to develop a prototype multi-fuel reformer system for a fuel cell powered vehicle, the objective of this program was to evaluate the feasibility of a multi-fuel reformer concept and to select a reforming technology for further development in the Phase 2 program, with the ultimate goal of integration with a DOE-designated fuel cell and vehicle configuration. The basic reformer processes examined in this study included catalytic steam reforming (SR), non-catalytic partial oxidation (POX) and catalytic partial oxidation (also known as Autothermal Reforming, or ATR). Fuels under consideration in this study included methanol, ethanol, and natural gas. A systematic evaluation of reforming technologies, fuels, and transportation fuel cell applications was conducted for the purpose of selecting a suitable multi-fuel processor for further development and demonstration in a transportation application.

Portable instrument for inspecting irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies

DOEpatents

Nicholson, Nicholas; Dowdy, Edward J.; Holt, David M.; Stump, Jr., Charles J.

1985-01-01

A portable instrument for measuring induced Cerenkov radiation associated with irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies in a water-filled storage pond is disclosed. The instrument includes a photomultiplier tube and an image intensifier which are operable in parallel and simultaneously by means of a field lens assembly and an associated beam splitter. The image intensifier permits an operator to aim and focus the apparatus on a submerged fuel assembly. Once the instrument is aimed and focused, an illumination reading can be obtained with the photomultiplier tube. The instrument includes a lens cap with a carbon-14/phosphor light source for calibrating the apparatus in the field.

Implementation of a portable device for real-time ECG signal analysis.

PubMed

Jeon, Taegyun; Kim, Byoungho; Jeon, Moongu; Lee, Byung-Geun

2014-12-10

Cardiac disease is one of the main causes of catastrophic mortality. Therefore, detecting the symptoms of cardiac disease as early as possible is important for increasing the patient's survival. In this study, a compact and effective architecture for detecting atrial fibrillation (AFib) and myocardial ischemia is proposed. We developed a portable device using this architecture, which allows real-time electrocardiogram (ECG) signal acquisition and analysis for cardiac diseases. A noisy ECG signal was preprocessed by an analog front-end consisting of analog filters and amplifiers before it was converted into digital data. The analog front-end was minimized to reduce the size of the device and power consumption by implementing some of its functions with digital filters realized in software. With the ECG data, we detected QRS complexes based on wavelet analysis and feature extraction for morphological shape and regularity using an ARM processor. A classifier for cardiac disease was constructed based on features extracted from a training dataset using support vector machines. The classifier then categorized the ECG data into normal beats, AFib, and myocardial ischemia. A portable ECG device was implemented, and successfully acquired and processed ECG signals. The performance of this device was also verified by comparing the processed ECG data with high-quality ECG data from a public cardiac database. Because of reduced computational complexity, the ARM processor was able to process up to a thousand samples per second, and this allowed real-time acquisition and diagnosis of heart disease. Experimental results for detection of heart disease showed that the device classified AFib and ischemia with a sensitivity of 95.1% and a specificity of 95.9%. Current home care and telemedicine systems have a separate device and diagnostic service system, which results in additional time and cost. Our proposed portable ECG device provides captured ECG data and suspected waveform to identify sporadic and chronic events of heart diseases. This device has been built and evaluated for high quality of signals, low computational complexity, and accurate detection.

40 CFR 1060.102 - What permeation emission control requirements apply for fuel lines?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... assemblies as aggregated systems that include multiple sections of fuel line with connectors and fittings. For example, you may certify fuel lines for portable marine fuel tanks as assemblies of fuel hose, primer bulbs, and self-sealing end connections. The length of such an assembly must not be longer than a...

40 CFR 1060.102 - What permeation emission control requirements apply for fuel lines?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... assemblies as aggregated systems that include multiple sections of fuel line with connectors and fittings. For example, you may certify fuel lines for portable marine fuel tanks as assemblies of fuel hose, primer bulbs, and self-sealing end connections. The length of such an assembly must not be longer than a...

Controlled shutdown of a fuel cell

DOEpatents

Clingerman, Bruce J.; Keskula, Donald H.

2002-01-01

A method is provided for the shutdown of a fuel cell system to relieve system overpressure while maintaining air compressor operation, and corresponding vent valving and control arrangement. The method and venting arrangement are employed in a fuel cell system, for instance a vehicle propulsion system, comprising, in fluid communication, an air compressor having an outlet for providing air to the system, a combustor operative to provide combustor exhaust to the fuel processor.

Deployable Fuel Cell Power Generator - Multi-Fuel Processor

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-02-01

and the system operating pressure, while the separation efficiency depends on the evaporator design. Desulfurizer – A flow-through gas -solid or gas ...meeting the Executive Order (EO) 13423 and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions 3 percent...use available fuel such as natural gas (methane) or propane. The ability to reform multitude of fuels can accelerate the introduction of more

Zeolites Remove Sulfur From Fuels

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Voecks, Gerald E.; Sharma, Pramod K.

1991-01-01

Zeolites remove substantial amounts of sulfur compounds from diesel fuel under relatively mild conditions - atmospheric pressure below 300 degrees C. Extracts up to 60 percent of sulfur content of high-sulfur fuel. Applicable to petroleum refineries, natural-gas processors, electric powerplants, and chemical-processing plants. Method simpler and uses considerably lower pressure than current industrial method, hydro-desulfurization. Yields cleaner emissions from combustion of petroleum fuels, and protects catalysts from poisoning by sulfur.

Waste Vegetable Oil as an Alternative Fuel for Diesel Vehicles

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-03-01

processor has a 160 gallon capacity, a fuel dryer , and features automatic mixing of the chemicals. The chemicals needed consist of lye (sodium...to distinguish it as tax-exempt. Fuel taxes are reported to the Internal Revenue Service ( IRS ) when the fuel is distributed to the “Service...collected in the commercial market. The refiner will pay the tax per gallon directly to the 22 IRS . When the fuel is sold, the end user pays the tax

Market survey of fuel cells in Mexico: Niche for low power portable systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ramírez-Salgado, Joel; Domínguez-Aguilar, Marco A.

This work provides an overview of the potential market in Mexico for portable electronic devices to be potentially powered by direct methanol fuel cells. An extrapolation method based on data published in Mexico and abroad served to complete this market survey. A review of electronics consumption set the basis for the future forecast and technology assimilation. The potential market for fuel cells for mobile phones in Mexico will be around 5.5 billion USD by 2013, considering a cost of 41 USD per cell in a market of 135 million mobile phones. Likewise, the market for notebook computers, PDAs and other electronic devices will likely grow in the future, with a combined consumption of fuel cell technology equivalent to 1.6 billion USD by 2014.

Micro-Tubular Fuel Cells

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kimble, Michael C.; Anderson, Everett B.; Jayne, Karen D.; Woodman, Alan S.

2004-01-01

Micro-tubular fuel cells that would operate at power levels on the order of hundreds of watts or less are under development as alternatives to batteries in numerous products - portable power tools, cellular telephones, laptop computers, portable television receivers, and small robotic vehicles, to name a few examples. Micro-tubular fuel cells exploit advances in the art of proton-exchange-membrane fuel cells. The main advantage of the micro-tubular fuel cells over the plate-and-frame fuel cells would be higher power densities: Whereas the mass and volume power densities of low-pressure hydrogen-and-oxygen-fuel plate-and-frame fuel cells designed to operate in the targeted power range are typically less than 0.1 W/g and 0.1 kW/L, micro-tubular fuel cells are expected to reach power densities much greater than 1 W/g and 1 kW/L. Because of their higher power densities, micro-tubular fuel cells would be better for powering portable equipment, and would be better suited to applications in which there are requirements for modularity to simplify maintenance or to facilitate scaling to higher power levels. The development of PEMFCs has conventionally focused on producing large stacks of cells that operate at typical power levels >5 kW. The usual approach taken to developing lower-power PEMFCs for applications like those listed above has been to simply shrink the basic plate-and-frame configuration to smaller dimensions. A conventional plate-and-frame fuel cell contains a membrane/electrode assembly in the form of a flat membrane with electrodes of the same active area bonded to both faces. In order to provide reactants to both electrodes, bipolar plates that contain flow passages are placed on both electrodes. The mass and volume overhead of the bipolar plates amounts to about 75 percent of the total mass and volume of a fuel-cell stack. Removing these bipolar plates in the micro-tubular fuel cell significantly increases the power density.

Evaluation of methods for rapid determination of freezing point of aviation fuels

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mathiprakasam, B.

1982-01-01

Methods for identification of the more promising concepts for the development of a portable instrument to rapidly determine the freezing point of aviation fuels are described. The evaluation process consisted of: (1) collection of information on techniques previously used for the determination of the freezing point, (2) screening and selection of these techniques for further evaluation of their suitability in a portable unit for rapid measurement, and (3) an extensive experimental evaluation of the selected techniques and a final selection of the most promising technique. Test apparatuses employing differential thermal analysis and the change in optical transparency during phase change were evaluated and tested. A technique similar to differential thermal analysis using no reference fuel was investigated. In this method, the freezing point was obtained by digitizing the data and locating the point of inflection. Results obtained using this technique compare well with those obtained elsewhere using different techniques. A conceptual design of a portable instrument incorporating this technique is presented.

Portable vapor diffusion coefficient meter

DOEpatents

Ho, Clifford K [Albuquerque, NM

2007-06-12

An apparatus for measuring the effective vapor diffusion coefficient of a test vapor diffusing through a sample of porous media contained within a test chamber. A chemical sensor measures the time-varying concentration of vapor that has diffused a known distance through the porous media. A data processor contained within the apparatus compares the measured sensor data with analytical predictions of the response curve based on the transient diffusion equation using Fick's Law, iterating on the choice of an effective vapor diffusion coefficient until the difference between the predicted and measured curves is minimized. Optionally, a purge fluid can forced through the porous media, permitting the apparatus to also measure a gas-phase permeability. The apparatus can be made lightweight, self-powered, and portable for use in the field.

Portable LQCD Monte Carlo code using OpenACC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bonati, Claudio; Calore, Enrico; Coscetti, Simone; D'Elia, Massimo; Mesiti, Michele; Negro, Francesco; Fabio Schifano, Sebastiano; Silvi, Giorgio; Tripiccione, Raffaele

2018-03-01

Varying from multi-core CPU processors to many-core GPUs, the present scenario of HPC architectures is extremely heterogeneous. In this context, code portability is increasingly important for easy maintainability of applications; this is relevant in scientific computing where code changes are numerous and frequent. In this talk we present the design and optimization of a state-of-the-art production level LQCD Monte Carlo application, using the OpenACC directives model. OpenACC aims to abstract parallel programming to a descriptive level, where programmers do not need to specify the mapping of the code on the target machine. We describe the OpenACC implementation and show that the same code is able to target different architectures, including state-of-the-art CPUs and GPUs.

Method for generating hydrogen for fuel cells

DOEpatents

Ahmed, Shabbir; Lee, Sheldon H. D.; Carter, John David; Krumpelt, Michael

2004-03-30

A method of producing a H.sub.2 rich gas stream includes supplying an O.sub.2 rich gas, steam, and fuel to an inner reforming zone of a fuel processor that includes a partial oxidation catalyst and a steam reforming catalyst or a combined partial oxidation and stream reforming catalyst. The method also includes contacting the O.sub.2 rich gas, steam, and fuel with the partial oxidation catalyst and the steam reforming catalyst or the combined partial oxidation and stream reforming catalyst in the inner reforming zone to generate a hot reformate stream. The method still further includes cooling the hot reformate stream in a cooling zone to produce a cooled reformate stream. Additionally, the method includes removing sulfur-containing compounds from the cooled reformate stream by contacting the cooled reformate stream with a sulfur removal agent. The method still further includes contacting the cooled reformate stream with a catalyst that converts water and carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide and H.sub.2 in a water-gas-shift zone to produce a final reformate stream in the fuel processor.

Analysis of the control structures for an integrated ethanol processor for proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Biset, S.; Nieto Deglioumini, L.; Basualdo, M.; Garcia, V. M.; Serra, M.

The aim of this work is to investigate which would be a good preliminary plantwide control structure for the process of Hydrogen production from bioethanol to be used in a proton exchange membrane (PEM) accounting only steady-state information. The objective is to keep the process under optimal operation point, that is doing energy integration to achieve the maximum efficiency. Ethanol, produced from renewable feedstocks, feeds a fuel processor investigated for steam reforming, followed by high- and low-temperature shift reactors and preferential oxidation, which are coupled to a polymeric fuel cell. Applying steady-state simulation techniques and using thermodynamic models the performance of the complete system with two different control structures have been evaluated for the most typical perturbations. A sensitivity analysis for the key process variables together with the rigorous operability requirements for the fuel cell are taking into account for defining acceptable plantwide control structure. This is the first work showing an alternative control structure applied to this kind of process.

33 CFR 149.418 - What fire protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... a helicopter fueling facility have? 149.418 Section 149.418 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST... protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have? In addition to the portable fire extinguishers required under table 149.409, each helicopter fueling facility must have a fire protection system complying...

33 CFR 149.418 - What fire protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... a helicopter fueling facility have? 149.418 Section 149.418 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST... protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have? In addition to the portable fire extinguishers required under table 149.409, each helicopter fueling facility must have a fire protection system complying...

33 CFR 149.418 - What fire protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... a helicopter fueling facility have? 149.418 Section 149.418 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST... protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have? In addition to the portable fire extinguishers required under Table 149.409 of this part, each helicopter fueling facility must have a fire protection...

33 CFR 149.418 - What fire protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... a helicopter fueling facility have? 149.418 Section 149.418 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST... protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have? In addition to the portable fire extinguishers required under Table 149.409 of this part, each helicopter fueling facility must have a fire protection...

33 CFR 149.418 - What fire protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... a helicopter fueling facility have? 149.418 Section 149.418 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST... protection system must a helicopter fueling facility have? In addition to the portable fire extinguishers required under table 149.409, each helicopter fueling facility must have a fire protection system complying...

Portable obstructive sleep apnea detection and mobile monitoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Demirkol ćakmak, Duygu; Eyüboǧlu, B. Murat

2017-05-01

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome is becoming a prevalent disease for both adults and children. It is described as the cessation of breath for at least 10 seconds during sleep. Detecting sleep apnea is considered as a troublesome and timeconsuming method, which requires the patients to stay one or more nights in dedicated sleep disorder rooms with sensors physically attached to their body. Undiagnosed thereby untreated sleep apnea patients are under high risk of hypertension, heart attack, traffic accident through fatigue and sleeplessness. In this project, nasal and oral respiratory information is obtained with utilizing thermocouple and oxygen saturation in the blood is obtained with utilizing pulse oximeter. An analog hardware circuit is designed to readout thermocouple and pulse oximeter signals. According to this respiratory and pulse oximetry signals, obstructive sleep apnea is detected in real time with using a software implemented into an ARM based processor. An Android mobile application is developed to record and display the oxygen saturation, heart rate and respiratory signal data during sleep. ARM based processor and mobile application communication is established via Bluetooth interface to reduce cabling on the patient. In summary, a portable, low cost and user friendly device to detect obstructive sleep apnea which is able to share the necessary information to the patients and doctors for the duration of the whole sleep cycle is developed.

Incorporating landscape fuel treatment modeling into the Forest Vegetation Simulator

Treesearch

Robert C. Seli; Alan A. Ager; Nicholas L. Crookston; Mark A. Finney; Berni Bahro; James K. Agee; Charles W. McHugh

2008-01-01

A simulation system was developed to explore how fuel treatments placed in random and optimal spatial patterns affect the growth and behavior of large fires when implemented at different rates over the course of five decades. The system consists of several command line programs linked together: (1) FVS with the Parallel Processor (PPE) and Fire and Fuels (FFE)...

Performance and long term degradation of 7 W micro-tubular solid oxide fuel cells for portable applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Torrell, M.; Morata, A.; Kayser, P.; Kendall, M.; Kendall, K.; Tarancón, A.

2015-07-01

Micro-tubular SOFCs have shown an astonishing thermal shock resistance, many orders of magnitude larger than planar SOFCs, opening the possibility of being used in portable applications. However, only few studies have been devoted to study the degradation of large-area micro-tubular SOFCs. This work presents microstructural, electrochemical and long term degradation studies of single micro-tubular cells fabricated by high shear extrusion, operating in the intermediate range of temperatures (T∼700 °C). A maximum power of 7 W per cell has been measured in a wide range of fuel utilizations between 10% and 60% at 700 °C. A degradation rate of 360 mW/1000 h (8%) has been observed for cells operated over more than 1500 h under fuel utilizations of 40%. Higher fuel utilizations lead to strong degradations associated to nickel oxidation/reduction processes. Quick thermal cycling with heating ramp rates of 30 °C /min yielded degradation rates of 440 mW/100 cycles (9%). These reasonable values of degradation under continuous and thermal cycling operation approach the requirements for many portable applications including auxiliary power units or consumer electronics opening this typically forbidden market to the SOFC technology.

Portable instrument for inspecting irradiated nuclear-fuel assemblies in a water-filled storage pond by measurement of induced Cerenkov radiation

DOEpatents

Nicholson, N.; Dowdy, E.J.; Holt, D.M.; Stump, C.J. Jr.

1982-05-13

A portable instrument for measuring induced Cerenkov radiation associated with irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies in a water-filled storage pond is disclosed. The instrument includes a photomultiplier tube and an image intensifier which are operable in parallel and simultaneously by means of a field lens assembly and an associated beam splitter. The image intensifier permits an operator to aim and focus the apparatus on a submerged fuel assembly. Once the instrument is aimed and focused, an illumination reading can be obtained with the photomultiplier tube. The instrument includes a lens cap with a carbon-14/phosphor light source for calibrating the apparatus in the field.

Portable water quality monitoring system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nizar, N. B.; Ong, N. R.; Aziz, M. H. A.; Alcain, J. B.; Haimi, W. M. W. N.; Sauli, Z.

2017-09-01

Portable water quality monitoring system was a developed system that tested varied samples of water by using different sensors and provided the specific readings to the user via short message service (SMS) based on the conditions of the water itself. In this water quality monitoring system, the processing part was based on a microcontroller instead of Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) machines to receive the results. By using four main sensors, this system obtained the readings based on the detection of the sensors, respectively. Therefore, users can receive the readings through SMS because there was a connection between Arduino Uno and GSM Module. This system was designed to be portable so that it would be convenient for users to carry it anywhere and everywhere they wanted to since the processor used is smaller in size compared to the LCR machines. It was also developed to ease the user to monitor and control the water quality. However, the ranges of the sensors' detection still a limitation in this study.

Hand-held spectrophotometer design for textile fabrics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Böcekçi, Veysel Gökhan; Yıldız, Kazım

2017-09-01

In this study, a hand-held spectrophotometer was designed by taking advantage of the developments in modern optoelectronic technology. Spectrophotometer devices are used to determine the color information from the optic properties of the materials. As an alternative to a desktop spectrophotometer device we have implemented, it is the first prototype, low cost and portable. The prototype model designed for the textile industry can detect the color tone of any fabric. The prototype model consists of optic sensor, processor, display floors. According to the color applied on the optic sensor, it produces special frequency information on its output at that color value. In Arduino type processor, the frequency information is evaluated by the program we have written and the color tone information between 0-255 ton is decided and displayed on the screen.

Adaptable radiation monitoring system and method

DOEpatents

Archer, Daniel E [Livermore, CA; Beauchamp, Brock R [San Ramon, CA; Mauger, G Joseph [Livermore, CA; Nelson, Karl E [Livermore, CA; Mercer, Michael B [Manteca, CA; Pletcher, David C [Sacramento, CA; Riot, Vincent J [Berkeley, CA; Schek, James L [Tracy, CA; Knapp, David A [Livermore, CA

2006-06-20

A portable radioactive-material detection system capable of detecting radioactive sources moving at high speeds. The system has at least one radiation detector capable of detecting gamma-radiation and coupled to an MCA capable of collecting spectral data in very small time bins of less than about 150 msec. A computer processor is connected to the MCA for determining from the spectral data if a triggering event has occurred. Spectral data is stored on a data storage device, and a power source supplies power to the detection system. Various configurations of the detection system may be adaptably arranged for various radiation detection scenarios. In a preferred embodiment, the computer processor operates as a server which receives spectral data from other networked detection systems, and communicates the collected data to a central data reporting system.

Parallel computation for biological sequence comparison: comparing a portable model to the native model for the Intel Hypercube.

PubMed Central

Nadkarni, P. M.; Miller, P. L.

1991-01-01

A parallel program for inter-database sequence comparison was developed on the Intel Hypercube using two models of parallel programming. One version was built using machine-specific Hypercube parallel programming commands. The other version was built using Linda, a machine-independent parallel programming language. The two versions of the program provide a case study comparing these two approaches to parallelization in an important biological application area. Benchmark tests with both programs gave comparable results with a small number of processors. As the number of processors was increased, the Linda version was somewhat less efficient. The Linda version was also run without change on Network Linda, a virtual parallel machine running on a network of desktop workstations. PMID:1807632

Massively parallel quantum computer simulator

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

De Raedt, K.; Michielsen, K.; De Raedt, H.; Trieu, B.; Arnold, G.; Richter, M.; Lippert, Th.; Watanabe, H.; Ito, N.

2007-01-01

We describe portable software to simulate universal quantum computers on massive parallel computers. We illustrate the use of the simulation software by running various quantum algorithms on different computer architectures, such as a IBM BlueGene/L, a IBM Regatta p690+, a Hitachi SR11000/J1, a Cray X1E, a SGI Altix 3700 and clusters of PCs running Windows XP. We study the performance of the software by simulating quantum computers containing up to 36 qubits, using up to 4096 processors and up to 1 TB of memory. Our results demonstrate that the simulator exhibits nearly ideal scaling as a function of the number of processors and suggest that the simulation software described in this paper may also serve as benchmark for testing high-end parallel computers.

Micro solid oxide fuel cells: a new generation of micro-power sources for portable applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chiabrera, Francesco; Garbayo, Iñigo; Alayo, Nerea; Tarancón, Albert

2017-06-01

Portable electronic devices are already an indispensable part of our daily life; and their increasing number and demand for higher performance is becoming a challenge for the research community. In particular, a major concern is the way to efficiently power these energy-demanding devices, assuring long grid independency with high efficiency, sustainability and cheap production. In this context, technologies beyond Li-ion are receiving increasing attention, among which the development of micro solid oxide fuel cells (μSOFC) stands out. In particular, μSOFC provides a high energy density, high efficiency and opens the possibility to the use of different fuels, such as hydrocarbons. Yet, its high operating temperature has typically hindered its application as miniaturized portable device. Recent advances have however set a completely new range of lower operating temperatures, i.e. 350-450°C, as compared to the typical <900°C needed for classical bulk SOFC systems. In this work, a comprehensive review of the status of the technology is presented. The main achievements, as well as the most important challenges still pending are discussed, regarding (i.) the cell design and microfabrication, and (ii.) the integration of functional electrolyte and electrode materials. To conclude, the different strategies foreseen for a wide deployment of the technology as new portable power source are underlined.

Electrical start-up for diesel fuel processing in a fuel-cell-based auxiliary power unit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Samsun, Remzi Can; Krupp, Carsten; Tschauder, Andreas; Peters, Ralf; Stolten, Detlef

2016-01-01

As auxiliary power units in trucks and aircraft, fuel cell systems with a diesel and kerosene reforming capacity offer the dual benefit of reduced emissions and fuel consumption. In order to be commercially viable, these systems require a quick start-up time with low energy input. In pursuit of this end, this paper reports an electrical start-up strategy for diesel fuel processing. A transient computational fluid dynamics model is developed to optimize the start-up procedure of the fuel processor in the 28 kWth power class. The temperature trend observed in the experiments is reproducible to a high degree of accuracy using a dual-cell approach in ANSYS Fluent. Starting from a basic strategy, different options are considered for accelerating system start-up. The start-up time is reduced from 22 min in the basic case to 9.5 min, at an energy consumption of 0.4 kW h. Furthermore, an electrical wire is installed in the reformer to test the steam generation during start-up. The experimental results reveal that the generation of steam at 450 °C is possible within seconds after water addition to the reformer. As a result, the fuel processor can be started in autothermal reformer mode using the electrical concept developed in this work.

Design, integration and demonstration of a 50 W JP8/kerosene fueled portable SOFC power generator

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cheekatamarla, Praveen K.; Finnerty, Caine M.; Robinson, Charles R.; Andrews, Stanley M.; Brodie, Jonathan A.; Lu, Y.; DeWald, Paul G.

A man-portable solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system integrated with desulfurized JP8 partial oxidation (POX) reformer was demonstrated to supply a continuous power output of 50 W. This paper discusses some of the design paths chosen and challenges faced during the thermal integration of the stack and reformer in aiding the system startup and shutdown along with balance of plant and power management solutions. The package design, system capabilities, and test results of the prototype unit are presented.

The 40-kw field test power plant modification and development, phase 2

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1980-01-01

Progression on the design and development of a 40 KW fuel cell system for on-site installation for providing both thermal and electrical power is reported. Development of the steam reformer fuel processor, power section, inverter, control system, and thermal management and water treatment systems is described.

Miniature ceramic fuel cell

DOEpatents

Lessing, Paul A.; Zuppero, Anthony C.

1997-06-24

A miniature power source assembly capable of providing portable electricity is provided. A preferred embodiment of the power source assembly employing a fuel tank, fuel pump and control, air pump, heat management system, power chamber, power conditioning and power storage. The power chamber utilizes a ceramic fuel cell to produce the electricity. Incoming hydro carbon fuel is automatically reformed within the power chamber. Electrochemical combustion of hydrogen then produces electricity.

Portable DMFC system with methanol sensor-less control

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, C. Y.; Liu, D. H.; Huang, C. L.; Chang, C. L.

This work develops a prototype 20 W portable DMFC by system integration of stack, condenser, methanol sensor-less control and start-up characteristics. The effects of these key components and control schemes on the performance are also discussed. To expedite the use of portable DMFC in electronic applications, the system utilizes a novel methanol sensor-less control method, providing improved fuel efficiency, durability, miniaturization and cost reduction. The operating characteristics of the DMFC stack are applied to control the fuel ejection time and period, enabling the system to continue operating even when the MEAs of the stack are deteriorated. The portable system is also designed with several features including water balance and quick start-up (in 5 min). Notably, the proposed system using methanol sensor-less control with injection of pure methanol can power the DVD player and notebook PC. The system specific energy and energy density following three days of operation are 362 Wh kg -1 and 335 Wh L -1, respectively, which are better than those of lithium batteries (∼150 Wh kg -1 and ∼250 Wh L -). This good energy storage feature demonstrates that the portable DMFC is likely to be valuable in computer, communication and consumer electronic (3C) markets.

Clean fuels from biomass. [feasibility of converting plant systems to fuels

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hsu, Y. Y.

1974-01-01

The feasibility of converting biomass to portable fuels is studied. Since plants synthesize biomass from H2O and CO2 with the help of solar energy, the conversion methods of pyrolysis, anaerobic fermentation, and hydrogenation are considered. Cost reduction methods and cost effectiveness are emphasized.

Low-voltage analog front-end processor design for ISFET-based sensor and H+ sensing applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chung, Wen-Yaw; Yang, Chung-Huang; Peng, Kang-Chu; Yeh, M. H.

2003-04-01

This paper presents a modular-based low-voltage analog-front-end processor design in a 0.5mm double-poly double-metal CMOS technology for Ion Sensitive Field Effect Transistor (ISFET)-based sensor and H+ sensing applications. To meet the potentiometric response of the ISFET that is proportional to various H+ concentrations, the constant-voltage and constant current (CVCS) testing configuration has been used. Low-voltage design skills such as bulk-driven input pair, folded-cascode amplifier, bootstrap switch control circuits have been designed and integrated for 1.5V supply and nearly rail-to-rail analog to digital signal processing. Core modules consist of an 8-bit two-step analog-digital converter and bulk-driven pre-amplifiers have been developed in this research. The experimental results show that the proposed circuitry has an acceptable linearity to 0.1 pH-H+ sensing conversions with the buffer solution in the range of pH2 to pH12. The processor has a potential usage in battery-operated and portable healthcare devices and environmental monitoring applications.

Simulating Hydrologic Flow and Reactive Transport with PFLOTRAN and PETSc on Emerging Fine-Grained Parallel Computer Architectures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mills, R. T.; Rupp, K.; Smith, B. F.; Brown, J.; Knepley, M.; Zhang, H.; Adams, M.; Hammond, G. E.

2017-12-01

As the high-performance computing community pushes towards the exascale horizon, power and heat considerations have driven the increasing importance and prevalence of fine-grained parallelism in new computer architectures. High-performance computing centers have become increasingly reliant on GPGPU accelerators and "manycore" processors such as the Intel Xeon Phi line, and 512-bit SIMD registers have even been introduced in the latest generation of Intel's mainstream Xeon server processors. The high degree of fine-grained parallelism and more complicated memory hierarchy considerations of such "manycore" processors present several challenges to existing scientific software. Here, we consider how the massively parallel, open-source hydrologic flow and reactive transport code PFLOTRAN - and the underlying Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation (PETSc) library on which it is built - can best take advantage of such architectures. We will discuss some key features of these novel architectures and our code optimizations and algorithmic developments targeted at them, and present experiences drawn from working with a wide range of PFLOTRAN benchmark problems on these architectures.

Research in Parallel Algorithms and Software for Computational Aerosciences

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Domel, Neal D.

1996-01-01

Phase I is complete for the development of a Computational Fluid Dynamics parallel code with automatic grid generation and adaptation for the Euler analysis of flow over complex geometries. SPLITFLOW, an unstructured Cartesian grid code developed at Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems, has been modified for a distributed memory/massively parallel computing environment. The parallel code is operational on an SGI network, Cray J90 and C90 vector machines, SGI Power Challenge, and Cray T3D and IBM SP2 massively parallel machines. Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is the message passing protocol for portability to various architectures. A domain decomposition technique was developed which enforces dynamic load balancing to improve solution speed and memory requirements. A host/node algorithm distributes the tasks. The solver parallelizes very well, and scales with the number of processors. Partially parallelized and non-parallelized tasks consume most of the wall clock time in a very fine grain environment. Timing comparisons on a Cray C90 demonstrate that Parallel SPLITFLOW runs 2.4 times faster on 8 processors than its non-parallel counterpart autotasked over 8 processors.

Research in Parallel Algorithms and Software for Computational Aerosciences

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Domel, Neal D.

1996-01-01

Phase 1 is complete for the development of a computational fluid dynamics CFD) parallel code with automatic grid generation and adaptation for the Euler analysis of flow over complex geometries. SPLITFLOW, an unstructured Cartesian grid code developed at Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems, has been modified for a distributed memory/massively parallel computing environment. The parallel code is operational on an SGI network, Cray J90 and C90 vector machines, SGI Power Challenge, and Cray T3D and IBM SP2 massively parallel machines. Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is the message passing protocol for portability to various architectures. A domain decomposition technique was developed which enforces dynamic load balancing to improve solution speed and memory requirements. A host/node algorithm distributes the tasks. The solver parallelizes very well, and scales with the number of processors. Partially parallelized and non-parallelized tasks consume most of the wall clock time in a very fine grain environment. Timing comparisons on a Cray C90 demonstrate that Parallel SPLITFLOW runs 2.4 times faster on 8 processors than its non-parallel counterpart autotasked over 8 processors.

A military grade, field usable, Raman analyzer: measurement of captured fuel

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Farquharson, Stuart; Smith, Wayne; Shende, Chetan; Patient, Michael; Huang, Hermes; Brouillette, Carl

2014-05-01

Portable Raman analyzers have emerged during the first part of this century as an important field tool for crime scene and forensic analysis, primarily for their ability to identify unknown substances. This ability is also important to the US military, which has been investigating such analyzers for identification of explosive materials that may be used to produce improvised explosive devices, chemicals that may be used to produce chemical warfare agents, and fuels in storage tanks that may be used to power US military vehicles. However, the use of such portable analyzers requires that they meet stringent military standards (specifically MIL-STD 810G). These requirements include among others: 1) light weight and small size (< 35 pounds, < 3 cu. ft.), 2) vibration and shock resistant (26 four foot drops), 3) operation from -4 to 110 oF, 4) operation in blowing dust, sand and rain, 5) battery operation, and of course 6) safe operation (no laser or shock hazards). Here we describe a portable Raman analyzer that meets all of these requirements, and its use to determine if captured fuels are suitable for use.

Fuel cells for low power applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Heinzel, A.; Hebling, C.; Müller, M.; Zedda, M.; Müller, C.

Electronic devices show an ever-increasing power demand and thus, require innovative concepts for power supply. For a wide range of power and energy capacity, membrane fuel cells are an attractive alternative to conventional batteries. The main advantages are the flexibility with respect to power and capacity achievable with different devices for energy conversion and energy storage, the long lifetime and long service life, the good ecological balance, very low self-discharge. Therefore, the development of fuel cell systems for portable electronic devices is an attractive, although also a challenging, goal. The fuel for a membrane fuel cell might be hydrogen from a hydride storage system or methanol/water as a liquid alternative. The main differences between the two systems are the much higher power density for hydrogen fuel cells, the higher energy density per weight for the liquid fuel, safety aspects and infrastructure for fuel supply for hydride materials. For different applications, different system designs are required. High power cells are required for portable computers, low power methanol fuel cells required for mobile phones in hybrid systems with batteries and micro-fuel cells are required, e.g. for hand held PCs in the sub-Watt range. All these technologies are currently under development. Performance data and results of simulations and experimental investigations will be presented.

Extended Durability Testing of an External Fuel Processor for a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Mark Perna; Anant Upadhyayula; Mark Scotto

2012-11-05

Durability testing was performed on an external fuel processor (EFP) for a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) power plant. The EFP enables the SOFC to reach high system efficiency (electrical efficiency up to 60%) using pipeline natural gas and eliminates the need for large quantities of bottled gases. LG Fuel Cell Systems Inc. (formerly known as Rolls-Royce Fuel Cell Systems (US) Inc.) (LGFCS) is developing natural gas-fired SOFC power plants for stationary power applications. These power plants will greatly benefit the public by reducing the cost of electricity while reducing the amount of gaseous emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur oxides,more » and nitrogen oxides compared to conventional power plants. The EFP uses pipeline natural gas and air to provide all the gas streams required by the SOFC power plant; specifically those needed for start-up, normal operation, and shutdown. It includes a natural gas desulfurizer, a synthesis-gas generator and a start-gas generator. The research in this project demonstrated that the EFP could meet its performance and durability targets. The data generated helped assess the impact of long-term operation on system performance and system hardware. The research also showed the negative impact of ambient weather (both hot and cold conditions) on system operation and performance.« less

United States transportation fuel economics (1975 - 1995)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Alexander, A. D., III

1975-01-01

The United States transportation fuel economics in terms of fuel resources options, processing alternatives, and attendant economics for the period 1975 to 1995 are evaluated. The U.S. energy resource base is reviewed, portable fuel-processing alternatives are assessed, and selected future aircraft fuel options - JP fuel, liquid methane, and liquid hydrogen - are evaluated economically. Primary emphasis is placed on evaluating future aircraft fuel options and economics to provide guidance for future strategy of NASA in the development of aviation and air transportation research and technology.

Fuzzy Logic Based Controller for a Grid-Connected Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Power Plant.

PubMed

Chatterjee, Kalyan; Shankar, Ravi; Kumar, Amit

2014-10-01

This paper describes a mathematical model of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) power plant integrated in a multimachine power system. The utilization factor of a fuel stack maintains steady state by tuning the fuel valve in the fuel processor at a rate proportional to a current drawn from the fuel stack. A suitable fuzzy logic control is used for the overall system, its objective being controlling the current drawn by the power conditioning unit and meet a desirable output power demand. The proposed control scheme is verified through computer simulations.

40 CFR 59.623 - What must I include in my application?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

...) List the specifications of the test fuel to show that it falls within the required ranges specified in... application (including the test procedures, test parameters, and test fuels) to show you meet the requirements... PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission...

40 CFR 59.623 - What must I include in my application?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

...) List the specifications of the test fuel to show that it falls within the required ranges specified in... application (including the test procedures, test parameters, and test fuels) to show you meet the requirements... PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission...

40 CFR 59.623 - What must I include in my application?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

...) List the specifications of the test fuel to show that it falls within the required ranges specified in... application (including the test procedures, test parameters, and test fuels) to show you meet the requirements... PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission...

40 CFR 59.623 - What must I include in my application?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

...) List the specifications of the test fuel to show that it falls within the required ranges specified in... application (including the test procedures, test parameters, and test fuels) to show you meet the requirements... PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission...

40 CFR 59.623 - What must I include in my application?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

...) List the specifications of the test fuel to show that it falls within the required ranges specified in... application (including the test procedures, test parameters, and test fuels) to show you meet the requirements... PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission...

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sargent, S.A.

Apple pomace or presscake, was evaluated for suitability as a boiler feedstock for Michigan firms processing apple juice. Based upon the physical and chemical characteristics of pomace, handling/direct combustion systems were selected to conform with operating parameters typical of the industry. Fresh pomace flow rates of 29,030 and 88,998 kg/day (64,000 and 194,000 lb/day) were considered as representative of small and large processors, respectively, and the material was assumed to be dried to 15% moisture content (wet basis) prior to storage and combustion. Boilers utilizing pile-burning, fluidized-bed-combustion, and suspension-firing technologies were sized for each flow rate, resulting in energy productionmore » of 2930 and 8790 kW (10 and 30 million Btu/h), respectively. A life-cycle cost analysis was performed giving Average Annual Costs for the three handling/combustion system combinations (based on the Uniform Capital Recovery factor). An investment loan at 16% interest with a 5-year payback period was assumed. The break-even period for annual costs was calculated by anticipated savings incurred through reduction of fossil-fuel costs during a 5-month processing season. Large processors, producing more than 88,998 kg pomace/day, could economically convert to a suspension-fired system substituting for fuel oil, with break-even occurring after 4 months of operation of pomace per year. Small processors, producing less than 29,030 kg/day, could not currently convert to pomace combustion systems given these economic circumstances. A doubling of electrical-utility costs and changes in interest rates from 10 to 20% per year had only slight effects on the recovery of Average Annual Costs. Increases in fossil-fuel prices and the necessity to pay for pomace disposal reduced the cost-recovery period for all systems, making some systems feasible for small processors. 39 references, 13 figures, 10 tables.« less

Portable Computer Keyboard For Use With One Hand

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Friedman, Gary L.

1992-01-01

Data-entry device held in one hand and operated with five fingers. Contains seven keys. Letters, numbers, punctuation, and cursor commands keyed into computer by pressing keys in various combinations. Device called "data egg" used where standard typewriter keyboard unusable or unavailable. Contains micro-processor and 32-Kbyte memory. Captures text and transmits it to computer. Concept extended to computer mouse. Especially useful to handicapped or bedridden people who find it difficult or impossible to operate standard keyboards.

Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (C3I) Project Book: Fiscal Year 1992

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-05-12

PSC-3 is a rugged, lightweight (less than 35 lbs including batteries and whip and mdium gain antennas) portable device capable of being paged while...as Materiel Change (NC) projects. They Include: TACFWR Wpgade NC; Water Entry Resolution NC; FIREFIWER Training Device Upgrade MC; and Backplmn Wiringj... devices consist of a sensor . processor addigital display ibplWsd on an Individual air defense mopon system(FAM and NWWI). Two models are in development

Reduced size fuel cell for portable applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Narayanan, Sekharipuram R. (Inventor); Valdez, Thomas I. (Inventor); Clara, Filiberto (Inventor); Frank, Harvey A. (Inventor)

2004-01-01

A flat pack type fuel cell includes a plurality of membrane electrode assemblies. Each membrane electrode assembly is formed of an anode, an electrolyte, and an cathode with appropriate catalysts thereon. The anode is directly into contact with fuel via a wicking element. The fuel reservoir may extend along the same axis as the membrane electrode assemblies, so that fuel can be applied to each of the anodes. Each of the fuel cell elements is interconnected together to provide the voltage outputs in series.

Plant That Makes Fuel Out Of Garbage and Waste Called A Success

Science.gov Websites

, to run a turbine to generate electricity or as a transportation fuel. Pathogens in the food municipal solid waste and food processing wastes. The plant was operated close to neighbors in a light market of $1 billion. Other potential customers include food processors and waste haulers, who must now

Recent Advances in High-Performance Direct Methanol Fuel Cells

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Narayanan, S. R.; Chun, W.; Valdez, T. I.; Jeffries-Nakamura, B.; Frank, H.; Surumpudi, S.; Halpert, G.; Kosek, J.; Cropley, C.; La Conti, A. B.;

Fuel processor for fuel cell power system

DOEpatents

Vanderborgh, Nicholas E.; Springer, Thomas E.; Huff, James R.

1987-01-01

A catalytic organic fuel processing apparatus, which can be used in a fuel cell power system, contains within a housing a catalyst chamber, a variable speed fan, and a combustion chamber. Vaporized organic fuel is circulated by the fan past the combustion chamber with which it is in indirect heat exchange relationship. The heated vaporized organic fuel enters a catalyst bed where it is converted into a desired product such as hydrogen needed to power the fuel cell. During periods of high demand, air is injected upstream of the combustion chamber and organic fuel injection means to burn with some of the organic fuel on the outside of the combustion chamber, and thus be in direct heat exchange relation with the organic fuel going into the catalyst bed.

Integrated Chemical Fuel Microprocessor for Power Generation in MEMS Applications

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-07-01

unreacted fuels (ammonia and hydrocarbon) and carbon monoxide that could otherwise adversely affect hydrogen Proton Exchange Membrane ( PEM ) fuel cell ...High hydrogen purity is required in a variety of processes, from the microelectronics industry to PEM fuel cells . For portable-power applications, it...Geff Ffuel Heat Load Complexity Li-Ion Batteries 330 140 1.2 W Low Carnot Engines *7,878 13,750 10% 50% 395 690 10 W Low Fuel Cells : PEM /Hydride #2,382

Mobile lighting apparatus

DOEpatents

Roe, George Michael; Klebanoff, Leonard Elliott; Rea, Gerald W; Drake, Robert A; Johnson, Terry A; Wingert, Steven John; Damberger, Thomas A; Skradski, Thomas J; Radley, Christopher James; Oros, James M; Schuttinger, Paul G; Grupp, David J; Prey, Stephen Carl

2013-05-14

A mobile lighting apparatus includes a portable frame such as a moveable trailer or skid having a light tower thereon. The light tower is moveable from a stowed position to a deployed position. A hydrogen-powered fuel cell is located on the portable frame to provide electrical power to an array of the energy efficient lights located on the light tower.

Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence Electronic Warfare (C4IEW) Project Book, Fiscal Year 1994. (Non-FOUO Version)

DTIC Science & Technology

1994-04-01

TSW-7A, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL CENTRAL (ATCC) 32- 8 AN/TTC-41(V), CENTRAL OFFICE, TELEPHONE, AUTOMATIC 32- 9 MISSILE COUNTERMEASURE DEVICE (MCD) .- 0 MK...a Handheld Terminal Unit (HTU), Portable Computer Unit (PCU), Transportable Computer Unit (TCU), and compatible NOI peripheral devices . All but the...CLASSIFICATION: ASARC-III, Jun 80, Standard. I I I AN/TIC-39 IS A MOBILE , AUTOMATIC , MODULAR ELECTRONIC CIRCUIT SWITCH UNDER PROCESSOR CONTROL WITH INTEGRAL

Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence Electronic Warfare (C4IEW) and Sensors. Project Book. Fiscal Year 1996

DTIC Science & Technology

1996-01-01

INTENSIFICATION (AI2) ATD AERIAL SCOUT SENSORS INTEGRATION (ASSI) BISTATIC RADAR FOR WEAPONS LOCATION (BRWL) ATD CLOSE IN MAN PORTABLE MINE DETECTOR (CIMMD...MS IV PE & LINE #: 1X428010.D107 HI Operations/Support DESCRIPTION: The AN/TTC-39A Circuit Switch is a 744 line mobile , automatic ...SYNOPSIS: AN/TTC-39 IS A MOBILE , AUTOMATIC , MODULAR ELECTRONIC CIRCUIT SWITCH UNDER PROCESSOR CONTROL WITH INTEGRAL COMSEC AND MULTIPLEX EQUIPMENT. AN/TTC

Multimedia-based decision support system for hazards recognition and abatement

DOEpatents

Czachowski, John B.; Zoldak, John T.

1998-01-01

A system for monitoring a site includes a portable data collection module used in the field to collect site specific data, and a processor module located at a central location. The data collection module displays choices of categories of findings, and then specific findings within each category. A selected specific finding is then displayed in report form with a citation to the specific code or statutory requirement, as well as a recommended course of action and an abatement date.

Balloon-borne video cassette recorders for digital data storage

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Althouse, W. E.; Cook, W. R.

1985-01-01

A high speed, high capacity digital data storage system was developed for a new balloon-borne gamma-ray telescope. The system incorporates economical consumer products: the portable video cassette recorder (VCR) and a relatively newer item - the digital audio processor. The in-flight recording system employs eight VCRs and will provide a continuous data storage rate of 1.4 megabits/sec throughout a 40 hour balloon flight. Data storage capacity is 25 gigabytes and power consumption is only 10 watts.

Performance and economic assessments of a solid oxide fuel cell system with a two-step ethanol-steam-reforming process using CaO sorbent

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tippawan, Phanicha; Arpornwichanop, Amornchai

2016-02-01

The hydrogen production process is known to be important to a fuel cell system. In this study, a carbon-free hydrogen production process is proposed by using a two-step ethanol-steam-reforming procedure, which consists of ethanol dehydrogenation and steam reforming, as a fuel processor in the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system. An addition of CaO in the reformer for CO2 capture is also considered to enhance the hydrogen production. The performance of the SOFC system is analyzed under thermally self-sufficient conditions in terms of the technical and economic aspects. The simulation results show that the two-step reforming process can be run in the operating window without carbon formation. The addition of CaO in the steam reformer, which runs at a steam-to-ethanol ratio of 5, temperature of 900 K and atmospheric pressure, minimizes the presence of CO2; 93% CO2 is removed from the steam-reforming environment. This factor causes an increase in the SOFC power density of 6.62%. Although the economic analysis shows that the proposed fuel processor provides a higher capital cost, it offers a reducing active area of the SOFC stack and the most favorable process economics in term of net cost saving.

Compact hydrogen production systems for solid polymer fuel cells

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ledjeff-Hey, K.; Formanski, V.; Kalk, Th.; Roes, J.

Generally there are several ways to produce hydrogen gas from carbonaceous fuels like natural gas, oil or alcohols. Most of these processes are designed for large-scale industrial production and are not suitable for a compact hydrogen production system (CHYPS) in the power range of 1 kW. In order to supply solid polymer fuel cells (SPFC) with hydrogen, a compact fuel processor is required for mobile applications. The produced hydrogen-rich gas has to have a low level of harmful impurities; in particular the carbon monoxide content has to be lower than 20 ppmv. Integrating the reaction step, the gas purification and the heat supply leads to small-scale hydrogen production systems. The steam reforming of methanol is feasible at copper catalysts in a low temperature range of 200-350°C. The combination of a small-scale methanol reformer and a metal membrane as purification step forms a compact system producing high-purity hydrogen. The generation of a SPFC hydrogen fuel gas can also be performed by thermal or catalytic cracking of liquid hydrocarbons such as propane. At a temperature of 900°C the decomposition of propane into carbon and hydrogen takes place. A fuel processor based on this simple concept produces a gas stream with a hydrogen content of more than 90 vol.% and without CO and CO2.

A Power Efficient Exaflop Computer Design for Global Cloud System Resolving Climate Models.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wehner, M. F.; Oliker, L.; Shalf, J.

2008-12-01

Exascale computers would allow routine ensemble modeling of the global climate system at the cloud system resolving scale. Power and cost requirements of traditional architecture systems are likely to delay such capability for many years. We present an alternative route to the exascale using embedded processor technology to design a system optimized for ultra high resolution climate modeling. These power efficient processors, used in consumer electronic devices such as mobile phones, portable music players, cameras, etc., can be tailored to the specific needs of scientific computing. We project that a system capable of integrating a kilometer scale climate model a thousand times faster than real time could be designed and built in a five year time scale for US$75M with a power consumption of 3MW. This is cheaper, more power efficient and sooner than any other existing technology.

JPL's Real-Time Weather Processor project (RWP) metrics and observations at system completion

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Loesh, Robert E.; Conover, Robert A.; Malhotra, Shan

1990-01-01

As an integral part of the overall upgraded National Airspace System (NAS), the objective of the Real-Time Weather Processor (RWP) project is to improve the quality of weather information and the timeliness of its dissemination to system users. To accomplish this, an RWP will be installed in each of the Center Weather Service Units (CWSUs), located in 21 of the 23 Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs). The RWP System is a prototype system. It is planned that the software will be GFE and that production hardware will be acquired via industry competitive procurement. The ARTCC is a facility established to provide air traffic control service to aircraft operating on Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) flight plans within controlled airspace, principally during the en route phase of the flight. Covered here are requirement metrics, Software Problem Failure Reports (SPFRs), and Ada portability metrics and observations.

Is it possible to design a portable power generator based on micro-solid oxide fuel cells? A finite volume analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pla, D.; Sánchez-González, A.; Garbayo, I.; Salleras, M.; Morata, A.; Tarancón, A.

2015-10-01

The inherent limited capacity of current battery technology is not sufficient for covering the increasing power requirements of widely extended portable devices. Among other promising alternatives, recent advances in the field of micro-Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (μ-SOFCs) converted this disruptive technology into a serious candidate to power next generations of portable devices. However, the implementation of single cells in real devices, i.e. μ-SOFC stacks coupled to the required balance-of-plant elements like fuel reformers or post combustors, still remains unexplored. This work aims addressing this system-level research by proposing a new compact design of a vertically stacked device fuelled with ethanol. The feasibility and design optimization for achieving a thermally self-sustained regime and a rapid and low-power consuming start-up is studied by finite volume analysis. An optimal thermal insulation strategy is defined to maintain the steady-state operation temperature of the μ-SOFC at 973 K and an external temperature lower than 323 K. A hybrid start-up procedure, based on heaters embedded in the μ-SOFCs and heat released by chemical reactions in the post-combustion unit, is analyzed allowing start-up times below 1 min and energy consumption under 500 J. These results clearly demonstrate the feasibility of high temperature μ-SOFC power systems fuelled with hydrocarbons for portable applications, therefore, anticipating a new family of mobile and uninterrupted power generators.

Microfabrication of microchannels for fuel cell plates.

PubMed

Jang, Ho Su; Park, Dong Sam

2010-01-01

Portable electronic devices such as notebook computers, PDAs, cellular phones, etc., are being widely used, and they increasingly need cheap, efficient, and lightweight power sources. Fuel cells have been proposed as possible power sources to address issues that involve energy production and the environment. In particular, a small type of fuel-cell system is known to be suitable for portable electronic devices. The development of micro fuel cell systems can be achieved by the application of microchannel technology. In this study, the conventional method of chemical etching and the mechanical machining method of micro end milling were used for the microfabrication of microchannel for fuel cell separators. The two methods were compared in terms of their performance in the fabrication with regards to dimensional errors, flatness, straightness, and surface roughness. Following microchannel fabrication, the powder blasting technique is introduced to improve the coating performance of the catalyst on the surface of the microchannel. Experimental results show that end milling can remarkably increase the fabrication performance and that surface treatment by powder blasting can improve the performance of catalyst coating.

Microfabrication of Microchannels for Fuel Cell Plates

PubMed Central

Jang, Ho Su; Park, Dong Sam

2010-01-01

Portable electronic devices such as notebook computers, PDAs, cellular phones, etc., are being widely used, and they increasingly need cheap, efficient, and lightweight power sources. Fuel cells have been proposed as possible power sources to address issues that involve energy production and the environment. In particular, a small type of fuel-cell system is known to be suitable for portable electronic devices. The development of micro fuel cell systems can be achieved by the application of microchannel technology. In this study, the conventional method of chemical etching and the mechanical machining method of micro end milling were used for the microfabrication of microchannel for fuel cell separators. The two methods were compared in terms of their performance in the fabrication with regards to dimensional errors, flatness, straightness, and surface roughness. Following microchannel fabrication, the powder blasting technique is introduced to improve the coating performance of the catalyst on the surface of the microchannel. Experimental results show that end milling can remarkably increase the fabrication performance and that surface treatment by powder blasting can improve the performance of catalyst coating. PMID:22315533

Design of a Fuel Processor System for Generating Hydrogen for Automotive Applications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kolavennu, Panini K.; Telotte, John C.; Palanki, Srinivas

2006-01-01

The objective of this paper is to design a train of tubular reactors that use a methane feed to produce hydrogen of the desired purity so that it can be utilized by a fuel cell for automotive applications. Reaction engineering principles, which are typically covered at the undergraduate level, are utilized to design this reactor train. It is shown…

Implementing the PM Programming Language using MPI and OpenMP - a New Tool for Programming Geophysical Models on Parallel Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bellerby, Tim

2015-04-01

PM (Parallel Models) is a new parallel programming language specifically designed for writing environmental and geophysical models. The language is intended to enable implementers to concentrate on the science behind the model rather than the details of running on parallel hardware. At the same time PM leaves the programmer in control - all parallelisation is explicit and the parallel structure of any given program may be deduced directly from the code. This paper describes a PM implementation based on the Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Open Multi-Processing (OpenMP) standards, looking at issues involved with translating the PM parallelisation model to MPI/OpenMP protocols and considering performance in terms of the competing factors of finer-grained parallelisation and increased communication overhead. In order to maximise portability, the implementation stays within the MPI 1.3 standard as much as possible, with MPI-2 MPI-IO file handling the only significant exception. Moreover, it does not assume a thread-safe implementation of MPI. PM adopts a two-tier abstract representation of parallel hardware. A PM processor is a conceptual unit capable of efficiently executing a set of language tasks, with a complete parallel system consisting of an abstract N-dimensional array of such processors. PM processors may map to single cores executing tasks using cooperative multi-tasking, to multiple cores or even to separate processing nodes, efficiently sharing tasks using algorithms such as work stealing. While tasks may move between hardware elements within a PM processor, they may not move between processors without specific programmer intervention. Tasks are assigned to processors using a nested parallelism approach, building on ideas from Reyes et al. (2009). The main program owns all available processors. When the program enters a parallel statement then either processors are divided out among the newly generated tasks (number of new tasks < number of processors) or tasks are divided out among the available processors (number of tasks > number of processors). Nested parallel statements may further subdivide the processor set owned by a given task. Tasks or processors are distributed evenly by default, but uneven distributions are possible under programmer control. It is also possible to explicitly enable child tasks to migrate within the processor set owned by their parent task, reducing load unbalancing at the potential cost of increased inter-processor message traffic. PM incorporates some programming structures from the earlier MIST language presented at a previous EGU General Assembly, while adopting a significantly different underlying parallelisation model and type system. PM code is available at www.pm-lang.org under an unrestrictive MIT license. Reference Ruymán Reyes, Antonio J. Dorta, Francisco Almeida, Francisco de Sande, 2009. Automatic Hybrid MPI+OpenMP Code Generation with llc, Recent Advances in Parallel Virtual Machine and Message Passing Interface, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 5759, 185-195

Fuel processor for fuel cell power system. [Conversion of methanol into hydrogen

DOEpatents

Vanderborgh, N.E.; Springer, T.E.; Huff, J.R.

1986-01-28

A catalytic organic fuel processing apparatus, which can be used in a fuel cell power system, contains within a housing a catalyst chamber, a variable speed fan, and a combustion chamber. Vaporized organic fuel is circulated by the fan past the combustion chamber with which it is in indirect heat exchange relationship. The heated vaporized organic fuel enters a catalyst bed where it is converted into a desired product such as hydrogen needed to power the fuel cell. During periods of high demand, air is injected upstream of the combustion chamber and organic fuel injection means to burn with some of the organic fuel on the outside of the combustion chamber, and thus be in direct heat exchange relation with the organic fuel going into the catalyst bed.

Portable Spray Booth

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hansen, Timothy D.; Bardwell, Micheal J.

1996-01-01

Portable spray booth provides for controlled application of coating materials with high solvent contents. Includes contoured shroud and carbon filter bed limiting concentration of fumes in vicinity. Designed to substitute spraying for brush application of solvent-based adhesive prior to installing rubber waterproof seals over joints between segments of solid-fuel rocket motor. With minor adjustments and modifications, used to apply other solvent-based adhesives, paints, and like.

Field portable low temperature porous layer open tubular cryoadsorption headspace sampling and analysis part II: Applications.

PubMed

Harries, Megan; Bukovsky-Reyes, Santiago; Bruno, Thomas J

2016-01-15

This paper details the sampling methods used with the field portable porous layer open tubular cryoadsorption (PLOT-cryo) approach, described in Part I of this two-part series, applied to several analytes of interest. We conducted tests with coumarin and 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (two solutes that were used in initial development of PLOT-cryo technology), naphthalene, aviation turbine kerosene, and diesel fuel, on a variety of matrices and test beds. We demonstrated that these analytes can be easily detected and reliably identified using the portable unit for analyte collection. By leveraging efficiency-boosting temperature control and the high flow rate multiple capillary wafer, very short collection times (as low as 3s) yielded accurate detection. For diesel fuel spiked on glass beads, we determined a method detection limit below 1 ppm. We observed greater variability among separate samples analyzed with the portable unit than previously documented in work using the laboratory-based PLOT-cryo technology. We identify three likely sources that may help explain the additional variation: the use of a compressed air source to generate suction, matrix geometry, and variability in the local vapor concentration around the sampling probe as solute depletion occurs both locally around the probe and in the test bed as a whole. This field-portable adaptation of the PLOT-cryo approach has numerous and diverse potential applications. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Field Portable Low Temperature Porous Layer Open Tubular Cryoadsorption Headspace Sampling and Analysis Part II: Applications*

PubMed Central

Harries, Megan; Bukovsky-Reyes, Santiago; Bruno, Thomas J.

2016-01-01

This paper details the sampling methods used with the field portable porous layer open tubular cryoadsorption (PLOT-cryo) approach, described in Part I of this two-part series, applied to several analytes of interest. We conducted tests with coumarin and 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (two solutes that were used in initial development of PLOT-cryo technology), naphthalene, aviation turbine kerosene, and diesel fuel, on a variety of matrices and test beds. We demonstrated that these analytes can be easily detected and reliably identified using the portable unit for analyte collection. By leveraging efficiency-boosting temperature control and the high flow rate multiple capillary wafer, very short collection times (as low as 3 s) yielded accurate detection. For diesel fuel spiked on glass beads, we determined a method detection limit below 1 ppm. We observed greater variability among separate samples analyzed with the portable unit than previously documented in work using the laboratory-based PLOT-cryo technology. We identify three likely sources that may help explain the additional variation: the use of a compressed air source to generate suction, matrix geometry, and variability in the local vapor concentration around the sampling probe as solute depletion occurs both locally around the probe and in the test bed as a whole. This field-portable adaptation of the PLOT-cryo approach has numerous and diverse potential applications. PMID:26726934

Personal Computer-less (PC-less) Microcontroller Training Kit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Somantri, Y.; Wahyudin, D.; Fushilat, I.

2018-02-01

The need of microcontroller training kit is necessary for practical work of students of electrical engineering education. However, to use available training kit not only costly but also does not meet the need of laboratory requirements. An affordable and portable microcontroller kit could answer such problem. This paper explains the design and development of Personal Computer Less (PC-Less) Microcontroller Training Kit. It was developed based on Lattepanda processor and Arduino microcontroller as target. The training kit equipped with advanced input-output interfaces that adopted the concept of low cost and low power system. The preliminary usability testing proved this device can be used as a tool for microcontroller programming and industrial automation training. By adopting the concept of portability, the device could be operated in the rural area which electricity and computer infrastructure are limited. Furthermore, the training kit is suitable for student of electrical engineering student from university and vocational high school.

Fuels processing for transportation fuel cell systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kumar, R.; Ahmed, S.

Fuel cells primarily use hydrogen as the fuel. This hydrogen must be produced from other fuels such as natural gas or methanol. The fuel processor requirements are affected by the fuel to be converted, the type of fuel cell to be supplied, and the fuel cell application. The conventional fuel processing technology has been reexamined to determine how it must be adapted for use in demanding applications such as transportation. The two major fuel conversion processes are steam reforming and partial oxidation reforming. The former is established practice for stationary applications; the latter offers certain advantages for mobile systems and is presently in various stages of development. This paper discusses these fuel processing technologies and the more recent developments for fuel cell systems used in transportation. The need for new materials in fuels processing, particularly in the area of reforming catalysis and hydrogen purification, is discussed.

Water reactive hydrogen fuel cell power system

DOEpatents

Wallace, Andrew P; Melack, John M; Lefenfeld, Michael

2014-01-21

A water reactive hydrogen fueled power system includes devices and methods to combine reactant fuel materials and aqueous solutions to generate hydrogen. The generated hydrogen is converted in a fuel cell to provide electricity. The water reactive hydrogen fueled power system includes a fuel cell, a water feed tray, and a fuel cartridge to generate power for portable power electronics. The removable fuel cartridge is encompassed by the water feed tray and fuel cell. The water feed tray is refillable with water by a user. The water is then transferred from the water feed tray into a fuel cartridge to generate hydrogen for the fuel cell which then produces power for the user.

Water reactive hydrogen fuel cell power system

DOEpatents

Wallace, Andrew P; Melack, John M; Lefenfeld, Michael

2014-11-25

A water reactive hydrogen fueled power system includes devices and methods to combine reactant fuel materials and aqueous solutions to generate hydrogen. The generated hydrogen is converted in a fuel cell to provide electricity. The water reactive hydrogen fueled power system includes a fuel cell, a water feed tray, and a fuel cartridge to generate power for portable power electronics. The removable fuel cartridge is encompassed by the water feed tray and fuel cell. The water feed tray is refillable with water by a user. The water is then transferred from the water feed tray into the fuel cartridge to generate hydrogen for the fuel cell which then produces power for the user.

Strong, Tough Glass Composites Developed for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Seals

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bansal, Narottam P.; Choi, Sung R.

2005-01-01

A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that continuously converts the chemical energy of a fuel directly into electrical energy. It consists of an electrolyte, an anode, and a cathode. Various types of fuel cells are available, such as direct methanol fuel cells, alkaline fuel cells, proton-exchange-membrane fuel cells, phosphoric acid fuel cells, molten carbonate fuel cells, and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). The salient features of an SOFC are all solid construction and high-temperature electrochemical-reaction-based operation, resulting in clean, efficient power generation from a variety of fuels. SOFCs are being developed for a broad range of applications, such as portable electronic devices, automobiles, power generation, and aeronautics.

Development of Key-Enabling Technologies for a Variable-blend Natural Gas Vehicle

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2017-12-01

A portable, economic and reliable sensor for the Natural Gas (NG) fuel quality has been developed. Both Wobbe Index (WI) and Methane Indexes (MI) as well as inert gas content (inert%) of the NG fuel can be measured in real time within 5% accuracy. Th...

Assessment and comparison of 100-MW coal gasification phosphoric acid fuel cell power plants

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lu, Cheng-Yi

1988-01-01

One of the advantages of fuel cell (FC) power plants is fuel versatility. With changes only in the fuel processor, the power plant will be able to accept a variety of fuels. This study was performed to design process diagrams, evaluate performance, and to estimate cost of 100 MW coal gasifier (CG)/phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) power plant systems utilizing coal, which is the largest single potential source of alternate hydrocarbon liquids and gases in the United States, as the fuel. Results of this study will identify the most promising integrated CG/PAFC design and its near-optimal operating conditions. The comparison is based on the performance and cost of electricity which is calculated under consistent financial assumptions.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sargent, S.A.; Pierson, T.R.; Steffe, J.F.

Apple juice processors generating up to 100 ton/day (90,718 kg/day) of pomace and incurring no disposal costs could not economically invest in a pile burning, fluidized-bed or suspension-fired system at present fossil fuel costs. Cost analysis is warranted for situations in which disposal costs are greater than $9.15/ton ($8.30/1000 kg) or in which fossil fuel price increases are expected in excess of 25%.

FUELS IN SOIL TEST KIT: FIELD USE OF DIESEL DOG SOIL TEST KITS

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Susan S. Sorini; John F. Schabron; Joseph F. Rovani, Jr.

Western Research Institute (WRI) has developed a new commercial product ready for technology transfer, the Diesel Dog{reg_sign} Portable Soil Test Kit, for performing analysis of fuel-contaminated soils in the field. The technology consists of a method developed by WRI (U.S. Patents 5,561,065 and 5,976,883) and hardware developed by WRI that allows the method to be performed in the field (patent pending). The method is very simple and does not require the use of highly toxic reagents. The aromatic components in a soil extract are measured by absorption at 254 nm with a field-portable photometer. WRI added significant value to themore » technology by taking the method through the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) approval and validation processes. The method is designated as ASTM Method D 5831-96, Standard Test Method for Screening Fuels in Soils. This ASTM designation allows the method to be used for federal compliance activities. In June 2001, the Diesel Dog technology won an American Chemical Society Regional Industrial Innovations Award. To gain field experience with the new technology, Diesel Dog kits have been used for a variety of site evaluation and cleanup activities. Information gained from these activities has led to improvements in hardware configurations and additional insight into correlating Diesel Dog results with results from laboratory methods. The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) used Diesel Dog Soil Test Kits to guide cleanups at a variety of sites throughout the state. ENSR, of Acton, Massachusetts, used a Diesel Dog Portable Soil Test Kit to evaluate sites in the Virgin Islands and Georgia. ChemTrack and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers successfully used a test kit to guide excavation at an abandoned FAA fuel-contaminated site near Fairbanks, Alaska. Barenco, Inc. is using a Diesel Dog Portable Soil Test Kit for site evaluations in Canada. A small spill of diesel fuel was cleaned up in Laramie, Wyoming using a Diesel Dog Soil Test Kit.« less

A portable high-definition electronic endoscope based on embedded system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Guang; Wang, Liqiang; Xu, Jin

2012-11-01

This paper presents a low power and portable highdefinition (HD) electronic endoscope based on CortexA8 embedded system. A 1/6 inch CMOS image sensor is used to acquire HD images with 1280 *800 pixels. The camera interface of A8 is designed to support images of various sizes and support multiple inputs of video format such as ITUR BT601/ 656 standard. Image rotation (90 degrees clockwise) and image process functions are achieved by CAMIF. The decode engine of the processor plays back or records HD videos at speed of 30 frames per second, builtin HDMI interface transmits high definition images to the external display. Image processing procedures such as demosaicking, color correction and auto white balance are realized on the A8 platform. Other functions are selected through OSD settings. An LCD panel displays the real time images. The snapshot pictures or compressed videos are saved in an SD card or transmited to a computer through USB interface. The size of the camera head is 4×4.8×15 mm with more than 3 meters working distance. The whole endoscope system can be powered by a lithium battery, with the advantages of miniature, low cost and portability.

Advanced techniques for repair of irradiated PWR fuel assemblies

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Knaab, H.; Westphal, M.

Kraftwerk union has recently designed and built a portable repair unit for use in nuclear power plants for repair of defective fuel assemblies where space limitations do not allow permanent installation of repair equipment. This new equipment is designed to be easily disassembled and decontaminated. The main component of the equipment is the fuel assembly reconstitution unit (FARU) which is placed on the floor of the spent fuel pool. The use of the FARU is described in the paper.

Investigation of the characteristics of a stacked direct borohydride fuel cell for portable applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kim, Cheolhwan; Kim, Kyu-Jung; Ha, Man Yeong

To investigate the possibility of the portable application of a direct borohydride fuel cell (DBFC), weight reduction of the stack and high stacking of the cells are investigated for practical running conditions. For weight reduction, carbon graphite is adopted as the bipolar plate material even though it has disadvantages in tight stacking, which results in stacking loss from insufficient material strength. For high stacking, it is essential to have a uniform fuel distribution among cells and channels to maintain equal electric load on each cell. In particular, the design of the anode channel is important because active hydrogen generation causes non-uniformity in the fuel flow-field of the cells and channels. To reduce the disadvantages of stacking force margin and fuel maldistribution, an O-ring type-sealing system with an internal manifold and a parallel anode channel design is adopted, and the characteristics of a single and a five-cell fuel cell stack are analyzed. By adopting carbon graphite, the stack weight can be reduced by 4.2 times with 12% of performance degradation from the insufficient stacking force. When cells are stacked, the performance exceeds the single-cell performance because of the stack temperature increase from the reduction of the radiation area from the narrow stacking of cells.

An efficient and portable SIMD algorithm for charge/current deposition in Particle-In-Cell codes

DOE PAGES

Vincenti, H.; Lobet, M.; Lehe, R.; ...

2016-09-19

In current computer architectures, data movement (from die to network) is by far the most energy consuming part of an algorithm (≈20pJ/word on-die to ≈10,000 pJ/word on the network). To increase memory locality at the hardware level and reduce energy consumption related to data movement, future exascale computers tend to use many-core processors on each compute nodes that will have a reduced clock speed to allow for efficient cooling. To compensate for frequency decrease, machine vendors are making use of long SIMD instruction registers that are able to process multiple data with one arithmetic operator in one clock cycle. SIMD registermore » length is expected to double every four years. As a consequence, Particle-In-Cell (PIC) codes will have to achieve good vectorization to fully take advantage of these upcoming architectures. In this paper, we present a new algorithm that allows for efficient and portable SIMD vectorization of current/charge deposition routines that are, along with the field gathering routines, among the most time consuming parts of the PIC algorithm. Our new algorithm uses a particular data structure that takes into account memory alignment constraints and avoids gather/scat;ter instructions that can significantly affect vectorization performances on current CPUs. The new algorithm was successfully implemented in the 3D skeleton PIC code PICSAR and tested on Haswell Xeon processors (AVX2-256 bits wide data registers). Results show a factor of ×2 to ×2.5 speed-up in double precision for particle shape factor of orders 1–3. The new algorithm can be applied as is on future KNL (Knights Landing) architectures that will include AVX-512 instruction sets with 512 bits register lengths (8 doubles/16 singles). Program summary Program Title: vec_deposition Program Files doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/nh77fv9k8c.1 Licensing provisions: BSD 3-Clause Programming language: Fortran 90 External routines/libraries:  OpenMP > 4.0 Nature of problem: Exascale architectures will have many-core processors per node with long vector data registers capable of performing one single instruction on multiple data during one clock cycle. Data register lengths are expected to double every four years and this pushes for new portable solutions for efficiently vectorizing Particle-In-Cell codes on these future many-core architectures. One of the main hotspot routines of the PIC algorithm is the current/charge deposition for which there is no efficient and portable vector algorithm. Solution method: Here we provide an efficient and portable vector algorithm of current/charge deposition routines that uses a new data structure, which significantly reduces gather/scatter operations. Vectorization is controlled using OpenMP 4.0 compiler directives for vectorization which ensures portability across different architectures. Restrictions: Here we do not provide the full PIC algorithm with an executable but only vector routines for current/charge deposition. These scalar/vector routines can be used as library routines in your 3D Particle-In-Cell code. However, to get the best performances out of vector routines you have to satisfy the two following requirements: (1) Your code should implement particle tiling (as explained in the manuscript) to allow for maximized cache reuse and reduce memory accesses that can hinder vector performances. The routines can be used directly on each particle tile. (2) You should compile your code with a Fortran 90 compiler (e.g Intel, gnu or cray) and provide proper alignment flags and compiler alignment directives (more details in README file).« less

An efficient and portable SIMD algorithm for charge/current deposition in Particle-In-Cell codes

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Vincenti, H.; Lobet, M.; Lehe, R.

In current computer architectures, data movement (from die to network) is by far the most energy consuming part of an algorithm (≈20pJ/word on-die to ≈10,000 pJ/word on the network). To increase memory locality at the hardware level and reduce energy consumption related to data movement, future exascale computers tend to use many-core processors on each compute nodes that will have a reduced clock speed to allow for efficient cooling. To compensate for frequency decrease, machine vendors are making use of long SIMD instruction registers that are able to process multiple data with one arithmetic operator in one clock cycle. SIMD registermore » length is expected to double every four years. As a consequence, Particle-In-Cell (PIC) codes will have to achieve good vectorization to fully take advantage of these upcoming architectures. In this paper, we present a new algorithm that allows for efficient and portable SIMD vectorization of current/charge deposition routines that are, along with the field gathering routines, among the most time consuming parts of the PIC algorithm. Our new algorithm uses a particular data structure that takes into account memory alignment constraints and avoids gather/scat;ter instructions that can significantly affect vectorization performances on current CPUs. The new algorithm was successfully implemented in the 3D skeleton PIC code PICSAR and tested on Haswell Xeon processors (AVX2-256 bits wide data registers). Results show a factor of ×2 to ×2.5 speed-up in double precision for particle shape factor of orders 1–3. The new algorithm can be applied as is on future KNL (Knights Landing) architectures that will include AVX-512 instruction sets with 512 bits register lengths (8 doubles/16 singles). Program summary Program Title: vec_deposition Program Files doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/nh77fv9k8c.1 Licensing provisions: BSD 3-Clause Programming language: Fortran 90 External routines/libraries:  OpenMP > 4.0 Nature of problem: Exascale architectures will have many-core processors per node with long vector data registers capable of performing one single instruction on multiple data during one clock cycle. Data register lengths are expected to double every four years and this pushes for new portable solutions for efficiently vectorizing Particle-In-Cell codes on these future many-core architectures. One of the main hotspot routines of the PIC algorithm is the current/charge deposition for which there is no efficient and portable vector algorithm. Solution method: Here we provide an efficient and portable vector algorithm of current/charge deposition routines that uses a new data structure, which significantly reduces gather/scatter operations. Vectorization is controlled using OpenMP 4.0 compiler directives for vectorization which ensures portability across different architectures. Restrictions: Here we do not provide the full PIC algorithm with an executable but only vector routines for current/charge deposition. These scalar/vector routines can be used as library routines in your 3D Particle-In-Cell code. However, to get the best performances out of vector routines you have to satisfy the two following requirements: (1) Your code should implement particle tiling (as explained in the manuscript) to allow for maximized cache reuse and reduce memory accesses that can hinder vector performances. The routines can be used directly on each particle tile. (2) You should compile your code with a Fortran 90 compiler (e.g Intel, gnu or cray) and provide proper alignment flags and compiler alignment directives (more details in README file).« less

PRAIS: Distributed, real-time knowledge-based systems made easy

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Goldstein, David G.

1990-01-01

This paper discusses an architecture for real-time, distributed (parallel) knowledge-based systems called the Parallel Real-time Artificial Intelligence System (PRAIS). PRAIS strives for transparently parallelizing production (rule-based) systems, even when under real-time constraints. PRAIS accomplishes these goals by incorporating a dynamic task scheduler, operating system extensions for fact handling, and message-passing among multiple copies of CLIPS executing on a virtual blackboard. This distributed knowledge-based system tool uses the portability of CLIPS and common message-passing protocols to operate over a heterogeneous network of processors.

Balloon-borne video cassette recorders for digital data storage

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Althouse, W. E.; Cook, W. R.

1985-01-01

A high-speed, high-capacity digital data storage system has been developed for a new balloon-borne gamma-ray telescope. The system incorporates sophisticated, yet easy to use and economical consumer products: the portable video cassette recorder (VCR) and a relatively newer item - the digital audio processor. The in-flight recording system employs eight VCRs and will provide a continuous data storage rate of 1.4 megabits/sec throughout a 40 hour balloon flight. Data storage capacity is 25 gigabytes and power consumption is only 10 watts.

Operating System Abstraction Layer (OSAL)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Yanchik, Nicholas J.

2007-01-01

This viewgraph presentation reviews the concept of the Operating System Abstraction Layer (OSAL) and its benefits. The OSAL is A small layer of software that allows programs to run on many different operating systems and hardware platforms It runs independent of the underlying OS & hardware and it is self-contained. The benefits of OSAL are that it removes dependencies from any one operating system, promotes portable, reusable flight software. It allows for Core Flight software (FSW) to be built for multiple processors and operating systems. The presentation discusses the functionality, the various OSAL releases, and describes the specifications.

Hydrogen generation by electrolysis of aqueous organic solutions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jeffries-Nakamura, Barbara (Inventor); Narayanan, Sekharipuram R. (Inventor); Chun, William (Inventor); Valdez, Thomas I. (Inventor)

2006-01-01

A device for electrolysis of an aqueous solution of an organic fuel. The electrolyte is a solid-state polymer membrane with anode and cathode catalysts on both surfaces for electro-oxidization and electro-reduction. A low-cost and portable hydrogen generator can be made based on the device with organic fuels such as methanol.

Hydrogen generation by electrolysis of aqueous organic solutions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Narayanan, Sekharipuram R. (Inventor); Chun, William (Inventor); Jeffries-Nakamura, Barbara (Inventor); Valdez, Thomas I. (Inventor)

2002-01-01

A device for electrolysis of an aqueous solution of an organic fuel. The electrolyte is a solid-state polymer membrane with anode and cathode catalysts on both surfaces for electro-oxidization and electro-reduction. A low-cost and portable hydrogen generator can be made based on the device with organic fuels such as methanol.

Power sources for portable electronics and hybrid cars: lithium batteries and fuel cells.

PubMed

Scrosati, Bruno

2005-01-01

The activities in progress in our laboratory for the development of batteries and fuel cells for portable electronics and hybrid car applications are reviewed and discussed. In the case of lithium batteries, the research has been mainly focused on the characterization of new electrode and electrolyte materials. Results related to disordered carbon anodes and improved, solvent-free, as well as gel-type, polymer electrolytes are particularly stressed. It is shown that the use of proper gel electrolytes, in combination with suitable electrode couples, allows the development of new types of safe, reliable, and low-cost lithium ion batteries which appear to be very promising power sources for hybrid vehicles. Some of the technologies proven to be successful in the lithium battery area are readapted for use in fuel cells. In particular, this approach has been followed for the preparation of low-cost and stable protonic membranes to be proposed as an alternative to the expensive, perfluorosulfonic membranes presently used in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Copyright 2005 The Japan Chemical Journal Forum and Wiley Periodicals, Inc

ISFET-based sensor signal processor chip design for environment monitoring applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chung, Wen-Yaw; Yang, Chung-Huang; Wang, Ming-Ga

2004-12-01

In recent years Ion-Sensitive Field Effect Transistor (ISFET) based transducers create valuable applications in physiological data acquisition and environment monitoring. This paper presents a mixed-mode ASIC design for potentiometric ISFET-based bio-chemical sensor applications including H+ sensing and hand-held pH meter. For battery power consideration, the proposed system consists of low voltage (3V) analog front-end readout circuits and digital processor has been developed and fabricated in a 0.5mm double-poly double-metal CMOS technology. To assure that the correct pH value can be measured, the two-point calibration circuitry based on the response of standard pH4 and pH7 buffer solution has been implemented by using algorithmic state machine hardware algorithms. The measurement accuracy of the chip is 10 bits and the measured range between pH 2 to pH 12 compared to ideal values is within the accuracy of 0.1pH. For homeland environmental applications, the system provide rapid, easy to use, and cost-effective on-site testing on the quality of water, such as drinking water, ground water and river water. The processor has a potential usage in battery-operated and portable devices in environmental monitoring applications compared to commercial hand-held pH meter.

Compact lidar system using laser diode, binary continuous wave power modulation, and an avalanche photodiode-based receiver controlled by a digital signal processor

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ardanuy, Antoni; Comerón, Adolfo

2018-04-01

We analyze the practical limits of a lidar system based on the use of a laser diode, random binary continuous wave power modulation, and an avalanche photodiode (APD)-based photereceiver, combined with the control and computing power of the digital signal processors (DSP) currently available. The target is to design a compact portable lidar system made all in semiconductor technology, with a low-power demand and an easy configuration of the system, allowing change in some of its features through software. Unlike many prior works, we emphasize the use of APDs instead of photomultiplier tubes to detect the return signal and the application of the system to measure not only hard targets, but also medium-range aerosols and clouds. We have developed an experimental prototype to evaluate the behavior of the system under different environmental conditions. Experimental results provided by the prototype are presented and discussed.

Programs for Testing Processor-in-Memory Computing Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Katz, Daniel S.

2006-01-01

The Multithreaded Microbenchmarks for Processor-In-Memory (PIM) Compilers, Simulators, and Hardware are computer programs arranged in a series for use in testing the performances of PIM computing systems, including compilers, simulators, and hardware. The programs at the beginning of the series test basic functionality; the programs at subsequent positions in the series test increasingly complex functionality. The programs are intended to be used while designing a PIM system, and can be used to verify that compilers, simulators, and hardware work correctly. The programs can also be used to enable designers of these system components to examine tradeoffs in implementation. Finally, these programs can be run on non-PIM hardware (either single-threaded or multithreaded) using the POSIX pthreads standard to verify that the benchmarks themselves operate correctly. [POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface for UNIX) is a set of standards that define how programs and operating systems interact with each other. pthreads is a library of pre-emptive thread routines that comply with one of the POSIX standards.

High performance in silico virtual drug screening on many-core processors.

PubMed

McIntosh-Smith, Simon; Price, James; Sessions, Richard B; Ibarra, Amaurys A

2015-05-01

Drug screening is an important part of the drug development pipeline for the pharmaceutical industry. Traditional, lab-based methods are increasingly being augmented with computational methods, ranging from simple molecular similarity searches through more complex pharmacophore matching to more computationally intensive approaches, such as molecular docking. The latter simulates the binding of drug molecules to their targets, typically protein molecules. In this work, we describe BUDE, the Bristol University Docking Engine, which has been ported to the OpenCL industry standard parallel programming language in order to exploit the performance of modern many-core processors. Our highly optimized OpenCL implementation of BUDE sustains 1.43 TFLOP/s on a single Nvidia GTX 680 GPU, or 46% of peak performance. BUDE also exploits OpenCL to deliver effective performance portability across a broad spectrum of different computer architectures from different vendors, including GPUs from Nvidia and AMD, Intel's Xeon Phi and multi-core CPUs with SIMD instruction sets.

High performance in silico virtual drug screening on many-core processors

PubMed Central

Price, James; Sessions, Richard B; Ibarra, Amaurys A

2015-01-01

Drug screening is an important part of the drug development pipeline for the pharmaceutical industry. Traditional, lab-based methods are increasingly being augmented with computational methods, ranging from simple molecular similarity searches through more complex pharmacophore matching to more computationally intensive approaches, such as molecular docking. The latter simulates the binding of drug molecules to their targets, typically protein molecules. In this work, we describe BUDE, the Bristol University Docking Engine, which has been ported to the OpenCL industry standard parallel programming language in order to exploit the performance of modern many-core processors. Our highly optimized OpenCL implementation of BUDE sustains 1.43 TFLOP/s on a single Nvidia GTX 680 GPU, or 46% of peak performance. BUDE also exploits OpenCL to deliver effective performance portability across a broad spectrum of different computer architectures from different vendors, including GPUs from Nvidia and AMD, Intel’s Xeon Phi and multi-core CPUs with SIMD instruction sets. PMID:25972727

Hydrogen storage with trilithium aluminum hexahydride

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Nathaniel, T.A.

1998-05-14

Fuel cells have good potential to replace batteries for many applications requiring moderate, portable electric power. Applications being researched can range from cellular telephones and radios to power generators for large camps. The primary advantages of fuel cells include high power density, low temperature operation, silent operation, no poisonous exhausts, high electric efficiency, and fast start-up capability. While many commercial industries are just beginning to look at the opportunities fuel cells present, the space program has driven the development of fuel cell technology. The paper discusses the status of the fuel cell and in particular, the technology for hydrogen storagemore » for fuel cell use.« less

Effects of fuel processing methods on industrial scale biogas-fuelled solid oxide fuel cell system for operating in wastewater treatment plants

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Farhad, Siamak; Yoo, Yeong; Hamdullahpur, Feridun

The performance of three solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) systems, fuelled by biogas produced through anaerobic digestion (AD) process, for heat and electricity generation in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is studied. Each system has a different fuel processing method to prevent carbon deposition over the anode catalyst under biogas fuelling. Anode gas recirculation (AGR), steam reforming (SR), and partial oxidation (POX) are the methods employed in systems I-III, respectively. A planar SOFC stack used in these systems is based on the anode-supported cells with Ni-YSZ anode, YSZ electrolyte and YSZ-LSM cathode, operated at 800 °C. A computer code has been developed for the simulation of the planar SOFC in cell, stack and system levels and applied for the performance prediction of the SOFC systems. The key operational parameters affecting the performance of the SOFC systems are identified. The effect of these parameters on the electrical and CHP efficiencies, the generated electricity and heat, the total exergy destruction, and the number of cells in SOFC stack of the systems are studied. The results show that among the SOFC systems investigated in this study, the AGR and SR fuel processor-based systems with electrical efficiency of 45.1% and 43%, respectively, are suitable to be applied in WWTPs. If the entire biogas produced in a WWTP is used in the AGR or SR fuel processor-based SOFC system, the electricity and heat required to operate the WWTP can be completely self-supplied and the extra electricity generated can be sold to the electrical grid.

Portable in-woods pyrolysis: Using forest biomass to reduce forest fuels, increase soil productivity, and sequester carbon

Treesearch

Deborah Page-Dumroese; Mark Coleman; Greg Jones; Tyron Venn; R. Kasten Dumroese; Nathanial Anderson; Woodam Chung; Dan Loeffler; Jim Archuleta; Mark Kimsey; Phil Badger; Terry Shaw; Kristin McElligott

2009-01-01

We describe the use of an in-woods portable pyrolysis unit that converts forest biomass to bio-oil and the application of the byproduct bio-char in a field trial. We also discuss how in-woods processing may reduce the need for long haul distances of lowvalue woody biomass and eliminate open, currently wasteful burning of forest biomass. If transportation costs can be...

Business Case for Fuel Cells 2016

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Curtin, Sandra; Gangi, Jennifer; Benjamin, Thomas G.

The report provides an overview of recent private sector fuel cell installations at U.S. businesses as of December 31, 2016. This list is by no means exhaustive. Over the past few decades, hundreds of thousands of fuel cells have been installed around the world, for primary or backup power, as well as in various other applications including portable and emergency backup power. Fuel cells have also been deployed in other applications such as heat and electricity for homes and apartments, material handling, passenger vehicles, buses, and remote, off-grid sites.

Analysis of H2 storage needs for early market non-motive fuel cell applications.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Johnson, Terry Alan; Moreno, Marcina; Arienti, Marco

Hydrogen fuel cells can potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the United States dependence on foreign oil, but issues with hydrogen storage are impeding their widespread use. To help overcome these challenges, this study analyzes opportunities for their near-term deployment in five categories of non-motive equipment: portable power, construction equipment, airport ground support equipment, telecom backup power, and man-portable power and personal electronics. To this end, researchers engaged end users, equipment manufacturers, and technical experts via workshops, interviews, and electronic means, and then compiled these data into meaningful and realistic requirements for hydrogen storage in specific target applications. In additionmore » to developing these requirements, end-user benefits (e.g., low noise and emissions, high efficiency, potentially lower maintenance costs) and concerns (e.g., capital cost, hydrogen availability) of hydrogen fuel cells in these applications were identified. Market data show potential deployments vary with application from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of units.« less

40 CFR 59.630 - EPA testing.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUND EMISSION STANDARDS FOR CONSUMER AND COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative... may test any portable fuel container subject to the standards of this subpart. (a) Certification and...

Measurements of the LHCb software stack on the ARM architecture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vijay Kartik, S.; Couturier, Ben; Clemencic, Marco; Neufeld, Niko

2014-06-01

The ARM architecture is a power-efficient design that is used in most processors in mobile devices all around the world today since they provide reasonable compute performance per watt. The current LHCb software stack is designed (and thus expected) to build and run on machines with the x86/x86_64 architecture. This paper outlines the process of measuring the performance of the LHCb software stack on the ARM architecture - specifically, the ARMv7 architecture on Cortex-A9 processors from NVIDIA and on full-fledged ARM servers with chipsets from Calxeda - and makes comparisons with the performance on x86_64 architectures on the Intel Xeon L5520/X5650 and AMD Opteron 6272. The paper emphasises the aspects of performance per core with respect to the power drawn by the compute nodes for the given performance - this ensures a fair real-world comparison with much more 'powerful' Intel/AMD processors. The comparisons of these real workloads in the context of LHCb are also complemented with the standard synthetic benchmarks HEPSPEC and Coremark. The pitfalls and solutions for the non-trivial task of porting the source code to build for the ARMv7 instruction set are presented. The specific changes in the build process needed for ARM-specific portions of the software stack are described, to serve as pointers for further attempts taken up by other groups in this direction. Cases where architecture-specific tweaks at the assembler lever (both in ROOT and the LHCb software stack) were needed for a successful compile are detailed - these cases are good indicators of where/how the software stack as well as the build system can be made more portable and multi-arch friendly. The experience gained from the tasks described in this paper are intended to i) assist in making an informed choice about ARM-based server solutions as a feasible low-power alternative to the current compute nodes, and ii) revisit the software design and build system for portability and generic improvements.

Development of new UV-I. I. Cerenkov Viewing Device

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kuribara, Masayuki; Nemoto, Koshichi

1994-02-01

The Cerenkov glow images from boiling-water reactors (BWR) and pressurized-water reactors (PWR) irradiated fuel assemblies are generally used for inspections. However, sometimes it is difficult or impossible to identify the image by the conventional Cerenkov Viewing Device (CVD), because of the long cooling time and/or low burnup. Now a new UV-I.I. (Ultra-Violet light Image Intensifier) CVD has been developed, which can detect the very weak Cerenkov glow from spent fuel assemblies. As this new device uses the newly developed proximity focused type UV-I.I., Cerenkov photons are used efficiently, producing better quality Cerenkov glow images. Moreover, since the image is convertedmore » to a video signal, it is easy to improve the signal to noise ratio (S/N) by an image processor. The new CVD was tested at BWR and PWR power plants in Japan, with fuel burnups ranging from 6,200--33,000 MWD/MTU (megawatt days per metric ton of uranium) and cooling times ranging from 370 to 6,200 d. The tests showed that the new CVD is superior to the conventional STA/CRIEPI CVD, and could detect very feeble Cerenkov glow images using an image processor.« less

Recovery Act: Advanced Direct Methanol Fuel Cell for Mobile Computing

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Fletcher, James H.; Cox, Philip; Harrington, William J

2013-09-03

ABSTRACT Project Title: Recovery Act: Advanced Direct Methanol Fuel Cell for Mobile Computing PROJECT OBJECTIVE The objective of the project was to advance portable fuel cell system technology towards the commercial targets of power density, energy density and lifetime. These targets were laid out in the DOE’s R&D roadmap to develop an advanced direct methanol fuel cell power supply that meets commercial entry requirements. Such a power supply will enable mobile computers to operate non-stop, unplugged from the wall power outlet, by using the high energy density of methanol fuel contained in a replaceable fuel cartridge. Specifically this project focusedmore » on balance-of-plant component integration and miniaturization, as well as extensive component, subassembly and integrated system durability and validation testing. This design has resulted in a pre-production power supply design and a prototype that meet the rigorous demands of consumer electronic applications. PROJECT TASKS The proposed work plan was designed to meet the project objectives, which corresponded directly with the objectives outlined in the Funding Opportunity Announcement: To engineer the fuel cell balance-of-plant and packaging to meet the needs of consumer electronic systems, specifically at power levels required for mobile computing. UNF used existing balance-of-plant component technologies developed under its current US Army CERDEC project, as well as a previous DOE project completed by PolyFuel, to further refine them to both miniaturize and integrate their functionality to increase the system power density and energy density. Benefits of UNF’s novel passive water recycling MEA (membrane electrode assembly) and the simplified system architecture it enabled formed the foundation of the design approach. The package design was hardened to address orientation independence, shock, vibration, and environmental requirements. Fuel cartridge and fuel subsystems were improved to ensure effective fuel containment. PROJECT OVERVIEW The University of North Florida (UNF), with project partner the University of Florida, recently completed the Department of Energy (DOE) project entitled “Advanced Direct Methanol Fuel Cell for Mobile Computing”. The primary objective of the project was to advance portable fuel cell system technology towards the commercial targets as laid out in the DOE R&D roadmap by developing a 20-watt, direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC), portable power supply based on the UNF innovative “passive water recovery” MEA. Extensive component, sub-system, and system development and testing was undertaken to meet the rigorous demands of the consumer electronic application. Numerous brassboard (nonpackaged) systems were developed to optimize the integration process and facilitating control algorithm development. The culmination of the development effort was a fully-integrated, DMFC, power supply (referred to as DP4). The project goals were 40 W/kg for specific power, 55 W/l for power density, and 575 Whr/l for energy density. It should be noted that the specific power and power density were for the power section only, and did not include the hybrid battery. The energy density is based on three, 200 ml, fuel cartridges, and also did not include the hybrid battery. The results show that the DP4 system configured without the methanol concentration sensor exceeded all performance goals, achieving 41.5 W/kg for specific power, 55.3 W/l for power density, and 623 Whr/l for energy density. During the project, the DOE revised its technical targets, and the definition of many of these targets, for the portable power application. With this revision, specific power, power density, specific energy (Whr/kg), and energy density are based on the total system, including fuel tank, fuel, and hybridization battery. Fuel capacity is not defined, but the same value is required for all calculations. Test data showed that the DP4 exceeded all 2011 Technical Status values; for example, the DP4 energy density was 373 Whr/l versus the DOE 2011 status of 200 Whr/l. For the DOE 2013 Technical Goals, the operation time was increased from 10 hours to 14.3 hours. Under these conditions, the DP4 closely approached or surpassed the technical targets; for example, the DP4 achieved 468 Whr/l versus the goal of 500 Whr/l. Thus, UNF has successfully met the project goals. A fully-operational, 20-watt DMFC power supply was developed based on the UNF passive water recovery MEA. The power supply meets the project performance goals and advances portable power technology towards the commercialization targets set by the DOE.« less

Biomedical engineering tasks. [electrode development for electrocardiography and electroencephalography

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1972-01-01

Electrocardiographic and vectorcardiographic bioinstrumentation work centered on the development of a new electrode system harness for Project Skylab. Evaluation of several silver electrode configurations proved superior impedance voltage performance for silver/silver chloride electrodes mounted flush by using a paste adhesive. A portable ECG processor has been designed and a breadboard unit has been built to sample ECG input data at a rate of 500 samples per second for arrhythmia detection. A small real time display driver program has been developed for statistical analysis on selected QPS features. Engineering work on a sleep monitoring cap assembly continued.

Scalability and Portability of Two Parallel Implementations of ADI

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Phung, Thanh; VanderWijngaart, Rob F.

1994-01-01

Two domain decompositions for the implementation of the NAS Scalar Penta-diagonal Parallel Benchmark on MIMD systems are investigated, namely transposition and multi-partitioning. Hardware platforms considered are the Intel iPSC/860 and Paragon XP/S-15, and clusters of SGI workstations on ethernet, communicating through PVM. It is found that the multi-partitioning strategy offers the kind of coarse granularity that allows scaling up to hundreds of processors on a massively parallel machine. Moreover, efficiency is retained when the code is ported verbatim (save message passing syntax) to a PVM environment on a modest size cluster of workstations.

Portable Fuel Quality Analyzer

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-01-27

other transportation industries, such as trucking. The PFQA could also be used in fuel blending operations performed at petroleum, ethanol and biodiesel plants. ...Report Documentation Page Form ApprovedOMB No. 0704-0188 Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per...24476 12. DISTRIBUTION/AVAILABILITY STATEMENT Approved for public release; distribution unlimited 13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES 14. ABSTRACT The

The Business Case for Fuel Cells: Delivering Sustainable Value

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Curtin, Sandra; Gangi, Jennifer

This report, written and compiled by Argonne National Laboratory and the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association with support from the Fuel Cell Technologies Office, provides an overview of private sector fuel cell installations at U.S. businesses as of December 31, 2016. Over the past few decades, hundreds of thousands of fuel cells have been installed around the world, for primary or backup power, as well as in various other applications including portable and emergency backup power. Fuel cells have also been deployed in other applications such as heat and electricity for homes and apartments, material handling, passenger vehicles, buses,more » and remote, off-grid sites.« less

Real-time trajectory optimization on parallel processors

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Psiaki, Mark L.

1993-01-01

A parallel algorithm has been developed for rapidly solving trajectory optimization problems. The goal of the work has been to develop an algorithm that is suitable to do real-time, on-line optimal guidance through repeated solution of a trajectory optimization problem. The algorithm has been developed on an INTEL iPSC/860 message passing parallel processor. It uses a zero-order-hold discretization of a continuous-time problem and solves the resulting nonlinear programming problem using a custom-designed augmented Lagrangian nonlinear programming algorithm. The algorithm achieves parallelism of function, derivative, and search direction calculations through the principle of domain decomposition applied along the time axis. It has been encoded and tested on 3 example problems, the Goddard problem, the acceleration-limited, planar minimum-time to the origin problem, and a National Aerospace Plane minimum-fuel ascent guidance problem. Execution times as fast as 118 sec of wall clock time have been achieved for a 128-stage Goddard problem solved on 32 processors. A 32-stage minimum-time problem has been solved in 151 sec on 32 processors. A 32-stage National Aerospace Plane problem required 2 hours when solved on 32 processors. A speed-up factor of 7.2 has been achieved by using 32-nodes instead of 1-node to solve a 64-stage Goddard problem.

Certification and Compliance for Nonroad Vehicles and Engines

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Certification and compliance information for aircraft, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and dirt bikes, locomotives, marine compression-ignition (CI) engines, nonroad CI engines, nonroad spark (SI) engines, portable fuel containers, snowmobiles.

Parallel community climate model: Description and user`s guide

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Drake, J.B.; Flanery, R.E.; Semeraro, B.D.

This report gives an overview of a parallel version of the NCAR Community Climate Model, CCM2, implemented for MIMD massively parallel computers using a message-passing programming paradigm. The parallel implementation was developed on an Intel iPSC/860 with 128 processors and on the Intel Delta with 512 processors, and the initial target platform for the production version of the code is the Intel Paragon with 2048 processors. Because the implementation uses a standard, portable message-passing libraries, the code has been easily ported to other multiprocessors supporting a message-passing programming paradigm. The parallelization strategy used is to decompose the problem domain intomore » geographical patches and assign each processor the computation associated with a distinct subset of the patches. With this decomposition, the physics calculations involve only grid points and data local to a processor and are performed in parallel. Using parallel algorithms developed for the semi-Lagrangian transport, the fast Fourier transform and the Legendre transform, both physics and dynamics are computed in parallel with minimal data movement and modest change to the original CCM2 source code. Sequential or parallel history tapes are written and input files (in history tape format) are read sequentially by the parallel code to promote compatibility with production use of the model on other computer systems. A validation exercise has been performed with the parallel code and is detailed along with some performance numbers on the Intel Paragon and the IBM SP2. A discussion of reproducibility of results is included. A user`s guide for the PCCM2 version 2.1 on the various parallel machines completes the report. Procedures for compilation, setup and execution are given. A discussion of code internals is included for those who may wish to modify and use the program in their own research.« less

Processing of thermionic power on an electrically propelled spacecraft

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Macie, T. W.

1973-01-01

A study to define the power processing equipment required between a thermionic reactor and an array of mercury-ion thrusters for a nuclear electric propulsion system is reported. Observations and recommendations that resulted from this study were: (1) the preferred thermionic-fuel-element source voltages are 23 V or higher; (2) transistor characteristics exert a strong effect on power processor mass; (3) the power processor mass could be considerably reduced should the magnetic materials that exhibit low losses at high frequencies, that have a high Curie point, and that can operate at 15 to 20 kG become avaliable; (4) electrical component packaging on the radiator could reduce the area that is sensitive to meteoroid penetration, thereby reducing the meteoroid shielding mass requirement; (5) an experimental model of the power processor design should be built and tested to verify the efficiencies, masses, and all the automatic operational aspects of the design.

A Methodology for Distributing the Corporate Database.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McFadden, Fred R.

The trend to distributed processing is being fueled by numerous forces, including advances in technology, corporate downsizing, increasing user sophistication, and acquisitions and mergers. Increasingly, the trend in corporate information systems (IS) departments is toward sharing resources over a network of multiple types of processors, operating…

Purifier-integrated methanol reformer for fuel cell vehicles

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Han, Jaesung; Kim, Il-soo; Choi, Keun-Sup

We developed a compact, 3-kW, purifier-integrated modular reformer which becomes the building block of full-scale 30-kW or 50-kW methanol fuel processors for fuel cell vehicles. Our proprietary technologies regarding hydrogen purification by composite metal membrane and catalytic combustion by washcoated wire-mesh catalyst were combined with the conventional methanol steam-reforming technology, resulting in higher conversion, excellent quality of product hydrogen, and better thermal efficiency than any other systems using preferential oxidation. In this system, steam reforming, hydrogen purification, and catalytic combustion all take place in a single reactor so that the whole system is compact and easy to operate. Hydrogen from the module is ultrahigh pure (99.9999% or better), hence there is no power degradation of PEMFC stack due to contamination by CO. Also, since only pure hydrogen is supplied to the anode of the PEMFC stack, 100% hydrogen utilization is possible in the stack. The module produces 2.3 Nm 3/h of hydrogen, which is equivalent to 3 kW when PEMFC has 43% efficiency. Thermal efficiency (HHV of product H 2/HHV of MeOH in) of the module is 89% and the power density of the module is 0.77 kW/l. This work was conducted in cooperation with Hyundai Motor Company in the form of a Korean national project. Currently the module is under test with an actual fuel cell stack in order to verify its performance. Sooner or later a full-scale 30-kW system will be constructed by connecting these modules in series and parallel and will serve as the fuel processor for the Korean first fuel cell hybrid vehicle.

77 FR 72746 - Regulation of Fuels and Fuel Additives: Modifications to Renewable Fuel Standard and Diesel...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-12-06

...EPA published a direct final rule on October 9, 2012 to amend the definition of heating oil in 40 CFR 80.1401 in the Renewable Fuel Standard (``RFS'') program under section 211(o) of the Clean Air Act. The direct final rule also amended requirements under EPA's diesel sulfur program related to the sulfur content of locomotive and marine diesel fuel produced by transmix processors, and the fuel marker requirements for 500 ppm sulfur locomotive and marine (LM) diesel fuel to allow for solvent yellow 124 marker to transition out of the distribution system. Because EPA received adverse comments on the heating oil definition and transmix amendments, we are withdrawing those portions of the direct final rule. Because EPA did not receive adverse comments with respect to the yellow marker amendments, those amendments will become effective as indicated in the direct final rule.

Parallelization of a Monte Carlo particle transport simulation code

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hadjidoukas, P.; Bousis, C.; Emfietzoglou, D.

2010-05-01

We have developed a high performance version of the Monte Carlo particle transport simulation code MC4. The original application code, developed in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) for Microsoft Excel, was first rewritten in the C programming language for improving code portability. Several pseudo-random number generators have been also integrated and studied. The new MC4 version was then parallelized for shared and distributed-memory multiprocessor systems using the Message Passing Interface. Two parallel pseudo-random number generator libraries (SPRNG and DCMT) have been seamlessly integrated. The performance speedup of parallel MC4 has been studied on a variety of parallel computing architectures including an Intel Xeon server with 4 dual-core processors, a Sun cluster consisting of 16 nodes of 2 dual-core AMD Opteron processors and a 200 dual-processor HP cluster. For large problem size, which is limited only by the physical memory of the multiprocessor server, the speedup results are almost linear on all systems. We have validated the parallel implementation against the serial VBA and C implementations using the same random number generator. Our experimental results on the transport and energy loss of electrons in a water medium show that the serial and parallel codes are equivalent in accuracy. The present improvements allow for studying of higher particle energies with the use of more accurate physical models, and improve statistics as more particles tracks can be simulated in low response time.

Real-time portable system for fabric defect detection using an ARM processor

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fernandez-Gallego, J. A.; Yañez-Puentes, J. P.; Ortiz-Jaramillo, B.; Alvarez, J.; Orjuela-Vargas, S. A.; Philips, W.

2012-06-01

Modern textile industry seeks to produce textiles as little defective as possible since the presence of defects can decrease the final price of products from 45% to 65%. Automated visual inspection (AVI) systems, based on image analysis, have become an important alternative for replacing traditional inspections methods that involve human tasks. An AVI system gives the advantage of repeatability when implemented within defined constrains, offering more objective and reliable results for particular tasks than human inspection. Costs of automated inspection systems development can be reduced using modular solutions with embedded systems, in which an important advantage is the low energy consumption. Among the possibilities for developing embedded systems, the ARM processor has been explored for acquisition, monitoring and simple signal processing tasks. In a recent approach we have explored the use of the ARM processor for defects detection by implementing the wavelet transform. However, the computation speed of the preprocessing was not yet sufficient for real time applications. In this approach we significantly improve the preprocessing speed of the algorithm, by optimizing matrix operations, such that it is adequate for a real time application. The system was tested for defect detection using different defect types. The paper is focused in giving a detailed description of the basis of the algorithm implementation, such that other algorithms may use of the ARM operations for fast implementations.

Direct Final Rule for Technical Amendments for Marine Spark-Ignition Engines and Vessels

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Rule published September 16, 2010 to make technical amendments to the design standard for portable marine fuel tanks. This rule incorporates safe recommended practices, developed through industry consensus.

Micro solid oxide fuel cell fabricated on porous stainless steel: a new strategy for enhanced thermal cycling ability

PubMed Central

Kim, Kun Joong; Park, Byung Hyun; Kim, Sun Jae; Lee, Younki; Bae, Hongyeul; Choi, Gyeong Man

2016-01-01

Miniaturized solid oxide fuel cells (micro-SOFCs) are being extensively studied as a promising alternative to Li batteries for next generation portable power. A new micro-SOFC is designed and fabricated which shows enhanced thermal robustness by employing oxide-based thin-film electrode and porous stainless steel (STS) substrate. To deposit gas-tight thin-film electrolyte on STS, nano-porous composite oxide is proposed and applied as a new contact layer on STS. The micro-SOFC fabricated on composite oxide- STS dual layer substrate shows the peak power density of 560 mW cm−2 at 550 °C and maintains this power density during rapid thermal cycles. This cell may be suitable for portable electronic device that requires high power-density and fast thermal cycling. PMID:26928921

Micro solid oxide fuel cell fabricated on porous stainless steel: a new strategy for enhanced thermal cycling ability.

PubMed

Kim, Kun Joong; Park, Byung Hyun; Kim, Sun Jae; Lee, Younki; Bae, Hongyeul; Choi, Gyeong Man

2016-03-01

Miniaturized solid oxide fuel cells (micro-SOFCs) are being extensively studied as a promising alternative to Li batteries for next generation portable power. A new micro-SOFC is designed and fabricated which shows enhanced thermal robustness by employing oxide-based thin-film electrode and porous stainless steel (STS) substrate. To deposit gas-tight thin-film electrolyte on STS, nano-porous composite oxide is proposed and applied as a new contact layer on STS. The micro-SOFC fabricated on composite oxide- STS dual layer substrate shows the peak power density of 560 mW cm(-2) at 550 °C and maintains this power density during rapid thermal cycles. This cell may be suitable for portable electronic device that requires high power-density and fast thermal cycling.

Advanced Diesel Oil Fuel Processor Development

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-06-01

water exit 29 sample quencher: gas sample line inlet 30 sample quencher: gas sample line exit 31 sample quencher: cooling water inlet 32 desulfuriser ...exit line 33, 34 desulfurimer 35 heat exchanger: process gas exit (to desulfuriser ) 38 shift reactor inlet (top) 37 shift reactor: cooling air exit

An efficient and portable SIMD algorithm for charge/current deposition in Particle-In-Cell codes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vincenti, H.; Lobet, M.; Lehe, R.; Sasanka, R.; Vay, J.-L.

2017-01-01

In current computer architectures, data movement (from die to network) is by far the most energy consuming part of an algorithm (≈ 20 pJ/word on-die to ≈10,000 pJ/word on the network). To increase memory locality at the hardware level and reduce energy consumption related to data movement, future exascale computers tend to use many-core processors on each compute nodes that will have a reduced clock speed to allow for efficient cooling. To compensate for frequency decrease, machine vendors are making use of long SIMD instruction registers that are able to process multiple data with one arithmetic operator in one clock cycle. SIMD register length is expected to double every four years. As a consequence, Particle-In-Cell (PIC) codes will have to achieve good vectorization to fully take advantage of these upcoming architectures. In this paper, we present a new algorithm that allows for efficient and portable SIMD vectorization of current/charge deposition routines that are, along with the field gathering routines, among the most time consuming parts of the PIC algorithm. Our new algorithm uses a particular data structure that takes into account memory alignment constraints and avoids gather/scatter instructions that can significantly affect vectorization performances on current CPUs. The new algorithm was successfully implemented in the 3D skeleton PIC code PICSAR and tested on Haswell Xeon processors (AVX2-256 bits wide data registers). Results show a factor of × 2 to × 2.5 speed-up in double precision for particle shape factor of orders 1- 3. The new algorithm can be applied as is on future KNL (Knights Landing) architectures that will include AVX-512 instruction sets with 512 bits register lengths (8 doubles/16 singles).

46 CFR 27.102 - Incorporation by reference.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... Street, Suite 10, Annapolis, MD 21403 H-25-1986—Portable Fuel Systems for Flammable Liquids 27.211 H-33... Clean Agent Fire Extinguishing Systems, 2000 edition 27.101 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), 400...

46 CFR 27.102 - Incorporation by reference.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... Street, Suite 10, Annapolis, MD 21403 H-25-1986—Portable Fuel Systems for Flammable Liquids 27.211 H-33... Clean Agent Fire Extinguishing Systems, 2000 edition 27.101 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), 400...

46 CFR 27.102 - Incorporation by reference.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... Street, Suite 10, Annapolis, MD 21403 H-25-1986—Portable Fuel Systems for Flammable Liquids 27.211 H-33... Clean Agent Fire Extinguishing Systems, 2000 edition 27.101 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), 400...

46 CFR 27.102 - Incorporation by reference.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

... Street, Suite 10, Annapolis, MD 21403 H-25-1986—Portable Fuel Systems for Flammable Liquids 27.211 H-33... Clean Agent Fire Extinguishing Systems, 2000 edition 27.101 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), 400...

40 CFR 279.70 - Applicability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... THE MANAGEMENT OF USED OIL Standards for Used Oil Fuel Marketers § 279.70 Applicability. (a) Any... forth in § 279.11. (b) The following persons are not marketers subject to this subpart: (1) Used oil... oil to processor/re-refiners who incidentally burn used oil are not marketers subject to this Subpart...

A System-on-Chip Solution for Point-of-Care Ultrasound Imaging Systems: Architecture and ASIC Implementation.

PubMed

Kang, Jeeun; Yoon, Changhan; Lee, Jaejin; Kye, Sang-Bum; Lee, Yongbae; Chang, Jin Ho; Kim, Gi-Duck; Yoo, Yangmo; Song, Tai-kyong

2016-04-01

In this paper, we present a novel system-on-chip (SOC) solution for a portable ultrasound imaging system (PUS) for point-of-care applications. The PUS-SOC includes all of the signal processing modules (i.e., the transmit and dynamic receive beamformer modules, mid- and back-end processors, and color Doppler processors) as well as an efficient architecture for hardware-based imaging methods (e.g., dynamic delay calculation, multi-beamforming, and coded excitation and compression). The PUS-SOC was fabricated using a UMC 130-nm NAND process and has 16.8 GFLOPS of computing power with a total equivalent gate count of 12.1 million, which is comparable to a Pentium-4 CPU. The size and power consumption of the PUS-SOC are 27×27 mm(2) and 1.2 W, respectively. Based on the PUS-SOC, a prototype hand-held US imaging system was implemented. Phantom experiments demonstrated that the PUS-SOC can provide appropriate image quality for point-of-care applications with a compact PDA size ( 200×120×45 mm(3)) and 3 hours of battery life.

Fuel-Flexible Engines for Portable-Power Applications

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-05-31

military grade, JP8, respectively. Repeated testing procedures elucidated the need for better measurement and control of the glow plug intensity ...different fuels that are currently available for market consumption. While petroleum- based fuels are being tested in this research, the researchers are...0.8 210 15 TA4, TA7 Gasoline C8-H18 0.75 280 15.1 TA7 Light Diesel C8-H18 0.85 210 15 TA7 Medium Diesel C14-H30 0.85 210 15 TA7 Heavy Diesel C21-H44

Onboard fuel reformers for fuel cell vehicles: Equilibrium, kinetic and system modeling

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kreutz, T.G.; Steinbugler, M.M.; Ogden, J.M.

1996-12-31

On-board reforming of liquid fuels to hydrogen for use in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) has been the subject of numerous investigations. In many respects, liquid fuels represent a more attractive method of carrying hydrogen than compressed hydrogen itself, promising greater vehicle range, shorter refilling times, increased safety, and perhaps most importantly, utilization of the current fuel distribution infrastructure. The drawbacks of on-board reformers include their inherent complexity [for example a POX reactor includes: a fuel vaporizer, a reformer, water-gas shift reactors, a preferential oxidation (PROX) unit for CO cleanup, heat exchangers for thermal integration, sensorsmore » and controls, etc.], weight, and expense relative to compressed H{sub 2}, as well as degraded fuel cell performance due to the presence of inert gases and impurities in the reformate. Partial oxidation (POX) of automotive fuels is another alternative for hydrogen production. This paper provides an analysis of POX reformers and a fuel economy comparison of vehicles powered by on-board POX and SRM fuel processors.« less

Development of a Solid-Oxide Fuel Cell/Gas Turbine Hybrid System Model for Aerospace Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Freeh, Joshua E.; Pratt, Joseph W.; Brouwer, Jacob

2004-01-01

Recent interest in fuel cell-gas turbine hybrid applications for the aerospace industry has led to the need for accurate computer simulation models to aid in system design and performance evaluation. To meet this requirement, solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and fuel processor models have been developed and incorporated into the Numerical Propulsion Systems Simulation (NPSS) software package. The SOFC and reformer models solve systems of equations governing steady-state performance using common theoretical and semi-empirical terms. An example hybrid configuration is presented that demonstrates the new capability as well as the interaction with pre-existing gas turbine and heat exchanger models. Finally, a comparison of calculated SOFC performance with experimental data is presented to demonstrate model validity. Keywords: Solid Oxide Fuel Cell, Reformer, System Model, Aerospace, Hybrid System, NPSS

Optimisation of a parallel ocean general circulation model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Beare, M. I.; Stevens, D. P.

1997-10-01

This paper presents the development of a general-purpose parallel ocean circulation model, for use on a wide range of computer platforms, from traditional scalar machines to workstation clusters and massively parallel processors. Parallelism is provided, as a modular option, via high-level message-passing routines, thus hiding the technical intricacies from the user. An initial implementation highlights that the parallel efficiency of the model is adversely affected by a number of factors, for which optimisations are discussed and implemented. The resulting ocean code is portable and, in particular, allows science to be achieved on local workstations that could otherwise only be undertaken on state-of-the-art supercomputers.

Diderot: a Domain-Specific Language for Portable Parallel Scientific Visualization and Image Analysis.

PubMed

Kindlmann, Gordon; Chiw, Charisee; Seltzer, Nicholas; Samuels, Lamont; Reppy, John

2016-01-01

Many algorithms for scientific visualization and image analysis are rooted in the world of continuous scalar, vector, and tensor fields, but are programmed in low-level languages and libraries that obscure their mathematical foundations. Diderot is a parallel domain-specific language that is designed to bridge this semantic gap by providing the programmer with a high-level, mathematical programming notation that allows direct expression of mathematical concepts in code. Furthermore, Diderot provides parallel performance that takes advantage of modern multicore processors and GPUs. The high-level notation allows a concise and natural expression of the algorithms and the parallelism allows efficient execution on real-world datasets.

Users manual for the Chameleon parallel programming tools

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Gropp, W.; Smith, B.

1993-06-01

Message passing is a common method for writing programs for distributed-memory parallel computers. Unfortunately, the lack of a standard for message passing has hampered the construction of portable and efficient parallel programs. In an attempt to remedy this problem, a number of groups have developed their own message-passing systems, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Chameleon is a second-generation system of this type. Rather than replacing these existing systems, Chameleon is meant to supplement them by providing a uniform way to access many of these systems. Chameleon`s goals are to (a) be very lightweight (low over-head), (b) be highlymore » portable, and (c) help standardize program startup and the use of emerging message-passing operations such as collective operations on subsets of processors. Chameleon also provides a way to port programs written using PICL or Intel NX message passing to other systems, including collections of workstations. Chameleon is tracking the Message-Passing Interface (MPI) draft standard and will provide both an MPI implementation and an MPI transport layer. Chameleon provides support for heterogeneous computing by using p4 and PVM. Chameleon`s support for homogeneous computing includes the portable libraries p4, PICL, and PVM and vendor-specific implementation for Intel NX, IBM EUI (SP-1), and Thinking Machines CMMD (CM-5). Support for Ncube and PVM 3.x is also under development.« less

Field-portable lensfree tomographic microscope†

PubMed Central

Isikman, Serhan O.; Bishara, Waheb; Sikora, Uzair; Yaglidere, Oguzhan; Yeah, John; Ozcan, Aydogan

2011-01-01

We present a field-portable lensfree tomographic microscope, which can achieve sectional imaging of a large volume (~20 mm3) on a chip with an axial resolution of <7 μm. In this compact tomographic imaging platform (weighing only ~110 grams), 24 light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that are each butt-coupled to a fibre-optic waveguide are controlled through a cost-effective micro-processor to sequentially illuminate the sample from different angles to record lensfree holograms of the sample that is placed on the top of a digital sensor array. In order to generate pixel super-resolved (SR) lensfree holograms and hence digitally improve the achievable lateral resolution, multiple sub-pixel shifted holograms are recorded at each illumination angle by electromagnetically actuating the fibre-optic waveguides using compact coils and magnets. These SR projection holograms obtained over an angular range of ~50° are rapidly reconstructed to yield projection images of the sample, which can then be back-projected to compute tomograms of the objects on the sensor-chip. The performance of this compact and light-weight lensfree tomographic microscope is validated by imaging micro-beads of different dimensions as well as a Hymenolepis nana egg, which is an infectious parasitic flatworm. Achieving a decent three-dimensional spatial resolution, this field-portable on-chip optical tomographic microscope might provide a useful toolset for telemedicine and high-throughput imaging applications in resource-poor settings. PMID:21573311

Fuel-rich catalytic combustion: A fuel processor for high-speed propulsion

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Brabbs, Theodore A.; Rollbuhler, R. James; Lezberg, Erwin A.

1990-01-01

Fuel-rich catalytic combustion of Jet-A fuel was studied over the equivalence ratio range 4.7 to 7.8, which yielded combustion temperatures of 1250 to 1060 K. The process was soot-free and the gaseous products were similar to those obtained in the iso-octane study. A carbon atom balance across the catalyst bed calculated for the gaseous products accounted for about 70 to 90 percent of the fuel carbon; the balance was condensed as a liquid in the cold trap. It was shown that 52 to 77 percent of the fuel carbon was C1, C2, and C3 molecules. The viability of using fuel-rich catalytic combustion as a technique for preheating a practical fuel to very high temperatures was demonstrated. Preliminary results from the scaled up version of the catalytic combustor produced a high-temperature fuel containing large amounts of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The balance of the fuel was completely vaporized and in various stages of pyrolysis and oxidation. Visual observations indicate that there was no soot present.

Present Status and Extensions of the Monte Carlo Performance Benchmark

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hoogenboom, J. Eduard; Petrovic, Bojan; Martin, William R.

2014-06-01

The NEA Monte Carlo Performance benchmark started in 2011 aiming to monitor over the years the abilities to perform a full-size Monte Carlo reactor core calculation with a detailed power production for each fuel pin with axial distribution. This paper gives an overview of the contributed results thus far. It shows that reaching a statistical accuracy of 1 % for most of the small fuel zones requires about 100 billion neutron histories. The efficiency of parallel execution of Monte Carlo codes on a large number of processor cores shows clear limitations for computer clusters with common type computer nodes. However, using true supercomputers the speedup of parallel calculations is increasing up to large numbers of processor cores. More experience is needed from calculations on true supercomputers using large numbers of processors in order to predict if the requested calculations can be done in a short time. As the specifications of the reactor geometry for this benchmark test are well suited for further investigations of full-core Monte Carlo calculations and a need is felt for testing other issues than its computational performance, proposals are presented for extending the benchmark to a suite of benchmark problems for evaluating fission source convergence for a system with a high dominance ratio, for coupling with thermal-hydraulics calculations to evaluate the use of different temperatures and coolant densities and to study the correctness and effectiveness of burnup calculations. Moreover, other contemporary proposals for a full-core calculation with realistic geometry and material composition will be discussed.

System Design of a Natural Gas PEM Fuel Cell Power Plant for Buildings

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Joe Ferrall, Tim Rehg, Vesna Stanic

2000-09-30

The following conclusions are made based on this analysis effort: (1) High-temperature PEM data are not available; (2) Stack development effort for Phase II is required; (3) System results are by definition preliminary, mostly due to the immaturity of the high-temperature stack; other components of the system are relatively well defined; (4) The Grotthuss conduction mechanism yields the preferred system characteristics; the Grotthuss conduction mechanism is also much less technically mature than the vehicle mechanism; (5) Fuel processor technology is available today and can be procured for Phase II (steam or ATR); (6) The immaturity of high-temperature membrane technology requiresmore » that a robust system design be developed in Phase II that is capable of operating over a wide temperature and pressure range - (a) Unpressurized or Pressurized PEM (Grotthuss mechanism) at 140 C, Highest temperature most favorable, Lowest water requirement most favorable, Pressurized recommended for base loaded operation, Unpressurized may be preferred for load following; (b) Pressurized PEM (vehicle mechanism) at about 100 C, Pressure required for saturation, Fuel cell technology currently available, stack development required. The system analysis and screening evaluation resulted in the identification of the following components for the most promising system: (1) Steam reforming fuel processor; (2) Grotthuss mechanism fuel cell stack operating at 140 C; (3) Means to deliver system waste heat to a cogeneration unit; (4) Pressurized system utilizing a turbocompressor for a base-load power application. If duty cycling is anticipated, the benefits of compression may be offset due to complexity of control. In this case (and even in the base loaded case), the turbocompressor can be replaced with a blower for low-pressure operation.« less

Reactant gas composition for fuel cell potential control

DOEpatents

Bushnell, Calvin L.; Davis, Christopher L.

1991-01-01

A fuel cell (10) system in which a nitrogen (N.sub.2) gas is used on the anode section (11) and a nitrogen/oxygen (N.sub.2 /O.sub.2) gaseous mix is used on the cathode section (12) to maintain the cathode at an acceptable voltage potential during adverse conditions occurring particularly during off-power conditions, for example, during power plant shutdown, start-up and hot holds. During power plant shutdown, the cathode section is purged with a gaseous mixture of, for example, one-half percent (0.5%) oxygen (O.sub.2) and ninety-nine and a half percent (99.5%) nitrogen (N.sub.2) supplied from an ejector (21) bleeding in air (24/28) into a high pressure stream (27) of nitrogen (N.sub.2) as the primary or majority gas. Thereafter the fuel gas in the fuel processor (31) and the anode section (11) is purged with nitrogen gas to prevent nickel (Ni) carbonyl from forming from the shift catalyst. A switched dummy electrical load (30) is used to bring the cathode potential down rapidly during the start of the purges. The 0.5%/99.5% O.sub.2 /N.sub.2 mixture maintains the cathode potential between 0.3 and 0.7 volts, and this is sufficient to maintain the cathode potential at 0.3 volts for the case of H.sub.2 diffusing to the cathode through a 2 mil thick electrolyte filled matrix and below 0.8 volts for no diffusion at open circuit conditions. The same high pressure gas source (20) is used via a "T" juncture ("T") to purge the anode section and its associated fuel processor (31).

Development and test fuel cell powered on-site integrated total energy systems. Phase 3: Full-scale power plant development

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kaufman, A.

1982-01-01

The on-site system application analysis is summarized. Preparations were completed for the first test of a full-sized single cell. Emphasis of the methanol fuel processor development program shifted toward the use of commercial shell-and-tube heat exchangers. An improved method for predicting the carbon-monoxide tolerance of anode catalysts is described. Other stack support areas reported include improved ABA bipolar plate bonding technology, improved electrical measurement techniques for specification-testing of stack components, and anodic corrosion behavior of carbon materials.

Transport phenomena in alkaline direct ethanol fuel cells for sustainable energy production

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

An, L.; Zhao, T. S.

2017-02-01

Alkaline direct ethanol fuel cells (DEFC), which convert the chemical energy stored in ethanol directly into electricity, are one of the most promising energy-conversion devices for portable, mobile and stationary power applications, primarily because this type of fuel cell runs on a carbon-neutral, sustainable fuel and the electrocatalytic and membrane materials that constitute the cell are relatively inexpensive. As a result, the alkaline DEFC technology has undergone a rapid progress over the last decade. This article provides a comprehensive review of transport phenomena of various species in this fuel cell system. The past investigations into how the design and structural parameters of membrane electrode assemblies and the operating parameters affect the fuel cell performance are discussed. In addition, future perspectives and challenges with regard to transport phenomena in this fuel cell system are also highlighted.

A Smartphone Application for Customized Frequency Table Selection in Cochlear Implants.

PubMed

Jethanamest, Daniel; Azadpour, Mahan; Zeman, Annette M; Sagi, Elad; Svirsky, Mario A

2017-09-01

A novel smartphone-based software application can facilitate self-selection of frequency allocation tables (FAT) in postlingually deaf cochlear implant (CI) users. CIs use FATs to represent the tonotopic organization of a normal cochlea. Current CI fitting methods typically use a standard FAT for all patients regardless of individual differences in cochlear size and electrode location. In postlingually deaf patients, different amounts of mismatch can result between the frequency-place function they experienced when they had normal hearing and the frequency-place function that results from the standard FAT. For some CI users, an alternative FAT may enhance sound quality or speech perception. Currently, no widely available tools exist to aid real-time selection of different FATs. This study aims to develop a new smartphone tool for this purpose and to evaluate speech perception and sound quality measures in a pilot study of CI subjects using this application. A smartphone application for a widely available mobile platform (iOS) was developed to serve as a preprocessor of auditory input to a clinical CI speech processor and enable interactive real-time selection of FATs. The application's output was validated by measuring electrodograms for various inputs. A pilot study was conducted in six CI subjects. Speech perception was evaluated using word recognition tests. All subjects successfully used the portable application with their clinical speech processors to experience different FATs while listening to running speech. The users were all able to select one table that they judged provided the best sound quality. All subjects chose a FAT different from the standard FAT in their everyday clinical processor. Using the smartphone application, the mean consonant-nucleus-consonant score with the default FAT selection was 28.5% (SD 16.8) and 29.5% (SD 16.4) when using a self-selected FAT. A portable smartphone application enables CI users to self-select frequency allocation tables in real time. Even though the self-selected FATs that were deemed to have better sound quality were only tested acutely (i.e., without long-term experience with them), speech perception scores were not inferior to those obtained with the clinical FATs. This software application may be a valuable tool for improving future methods of CI fitting.

Conceptual study of on orbit production of cryogenic propellants by water electrolysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Moran, Matthew E.

1991-01-01

The feasibility is assessed of producing cryogenic propellants on orbit by water electrolysis in support of NASA's proposed Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) missions. Using this method, water launched into low earth orbit (LEO) would be split into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis in an orbiting propellant processor spacecraft. The resulting gases would then be liquified and stored in cryogenic tanks. Supplying liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel to space vehicles by this technique has some possible advantages over conventional methods. The potential benefits are derived from the characteristics of water as a payload, and include reduced ground handling and launch risk, denser packaging, and reduced tankage and piping requirements. A conceptual design of a water processor was generated based on related previous studies, and contemporary or near term technologies required. Extensive development efforts would be required to adapt the various subsystems needed for the propellant processor for use in space. Based on the cumulative results, propellant production by on orbit water electrolysis for support of SEI missions is not recommended.

Non-Catalytic Reforming with Applications to Portable Power

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-10-01

and J.J. Beaman, Jr., “Freeform Fabrication of Non-Metallic Objects by Selective Laser Sintering and Infiltration”, Materials Science Forum, 561-565...for syngas production from jet fuel using various methods including catalysts [4, 47-54] and plasmas [55]. Investigations of noncatalytic reforming...Combustion of n-butanol in a spark -ignition IC engine. Fuel. 89(7): p. 1573-1582. 32. Behrens, D.A., I.C. Lee, and C.M. Waits, Catalytic combustion of

Mathematical Modeling and Optimization Studies on Development of Fuel Cells for Multifarious Applications

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-05-12

multicomponent steady-state model for liquid -feed solid polymer electrolyte DBFCs. These fuel cells use sodium borohydride (NaBH4) in alkaline media...layers, diffusion layers and the polymer electrolyte membrane for a liquid feed DBFC. Diffusion of reactants within and between the pores is accounted...projected for futuristic portable applications. In this project we developed a three- dimensional, multicomponent steady-state model for liquid -feed solid

Towards implementation of cellular automata in Microbial Fuel Cells.

PubMed

Tsompanas, Michail-Antisthenis I; Adamatzky, Andrew; Sirakoulis, Georgios Ch; Greenman, John; Ieropoulos, Ioannis

2017-01-01

The Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) is a bio-electrochemical transducer converting waste products into electricity using microbial communities. Cellular Automaton (CA) is a uniform array of finite-state machines that update their states in discrete time depending on states of their closest neighbors by the same rule. Arrays of MFCs could, in principle, act as massive-parallel computing devices with local connectivity between elementary processors. We provide a theoretical design of such a parallel processor by implementing CA in MFCs. We have chosen Conway's Game of Life as the 'benchmark' CA because this is the most popular CA which also exhibits an enormously rich spectrum of patterns. Each cell of the Game of Life CA is realized using two MFCs. The MFCs are linked electrically and hydraulically. The model is verified via simulation of an electrical circuit demonstrating equivalent behaviours. The design is a first step towards future implementations of fully autonomous biological computing devices with massive parallelism. The energy independence of such devices counteracts their somewhat slow transitions-compared to silicon circuitry-between the different states during computation.

Towards implementation of cellular automata in Microbial Fuel Cells

PubMed Central

Adamatzky, Andrew; Sirakoulis, Georgios Ch.; Greenman, John; Ieropoulos, Ioannis

2017-01-01

The Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) is a bio-electrochemical transducer converting waste products into electricity using microbial communities. Cellular Automaton (CA) is a uniform array of finite-state machines that update their states in discrete time depending on states of their closest neighbors by the same rule. Arrays of MFCs could, in principle, act as massive-parallel computing devices with local connectivity between elementary processors. We provide a theoretical design of such a parallel processor by implementing CA in MFCs. We have chosen Conway’s Game of Life as the ‘benchmark’ CA because this is the most popular CA which also exhibits an enormously rich spectrum of patterns. Each cell of the Game of Life CA is realized using two MFCs. The MFCs are linked electrically and hydraulically. The model is verified via simulation of an electrical circuit demonstrating equivalent behaviours. The design is a first step towards future implementations of fully autonomous biological computing devices with massive parallelism. The energy independence of such devices counteracts their somewhat slow transitions—compared to silicon circuitry—between the different states during computation. PMID:28498871

Portable thermo-photovoltaic power source

DOEpatents

Zuppero, Anthony C.; Krawetz, Barton; Barklund, C. Rodger; Seifert, Gary D.

1997-01-14

A miniature thermo-photovoltaic (TPV) device for generation of electrical power for use in portable electronic devices. A TPV power source is constructed to provide a heat source chemical reactor capable of using various fuels, such as liquid hydrocarbons, including but not limited to propane, LPG, butane, alcohols, oils and diesel fuels to generate a source of photons. A reflector dish guides misdirected photon energy from the photon source toward a photovoltaic array. A thin transparent protector sheet is disposed between the photon source and the array to reflect back thermal energy that cannot be converted to electricity, and protect the array from thermal damage. A microlens disposed between the protector sheet and the array further focuses the tailored band of photon energy from the photon source onto an array of photovoltaic cells, whereby the photon energy is converted to electrical power. A heat recuperator removes thermal energy from reactor chamber exhaust gases, preferably using mini- or micro-bellows to force air and fuel past the exhaust gases, and uses the energy to preheat the fuel and oxidant before it reaches the reactor, increasing system efficiency. Mini- or micro-bellows force ambient air through the system both to supply oxidant and to provide cooling. Finally, an insulator, which is preferably a super insulator, is disposed around the TPV power source to reduce fuel consumption, and to keep the TPV power source cool to the touch so it can be used in hand-held devices.

Pd and polyaniline nanocomposite on carbon fiber paper as an efficient direct formic acid fuel cell anode

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pandey, Rakesh K.

2018-03-01

Direct formic acid fuel cells are advantageous as portable power generating devices. In the present work, an anode catalyst for direct formic acid fuel cell (DFAFC) is presented which has good catalytic activity for formic acid oxidation. The catalyst is composed of Pd and conducting polymer polyaniline (Pd-PANI) nanocomposite. The catalyst was prepared by using a single step galvanostatic electrochemical deposition method. The Pd-PANI catalyst was electrodeposited at different time durations and a comparison of the catalytic activity at each deposition time was carried out and optimized.

10 CFR 474.2 - Definitions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... ENERGY ENERGY CONSERVATION ELECTRIC AND HYBRID VEHICLE RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEMONSTRATION PROGRAM... storage batteries or other portable electrical energy storage devices, provided that: (1) Recharge energy... electrical energy required for an electric vehicle to travel one mile of the Highway Fuel Economy Driving...

Passenger Transmitters as A Possible Cause of Aircraft Fuel Ignition

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nguyen, Truong X.; Ely, Jay J.; Dudley, Kenneth L.; Scearce, Stephen A.; Hatfield, Michael O.; Richardson, Robert E.

2006-01-01

An investigation was performed to study the potential for radio frequency (RF) power radiated from transmitting Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) to create an arcing/sparking event within the fuel tank of a large transport aircraft. A survey of RF emissions from typical intentional transmitting PEDs was first performed. Aircraft measurements of RF coupling to the fuel tank and its wiring were also performed to determine the PEDs induced power on the wiring, and the re-radiated power within the fuel tank. Laboratory simulations were conducted to determine the required RF power level for an arcing/sparking event. Data analysis shows large positive safety margins, even with simulated faults on the wiring.

Design, fabrication and performance evaluation of an integrated reformed methanol fuel cell for portable use

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Shubin; Zhang, Yufeng; Chen, Junyu; Yin, Congwen; Liu, Xiaowei

2018-06-01

In this paper, an integrated reformed methanol fuel cell (RMFC) as a portable power source is designed, fabricated and tested. The RMFC consists of a methanol steam reformer (MSR), a high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC) stack, a microcontroller unit (MCU) and other auxiliaries. First, a system model based on Matlab/Simulink is established to investigate the mass and energy transport characteristics within the whole system. The simulation results suggest a hydrogen flow rate of at least 670 sccm is needed for the system to output 30 W and simultaneously maintain thermal equilibrium. Second, a metallic MSR and an HT-PEMFC stack with 12 cells are fabricated and tested. The tests show that the RMFC system is able to function normally when the performances of all the components meet the minimum requirements. At last, in the experiment of successfully powering a laptop, the RMFC system exhibits a stable performance during the complete work flow of all the phases, namely start-up, output and shutdown. Moreover, with a conservative design of 20 W power rating, maximum energy conversion efficiency of the RMFC system can be achieved (36%), and good stability in long-term operation is shown.

A comparison of hydrogen, methanol and gasoline as fuels for fuel cell vehicles: implications for vehicle design and infrastructure development

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ogden, Joan M.; Steinbugler, Margaret M.; Kreutz, Thomas G.

All fuel cells currently being developed for near term use in electric vehicles require hydrogen as a fuel. Hydrogen can be stored directly or produced onboard the vehicle by reforming methanol, or hydrocarbon fuels derived from crude oil (e.g., gasoline, diesel, or middle distillates). The vehicle design is simpler with direct hydrogen storage, but requires developing a more complex refueling infrastructure. In this paper, we present modeling results comparing three leading options for fuel storage onboard fuel cell vehicles: (a) compressed gas hydrogen storage, (b) onboard steam reforming of methanol, (c) onboard partial oxidation (POX) of hydrocarbon fuels derived from crude oil. We have developed a fuel cell vehicle model, including detailed models of onboard fuel processors. This allows us to compare the vehicle performance, fuel economy, weight, and cost for various vehicle parameters, fuel storage choices and driving cycles. The infrastructure requirements are also compared for gaseous hydrogen, methanol and gasoline, including the added costs of fuel production, storage, distribution and refueling stations. The delivered fuel cost, total lifecycle cost of transportation, and capital cost of infrastructure development are estimated for each alternative. Considering both vehicle and infrastructure issues, possible fuel strategies leading to the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles are discussed.

Filamentous carbon particles for cleaning oil spills and method of production

DOEpatents

Muradov, Nazim

2010-04-06

A compact hydrogen generator is coupled to or integrated with a fuel cell for portable power applications. Hydrogen is produced via thermocatalytic decomposition (cracking, pyrolysis) of hydrocarbon fuels in oxidant-free environment. The apparatus can utilize a variety of hydrocarbon fuels, including natural gas, propane, gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel, crude oil (including sulfurous fuels). The hydrogen-rich gas produced is free of carbon oxides or other reactive impurities, so it could be directly fed to any type of a fuel cell. The catalysts for hydrogen production in the apparatus are carbon-based or metal-based materials and doped, if necessary, with a sulfur-capturing agent. Additionally disclosed are two novel processes for the production of two types of carbon filaments, and a novel filamentous carbon product. The hydrogen generator can be conveniently integrated with high temperature fuel cells to produce an efficient and self-contained source of electrical power.

Energy and exergy analysis of an ethanol reforming process for solid oxide fuel cell applications.

PubMed

Tippawan, Phanicha; Arpornwichanop, Amornchai

2014-04-01

The fuel processor in which hydrogen is produced from fuels is an important unit in a fuel cell system. The aim of this study is to apply a thermodynamic concept to identify a suitable reforming process for an ethanol-fueled solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). Three different reforming technologies, i.e., steam reforming, partial oxidation and autothermal reforming, are considered. The first and second laws of thermodynamics are employed to determine an energy demand and to describe how efficiently the energy is supplied to the reforming process. Effect of key operating parameters on the distribution of reforming products, such as H2, CO, CO2 and CH4, and the possibility of carbon formation in different ethanol reformings are examined as a function of steam-to-ethanol ratio, oxygen-to-ethanol ratio and temperatures at atmospheric pressure. Energy and exergy analysis are performed to identify the best ethanol reforming process for SOFC applications. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

76 FR 7196 - California State Nonroad Engine Pollution Control Standards; Request for Authorization of...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-02-09

...The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has notified EPA that it has adopted regulations for the control of diesel particulate matter in the exhaust from in-use portable diesel-fueled compression- ignition engines 50 horsepower and greater. CARB has requested that EPA issue a new authorization for the emission standards established by these regulations. This notice announces that EPA has tentatively scheduled a public hearing to consider California's In-Use Portable Diesel Equipment Airborne Toxic Control Measure authorization request and that EPA is now accepting written comment on the request.

40 CFR 86.107-98 - Sampling and analytical system.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... automatic sealing opening of the boot during fueling. There shall be no loss in the gas tightness of the... system (recorder and sensor) shall have an accuracy of ±3 °F (±1.7 °C). The recorder (data processor... ambient temperature sensors, connected to provide one average output, located 3 feet above the floor at...

40 CFR 86.107-98 - Sampling and analytical system.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... automatic sealing opening of the boot during fueling. There shall be no loss in the gas tightness of the... system (recorder and sensor) shall have an accuracy of ±3 °F (±1.7 °C). The recorder (data processor... ambient temperature sensors, connected to provide one average output, located 3 feet above the floor at...

Comparison of mechanized systems for thinning Ponderosa pine and mixed conifer stands

Treesearch

Bruce R. Hartsough; Joseph F. McNeel; Thomas A. Durston; Bryce J. Stokes

1994-01-01

We studied three systems for thinning pine plantations and naturally-regenerated stands on the Stanislaus National Forest, California. All three produced small sawlogs and fuel chips. The whole tree system consisted of a feller buncher, skidder, stroke processor, loader and chipper. The cut-to-length system included a harvester, forwarder, loader and chipper. A hybrid...

Comparison of mechanized systems for thinning Ponderosa pine and mixed conifer stands

Treesearch

Bruce R. Hartsough; Joseph F. McNeel; Thomas A. Durston; Bryce J. Stokes

1994-01-01

Three systems for thinning pine plantations and naturally-regenerated stands were studied. All three produced small sawlogs and fuel chips. The whole-tree system consisted of a feller buncher, skidder, stroke processor, loader, and chipper. The cut-to-length system included a harvester, forwarder, loader, and chipper. A hybrid system combined a feller buncher,...

Effect of high oleic acid soybean on seed oil, protein concentration, and yield

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Soybeans with high oleic acid content are desired by oil processors because of their improved oxidative stability for broader use in food, fuel and other products. However, non-GMO high-oleic soybeans have tended to have low seed yield. The objective of this study was to test non-GMO, high-oleic s...

Portable Rapid Test Fuel Tank Leak Detection System

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-04-01

polished. Lid is tig welded . Media: Water Result: Bubbles (encircled in red) only at threaded port and at top of the center as shown in Picture 2...bimetallic strip ( ) quartz crystal ( ) thermistor ( ) other (describe briefly) B-3 If product temperature is not

Human Performance and Biosystems

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-03-08

carbon nanotube binding peptides *A mutant laccase designed at UW self- assembles into active crystals Leucine βroll Linker (S) α-helix (H...cognitive functions, bio-molecular repair and bio- resiliency Bioenergy: • Portable H2 Fuel Generated from H2O or Cellulose : - Cheap, self

Initial experience with a handheld device digital imaging and communications in medicine viewer: OsiriX mobile on the iPhone.

PubMed

Choudhri, Asim F; Radvany, Martin G

2011-04-01

Medical imaging is commonly used to diagnose many emergent conditions, as well as plan treatment. Digital images can be reviewed on almost any computing platform. Modern mobile phones and handheld devices are portable computing platforms with robust software programming interfaces, powerful processors, and high-resolution displays. OsiriX mobile, a new Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine viewing program, is available for the iPhone/iPod touch platform. This raises the possibility of mobile review of diagnostic medical images to expedite diagnosis and treatment planning using a commercial off the shelf solution, facilitating communication among radiologists and referring clinicians.

Robust media processing on programmable power-constrained systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McVeigh, Jeff

2005-03-01

To achieve consumer-level quality, media systems must process continuous streams of audio and video data while maintaining exacting tolerances on sampling rate, jitter, synchronization, and latency. While it is relatively straightforward to design fixed-function hardware implementations to satisfy worst-case conditions, there is a growing trend to utilize programmable multi-tasking solutions for media applications. The flexibility of these systems enables support for multiple current and future media formats, which can reduce design costs and time-to-market. This paper provides practical engineering solutions to achieve robust media processing on such systems, with specific attention given to power-constrained platforms. The techniques covered in this article utilize the fundamental concepts of algorithm and software optimization, software/hardware partitioning, stream buffering, hierarchical prioritization, and system resource and power management. A novel enhancement to dynamically adjust processor voltage and frequency based on buffer fullness to reduce system power consumption is examined in detail. The application of these techniques is provided in a case study of a portable video player implementation based on a general-purpose processor running a non real-time operating system that achieves robust playback of synchronized H.264 video and MP3 audio from local storage and streaming over 802.11.

Model-Based Detection of Radioactive Contraband for Harbor Defense Incorporating Compton Scattering Physics

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Candy, J V; Chambers, D H; Breitfeller, E F

2010-03-02

The detection of radioactive contraband is a critical problem is maintaining national security for any country. Photon emissions from threat materials challenge both detection and measurement technologies especially when concealed by various types of shielding complicating the transport physics significantly. This problem becomes especially important when ships are intercepted by U.S. Coast Guard harbor patrols searching for contraband. The development of a sequential model-based processor that captures both the underlying transport physics of gamma-ray emissions including Compton scattering and the measurement of photon energies offers a physics-based approach to attack this challenging problem. The inclusion of a basic radionuclide representationmore » of absorbed/scattered photons at a given energy along with interarrival times is used to extract the physics information available from the noisy measurements portable radiation detection systems used to interdict contraband. It is shown that this physics representation can incorporated scattering physics leading to an 'extended' model-based structure that can be used to develop an effective sequential detection technique. The resulting model-based processor is shown to perform quite well based on data obtained from a controlled experiment.« less

Performance of a Bounce-Averaged Global Model of Super-Thermal Electron Transport in the Earth's Magnetic Field

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McGuire, Tim

1998-01-01

In this paper, we report the results of our recent research on the application of a multiprocessor Cray T916 supercomputer in modeling super-thermal electron transport in the earth's magnetic field. In general, this mathematical model requires numerical solution of a system of partial differential equations. The code we use for this model is moderately vectorized. By using Amdahl's Law for vector processors, it can be verified that the code is about 60% vectorized on a Cray computer. Speedup factors on the order of 2.5 were obtained compared to the unvectorized code. In the following sections, we discuss the methodology of improving the code. In addition to our goal of optimizing the code for solution on the Cray computer, we had the goal of scalability in mind. Scalability combines the concepts of portabilty with near-linear speedup. Specifically, a scalable program is one whose performance is portable across many different architectures with differing numbers of processors for many different problem sizes. Though we have access to a Cray at this time, the goal was to also have code which would run well on a variety of architectures.

Field-portable lensfree tomographic microscope.

PubMed

Isikman, Serhan O; Bishara, Waheb; Sikora, Uzair; Yaglidere, Oguzhan; Yeah, John; Ozcan, Aydogan

2011-07-07

We present a field-portable lensfree tomographic microscope, which can achieve sectional imaging of a large volume (∼20 mm(3)) on a chip with an axial resolution of <7 μm. In this compact tomographic imaging platform (weighing only ∼110 grams), 24 light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that are each butt-coupled to a fibre-optic waveguide are controlled through a cost-effective micro-processor to sequentially illuminate the sample from different angles to record lensfree holograms of the sample that is placed on the top of a digital sensor array. In order to generate pixel super-resolved (SR) lensfree holograms and hence digitally improve the achievable lateral resolution, multiple sub-pixel shifted holograms are recorded at each illumination angle by electromagnetically actuating the fibre-optic waveguides using compact coils and magnets. These SR projection holograms obtained over an angular range of ±50° are rapidly reconstructed to yield projection images of the sample, which can then be back-projected to compute tomograms of the objects on the sensor-chip. The performance of this compact and light-weight lensfree tomographic microscope is validated by imaging micro-beads of different dimensions as well as a Hymenolepis nana egg, which is an infectious parasitic flatworm. Achieving a decent three-dimensional spatial resolution, this field-portable on-chip optical tomographic microscope might provide a useful toolset for telemedicine and high-throughput imaging applications in resource-poor settings. This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2011

Real world duty cycles and utilization for construction equipment in North Carolina.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2008-01-04

Field data for in-use fuel consumption and emission rates were collected for 15 nonroad vehicles using a portable emission : measurement system (PEMS). Each vehicle, including 5 backhoes, 4 front end loaders, and 6 motor graders, were tested : once o...

76 FR 69214 - Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Virginia; Consumer and Commercial...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-11-08

... portable fuel containers, consumer products, architectural and industrial (AIM) coatings, adhesives and... the control technology, testing, monitoring, administrative, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements... and products subject to the standards subject to the provisions of Chapter 45, specify monitoring...

Miniaturized ascorbic acid fuel cells with flexible electrodes made of graphene-coated carbon fiber cloth

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hoshi, Kazuki; Muramatsu, Kazuo; Sumi, Hisato; Nishioka, Yasushiro

2016-04-01

Ascorbic acid (AA) is a biologically friendly compound and exists in many products such as sports drinks, fruit, and even in human blood. Thus, a miniaturized and flexible ascorbic acid fuel cell (AAFC) is expected be a power source for portable or implantable electric devices. In this study, we fabricated an AAFC with anode and cathode dimensions of 3 × 10 mm2 made of a graphene-coated carbon fiber cloth (GCFC) and found that GCFC electrodes significantly improve the power generated by the AAFC. This is because the GCFC has more than two times the effective surface area of a conventional carbon fiber cloth and it can contain more enzymes. The power density of the AAFC in a phosphate buffer solution containing 100 mM AA at room temperature was 34.1 µW/cm2 at 0.46 V. Technical issues in applying the AAFC to portable devices are also discussed.

An Apparatus for Measuring Rates of Discharge of a Fuel-Injection System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dutee, Francis J

1941-01-01

A portable apparatus for rapidly determining rates of discharge of a fuel-injection system is described. Satisfactory operation of this apparatus with injection-pump speeds up to 2400 r.p.m was obtained. Rate-of-discharge tests were made with several cam-plunger-valve injection systems with long injection tubes. A check valve designed to reduce secondary discharges was tested. This check valve was operated with injection-pump speeds up to 2400 r.p.m without the occurrence of large secondary discharges.

Structural design considerations for micromachined solid-oxide fuel cells

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Srikar, V. T.; Turner, Kevin T.; Andrew Ie, Tze Yung; Spearing, S. Mark

Micromachined solid-oxide fuel cells (μSOFCs) are among a class of devices being investigated for portable power generation. Optimization of the performance and reliability of such devices requires robust, scale-dependent, design methodologies. In this first analysis, we consider the structural design of planar, electrolyte-supported, μSOFCs from the viewpoints of electrochemical performance, mechanical stability and reliability, and thermal behavior. The effect of electrolyte thickness on fuel cell performance is evaluated using a simple analytical model. Design diagrams that account explicitly for thermal and intrinsic residual stresses are presented to identify geometries that are resistant to fracture and buckling. Analysis of energy loss due to in-plane heat conduction highlights the importance of efficient thermal isolation in microscale fuel cell design.

Investigation of Electromagnetic Field Threat to Fuel Tank Wiring of a Transport Aircraft

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ely, Jay J.; Nguyen, Truong X.; Dudley, Kenneth L.; Scearce, Stephen A.; Beck, Fred B.; Deshpande, Manohar D.; Cockrell, C. R.

2000-01-01

National Transportation Safety Board investigators have questioned whether an electrical discharge in the Fuel Quantity Indication System (FQIS) may have initiated the TWA-800 center wing tank explosion. Because the FQIS was designed to be incapable of producing such a discharge on its own, attention has been directed to mechanisms of outside electromagnetic influence. To support the investigation, the NASA Langley Research Center was tasked to study the potential for radiated electromagnetic fields from external radio frequency (RF) transmitters and passenger carried portable electronic devices (PEDs) to excite the FQIS enough to cause arcing, sparking or excessive heating within the fuel tank.

Particles of spilled oil-absorbing carbon in contact with water

DOEpatents

Muradov, Nazim [Melbourne, FL

2011-03-29

Hydrogen generator coupled to or integrated with a fuel cell for portable power applications. Hydrogen is produced via thermocatalytic decomposition (cracking, pyrolysis) of hydrocarbon fuels in oxidant-free environment. The apparatus can utilize a variety of hydrocarbon fuels, including natural gas, propane, gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel, crude oil (including sulfurous fuels). The hydrogen-rich gas produced is free of carbon oxides or other reactive impurities, so it could be directly fed to any type of a fuel cell. The catalysts for hydrogen production in the apparatus are carbon-based or metal-based materials and doped, if necessary, with a sulfur-capturing agent. Additionally disclosed are two novel processes for the production of two types of carbon filaments, and a novel filamentous carbon product. Carbon particles with surface filaments having a hydrophobic property of oil film absorption, compositions of matter containing those particles, and a system for using the carbon particles for cleaning oil spills.

RF Coupling into the Fuel Tank of a Large Transport Aircraft from Intentionally Transmitting Peds in the Passenger Cabin

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nguyen, Truong X.; Dudley, Kenneth L.; Scearce, Stephen A.; Ely, Jay J.; Richardson, Robert E.; Hatfield, Michael O.

2000-01-01

An investigation was performed to study the potential for radio frequency (RF) power radiated from Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) to create an arcing/sparking event within the fuel tank of a large transport aircraft. This paper describes the experimental methods used for measuring RF coupling to the fuel tank and Fuel Quantity Indication System (FQIS) wiring from PED sources located in the passenger cabin. To allow comparison of voltage/current data obtained in a laboratory chamber FQIS installation to an actual aircraft FQIS installation, aircraft fuel tank RF reverberation characteristics were also measured. Results from the measurements, along with a survey of threats from typical intentional transmitting PEDs are presented. The resulting worst-case power coupled onto fuel tank FQIS wiring is derived. The same approach can be applied to measure RF coupling into various other aircraft systems.

An Energy-Efficient and Scalable Deep Learning/Inference Processor With Tetra-Parallel MIMD Architecture for Big Data Applications.

PubMed

Park, Seong-Wook; Park, Junyoung; Bong, Kyeongryeol; Shin, Dongjoo; Lee, Jinmook; Choi, Sungpill; Yoo, Hoi-Jun

2015-12-01

Deep Learning algorithm is widely used for various pattern recognition applications such as text recognition, object recognition and action recognition because of its best-in-class recognition accuracy compared to hand-crafted algorithm and shallow learning based algorithms. Long learning time caused by its complex structure, however, limits its usage only in high-cost servers or many-core GPU platforms so far. On the other hand, the demand on customized pattern recognition within personal devices will grow gradually as more deep learning applications will be developed. This paper presents a SoC implementation to enable deep learning applications to run with low cost platforms such as mobile or portable devices. Different from conventional works which have adopted massively-parallel architecture, this work adopts task-flexible architecture and exploits multiple parallelism to cover complex functions of convolutional deep belief network which is one of popular deep learning/inference algorithms. In this paper, we implement the most energy-efficient deep learning and inference processor for wearable system. The implemented 2.5 mm × 4.0 mm deep learning/inference processor is fabricated using 65 nm 8-metal CMOS technology for a battery-powered platform with real-time deep inference and deep learning operation. It consumes 185 mW average power, and 213.1 mW peak power at 200 MHz operating frequency and 1.2 V supply voltage. It achieves 411.3 GOPS peak performance and 1.93 TOPS/W energy efficiency, which is 2.07× higher than the state-of-the-art.

Enabling MPEG-2 video playback in embedded systems through improved data cache efficiency

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Soderquist, Peter; Leeser, Miriam E.

1999-01-01

Digital video decoding, enabled by the MPEG-2 Video standard, is an important future application for embedded systems, particularly PDAs and other information appliances. Many such system require portability and wireless communication capabilities, and thus face severe limitations in size and power consumption. This places a premium on integration and efficiency, and favors software solutions for video functionality over specialized hardware. The processors in most embedded system currently lack the computational power needed to perform video decoding, but a related and equally important problem is the required data bandwidth, and the need to cost-effectively insure adequate data supply. MPEG data sets are very large, and generate significant amounts of excess memory traffic for standard data caches, up to 100 times the amount required for decoding. Meanwhile, cost and power limitations restrict cache sizes in embedded systems. Some systems, including many media processors, eliminate caches in favor of memories under direct, painstaking software control in the manner of digital signal processors. Yet MPEG data has locality which caches can exploit if properly optimized, providing fast, flexible, and automatic data supply. We propose a set of enhancements which target the specific needs of the heterogeneous types within the MPEG decoder working set. These optimizations significantly improve the efficiency of small caches, reducing cache-memory traffic by almost 70 percent, and can make an enhanced 4 KB cache perform better than a standard 1 MB cache. This performance improvement can enable high-resolution, full frame rate video playback in cheaper, smaller system than woudl otherwise be possible.

Optical links in handheld multimedia devices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

van Geffen, S.; Duis, J.; Miller, R.

2008-04-01

Ever emerging applications in handheld multimedia devices such as mobile phones, laptop computers, portable video games and digital cameras requiring increased screen resolutions are driving higher aggregate bitrates between host processor and display(s) enabling services such as mobile video conferencing, video on demand and TV broadcasting. Larger displays and smaller phones require complex mechanical 3D hinge configurations striving to combine maximum functionality with compact building volumes. Conventional galvanic interconnections such as Micro-Coax and FPC carrying parallel digital data between host processor and display module may produce Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and bandwidth limitations caused by small cable size and tight cable bends. To reduce the number of signals through a hinge, the mobile phone industry, organized in the MIPI (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) alliance, is currently defining an electrical interface transmitting serialized digital data at speeds >1Gbps. This interface allows for electrical or optical interconnects. Above 1Gbps optical links may offer a cost effective alternative because of their flexibility, increased bandwidth and immunity to EMI. This paper describes the development of optical links for handheld communication devices. A cable assembly based on a special Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) selected for its mechanical durability is terminated with a small form factor molded lens assembly which interfaces between an 850nm VCSEL transmitter and a receiving device on the printed circuit board of the display module. A statistical approach based on a Lean Design For Six Sigma (LDFSS) roadmap for new product development tries to find an optimum link definition which will be robust and low cost meeting the power consumption requirements appropriate for battery operated systems.

Software Defined GPS Receiver for International Space Station

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Duncan, Courtney B.; Robison, David E.; Koelewyn, Cynthia Lee

2011-01-01

JPL is providing a software defined radio (SDR) that will fly on the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the CoNNeCT project under NASA's SCaN program. The SDR consists of several modules including a Baseband Processor Module (BPM) and a GPS Module (GPSM). The BPM executes applications (waveforms) consisting of software components for the embedded SPARC processor and logic for two Virtex II Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) that operate on data received from the GPSM. GPS waveforms on the SDR are enabled by an L-Band antenna, low noise amplifier (LNA), and the GPSM that performs quadrature downconversion at L1, L2, and L5. The GPS waveform for the JPL SDR will acquire and track L1 C/A, L2C, and L5 GPS signals from a CoNNeCT platform on ISS, providing the best GPS-based positioning of ISS achieved to date, the first use of multiple frequency GPS on ISS, and potentially the first L5 signal tracking from space. The system will also enable various radiometric investigations on ISS such as local multipath or ISS dynamic behavior characterization. In following the software-defined model, this work will create a highly portable GPS software and firmware package that can be adapted to another platform with the necessary processor and FPGA capability. This paper also describes ISS applications for the JPL CoNNeCT SDR GPS waveform, possibilities for future global navigation satellite system (GNSS) tracking development, and the applicability of the waveform components to other space navigation applications.

Ice Storm Supercomputer

ScienceCinema

None

2018-05-01

A new Idaho National Laboratory supercomputer is helping scientists create more realistic simulations of nuclear fuel. Dubbed "Ice Storm" this 2048-processor machine allows researchers to model and predict the complex physics behind nuclear reactor behavior. And with a new visualization lab, the team can see the results of its simulations on the big screen. For more information about INL research, visit http://www.facebook.com/idahonationallaboratory.

South Carolina's timber industry-an assessment of timber product output and use, 1991

Treesearch

Tony G. Johnson; Edgar L. Davenport

1991-01-01

In 1991, roundwood output from South Carolina's forests totaled 508 million cubic feet, down 13 percent from 1989. Mill byproducts generated from primary processors declined an equal rate to 170 million cubic feet. Almost 100 percent of the residues were used, mostly for fuel and fiber products. Pulpwood remained the leading roundwood product at 250 million cubic...

40 CFR 59.630 - EPA testing.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 6 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false EPA testing. 59.630 Section 59.630 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) AIR PROGRAMS (CONTINUED) NATIONAL... Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families § 59.630 EPA testing. We...

40 CFR 59.630 - EPA testing.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 6 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false EPA testing. 59.630 Section 59.630 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) AIR PROGRAMS (CONTINUED) NATIONAL... Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families § 59.630 EPA testing. We...

40 CFR 59.630 - EPA testing.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 5 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false EPA testing. 59.630 Section 59.630 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) AIR PROGRAMS (CONTINUED) NATIONAL... Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families § 59.630 EPA testing. We...

40 CFR 59.630 - EPA testing.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 6 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false EPA testing. 59.630 Section 59.630 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) AIR PROGRAMS (CONTINUED) NATIONAL... Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families § 59.630 EPA testing. We...

Advances in developing rapid, reliable and portable detection systems for alcohol.

PubMed

Thungon, Phurpa Dema; Kakoti, Ankana; Ngashangva, Lightson; Goswami, Pranab

2017-11-15

Development of portable, reliable, sensitive, simple, and inexpensive detection system for alcohol has been an instinctive demand not only in traditional brewing, pharmaceutical, food and clinical industries but also in rapidly growing alcohol based fuel industries. Highly sensitive, selective, and reliable alcohol detections are currently amenable typically through the sophisticated instrument based analyses confined mostly to the state-of-art analytical laboratory facilities. With the growing demand of rapid and reliable alcohol detection systems, an all-round attempt has been made over the past decade encompassing various disciplines from basic and engineering sciences. Of late, the research for developing small-scale portable alcohol detection system has been accelerated with the advent of emerging miniaturization techniques, advanced materials and sensing platforms such as lab-on-chip, lab-on-CD, lab-on-paper etc. With these new inter-disciplinary approaches along with the support from the parallel knowledge growth on rapid detection systems being pursued for various targets, the progress on translating the proof-of-concepts to commercially viable and environment friendly portable alcohol detection systems is gaining pace. Here, we summarize the progress made over the years on the alcohol detection systems, with a focus on recent advancement towards developing portable, simple and efficient alcohol sensors. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Task Parallel Incomplete Cholesky Factorization using 2D Partitioned-Block Layout

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kim, Kyungjoo; Rajamanickam, Sivasankaran; Stelle, George Widgery

We introduce a task-parallel algorithm for sparse incomplete Cholesky factorization that utilizes a 2D sparse partitioned-block layout of a matrix. Our factorization algorithm follows the idea of algorithms-by-blocks by using the block layout. The algorithm-byblocks approach induces a task graph for the factorization. These tasks are inter-related to each other through their data dependences in the factorization algorithm. To process the tasks on various manycore architectures in a portable manner, we also present a portable tasking API that incorporates different tasking backends and device-specific features using an open-source framework for manycore platforms i.e., Kokkos. A performance evaluation is presented onmore » both Intel Sandybridge and Xeon Phi platforms for matrices from the University of Florida sparse matrix collection to illustrate merits of the proposed task-based factorization. Experimental results demonstrate that our task-parallel implementation delivers about 26.6x speedup (geometric mean) over single-threaded incomplete Choleskyby- blocks and 19.2x speedup over serial Cholesky performance which does not carry tasking overhead using 56 threads on the Intel Xeon Phi processor for sparse matrices arising from various application problems.« less

Improving energy efficiency in handheld biometric applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hoyle, David C.; Gale, John W.; Schultz, Robert C.; Rakvic, Ryan N.; Ives, Robert W.

2012-06-01

With improved smartphone and tablet technology, it is becoming increasingly feasible to implement powerful biometric recognition algorithms on portable devices. Typical iris recognition algorithms, such as Ridge Energy Direction (RED), utilize two-dimensional convolution in their implementation. This paper explores the energy consumption implications of 12 different methods of implementing two-dimensional convolution on a portable device. Typically, convolution is implemented using floating point operations. If a given algorithm implemented integer convolution vice floating point convolution, it could drastically reduce the energy consumed by the processor. The 12 methods compared include 4 major categories: Integer C, Integer Java, Floating Point C, and Floating Point Java. Each major category is further divided into 3 implementations: variable size looped convolution, static size looped convolution, and unrolled looped convolution. All testing was performed using the HTC Thunderbolt with energy measured directly using a Tektronix TDS5104B Digital Phosphor oscilloscope. Results indicate that energy savings as high as 75% are possible by using Integer C versus Floating Point C. Considering the relative proportion of processing time that convolution is responsible for in a typical algorithm, the savings in energy would likely result in significantly greater time between battery charges.

Space Tug Avionics Definition Study. Volume 5: Cost and Programmatics

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1975-01-01

The baseline avionics system features a central digital computer that integrates the functions of all the space tug subsystems by means of a redundant digital data bus. The central computer consists of dual central processor units, dual input/output processors, and a fault tolerant memory, utilizing internal redundancy and error checking. Three electronically steerable phased arrays provide downlink transmission from any tug attitude directly to ground or via TDRS. Six laser gyros and six accelerometers in a dodecahedron configuration make up the inertial measurement unit. Both a scanning laser radar and a TV system, employing strobe lamps, are required as acquisition and docking sensors. Primary dc power at a nominal 28 volts is supplied from dual lightweight, thermally integrated fuel cells which operate from propellant grade reactants out of the main tanks.

Voltammetric analysis of ordnance materials. Part 2: A portable digital voltammeter for use with a silver wire working electrode

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fine, D. A.; Reeve, D. A.; Dickus, R. A.

1984-12-01

An inexpensive, portable, digital voltammeter has been designed and built at NWC. The instrument is intended for use with a silver wire working electrode. The voltammeter was built in response to a need on the part of Navy facilities for the monitoring of effluent water from the carbon column cleanup process used to remove propyleneglycoldinitrate from Otto fuel waste water. The instrument may also be used for the monitoring of contaminants such as nitroglycerin, dinitrotoluene, trinitrotoluene and nitroguanidine. This report describes in detail the construction, circuitry, software and operational features of the instrument.

HANSF 1.3 Users Manual FAI/98-40-R2 Hanford Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Safety Analysis Model [SEC 1 and 2

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

DUNCAN, D.R.

The HANSF analysis tool is an integrated model considering phenomena inside a multi-canister overpack (MCO) spent nuclear fuel container such as fuel oxidation, convective and radiative heat transfer, and the potential for fission product release. This manual reflects the HANSF version 1.3.2, a revised version of 1.3.1. HANSF 1.3.2 was written to correct minor errors and to allow modeling of condensate flow on the MCO inner surface. HANSF 1.3.2 is intended for use on personal computers such as IBM-compatible machines with Intel processors running under Lahey TI or digital Visual FORTRAN, Version 6.0, but this does not preclude operation inmore » other environments.« less

40 CFR 59.685 - What symbols, acronyms, and abbreviations does this subpart use?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 5 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false What symbols, acronyms, and abbreviations does this subpart use? 59.685 Section 59.685 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION... CONSUMER AND COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel...

40 CFR 59.662 - What temporary provisions address hardship due to unusual circumstances?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... FOR CONSUMER AND COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Special Compliance Provisions § 59.662 What temporary provisions address hardship due... exemption will jeopardize the solvency of your company. (4) No other allowances are available under the...

29 CFR 1926.153 - Liquefied petroleum gas (LP-Gas).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... temporary period not to exceed 6 months they need not have fire-resisting foundations or saddles but shall...) Dispensing. (1) Filling of fuel containers for trucks or motor vehicles from bulk storage containers shall be.... (2) Filling of portable containers or containers mounted on skids from storage containers shall be...

29 CFR 1926.153 - Liquefied petroleum gas (LP-Gas).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... temporary period not to exceed 6 months they need not have fire-resisting foundations or saddles but shall...) Dispensing. (1) Filling of fuel containers for trucks or motor vehicles from bulk storage containers shall be.... (2) Filling of portable containers or containers mounted on skids from storage containers shall be...

29 CFR 1926.153 - Liquefied petroleum gas (LP-Gas).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... temporary period not to exceed 6 months they need not have fire-resisting foundations or saddles but shall...) Dispensing. (1) Filling of fuel containers for trucks or motor vehicles from bulk storage containers shall be.... (2) Filling of portable containers or containers mounted on skids from storage containers shall be...

29 CFR 1926.153 - Liquefied petroleum gas (LP-Gas).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... temporary period not to exceed 6 months they need not have fire-resisting foundations or saddles but shall...) Dispensing. (1) Filling of fuel containers for trucks or motor vehicles from bulk storage containers shall be.... (2) Filling of portable containers or containers mounted on skids from storage containers shall be...

Design Course for Micropower Generation Devices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mitsos, Alexander

2009-01-01

A project-based design course is developed for man-portable power generation via microfabricated fuel cell systems. Targeted audience are undergraduate chemical/process engineering students in their final year. The course covers 6 weeks, with three hours of lectures per week. Two alternative projects are developed, one focusing on selection of…

Locomotive biofuel study - rail yard and over the road measurements using portable emissions measurement system : final report.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2015-01-01

The emissions of three locomotive engines were measured with ULSD and multiple biofuel blends, including B10, B20, and B40. : B20 biodiesel fuel reduced emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC), and particulate matter...

40 CFR 59.660 - Exemption from the standards.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Special Compliance... racing applications which are designed to create a leak proof seal with the target tank or are designed to connect with a receiver installed on the target tank. This exemption is generally intended for...

40 CFR 59.625 - How do I select emission families?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... control strategy. (c) You may subdivide a group of containers that is identical under paragraph (b) of... Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families... containers that are expected to have similar emission characteristics throughout the useful life. (b) Group...

40 CFR 59.625 - How do I select emission families?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... control strategy. (c) You may subdivide a group of containers that is identical under paragraph (b) of... Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families... containers that are expected to have similar emission characteristics throughout the useful life. (b) Group...

40 CFR 59.625 - How do I select emission families?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... control strategy. (c) You may subdivide a group of containers that is identical under paragraph (b) of... Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families... containers that are expected to have similar emission characteristics throughout the useful life. (b) Group...

40 CFR 59.625 - How do I select emission families?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... control strategy. (c) You may subdivide a group of containers that is identical under paragraph (b) of... Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families... containers that are expected to have similar emission characteristics throughout the useful life. (b) Group...

40 CFR 59.625 - How do I select emission families?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... control strategy. (c) You may subdivide a group of containers that is identical under paragraph (b) of... Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Certifying Emission Families... containers that are expected to have similar emission characteristics throughout the useful life. (b) Group...

40 CFR 59.680 - What definitions apply to this subpart?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... design that controls or reduces the regulated evaporative emissions from. Emission-data unit means a... PRODUCTS Control of Evaporative Emissions From New and In-Use Portable Fuel Containers Definitions and... amended, 42 U.S.C. 7401-7671q. Adjustable parameter means any device, system, or element of design that...

75 FR 56491 - Technical Amendments for Marine Spark-Ignition Engines and Vessels

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-09-16

... spillage, incorporating safe recommended practices will result in a net benefit to the environment and lead... spillage, incorporating safe recommended practices will result in a net benefit to the environment and lead... portable fuel tanks to these new requirements, manufacturers working together on systems integration...

75 FR 56477 - Technical Amendments for Marine Spark-Ignition Engines and Vessels

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-09-16

... spillage, incorporating safe recommended practices will result in a net benefit to the environment and lead... portable fuel tanks to these new requirements, manufacturers working together on systems integration.... We have engaged the industry to identify a simple, safe, and emissions neutral solution to this...

Night-day-night sleep-wakefulness monitoring by ambulatory integrated circuit memories.

PubMed

Yamamoto, M; Nakao, M; Katayama, N; Waku, M; Suzuki, K; Irokawa, K; Abe, M; Ueno, T

1999-04-01

A medium-sized portable digital recorder with fully integrated circuit (IC) memories for sleep monitoring has been developed. It has five amplifiers for EEG, EMG, EOG, ECG, and a signal of body acceleration or respiration sound, four event markers, an 8 ch A/D converter, a digital signal processor (DSP), 192 Mbytes IC flash memories, and batteries. The whole system weighs 1200 g including batteries and is put into a small bag worn on the subject's waist or carried in their hand. The sampling rate for each input channel is programmable through the DSP. This apparatus is valuable for continuously monitoring the states of sleep-wakefulness over 24 h, making a night-day-night recording possible in a hospital, home, or car.

Accelerated Application Development: The ORNL Titan Experience

DOE PAGES

Joubert, Wayne; Archibald, Richard K.; Berrill, Mark A.; ...

2015-05-09

The use of computational accelerators such as NVIDIA GPUs and Intel Xeon Phi processors is now widespread in the high performance computing community, with many applications delivering impressive performance gains. However, programming these systems for high performance, performance portability and software maintainability has been a challenge. In this paper we discuss experiences porting applications to the Titan system. Titan, which began planning in 2009 and was deployed for general use in 2013, was the first multi-petaflop system based on accelerator hardware. To ready applications for accelerated computing, a preparedness effort was undertaken prior to delivery of Titan. In this papermore » we report experiences and lessons learned from this process and describe how users are currently making use of computational accelerators on Titan.« less

Accelerated application development: The ORNL Titan experience

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Joubert, Wayne; Archibald, Rick; Berrill, Mark

2015-08-01

The use of computational accelerators such as NVIDIA GPUs and Intel Xeon Phi processors is now widespread in the high performance computing community, with many applications delivering impressive performance gains. However, programming these systems for high performance, performance portability and software maintainability has been a challenge. In this paper we discuss experiences porting applications to the Titan system. Titan, which began planning in 2009 and was deployed for general use in 2013, was the first multi-petaflop system based on accelerator hardware. To ready applications for accelerated computing, a preparedness effort was undertaken prior to delivery of Titan. In this papermore » we report experiences and lessons learned from this process and describe how users are currently making use of computational accelerators on Titan.« less

On extending parallelism to serial simulators

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nicol, David; Heidelberger, Philip

1994-01-01

This paper describes an approach to discrete event simulation modeling that appears to be effective for developing portable and efficient parallel execution of models of large distributed systems and communication networks. In this approach, the modeler develops submodels using an existing sequential simulation modeling tool, using the full expressive power of the tool. A set of modeling language extensions permit automatically synchronized communication between submodels; however, the automation requires that any such communication must take a nonzero amount off simulation time. Within this modeling paradigm, a variety of conservative synchronization protocols can transparently support conservative execution of submodels on potentially different processors. A specific implementation of this approach, U.P.S. (Utilitarian Parallel Simulator), is described, along with performance results on the Intel Paragon.

Nanofluidic fuel cell

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Jin Wook; Kjeang, Erik

2013-11-01

Fuel cells are gaining momentum as a critical component in the renewable energy mix for stationary, transportation, and portable power applications. State-of-the-art fuel cell technology benefits greatly from nanotechnology applied to nanostructured membranes, catalysts, and electrodes. However, the potential of utilizing nanofluidics for fuel cells has not yet been explored, despite the significant opportunity of harnessing rapid nanoscale reactant transport in close proximity to the reactive sites. In the present article, a nanofluidic fuel cell that utilizes fluid flow through nanoporous media is conceptualized and demonstrated for the first time. This transformative concept captures the advantages of recently developed membraneless and catalyst-free fuel cell architectures paired with the enhanced interfacial contact area enabled by nanofluidics. When compared to previously reported microfluidic fuel cells, the prototype nanofluidic fuel cell demonstrates increased surface area, reduced activation overpotential, superior kinetic characteristics, and moderately enhanced fuel cell performance in the high cell voltage regime with up to 14% higher power density. However, the expected mass transport benefits in the high current density regime were constrained by high ohmic cell resistance, which could likely be resolved through future optimization studies.

Fighter Aircraft OBIGGS (On-Board Inert Gas Generator System) Study. Volume 2

DTIC Science & Technology

1987-06-01

UNCLASSIFIED.UNLIMITED L SAME AS RPT. 0 OTIC USERS 0 UNCLASSIFIED 22m. NAME Or RESPONSIBLE INOIVIOUAL 22b TELEPHONE NUJN lER 22c OFFICE SYMBOL IflncI.de A C...Pressure Air System 53 3.2.1.6.11.3 Fuel Tank Vent System 54 3.2.1.6.11.4 Fuel Scrubbing System 54 3.2.1.6.12 Control/ Interface Processor 55 3.2.1.6.12.1...Flowmeters 60, 3.2.1.6.13.6 Motion Transducer 61 3.2.1.7 Interface Requirements 61 3.2.1.7.1 External Interfaces 61 3.2.1.7.1.1 External Systems

Fuel cells: principles, types, fuels, and applications.

PubMed

Carrette, L; Friedrich, K A; Stimming, U

2000-12-15

During the last decade, fuel cells have received enormous attention from research institutions and companies as novel electrical energy conversion systems. In the near future, they will see application in automotive propulsion, distributed power generation, and in low power portable devices (battery replacement). This review gives an introduction into the fundamentals and applications of fuel cells: Firstly, the environmental and social factors promoting fuel cell development are discussed, with an emphasis on the advantages of fuel cells compared to the conventional techniques. Then, the main reactions, which are responsible for the conversion of chemical into electrical energy in fuel cells, are given and the thermodynamic and kinetic fundamentals are stated. The theoretical and real efficiencies of fuel cells are also compared to that of internal combustion engines. Next, the different types of fuel cells and their main components are explained and the related material issues are presented. A section is devoted to fuel generation and storage, which is of paramount importance for the practical aspects of fuel cell use. Finally, attention is given to the integration of the fuel cells into complete systems. © 2000 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH, Weinheim, Fed. Rep. of Germany.

Microcombustor

DOEpatents

Gardner, Timothy J.; Manginelli, Ronald P.; Lewis, Patrick R.; Frye-Mason, Gregory C.; Colburn, Chris

2004-09-07

A microcombustor comprises a microhotplate and a catalyst for sustained combustion on the microscale. The microhotplate has very low heat capacity and thermal conductivity that mitigate large heat losses arising from large surface-to-volume ratios typical of the microdomain. The heated catalyst enables flame ignition and stabilization, permits combustion with lean fuel/air mixtures, extends a hydrocarbon's limits of flammability, and lowers the combustion temperature. The reduced operating temperatures enable a longer microcombustor lifetime and the reduced fuel consumption enables smaller fuel supplies, both of which are especially important for portable microsystems applications. The microcombustor can be used for on-chip thermal management and for sensor applications, such as heating of a micro gas chromatography column and for use as a micro flame ionization detector.

An Investigation of EME as a Potential Cause of Fuel Tank Ignition

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ely, Jay J.; Nguyen, Truong X.; Dudley, Kenneth L.; Scearce, Stephen A.; Beck, Fred B.; Deshpande, Manohar D.; Cockrell, C. R.

2000-01-01

NASA researchers were tasked to study the potential for radio signals to excite an aircraft fuel quantity indication system (FQIS) enough to cause arcing, sparking or excessive heating within a fuel tank. Computational techniques were used to determine the threat from external high intensity radiated field (HIRF) transmitters nearby, like shipboard and airborne RADAR systems. Experimental methods were used to determine the threat from Portable Electronic Devices (PEDs) carried aboard by passengers. To support this work, unique electromagnetic coupling measurements were performed on a retired Boeing 747 aircraft, and new test and analysis methods were developed that may be applied to other FQIS designs as well as other aircraft electronic systems.

Diffusion-driven proton exchange membrane fuel cell for converting fermenting biomass to electricity.

PubMed

Malati, P; Mehrotra, P; Minoofar, P; Mackie, D M; Sumner, J J; Ganguli, R

2015-10-01

A membrane-integrated proton exchange membrane fuel cell that enables in situ fermentation of sugar to ethanol, diffusion-driven separation of ethanol, and its catalytic oxidation in a single continuous process is reported. The fuel cell consists of a fermentation chamber coupled to a direct ethanol fuel cell. The anode and fermentation chambers are separated by a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane. Ethanol generated from fermented biomass in the fermentation chamber diffuses through the RO membrane into a glucose solution contained in the DEFC anode chamber. The glucose solution is osmotically neutral to the biomass solution in the fermentation chamber preventing the anode chamber from drying out. The fuel cell sustains >1.3 mW cm(-2) at 47°C with high discharge capacity. No separate purification or dilution is necessary, resulting in an efficient and portable system for direct conversion of fermenting biomass to electricity. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A review on the performance and modelling of proton exchange membrane fuel cells

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Boucetta, A., E-mail: abirboucetta@yahoo.fr; Ghodbane, H., E-mail: h.ghodbane@mselab.org; Bahri, M., E-mail: m.bahri@mselab.org

2016-07-25

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC), are energy efficient and environmentally friendly alternative to conventional energy conversion for various applications in stationary power plants, portable power device and transportation. PEM fuel cells provide low operating temperature and high-energy efficiency with near zero emission. A PEM fuel cell is a multiple distinct parts device and a series of mass, energy, transport through gas channels, electric current transport through membrane electrode assembly and electrochemical reactions at the triple-phase boundaries. These processes play a decisive role in determining the performance of the Fuel cell, so that studies on the phenomena of gas flowsmore » and the performance modelling are made deeply. This paper gives a comprehensive overview of the state of the art on the Study of the phenomena of gas flow and performance modelling of PEMFC.« less

Performance of miniaturized direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) devices using micropump for fuel delivery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Tao; Wang, Qing-Ming

A fuel cell is a device that can convert chemical energy into electricity directly. Among various types of fuel cells, both polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) and direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) can work at low temperature (<80 °C). Therefore, they can be used to supply power for commercial portable electronics such as laptop computers, digital cameras, PDAs and cell phones. The focus of this paper is to investigate the performance of a miniaturized DMFC device using a micropump to deliver fuel. The core of this micropump is a piezoelectric ring-type bending actuator and the associated nozzle/diffuser for directing fuel flow. Based on the experimental measurements, it is found that the performance of the fuel cell can be significantly improved if enough fuel flow is induced by the micropump at anode. Three factors may contribute to the performance enhancement including replenishment of methanol, decrease of diffusion resistance and removal of carbon dioxide. In comparison with conventional mini pumps, the size of the piezoelectric micropump is much smaller and the energy consumption is much lower. Thus, it is very viable and effective to use a piezoelectric valveless micropump for fuel delivery in miniaturized DMFC power systems.

Mobile Computing for Aerospace Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Alena, Richard; Swietek, Gregory E. (Technical Monitor)

1994-01-01

The use of commercial computer technology in specific aerospace mission applications can reduce the cost and project cycle time required for the development of special-purpose computer systems. Additionally, the pace of technological innovation in the commercial market has made new computer capabilities available for demonstrations and flight tests. Three areas of research and development being explored by the Portable Computer Technology Project at NASA Ames Research Center are the application of commercial client/server network computing solutions to crew support and payload operations, the analysis of requirements for portable computing devices, and testing of wireless data communication links as extensions to the wired network. This paper will present computer architectural solutions to portable workstation design including the use of standard interfaces, advanced flat-panel displays and network configurations incorporating both wired and wireless transmission media. It will describe the design tradeoffs used in selecting high-performance processors and memories, interfaces for communication and peripheral control, and high resolution displays. The packaging issues for safe and reliable operation aboard spacecraft and aircraft are presented. The current status of wireless data links for portable computers is discussed from a system design perspective. An end-to-end data flow model for payload science operations from the experiment flight rack to the principal investigator is analyzed using capabilities provided by the new generation of computer products. A future flight experiment on-board the Russian MIR space station will be described in detail including system configuration and function, the characteristics of the spacecraft operating environment, the flight qualification measures needed for safety review, and the specifications of the computing devices to be used in the experiment. The software architecture chosen shall be presented. An analysis of the performance characteristics of wireless data links in the spacecraft environment will be discussed. Network performance and operation will be modeled and preliminary test results presented. A crew support application will be demonstrated in conjunction with the network metrics experiment.

Bluetooth wireless monitoring, diagnosis and calibration interface for control system of fuel cell bus in Olympic demonstration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hua, Jianfeng; Lin, Xinfan; Xu, Liangfei; Li, Jianqiu; Ouyang, Minggao

With the worldwide deterioration of the natural environment and the fossil fuel crisis, the possible commercialization of fuel cell vehicles has become a hot topic. In July 2008, Beijing started a clean public transportation plan for the 29th Olympic games. Three fuel cell city buses and 497 other low-emission vehicles are now serving the Olympic core area and Beijing urban areas. The fuel cell buses will operate along a fixed bus line for 1 year as a public demonstration of green energy vehicles. Due to the specialized nature of fuel cell engines and electrified power-train systems, measurement, monitoring and calibration devices are indispensable. Based on the latest Bluetooth wireless technology, a novel Bluetooth universal data interface was developed for the control system of the fuel cell city bus. On this platform, a series of wireless portable control auxiliary systems have been implemented, including wireless calibration, a monitoring system and an in-system programming platform, all of which are ensuring normal operation of the fuel cell buses used in the demonstration.

Boating Accident Investigations 1974, Fire and Explosion

DTIC Science & Technology

1975-04-15

Fuel Tanks - The two 28 gallon saddle tanks were manu- factured by Aluminum Fabricated Products , Inc. of .090 in. thick 5052 aluminum. The tanks, which...Extinguishers - The boat contained two fire portable fire ext~inguishers. One Amway Model 275R-5C fire extinguisbc: was found to be in good shape. It had

40 CFR 59.664 - What are the requirements for importing portable fuel containers into the United States?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) AIR PROGRAMS (CONTINUED) NATIONAL VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUND EMISSION... bond to cover any potential compliance or enforcement actions under the Clean Air Act if you cannot... of Treasury Circular 570, “Companies Holding Certificates of Authority as Acceptable Sureties on...

40 CFR 52.1070 - Identification of plan.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... availability of this material at NARA, call 202-741-6030, or go to: http://www.archives.gov/federal_register... Portable Fuel Containers 6/18/07 7/17/08, 73 FR 40970 26.11.13.08 Control of VOC Emissions from Marine... Recodification of existing Regulation .15; Amended. 26.11.32.19 Recordkeeping and Availability of Requested...

75 FR 77798 - Approval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Delaware; Limiting Emissions of...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-12-14

... Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Delaware; Limiting Emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds... Organic Compounds (VOC) from Consumer and Commercial Products, Section 3.0, Portable Fuel Containers. In... second comment period. Any parties interested in commenting on this action should do so at this time...

29 CFR 779.360 - Classification of liquefied-petroleum-gas sales.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 29 Labor 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Classification of liquefied-petroleum-gas sales. 779.360... Establishments Liquefied-Petroleum-Gas and Fuel Oil Dealers § 779.360 Classification of liquefied-petroleum-gas... ultimate consumer of liquefied-petroleum-gas, whether delivered in portable cylinders or in bulk to the...

76 FR 44405 - Regulation To Mitigate the Misfueling of Vehicles and Engines With Gasoline Containing Greater...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-07-25

... proposed color scheme and general design so that the two agencies' labels could work together as a... Programs AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ACTION: Final rule. SUMMARY: In two recent actions... Damage d. Addressing Non-English Speakers e. Portable Fuel Containers f. Color, Size, Shape, Font, and...

40 CFR 59.653 - How do I test portable fuel containers?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

.... Perform the following spout actuation and inversion steps at the end on the slosh testing, and at the end of the preconditioning soak. (i) Perform one complete actuation/inversion cycle per day for ten days. (ii) One actuation/inversion cycle consists of the following steps: (A) Remove and replace the spout...

Pollution Measuring System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1980-01-01

Research Ventures, Inc.'s visiplume is a portable, microprocessor-controlled air pollution monitor for measuring sulfur dioxide emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, and facilities that manufacture sulfuric acid. It observes smokestack plumes at a distance from the stack obviating the expense and difficulty of installing sample collectors in each stack and later analyzing the samples.

Development of a Standard Test Scenario to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Portable Fire Extinguishers on Lithium-ion Battery Fires

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Juarez, Alfredo; Harper, Susan A.; Hirsch, David B.; Carriere, Thierry

2013-01-01

Many sources of fuel are present aboard current spacecraft, with one especially hazardous source of stored energy: lithium ion batteries. Lithium ion batteries are a very hazardous form of fuel due to their self-sustaining combustion once ignited, for example, by an external heat source. Batteries can become extremely energetic fire sources due to their high density electrochemical energy content that may, under duress, be violently converted to thermal energy and fire in the form of a thermal runaway. Currently, lithium ion batteries are the preferred types of batteries aboard international spacecraft and therefore are routinely installed, collectively forming a potentially devastating fire threat to a spacecraft and its crew. Currently NASA is developing a fine water mist portable fire extinguisher for future use on international spacecraft. As its development ensues, a need for the standard evaluation of various types of fire extinguishers against this potential threat is required to provide an unbiased means of comparing between fire extinguisher technologies and ranking them based on performance.

MCNP Simulation Benchmarks for a Portable Inspection System for Narcotics, Explosives, and Nuclear Material Detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alfonso, Krystal; Elsalim, Mashal; King, Michael; Strellis, Dan; Gozani, Tsahi

2013-04-01

MCNPX simulations have been used to guide the development of a portable inspection system for narcotics, explosives, and special nuclear material (SNM) detection. The system seeks to address these threats to national security by utilizing a high-yield, compact neutron source to actively interrogate the threats and produce characteristic signatures that can then be detected by radiation detectors. The portability of the system enables rapid deployment and proximity to threats concealed in small spaces. Both dD and dT electronic neutron generators (ENG) were used to interrogate ammonium nitrate fuel oil (ANFO) and cocaine hydrochloride, and the detector response of NaI, CsI, and LaBr3 were compared. The effect of tungsten shielding on the neutron flux in the gamma ray detectors was investigated, while carbon, beryllium, and polyethylene ENG moderator materials were optimized by determining the reaction rate density in the threats. In order to benchmark the modeling results, experimental measurements are compared with MCNPX simulations. In addition, the efficiency and die-away time of a portable differential die-away analysis (DDAA) detector using 3He proportional counters for SNM detection has been determined.

A new implementation of the programming system for structural synthesis (PROSSS-2)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Rogers, James L., Jr.

1984-01-01

This new implementation of the PROgramming System for Structural Synthesis (PROSSS-2) combines a general-purpose finite element computer program for structural analysis, a state-of-the-art optimization program, and several user-supplied, problem-dependent computer programs. The results are flexibility of the optimization procedure, organization, and versatility of the formulation of constraints and design variables. The analysis-optimization process results in a minimized objective function, typically the mass. The analysis and optimization programs are executed repeatedly by looping through the system until the process is stopped by a user-defined termination criterion. However, some of the analysis, such as model definition, need only be one time and the results are saved for future use. The user must write some small, simple FORTRAN programs to interface between the analysis and optimization programs. One of these programs, the front processor, converts the design variables output from the optimizer into the suitable format for input into the analyzer. Another, the end processor, retrieves the behavior variables and, optionally, their gradients from the analysis program and evaluates the objective function and constraints and optionally their gradients. These quantities are output in a format suitable for input into the optimizer. These user-supplied programs are problem-dependent because they depend primarily upon which finite elements are being used in the model. PROSSS-2 differs from the original PROSSS in that the optimizer and front and end processors have been integrated into the finite element computer program. This was done to reduce the complexity and increase portability of the system, and to take advantage of the data handling features found in the finite element program.

Coding for parallel execution of hardware-in-the-loop millimeter-wave scene generation models on multicore SIMD processor architectures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Olson, Richard F.

2013-05-01

Rendering of point scatterer based radar scenes for millimeter wave (mmW) seeker tests in real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) scene generation requires efficient algorithms and vector-friendly computer architectures for complex signal synthesis. New processor technology from Intel implements an extended 256-bit vector SIMD instruction set (AVX, AVX2) in a multi-core CPU design providing peak execution rates of hundreds of GigaFLOPS (GFLOPS) on one chip. Real world mmW scene generation code can approach peak SIMD execution rates only after careful algorithm and source code design. An effective software design will maintain high computing intensity emphasizing register-to-register SIMD arithmetic operations over data movement between CPU caches or off-chip memories. Engineers at the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) applied two basic parallel coding methods to assess new 256-bit SIMD multi-core architectures for mmW scene generation in HWIL. These include use of POSIX threads built on vector library functions and more portable, highlevel parallel code based on compiler technology (e.g. OpenMP pragmas and SIMD autovectorization). Since CPU technology is rapidly advancing toward high processor core counts and TeraFLOPS peak SIMD execution rates, it is imperative that coding methods be identified which produce efficient and maintainable parallel code. This paper describes the algorithms used in point scatterer target model rendering, the parallelization of those algorithms, and the execution performance achieved on an AVX multi-core machine using the two basic parallel coding methods. The paper concludes with estimates for scale-up performance on upcoming multi-core technology.

LIBS data analysis using a predictor-corrector based digital signal processor algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sanders, Alex; Griffin, Steven T.; Robinson, Aaron

2012-06-01

There are many accepted sensor technologies for generating spectra for material classification. Once the spectra are generated, communication bandwidth limitations favor local material classification with its attendant reduction in data transfer rates and power consumption. Transferring sensor technologies such as Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (CRDS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) require effective material classifiers. A result of recent efforts has been emphasis on Partial Least Squares - Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) and Principle Component Analysis (PCA). Implementation of these via general purpose computers is difficult in small portable sensor configurations. This paper addresses the creation of a low mass, low power, robust hardware spectra classifier for a limited set of predetermined materials in an atmospheric matrix. Crucial to this is the incorporation of PCA or PLS-DA classifiers into a predictor-corrector style implementation. The system configuration guarantees rapid convergence. Software running on multi-core Digital Signal Processor (DSPs) simulates a stream-lined plasma physics model estimator, reducing Analog-to-Digital (ADC) power requirements. This paper presents the results of a predictorcorrector model implemented on a low power multi-core DSP to perform substance classification. This configuration emphasizes the hardware system and software design via a predictor corrector model that simultaneously decreases the sample rate while performing the classification.

A portable detection instrument based on DSP for beef marbling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhou, Tong; Peng, Yankun

2014-05-01

Beef marbling is one of the most important indices to assess beef quality. Beef marbling is graded by the measurement of the fat distribution density in the rib-eye region. However quality grades of beef in most of the beef slaughtering houses and businesses depend on trainees using their visual senses or comparing the beef slice to the Chinese standard sample cards. Manual grading demands not only great labor but it also lacks objectivity and accuracy. Aiming at the necessity of beef slaughtering houses and businesses, a beef marbling detection instrument was designed. The instrument employs Charge-coupled Device (CCD) imaging techniques, digital image processing, Digital Signal Processor (DSP) control and processing techniques and Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screen display techniques. The TMS320DM642 digital signal processor of Texas Instruments (TI) is the core that combines high-speed data processing capabilities and real-time processing features. All processes such as image acquisition, data transmission, image processing algorithms and display were implemented on this instrument for a quick, efficient, and non-invasive detection of beef marbling. Structure of the system, working principle, hardware and software are introduced in detail. The device is compact and easy to transport. The instrument can determine the grade of beef marbling reliably and correctly.

Homemade Buckeye-Pi: A Learning Many-Node Platform for High-Performance Parallel Computing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Amooie, M. A.; Moortgat, J.

2017-12-01

We report on the "Buckeye-Pi" cluster, the supercomputer developed in The Ohio State University School of Earth Sciences from 128 inexpensive Raspberry Pi (RPi) 3 Model B single-board computers. Each RPi is equipped with fast Quad Core 1.2GHz ARMv8 64bit processor, 1GB of RAM, and 32GB microSD card for local storage. Therefore, the cluster has a total RAM of 128GB that is distributed on the individual nodes and a flash capacity of 4TB with 512 processors, while it benefits from low power consumption, easy portability, and low total cost. The cluster uses the Message Passing Interface protocol to manage the communications between each node. These features render our platform the most powerful RPi supercomputer to date and suitable for educational applications in high-performance-computing (HPC) and handling of large datasets. In particular, we use the Buckeye-Pi to implement optimized parallel codes in our in-house simulator for subsurface media flows with the goal of achieving a massively-parallelized scalable code. We present benchmarking results for the computational performance across various number of RPi nodes. We believe our project could inspire scientists and students to consider the proposed unconventional cluster architecture as a mainstream and a feasible learning platform for challenging engineering and scientific problems.

Spatiotemporal Domain Decomposition for Massive Parallel Computation of Space-Time Kernel Density

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hohl, A.; Delmelle, E. M.; Tang, W.

2015-07-01

Accelerated processing capabilities are deemed critical when conducting analysis on spatiotemporal datasets of increasing size, diversity and availability. High-performance parallel computing offers the capacity to solve computationally demanding problems in a limited timeframe, but likewise poses the challenge of preventing processing inefficiency due to workload imbalance between computing resources. Therefore, when designing new algorithms capable of implementing parallel strategies, careful spatiotemporal domain decomposition is necessary to account for heterogeneity in the data. In this study, we perform octtree-based adaptive decomposition of the spatiotemporal domain for parallel computation of space-time kernel density. In order to avoid edge effects near subdomain boundaries, we establish spatiotemporal buffers to include adjacent data-points that are within the spatial and temporal kernel bandwidths. Then, we quantify computational intensity of each subdomain to balance workloads among processors. We illustrate the benefits of our methodology using a space-time epidemiological dataset of Dengue fever, an infectious vector-borne disease that poses a severe threat to communities in tropical climates. Our parallel implementation of kernel density reaches substantial speedup compared to sequential processing, and achieves high levels of workload balance among processors due to great accuracy in quantifying computational intensity. Our approach is portable of other space-time analytical tests.

Development of an 8000 bps voice codec for AvSat

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Clark, Joseph F.

1988-01-01

Air-mobile speech communication applications share robustness and noise immunity requirements with other mobile applications. The quality requirements are stringent, especially in the cockpit where air safety is involved. Based on these considerations, a decision was made to test an intermediate data rate such as 8.0 and 9.6 kb/s as proven technologies. A number of vocoders and codec technologies were investigated at rates ranging from 2.4 kb/s up to and including 9.6 kb/s. The proven vocoders operating at 2.4 and 4.8 kb/s lacked the noise immunity or the robustness to operate reliably in a cabin noise environment. One very attractive alternative approach was Spectrally Encoded Residual Excited LPC (SE-RELP) which is used in a multi-rate voice processor (MRP) developed at the Naval Research Lab (NRL). The MRP uses SE-RELP at rates of 9.6 and 16 kb/s. The 9.6 kb/s rate can be lowered to 8.0 kb/s without loss of information by modifying the frame. An 8.0 kb/s vocoder was developed using SE-RELP as a demonstrator and testbed. This demonstrator is implemented in real time using two Compaq 2 portable computers, each equipped with an ARIEL DSP016 Data Acquisition Processor.

A customizable system for real-time image processing using the Blackfin DSProcessor and the MicroC/OS-II real-time kernel

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coffey, Stephen; Connell, Joseph

2005-06-01

This paper presents a development platform for real-time image processing based on the ADSP-BF533 Blackfin processor and the MicroC/OS-II real-time operating system (RTOS). MicroC/OS-II is a completely portable, ROMable, pre-emptive, real-time kernel. The Blackfin Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), incorporating the Analog Devices/Intel Micro Signal Architecture (MSA), are a broad family of 16-bit fixed-point products with a dual Multiply Accumulate (MAC) core. In addition, they have a rich instruction set with variable instruction length and both DSP and MCU functionality thus making them ideal for media based applications. Using the MicroC/OS-II for task scheduling and management, the proposed system can capture and process raw RGB data from any standard 8-bit greyscale image sensor in soft real-time and then display the processed result using a simple PC graphical user interface (GUI). Additionally, the GUI allows configuration of the image capture rate and the system and core DSP clock rates thereby allowing connectivity to a selection of image sensors and memory devices. The GUI also allows selection from a set of image processing algorithms based in the embedded operating system.

S-HARP: A parallel dynamic spectral partitioner

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sohn, A.; Simon, H.

1998-01-01

Computational science problems with adaptive meshes involve dynamic load balancing when implemented on parallel machines. This dynamic load balancing requires fast partitioning of computational meshes at run time. The authors present in this report a fast parallel dynamic partitioner, called S-HARP. The underlying principles of S-HARP are the fast feature of inertial partitioning and the quality feature of spectral partitioning. S-HARP partitions a graph from scratch, requiring no partition information from previous iterations. Two types of parallelism have been exploited in S-HARP, fine grain loop level parallelism and coarse grain recursive parallelism. The parallel partitioner has been implemented in Messagemore » Passing Interface on Cray T3E and IBM SP2 for portability. Experimental results indicate that S-HARP can partition a mesh of over 100,000 vertices into 256 partitions in 0.2 seconds on a 64 processor Cray T3E. S-HARP is much more scalable than other dynamic partitioners, giving over 15 fold speedup on 64 processors while ParaMeTiS1.0 gives a few fold speedup. Experimental results demonstrate that S-HARP is three to 10 times faster than the dynamic partitioners ParaMeTiS and Jostle on six computational meshes of size over 100,000 vertices.« less

Analysis of Twenty-Two Performance Properties of Diesel, Gasoline, and Jet Fuels Using a Field-Portable Near-Infrared (NIR) Analyzer.

PubMed

Brouillette, Carl; Smith, Wayne; Shende, Chetan; Gladding, Zack; Farquharson, Stuart; Morris, Robert E; Cramer, Jeffrey A; Schmitigal, Joel

2016-05-01

The change in custody of fuel shipments at depots, pipelines, and ports could benefit from an analyzer that could rapidly verify that properties are within specifications. To meet this need, the design requirements for a fuel analyzer based on near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, such as spectral region and resolution, were examined. It was found that the 1000 to 1600 nm region, containing the second CH overtone and combination vibrational modes of hydrocarbons, provided the best near-infrared to fuel property correlations when path length was taken into account, whereas 4 cm(-1) resolution provided only a modest improvement compared to 16 cm(-1) resolution when four or more latent variables were used. Based on these results, a field-portable near-infrared fuel analyzer was built that employed an incandescent light source, sample compartment optics to hold 2 mL glass sample vials with ∼1 cm path length, a transmission grating, and a 256 channel InGaAs detector that measured the above stated wavelength range with 5-6 nm (∼32 cm(-1)) resolution. The analyzer produced high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) spectra of samples in 5 s. Twenty-two property correlation models were developed for diesel, gasoline, and jet fuels with root mean squared error of correlation - cross-validated values that compared favorably to corresponding ASTM reproducibility values. The standard deviations of predicted properties for repeat measurements at 4, 24, and 38℃ were often better than ASTM documented repeatability values. The analyzer and diesel property models were tested by measuring seven diesel samples at a local ASTM certification laboratory. The standard deviations between the analyzer determined values and the ASTM measured values for these samples were generally better than the model root mean squared error of correlation-cross-validated values for each property. © The Author(s) 2016.

Portable Radiation Detectors

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1997-01-01

Through a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from Kennedy Space Center, General Pneumatics Corporation's Western Research Center satisfied a NASA need for a non-clogging Joule-Thomson cryostat to provide very low temperature cooling for various sensors. This NASA-supported cryostat development played a key part in the development of more portable high-purity geranium gamma-ray detectors. Such are necessary to discern between the radionuclides in medical, fuel, weapon, and waste materials. The outcome of the SBIR project is a cryostat that can cool gamma-ray detectors, without vibration, using compressed gas that can be stored compactly and indefinitely in a standby mode. General Pneumatics also produces custom J-T cryostats for other government, commercial and medical applications.

Cold weather effects on Dresden Unit 1

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Anagnostopoulos, H.

1995-03-01

Dresden Unit 1 is in the final stages of a decommissioning effort directed at preparing the unit to enter a SAFSTOR status. Following an extended sub-zero cold wave, about 55,000 gallons of water were discovered in the lowest elevation of the spherical reactor enclosure. Cold weather had caused the freezing and breaking of several service water lines that had not been completely isolated. Two days later, at a regularly scheduled decommissioning meeting, the event was communicated to the decommissioning team, who quickly recognized the potential for freezing of a 42 inches diameter Fuel Transfer Tube that connects the sphere tomore » the Spent Fuel Pool. The team directed that the pool gates between the adjacent Spent Fuel Pool and the Fuel Transfer Pool be installed, and a portable source of heat was installed on the Fuel Transfer Tube. It was later determined that, with the fuel pool gates removed, and with a worst case freeze break at the 502 elevation on the Fuel Transfer Tube (in the Sphere), the fuel in the Spent Fuel Pool could be uncovered to a level 3 below the top of active fuel.« less

In-ground operation of Geothermic Fuel Cells for unconventional oil and gas recovery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sullivan, Neal; Anyenya, Gladys; Haun, Buddy; Daubenspeck, Mark; Bonadies, Joseph; Kerr, Rick; Fischer, Bernhard; Wright, Adam; Jones, Gerald; Li, Robert; Wall, Mark; Forbes, Alan; Savage, Marshall

2016-01-01

This paper presents operating and performance characteristics of a nine-stack solid-oxide fuel cell combined-heat-and-power system. Integrated with a natural-gas fuel processor, air compressor, reactant-gas preheater, and diagnostics and control equipment, the system is designed for use in unconventional oil-and-gas processing. Termed a ;Geothermic Fuel Cell; (GFC), the heat liberated by the fuel cell during electricity generation is harnessed to process oil shale into high-quality crude oil and natural gas. The 1.5-kWe SOFC stacks are packaged within three-stack GFC modules. Three GFC modules are mechanically and electrically coupled to a reactant-gas preheater and installed within the earth. During operation, significant heat is conducted from the Geothermic Fuel Cell to the surrounding geology. The complete system was continuously operated on hydrogen and natural-gas fuels for ∼600 h. A quasi-steady operating point was established to favor heat generation (29.1 kWth) over electricity production (4.4 kWe). Thermodynamic analysis reveals a combined-heat-and-power efficiency of 55% at this condition. Heat flux to the geology averaged 3.2 kW m-1 across the 9-m length of the Geothermic Fuel Cell-preheater assembly. System performance is reviewed; some suggestions for improvement are proposed.

Method and apparatus for real-time measurement of fuel gas compositions and heating values

DOEpatents

Zelepouga, Serguei; Pratapas, John M.; Saveliev, Alexei V.; Jangale, Vilas V.

2016-03-22

An exemplary embodiment can be an apparatus for real-time, in situ measurement of gas compositions and heating values. The apparatus includes a near infrared sensor for measuring concentrations of hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide, a mid infrared sensor for measuring concentrations of carbon monoxide and a semiconductor based sensor for measuring concentrations of hydrogen gas. A data processor having a computer program for reducing the effects of cross-sensitivities of the sensors to components other than target components of the sensors is also included. Also provided are corresponding or associated methods for real-time, in situ determination of a composition and heating value of a fuel gas.

Science& Technology Review November 2003

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

McMahon, D

2003-11-01

This issue of Science & Technology Review covers the following topics: (1) We Will Always Need Basic Science--Commentary by Tomas Diaz de la Rubia; (2) When Semiconductors Go Nano--experiments and computer simulations reveal some surprising behavior of semiconductors at the nanoscale; (3) Retinal Prosthesis Provides Hope for Restoring Sight--A microelectrode array is being developed for a retinal prosthesis; (4) Maglev on the Development Track for Urban Transportation--Inductrack, a Livermore concept to levitate train cars using permanent magnets, will be demonstrated on a 120-meter-long test track; and (5) Power Plant on a Chip Moves Closer to Reality--Laboratory-designed fuel processor gives powermore » boost to dime-size fuel cell.« less

The US Army Foreign Comparative Test fuel cell program

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bostic, Elizabeth; Sifer, Nicholas; Bolton, Christopher; Ritter, Uli; Dubois, Terry

The US Army RDECOM initiated a Foreign Comparative Test (FCT) Program to acquire lightweight, high-energy dense fuel cell systems from across the globe for evaluation as portable power sources in military applications. Five foreign companies, including NovArs, Smart Fuel Cell, Intelligent Energy, Ballard Power Systems, and Hydrogenics, Inc., were awarded competitive contracts under the RDECOM effort. This paper will report on the status of the program as well as the experimental results obtained from one of the units. The US Army has interests in evaluating and deploying a variety of fuel cell systems, where these systems show added value when compared to current power sources in use. For low-power applications, fuel cells utilizing high-energy dense fuels offer significant weight savings over current battery technologies. This helps reduce the load a solider must carry for longer missions. For high-power applications, the low operating signatures (acoustic and thermal) of fuel cell systems make them ideal power generators in stealth operations. Recent testing has been completed on the Smart Fuel Cell A25 system that was procured through the FCT program. The "A-25" is a direct methanol fuel cell hybrid and was evaluated as a potential candidate for soldier and sensor power applications.

Simulated parallel annealing within a neighborhood for optimization of biomechanical systems.

PubMed

Higginson, J S; Neptune, R R; Anderson, F C

2005-09-01

Optimization problems for biomechanical systems have become extremely complex. Simulated annealing (SA) algorithms have performed well in a variety of test problems and biomechanical applications; however, despite advances in computer speed, convergence to optimal solutions for systems of even moderate complexity has remained prohibitive. The objective of this study was to develop a portable parallel version of a SA algorithm for solving optimization problems in biomechanics. The algorithm for simulated parallel annealing within a neighborhood (SPAN) was designed to minimize interprocessor communication time and closely retain the heuristics of the serial SA algorithm. The computational speed of the SPAN algorithm scaled linearly with the number of processors on different computer platforms for a simple quadratic test problem and for a more complex forward dynamic simulation of human pedaling.

Mobile computing in critical care.

PubMed

Lapinsky, Stephen E

2007-03-01

Handheld computing devices are increasingly used by health care workers, and offer a mobile platform for point-of-care information access. Improved technology, with larger memory capacity, higher screen resolution, faster processors, and wireless connectivity has broadened the potential roles for these devices in critical care. In addition to the personal information management functions, handheld computers have been used to access reference information, management guidelines and pharmacopoeias as well as to track the educational experience of trainees. They can act as an interface with a clinical information system, providing rapid access to patient information. Despite their popularity, these devices have limitations related to their small size, and acceptance by physicians has not been uniform. In the critical care environment, the risk of transmitting microorganisms by such a portable device should always be considered.

Voltage scheduling for low power/energy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Manzak, Ali

2001-07-01

Power considerations have become an increasingly dominant factor in the design of both portable and desk-top systems. An effective way to reduce power consumption is to lower the supply voltage since voltage is quadratically related to power. This dissertation considers the problem of lowering the supply voltage at (i) the system level and at (ii) the behavioral level. At the system level, the voltage of the variable voltage processor is dynamically changed with the work load. Processors with limited sized buffers as well as those with very large buffers are considered. Given the task arrival times, deadline times, execution times, periods and switching activities, task scheduling algorithms that minimize energy or peak power are developed for the processors equipped with very large buffers. A relation between the operating voltages of the tasks for minimum energy/power is determined using the Lagrange multiplier method, and an iterative algorithm that utilizes this relation is developed. Experimental results show that the voltage assignment obtained by the proposed algorithm is very close (0.1% error) to that of the optimal energy assignment and the optimal peak power (1% error) assignment. Next, on-line and off-fine minimum energy task scheduling algorithms are developed for processors with limited sized buffers. These algorithms have polynomial time complexity and present optimal (off-line) and close-to-optimal (on-line) solutions. A procedure to calculate the minimum buffer size given information about the size of the task (maximum, minimum), execution time (best case, worst case) and deadlines is also presented. At the behavioral level, resources operating at multiple voltages are used to minimize power while maintaining the throughput. Such a scheme has the advantage of allowing modules on the critical paths to be assigned to the highest voltage levels (thus meeting the required timing constraints) while allowing modules on non-critical paths to be assigned to lower voltage levels (thus reducing the power consumption). A polynomial time resource and latency constrained scheduling algorithm is developed to distribute the available slack among the nodes such that power consumption is minimum. The algorithm is iterative and utilizes the slack based on the Lagrange multiplier method.

Alternative Fuels Data Center: Batteries for Hybrid and Plug-In Electric

Science.gov Websites

most portable consumer electronics such as cell phones and laptops because of their high energy per unit mass relative to other electrical energy storage systems. They also have a high power-to-weight ratio, high energy efficiency, good high-temperature performance, and low self-discharge. Most

46 CFR 27.102 - Incorporation by reference.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... Street, Suite 10, Annapolis, MD 21403 H-25-1986—Portable Fuel Systems for Flammable Liquids 27.211 H-33... Commonwealth Drive, Warrendale, PA 15096-0001 SAE J1475-1984—Hydraulic Hose Fitting for Marine Applications 27.211 SAE J1942-1989—Hose and Hose Assemblies for Marine Applications 27.211 [USCG-2000-6931, 69 FR...

46 CFR 160.135-13 - Approval inspections and tests for prototype lifeboats.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

...-11 of this subpart; (ii) Assuring that the quality assurance program of the manufacturer is.... (2) Fiber Reinforced Plastic (FRP) prototype lifeboat lay-up. For the prototype of each design of an... non-portable fuel tank must be tested by a static head above the tank top of 3 m (10 ft) of water...

46 CFR 160.135-13 - Approval inspections and tests for prototype lifeboats.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

...-11 of this subpart; (ii) Assuring that the quality assurance program of the manufacturer is.... (2) Fiber Reinforced Plastic (FRP) prototype lifeboat lay-up. For the prototype of each design of an... non-portable fuel tank must be tested by a static head above the tank top of 3 m (10 ft) of water...

46 CFR 160.135-13 - Approval inspections and tests for prototype lifeboats.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

...-11 of this subpart; (ii) Assuring that the quality assurance program of the manufacturer is.... (2) Fiber Reinforced Plastic (FRP) prototype lifeboat lay-up. For the prototype of each design of an... non-portable fuel tank must be tested by a static head above the tank top of 3 m (10 ft) of water...

49 CFR 176.76 - Transport vehicles, freight containers, and portable tanks containing hazardous materials.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

...) Any slack spaces between packages must be filled with dunnage; (7) The weight in a container must be... in which any flammable liquid or gas is stowed. Any heating or air conditioning equipment having a fuel tank containing a flammable liquid or gas may be stowed only “on deck”. Equipment electrically...

49 CFR 176.76 - Transport vehicles, freight containers, and portable tanks containing hazardous materials.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

...) Any slack spaces between packages must be filled with dunnage; (7) The weight in a container must be... in which any flammable liquid or gas is stowed. Any heating or air conditioning equipment having a fuel tank containing a flammable liquid or gas may be stowed only “on deck”. Equipment electrically...

49 CFR 176.76 - Transport vehicles, freight containers, and portable tanks containing hazardous materials.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

...) Any slack spaces between packages must be filled with dunnage; (7) The weight in a container must be... liquid or gas is stowed. Any heating or air conditioning equipment having a fuel tank containing a flammable liquid or gas may be stowed only “on deck”. Equipment electrically powered and designed to operate...

49 CFR 176.76 - Transport vehicles, freight containers, and portable tanks containing hazardous materials.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

...) Any slack spaces between packages must be filled with dunnage; (7) The weight in a container must be... liquid or gas is stowed. Any heating or air conditioning equipment having a fuel tank containing a flammable liquid or gas may be stowed only “on deck”. Equipment electrically powered and designed to operate...

49 CFR 176.76 - Transport vehicles, freight containers, and portable tanks containing hazardous materials.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

...) Any slack spaces between packages must be filled with dunnage; (7) The weight in a container must be... in which any flammable liquid or gas is stowed. Any heating or air conditioning equipment having a fuel tank containing a flammable liquid or gas may be stowed only “on deck”. Equipment electrically...

7. Credit PSR. Detail view looks east at Building 4306 ...

Library of Congress Historic Buildings Survey, Historic Engineering Record, Historic Landscapes Survey

7. Credit PSR. Detail view looks east at Building 4306 (Boiler House) and at the south facade of Building 4305. Ground disturbance in foreground was a pit lined with plastic film for placement of a temporary fuel tank. - Edwards Air Force Base, North Base, Unicon Portable Hangar, First & C Streets, Boron, Kern County, CA

Long life Regenerative Fuel Cell technology development plan

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Littman, Franklin D.; Cataldo, Robert L.; Mcelroy, James F.; Stedman, Jay K.

1992-01-01

This paper summarizes a technology roadmap for completing advanced development of a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) Regenerative Fuel Cell (RFC) to meet long life (20,000 hrs at 50 percent duty cycle) mobile or portable power system applications on the surface of the moon and Mars. Development of two different sized RFC power system modules is included in this plan (3 and 7.5 kWe). A conservative approach was taken which includes the development of a Ground Engineering System, Qualification Unit, and Flight Unit. This paper includes a concept description, technology assessment, development issues, development tasks, and development schedule.

Smartphones as image processing systems for prosthetic vision.

PubMed

Zapf, Marc P; Matteucci, Paul B; Lovell, Nigel H; Suaning, Gregg J

2013-01-01

The feasibility of implants for prosthetic vision has been demonstrated by research and commercial organizations. In most devices, an essential forerunner to the internal stimulation circuit is an external electronics solution for capturing, processing and relaying image information as well as extracting useful features from the scene surrounding the patient. The capabilities and multitude of image processing algorithms that can be performed by the device in real-time plays a major part in the final quality of the prosthetic vision. It is therefore optimal to use powerful hardware yet to avoid bulky, straining solutions. Recent publications have reported of portable single-board computers fast enough for computationally intensive image processing. Following the rapid evolution of commercial, ultra-portable ARM (Advanced RISC machine) mobile devices, the authors investigated the feasibility of modern smartphones running complex face detection as external processing devices for vision implants. The role of dedicated graphics processors in speeding up computation was evaluated while performing a demanding noise reduction algorithm (image denoising). The time required for face detection was found to decrease by 95% from 2.5 year old to recent devices. In denoising, graphics acceleration played a major role, speeding up denoising by a factor of 18. These results demonstrate that the technology has matured sufficiently to be considered as a valid external electronics platform for visual prosthetic research.

Missile signal processing common computer architecture for rapid technology upgrade

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rabinkin, Daniel V.; Rutledge, Edward; Monticciolo, Paul

2004-10-01

Interceptor missiles process IR images to locate an intended target and guide the interceptor towards it. Signal processing requirements have increased as the sensor bandwidth increases and interceptors operate against more sophisticated targets. A typical interceptor signal processing chain is comprised of two parts. Front-end video processing operates on all pixels of the image and performs such operations as non-uniformity correction (NUC), image stabilization, frame integration and detection. Back-end target processing, which tracks and classifies targets detected in the image, performs such algorithms as Kalman tracking, spectral feature extraction and target discrimination. In the past, video processing was implemented using ASIC components or FPGAs because computation requirements exceeded the throughput of general-purpose processors. Target processing was performed using hybrid architectures that included ASICs, DSPs and general-purpose processors. The resulting systems tended to be function-specific, and required custom software development. They were developed using non-integrated toolsets and test equipment was developed along with the processor platform. The lifespan of a system utilizing the signal processing platform often spans decades, while the specialized nature of processor hardware and software makes it difficult and costly to upgrade. As a result, the signal processing systems often run on outdated technology, algorithms are difficult to update, and system effectiveness is impaired by the inability to rapidly respond to new threats. A new design approach is made possible three developments; Moore's Law - driven improvement in computational throughput; a newly introduced vector computing capability in general purpose processors; and a modern set of open interface software standards. Today's multiprocessor commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) platforms have sufficient throughput to support interceptor signal processing requirements. This application may be programmed under existing real-time operating systems using parallel processing software libraries, resulting in highly portable code that can be rapidly migrated to new platforms as processor technology evolves. Use of standardized development tools and 3rd party software upgrades are enabled as well as rapid upgrade of processing components as improved algorithms are developed. The resulting weapon system will have a superior processing capability over a custom approach at the time of deployment as a result of a shorter development cycles and use of newer technology. The signal processing computer may be upgraded over the lifecycle of the weapon system, and can migrate between weapon system variants enabled by modification simplicity. This paper presents a reference design using the new approach that utilizes an Altivec PowerPC parallel COTS platform. It uses a VxWorks-based real-time operating system (RTOS), and application code developed using an efficient parallel vector library (PVL). A quantification of computing requirements and demonstration of interceptor algorithm operating on this real-time platform are provided.

High Fidelity Simulations of Unsteady Flow through Turbopumps and Flowliners

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kiris, Cetin C.; Kwak, dochan; Chan, William; Housman, Jeff

2006-01-01

High fidelity computations were carried out to analyze the orbiter LH2 feedline flowliner. Computations were performed on the Columbia platform which is a 10,240-processor supercluster consisting of 20 Altix nodes with 512 processor each. Various computational models were used to characterize the unsteady flow features in the turbopump, including the orbiter Low-Pressure-Fuel-Turbopump (LPFTP) inducer, the orbiter manifold and a test article used to represent the manifold. Unsteady flow originating from the orbiter LPFTP inducer is one of the major contributors to the high frequency cyclic loading that results in high cycle fatigue damage to the gimbal flowliners just upstream of the LPFTP. The flow fields for the orbiter manifold and representative test article are computed and analyzed for similarities and differences. The incompressible Navier-Stokes flow solver INS3D, based on the artificial compressibility method, was used to compute the flow of liquid hydrogen in each test article.

Modular chemiresistive sensor

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Alam, Maksudul M.; Sampathkumaran, Uma

The present invention relates to a modular chemiresistive sensor. In particular, a modular chemiresistive sensor for hypergolic fuel and oxidizer leak detection, carbon dioxide monitoring and detection of disease biomarkers. The sensor preferably has two gold or platinum electrodes mounted on a silicon substrate where the electrodes are connected to a power source and are separated by a gap of 0.5 to 4.0 .mu.M. A polymer nanowire or carbon nanotube spans the gap between the electrodes and connects the electrodes electrically. The electrodes are further connected to a circuit board having a processor and data storage, where the processor canmore » measure current and voltage values between the electrodes and compare the current and voltage values with current and voltage values stored in the data storage and assigned to particular concentrations of a pre-determined substance such as those listed above or a variety of other substances.« less

Nanomaterials for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells; Materials Challenges Facing Electrical Energy Storate

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Gopal Rao, MRS Web-Editor; Yury Gogotsi, Drexel University; Karen Swider-Lyons, Naval Research Laboratory

Symposium T: Nanomaterials for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells are under intense investigation worldwide for applications ranging from transportation to portable power. The purpose of this seminar is to focus on the nanomaterials and nanostructures inherent to polymer fuel cells. Symposium topics will range from high-activity cathode and anode catalysts, to theory and new analytical methods. Symposium U: Materials Challenges Facing Electrical Energy Storage Electricity, which can be generated in a variety of ways, offers a great potential for meeting future energy demands as a clean and efficient energy source. However, the use ofmore » electricity generated from renewable sources, such as wind or sunlight, requires efficient electrical energy storage. This symposium will cover the latest material developments for batteries, advanced capacitors, and related technologies, with a focus on new or emerging materials science challenges.« less

A qualitative analysis of the neutron population in fresh and spent fuel assemblies during simulated interrogation using the differential die-away technique

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Tobin, Stephen J.; Lundkvist, Niklas; Goodsell, Alison V.

In this study, Monte Carlo simulations were performed for the differential die-away (DDA) technique to analyse the time-dependent behaviour of the neutron population in fresh and spent nuclear fuel assemblies as part of the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative Spent Fuel (NGSI-SF) Project. Simulations were performed to investigate both a possibly portable as well as a permanent DDA instrument. Taking advantage of a custom made modification to the MCNPX code, the variation in the neutron population, simultaneously in time and space, was examined. The motivation for this research was to improve the design of the DDA instrument, as it is bemore » ing considered for possible deployment at the Central Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel and Encapsulation Plant in Sweden (Clab), as well as to assist in the interpretation of the both simulated and measured signals.« less

Design of experiments with four-factors for a PEM fuel cell optimization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Olteanu, V.; Pǎtularu, L.; Popescu, C. L.; Popescu, M. O.; Crǎciunescu, A.

2017-07-01

Nowadays, many research efforts are allocated for the development of fuel cells, since they constitute a carbon-free electrical energy generator which can be used for stationary, mobile and portable applications. The maximum value of the delivered power of a fuel cell depends on many factors as: the height of plates' channels, the stoichiometry level of the air flow, the air pressure for the cathode, and of the actual operating electric current density. In this paper, two levels, full four-factors factorial experiment has been designed in order to obtain the appropriate response surface which approximates the maximum delivered power dependence of the above-mentioned factors. The optimum set of the fuel-cell factors which determine the maximum value of the delivered power was determined and a comparison between simulated and measured optimal Power versus Current Density characteristics is given.

A qualitative analysis of the neutron population in fresh and spent fuel assemblies during simulated interrogation using the differential die-away technique

DOE PAGES

Tobin, Stephen J.; Lundkvist, Niklas; Goodsell, Alison V.; ...

2015-12-01

In this study, Monte Carlo simulations were performed for the differential die-away (DDA) technique to analyse the time-dependent behaviour of the neutron population in fresh and spent nuclear fuel assemblies as part of the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative Spent Fuel (NGSI-SF) Project. Simulations were performed to investigate both a possibly portable as well as a permanent DDA instrument. Taking advantage of a custom made modification to the MCNPX code, the variation in the neutron population, simultaneously in time and space, was examined. The motivation for this research was to improve the design of the DDA instrument, as it is bemore » ing considered for possible deployment at the Central Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel and Encapsulation Plant in Sweden (Clab), as well as to assist in the interpretation of the both simulated and measured signals.« less

Fuel Cell Power Plant Initiative. Volume 1; Solid Oxide Fuel Cell/Logistics Fuel Processor 27 kWe Power System Demonstration for ARPA

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Veyo, S.E.

1997-01-01

This report describes the successful testing of a 27 kWe Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) generator fueled by natural gas and/or a fuel gas produced by a brassboard logistics fuel preprocessor (LFP). The test period began on May 24, 1995 and ended on February 26, 1996 with the successful completion of all program requirements and objectives. During this time period, this power system produced 118.2 MWh of electric power. No degradation of the generator's performance was measured after 5582 accumulated hours of operation on these fuels: local natural gas - 3261 hours, jet fuel reformate gas - 766 hours, and diesel fuel reformate gas - 1555 hours. This SOFC generator was thermally cycled from full operating temperature to room temperature and back to operating temperature six times, because of failures of support system components and the occasional loss of test site power, without measurable cell degradation. Numerous outages of the LFP did not interrupt the generator's operation because the fuel control system quickly switched to local natural gas when an alarm indicated that the LFP reformate fuel supply had been interrupted. The report presents the measured electrical performance of the generator on all three fuel types and notes the small differences due to fuel type. Operational difficulties due to component failures are well documented even though they did not affect the overall excellent performance of this SOFC power generator. The final two appendices describe in detail the LFP design and the operating history of the tested brassboard LFP.

Lightweight Stacks of Direct Methanol Fuel Cells

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Narayanan, Sekharipuram; Valdez, Thomas

2004-01-01

An improved design concept for direct methanol fuel cells makes it possible to construct fuel-cell stacks that can weigh as little as one-third as much as do conventional bipolar fuel-cell stacks of equal power. The structural-support components of the improved cells and stacks can be made of relatively inexpensive plastics. Moreover, in comparison with conventional bipolar fuel-cell stacks, the improved fuel-cell stacks can be assembled, disassembled, and diagnosed for malfunctions more easily. These improvements are expected to bring portable direct methanol fuel cells and stacks closer to commercialization. In a conventional bipolar fuel-cell stack, the cells are interspersed with bipolar plates (also called biplates), which are structural components that serve to interconnect the cells and distribute the reactants (methanol and air). The cells and biplates are sandwiched between metal end plates. Usually, the stack is held together under pressure by tie rods that clamp the end plates. The bipolar stack configuration offers the advantage of very low internal electrical resistance. However, when the power output of a stack is only a few watts, the very low internal resistance of a bipolar stack is not absolutely necessary for keeping the internal power loss acceptably low.

Durability of PEM Fuel Cell Membranes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Xinyu; Reifsnider, Ken

Durability is still a critical limiting factor for the commercialization of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells, a leading energy conversion technology for powering future hydrogen fueled automobiles, backup power systems (e.g., for base transceiver station of cellular networks), portable electronic devices, etc. Ionic conducting polymer (ionomer) electrolyte membranes are the critical enabling materials for the PEM fuel cells. They are also widely used as the central functional elements in hydrogen generation (e.g., electrolyzers), membrane cell for chlor-alkali production, etc. A perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) polymer with the trade name Nafion® developed by DuPont™ is the most widely used PEM in chlor-alkali cells and PEM fuel cells. Similar PFSA membranes have been developed by Dow Chemical, Asahi Glass, and lately Solvay Solexis. Frequently, such membranes serve the dual function of reactant separation and selective ionic conduction between two otherwise separate compartments. For some applications, the compromise of the "separation" function via the degradation and mechanical failure of the electrolyte membrane can be the life-limiting factor; this is particularly the case for PEM in hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells.

Additive Manufacturing of a Microbial Fuel Cell—A detailed study

PubMed Central

Calignano, Flaviana; Tommasi, Tonia; Manfredi, Diego; Chiolerio, Alessandro

2015-01-01

In contemporary society we observe an everlasting permeation of electron devices, smartphones, portable computing tools. The tiniest living organisms on Earth could become the key to address this challenge: energy generation by bacterial processes from renewable stocks/waste through devices such as microbial fuel cells (MFCs). However, the application of this solution was limited by a moderately low efficiency. We explored the limits, if any, of additive manufacturing (AM) technology to fabricate a fully AM-based powering device, exploiting low density, open porosities able to host the microbes, systems easy to fuel continuously and to run safely. We obtained an optimal energy recovery close to 3 kWh m−3 per day that can power sensors and low-power appliances, allowing data processing and transmission from remote/harsh environments. PMID:26611142

Additive Manufacturing of a Microbial Fuel Cell—A detailed study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Calignano, Flaviana; Tommasi, Tonia; Manfredi, Diego; Chiolerio, Alessandro

2015-11-01

In contemporary society we observe an everlasting permeation of electron devices, smartphones, portable computing tools. The tiniest living organisms on Earth could become the key to address this challenge: energy generation by bacterial processes from renewable stocks/waste through devices such as microbial fuel cells (MFCs). However, the application of this solution was limited by a moderately low efficiency. We explored the limits, if any, of additive manufacturing (AM) technology to fabricate a fully AM-based powering device, exploiting low density, open porosities able to host the microbes, systems easy to fuel continuously and to run safely. We obtained an optimal energy recovery close to 3 kWh m-3 per day that can power sensors and low-power appliances, allowing data processing and transmission from remote/harsh environments.

Bioenergy

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-03-06

from electrode and then catalyzing O2 reduction. • Approach: Various MCO were linked to carbon nanotubes (CNT) using a chemical “tethering” reagent (1...Portable H2 Fuel Generated from H2O or Cellulose : - Cheap, self-healing inorganic catalysts split water into H2 and O2 - Engineered...chlorophyll light Sugar/ Cellulose Synthesis Light Reactions PSI and PSII Dark Reactions Triglyceride (Oil) Lipid Synthesis Microalgae

Characteristics of On-road Diesel Vehicles: Black Carbon Emissions in Chinese Cities Based on Portable Emissions Measurement.

PubMed

Zheng, Xuan; Wu, Ye; Jiang, Jingkun; Zhang, Shaojun; Liu, Huan; Song, Shaojie; Li, Zhenhua; Fan, Xiaoxiao; Fu, Lixin; Hao, Jiming

2015-11-17

Black carbon (BC) emissions from heavy-duty diesel vehicles (HDDVs) are rarely continuously measured using portable emission measurement systems (PEMSs). In this study, we utilize a PEMS to obtain real-world BC emission profiles for 25 HDDVs in China. The average fuel-based BC emissions of HDDVs certified according to Euro II, III, IV, and V standards are 2224 ± 251, 612 ± 740, 453 ± 584, and 152 ± 3 mg kg(-1), respectively. Notably, HDDVs adopting mechanical pump engines had significantly higher BC emissions than those equipped with electronic injection engines. Applying the useful features of PEMSs, we can relate instantaneous BC emissions to driving conditions using an operating mode binning methodology, and the average emission rates for Euro II to Euro IV diesel trucks can be constructed. From a macroscopic perspective, we observe that average speed is a significant factor affecting BC emissions and is well correlated with distance-based emissions (R(2) = 0.71). Therefore, the average fuel-based and distance-based BC emissions on congested roads are 40 and 125% higher than those on freeways. These results should be taken into consideration in future emission inventory studies.

Production of an environmentally friendly fuel with the aid of ultrasonic waves from a new plant source, and the investigation of its effect on pollutants reduction in a CI engine.

PubMed

Saraee, Hossein Soukht; Jafarmadar, Samad; Kheyrollahi, Javad; Hosseinpour, Alireza

2018-03-01

In this study, methyl ester of Sisymbrium plant seed oil with the chemical formula of C 18 H 34 O 2 is produced for the first time, with the aid of ultrasonic waves and in the presence of a nanocatalyst. After measuring its characteristics and comparing with ASTM standard, it is tested and evaluated with different ratios of diesel fuel in a single-cylinder diesel engine. The reactions are accomplished in a flask by an ultrasonic processor unit and in the presence of CaO-MgO nanocatalyst. The engine tests were conducted based on the engine short time experiment. The results showed that with the increment of biodiesel ratio in the fuel blend, pollutants level of CO, HC, and smoke opacity are decreased comparing diesel fuel due to the improvement of the combustion process, and the amount of NOx emission is increased owing to high pressure and temperature of the combustion chamber. Also, produced biodiesel fuel causes an increment in the fuel consumption and exhaust gasses temperature. Overall, with regard to its effects on the engine and also being a native and easy cultivation plant, it can be resulted that Sisymbrium oil biodiesel and its blends with diesel fuel can be applied as an alternative fuel.

Electric Fuel Pump Condition Monitor System Using Electricalsignature Analysis

DOEpatents

Haynes, Howard D [Knoxville, TN; Cox, Daryl F [Knoxville, TN; Welch, Donald E [Oak Ridge, TN

2005-09-13

A pump diagnostic system and method comprising current sensing probes clamped on electrical motor leads of a pump for sensing only current signals on incoming motor power, a signal processor having a means for buffering and anti-aliasing current signals into a pump motor current signal, and a computer having a means for analyzing, displaying, and reporting motor current signatures from the motor current signal to determine pump health using integrated motor and pump diagnostic parameters.

Joint Long-Range Energy Study for Greater Fairbanks Military Complex

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-02-01

be viewed as a two - stage processor of a fuel or feedstock. The feedstock is first gasified using high-temperature plasma heating sys- tems at...Coal-Fired Boilers with New Circulating Fluidized- Bed Boilers (CFBs). EAFB anticipates replacing two current boilers with two new boilers. This...definition to support DD Form 1391 budget level cost estimates for new coal-fired CHPPs at FWA and EAFB and for two new coal-fired CFBs at EAFB • update

Metal Oxide/Zeolite Combination Absorbs H2S

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Voecks, Gerald E.; Sharma, Pramod K.

1989-01-01

Mixed copper and molybdenum oxides supported in pores of zeolite found to remove H2S from mixture of gases rich in hydrogen and steam, at temperatures from 256 to 538 degree C. Absorber of H2S needed to clean up gas streams from fuel processors that incorporate high-temperature steam reformers or hydrodesulfurizing units. Zeolites chosen as supporting materials because of their high porosity, rigidity, alumina content, and variety of both composition and form.

The force on the flex: Global parallelism and portability

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jordan, H. F.

1986-01-01

A parallel programming methodology, called the force, supports the construction of programs to be executed in parallel by an unspecified, but potentially large, number of processes. The methodology was originally developed on a pipelined, shared memory multiprocessor, the Denelcor HEP, and embodies the primitive operations of the force in a set of macros which expand into multiprocessor Fortran code. A small set of primitives is sufficient to write large parallel programs, and the system has been used to produce 10,000 line programs in computational fluid dynamics. The level of complexity of the force primitives is intermediate. It is high enough to mask detailed architectural differences between multiprocessors but low enough to give the user control over performance. The system is being ported to a medium scale multiprocessor, the Flex/32, which is a 20 processor system with a mixture of shared and local memory. Memory organization and the type of processor synchronization supported by the hardware on the two machines lead to some differences in efficient implementations of the force primitives, but the user interface remains the same. An initial implementation was done by retargeting the macros to Flexible Computer Corporation's ConCurrent C language. Subsequently, the macros were caused to directly produce the system calls which form the basis for ConCurrent C. The implementation of the Fortran based system is in step with Flexible Computer Corporations's implementation of a Fortran system in the parallel environment.

Concurrent Probabilistic Simulation of High Temperature Composite Structural Response

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Abdi, Frank

1996-01-01

A computational structural/material analysis and design tool which would meet industry's future demand for expedience and reduced cost is presented. This unique software 'GENOA' is dedicated to parallel and high speed analysis to perform probabilistic evaluation of high temperature composite response of aerospace systems. The development is based on detailed integration and modification of diverse fields of specialized analysis techniques and mathematical models to combine their latest innovative capabilities into a commercially viable software package. The technique is specifically designed to exploit the availability of processors to perform computationally intense probabilistic analysis assessing uncertainties in structural reliability analysis and composite micromechanics. The primary objectives which were achieved in performing the development were: (1) Utilization of the power of parallel processing and static/dynamic load balancing optimization to make the complex simulation of structure, material and processing of high temperature composite affordable; (2) Computational integration and synchronization of probabilistic mathematics, structural/material mechanics and parallel computing; (3) Implementation of an innovative multi-level domain decomposition technique to identify the inherent parallelism, and increasing convergence rates through high- and low-level processor assignment; (4) Creating the framework for Portable Paralleled architecture for the machine independent Multi Instruction Multi Data, (MIMD), Single Instruction Multi Data (SIMD), hybrid and distributed workstation type of computers; and (5) Market evaluation. The results of Phase-2 effort provides a good basis for continuation and warrants Phase-3 government, and industry partnership.

A miniature fuel reformer system for portable power sources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dolanc, Gregor; Belavič, Darko; Hrovat, Marko; Hočevar, Stanko; Pohar, Andrej; Petrovčič, Janko; Musizza, Bojan

2014-12-01

A miniature methanol reformer system has been designed and built to technology readiness level exceeding a laboratory prototype. It is intended to feed fuel cells with electric power up to 100 W and contains a complete setup of the technological elements: catalytic reforming and PROX reactors, a combustor, evaporators, actuation and sensing elements, and a control unit. The system is engineered not only for performance and quality of the reformate, but also for its lightweight and compact design, seamless integration of elements, low internal electric consumption, and safety. In the paper, the design of the system is presented by focussing on its miniaturisation, integration, and process control.

Evaluation of a standard test method for screening fuels in soils

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sorini, S.S.; Schabron, J.F.

1996-12-31

A new screening method for fuel contamination in soils was recently developed as American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Method D-5831-95, Standard Test Method for Screening Fuels in Soils. This method uses low-toxicity chemicals and can be sued to screen organic- rich soils, as well as being fast, easy, and inexpensive to perform. Fuels containing aromatic compounds, such as diesel fuel and gasoline, as well as other aromatic-containing hydrocarbon materials, such as motor oil, crude oil, and cola oil, can be determined. The screening method for fuels in soils was evaluated by conducting a Collaborative study on the method.more » In the Collaborative study, a sand and an organic soil spiked with various concentrations of diesel fuel were tested. Data from the Collaborative study were used to determine the reproducibility (between participants) and repeatability (within participants) precision of the method for screening the test materials. The Collaborative study data also provide information on the performance of portable field equipment (patent pending) versus laboratory equipment for performing the screening method and a comparison of diesel concentration values determined using the screening method versus a laboratory method.« less

libdrdc: software standards library

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Erickson, David; Peng, Tie

2008-04-01

This paper presents the libdrdc software standards library including internal nomenclature, definitions, units of measure, coordinate reference frames, and representations for use in autonomous systems research. This library is a configurable, portable C-function wrapped C++ / Object Oriented C library developed to be independent of software middleware, system architecture, processor, or operating system. It is designed to use the automatically-tuned linear algebra suite (ATLAS) and Basic Linear Algebra Suite (BLAS) and port to firmware and software. The library goal is to unify data collection and representation for various microcontrollers and Central Processing Unit (CPU) cores and to provide a common Application Binary Interface (ABI) for research projects at all scales. The library supports multi-platform development and currently works on Windows, Unix, GNU/Linux, and Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems (RTEMS). This library is made available under LGPL version 2.1 license.

Efficient multitasking of Choleski matrix factorization on CRAY supercomputers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Overman, Andrea L.; Poole, Eugene L.

1991-01-01

A Choleski method is described and used to solve linear systems of equations that arise in large scale structural analysis. The method uses a novel variable-band storage scheme and is structured to exploit fast local memory caches while minimizing data access delays between main memory and vector registers. Several parallel implementations of this method are described for the CRAY-2 and CRAY Y-MP computers demonstrating the use of microtasking and autotasking directives. A portable parallel language, FORCE, is used for comparison with the microtasked and autotasked implementations. Results are presented comparing the matrix factorization times for three representative structural analysis problems from runs made in both dedicated and multi-user modes on both computers. CPU and wall clock timings are given for the parallel implementations and are compared to single processor timings of the same algorithm.

The eyesafe visioceilometer - A tactical visibility and cloud height lidar

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barnes, E. S.; Lentz, W. J.

A recent breakthrough in the mathematical solution to the lidar equation combined with state-of-the-art microelectronics has made it possible to produce the first portable ceiling, visibility, and rangefinding device suitable for tactical use by the U.S. Army. The signal processor of the former XE-2 (Nd:YAG) can be adapted to an eyesafe unit by making use of an erbium glass laser and a GaInAs PIN photodiode detector. It is pointed out that the XE-3 (Eyesafe Visioceilometer) provides tactical real-time data when and where the user needs it, with an accuracy superior to existing nonportable runway equipment. Attention is given to system evolution, lidar theory, the relationship of backscattering and extinction coefficients, a system description, the transient recorder, the analysis of data, and details regarding tactical applications.

Talking Wheelchair

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1981-01-01

Communication is made possible for disabled individuals by means of an electronic system, developed at Stanford University's School of Medicine, which produces highly intelligible synthesized speech. Familiarly known as the "talking wheelchair" and formally as the Versatile Portable Speech Prosthesis (VPSP). Wheelchair mounted system consists of a word processor, a video screen, a voice synthesizer and a computer program which instructs the synthesizer how to produce intelligible sounds in response to user commands. Computer's memory contains 925 words plus a number of common phrases and questions. Memory can also store several thousand other words of the user's choice. Message units are selected by operating a simple switch, joystick or keyboard. Completed message appears on the video screen, then user activates speech synthesizer, which generates a voice with a somewhat mechanical tone. With the keyboard, an experienced user can construct messages as rapidly as 30 words per minute.

MCNP4A: Features and philosophy

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hendricks, J.S.

This paper describes MCNP, states its philosophy, introduces a number of new features becoming available with version MCNP4A, and answers a number of questions asked by participants in the workshop. MCNP is a general-purpose three-dimensional neutron, photon and electron transport code. Its philosophy is ``Quality, Value and New Features.`` Quality is exemplified by new software quality assurance practices and a program of benchmarking against experiments. Value includes a strong emphasis on documentation and code portability. New features are the third priority. MCNP4A is now available at Los Alamos. New features in MCNP4A include enhanced statistical analysis, distributed processor multitasking, newmore » photon libraries, ENDF/B-VI capabilities, X-Windows graphics, dynamic memory allocation, expanded criticality output, periodic boundaries, plotting of particle tracks via SABRINA, and many other improvements. 23 refs.« less

Design of a search and rescue terminal based on the dual-mode satellite and CDMA network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Junping; Zhang, Xuan; Zheng, Bing; Zhou, Yubin; Song, Hao; Song, Wei; Zhang, Meikui; Liu, Tongze; Zhou, Li

2010-12-01

The current goal is to create a set of portable terminals with GPS/BD2 dual-mode satellite positioning, vital signs monitoring and wireless transmission functions. The terminal depends on an ARM processor to collect and combine data related to vital signs and GPS/BD2 location information, and sends the message to headquarters through the military CDMA network. It integrates multiple functions as a whole. The satellite positioning and wireless transmission capabilities are integrated into the motherboard, and the vital signs sensors used in the form of belts communicate with the board through Bluetooth. It can be adjusted according to the headquarters' instructions. This kind of device is of great practical significance for operations during disaster relief, search and rescue of the wounded in wartime, non-war military operations and other special circumstances.

The use of solar energy for powering a portable autoclave.

PubMed

Dravid, M N; Chandak, A; Phute, S U; Khadse, R K; Adchitre, H R; Kulkarni, S D

2012-04-01

Climate change and the depletion of fossil fuels have forced the developed world to look for clean energy alternatives. Solar cooking is developing in Asian and African countries blessed with ample sun, but is still at an early stage. A portable autoclave was developed in India using this technology. The Prince-40 Concentrator provided adequate capacity to autoclave culture media and treat biomedical waste in a small laboratory set-up, and could save electricity worth Rs. 15,000 (188.10 GBP)/year or LPG worth Rs. 37,500 (470.25 GBP)/year. This technology would be of immense use in health centres in rural areas with frequent power cuts or no power supply. Copyright © 2012 The Healthcare Infection Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The PEMFC-integrated CO oxidation — a novel method of simplifying the fuel cell plant

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rohland, Bernd; Plzak, Vojtech

Natural gas and methanol are the most economical fuels for residential fuel cell power generators as well as for mobile PEM-fuel cells. However, they have to be reformed with steam into hydrogen, which is to be cleaned from CO by shift-reaction and by partial oxidation to a level of no more than 30 ppm CO. This level is set by the Pt/Ru-C-anode of the PEMFC. A higher partial oxidation reaction rate for CO than those of Pt/Ru-C can be achieved in an oxidic Au-catalyst system. In the Fe 2O 3-Au system, a reaction rate of 2·10 -3 mol CO/s g Au at 1000 ppm CO and 5% "air bleed" at 80°C is achieved. This high rate allows to construct a catalyst-sheet for each cell within a PEMFC-stack. Practical and theoretical current/voltage characteristics of PEMFCs with catalyst-sheet are presented at 1000 ppm CO in hydrogen with 5% "air bleed". This gives the possibility of simplifying the gas processor of the plant.

A Field-Portable, Fiber-Optic Based Near-Infrared Spectrometer and its Applications to Fuels Analysis

DTIC Science & Technology

1991-05-28

R.E., Anal. Chem., 1991, 63, 114. 14. Ozubko, R.S., Clungston, D.M., Furimsky , E., Anal. Chem., 1981, 53, 183. 15. Hayes, P.C., Jr., Anderson, S.D...Adv. Study Inst. Sec. A, 1983, 46, 471. Ozubko, R.S., Clunqston, D.M., Furimsky , E., Anal. Chem., 1981, 53, 183. PC-MATLAB for 80386-based MS-DOS

Active water management at the cathode of a planar air-breathing polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell using an electroosmotic pump

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fabian, T.; O'Hayre, R.; Litster, S.; Prinz, F. B.; Santiago, J. G.

In a typical air-breathing fuel cell design, ambient air is supplied to the cathode by natural convection and dry hydrogen is supplied to a dead-ended anode. While this design is simple and attractive for portable low-power applications, the difficulty in implementing effective and robust water management presents disadvantages. In particular, excessive flooding of the open-cathode during long-term operation can lead to a dramatic reduction of fuel cell power. To overcome this limitation, we report here on a novel air-breathing fuel cell water management design based on a hydrophilic and electrically conductive wick in conjunction with an electroosmotic (EO) pump that actively pumps water out of the wick. Transient experiments demonstrate the ability of the EO-pump to "resuscitate" the fuel cell from catastrophic flooding events, while longer term galvanostatic measurements suggest that the design can completely eliminate cathode flooding using less than 2% of fuel cell power, and lead to stable operation with higher net power performance than a control design without EO-pump. This demonstrates that active EO-pump water management, which has previously only been demonstrated in forced-convection fuel cell systems, can also be applied effectively to miniaturized (<5 W) air-breathing fuel cell systems.

Development of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy monitoring of fuel markers to prevent fraud

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilkinson, Timothy; Clarkson, John; White, Peter C.; Meakin, Nicholas; McDonald, Ken

2013-05-01

Governments often tax fuel products to generate revenues to support and stimulate their economies. They also subsidize the cost of essential fuel products. Fuel taxation and subsidization practices are both subject to fraud. Oil marketing companies also suffer from fuel fraud with loss of legitimate sales and additional quality and liability issues. The use of an advanced marking system to identify and control fraud has been shown to be effective in controlling illegal activity. DeCipher has developed surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy as its lead technology for measuring markers in fuel to identify and control malpractice. SERS has many advantages that make it highly suitable for this purpose. The SERS instruments are portable and can be used to monitor fuel at any point in the supply chain. SERS shows high specificity for the marker, with no false positives. Multiple markers can also be detected in a single SERS analysis allowing, for example, specific regional monitoring of fuel. The SERS analysis from fuel is also quick, clear and decisive, with a measurement time of less than 5 minutes. We will present results highlighting our development of the use of a highly stable silver colloid as a SERS substrate to measure the markers at ppb levels. Preliminary results from the use of a solid state SERS substrate to measure fuel markers will also be presented.

Fatigue Analysis of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Stacks Based on Structural Stress Distribution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, C. W.; Liu, B.; Wei, M. Y.; Liu, L. F.

2017-05-01

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stack usually undergoes various vibrations during packing, transportation and serving time, in particular for those used in the automobiles and portable equipment. Based on the Miner fatigue damage theory, the fatigue lives of the fuel cell components are first assessed. Then the component fatigue life contours of the stack are obtained under four working conditions, i.e. the three single-axial (in X-, Y- and Z-axis separately) and multi-axial random vibrations. Accordingly, the component damage under various vibrations is evaluated. The stress distribution on the gasket and PEM will greatly affect their fatigue lives. Finally, we compare the fatigue lives of 4-bolt- and 6-bolt-clamping stacks under the same total clamping force, and find that increasing the bolt number could improve the bolt fatigue lives.

Proximity Operations Nano-Satellite Flight Demonstration (PONSFD) Rendezvous Proximity Operations Design and Trade Studies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Griesbach, J.; Westphal, J. J.; Roscoe, C.; Hawes, D. R.; Carrico, J. P.

2013-09-01

The Proximity Operations Nano-Satellite Flight Demonstration (PONSFD) program is to demonstrate rendezvous proximity operations (RPO), formation flying, and docking with a pair of 3U CubeSats. The program is sponsored by NASA Ames via the Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) in support of its Small Spacecraft Technology Program (SSTP). The goal of the mission is to demonstrate complex RPO and docking operations with a pair of low-cost 3U CubeSat satellites using passive navigation sensors. The program encompasses the entire system evolution including system design, acquisition, satellite construction, launch, mission operations, and final disposal. The satellite is scheduled for launch in Fall 2015 with a 1-year mission lifetime. This paper provides a brief mission overview but will then focus on the current design and driving trade study results for the RPO mission specific processor and relevant ground software. The current design involves multiple on-board processors, each specifically tasked with providing mission critical capabilities. These capabilities range from attitude determination and control to image processing. The RPO system processor is responsible for absolute and relative navigation, maneuver planning, attitude commanding, and abort monitoring for mission safety. A low power processor running a Linux operating system has been selected for implementation. Navigation is one of the RPO processor's key tasks. This entails processing data obtained from the on-board GPS unit as well as the on-board imaging sensors. To do this, Kalman filters will be hosted on the processor to ingest and process measurements for maintenance of position and velocity estimates with associated uncertainties. While each satellite carries a GPS unit, it will be used sparsely to conserve power. As such, absolute navigation will mainly consist of propagating past known states, and relative navigation will be considered to be of greater importance. For relative observations, each spacecraft hosts 3 electro-optical sensors dedicated to imaging the companion satellite. The image processor will analyze the images to obtain estimates for range, bearing, and pose, with associated rates and uncertainties. These observations will be fed to the RPO processor's relative Kalman filter to perform relative navigation updates. This paper includes estimates for expected navigation accuracies for both absolute and relative position and velocity. Another key task for the RPO processor is maneuver planning. This includes automation to plan maneuvers to achieve a desired formation configuration or trajectory (including docking), as well as automation to safely react to potentially dangerous situations. This will allow each spacecraft to autonomously plan fuel-efficient maneuvers to achieve a desired trajectory as well as compute adjustment maneuvers to correct for thrusting errors. This paper discusses results from a trade study that has been conducted to examine maneuver targeting algorithms required on-board the spacecraft. Ground software will also work in conjunction with the on-board software to validate and approve maneuvers as necessary.

A Portable Analyzer for Pouch-Actuated, Immunoassay Cassettes

PubMed Central

Qiu, Xianbo; Liu, Changchun; Mauk, Michael G.; Hart, Robert W.; Chen, Dafeng; Qiu, Jing; Kientz, Terry; Fiene, Jonathan; Bau, Haim H.

2011-01-01

A portable, small footprint, light, general purpose analyzer (processor) to control the flow in immunoassay cassettes and to facilitate the detection of test results is described. The durable analyzer accepts disposable cassettes that contain pouches and reaction chambers for various unit operations such as hydration of dry reagents, stirring, and incubation. The analyzer includes individually controlled, linear actuators to compress the pouches in the cassette, which facilitates the pumping and mixing of sample and reagents, and to close diaphragm-based valves for flow control. The same types of actuators are used to compress pouches and actuate valves. The analyzer also houses a compact OEM scanner/reader to excite fluorescence and detect emission from labels. The analyzer is hydraulically isolated from the cassette, reducing the possibility of cross-contamination. The analyzer facilitates programmable, automated execution of a sequence of operations such as pumping and valving in a timely fashion, reducing the level of expertise required from the operator and the possibility for errors. The analyzer’s design is modular and expandable to accommodate cassettes of various complexities and additional functionalities. In this paper, the utility of the analyzer has been demonstrated with the execution of a simple, consecutive, lateral flow assay of a model biological system and the test results were detected with up converting phosphor labels that are excited at infrared frequencies and emit in the visible spectrum. PMID:22125359

A portable device for rapid nondestructive detection of fresh meat quality

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Wan; Peng, Yankun

2014-05-01

Quality attributes of fresh meat influence nutritional value and consumers' purchasing power. In order to meet the demand of inspection department for portable device, a rapid and nondestructive detection device for fresh meat quality based on ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) processor and VIS/NIR technology was designed. Working principal, hardware composition, software system and functional test were introduced. Hardware system consisted of ARM processing unit, light source unit, detection probe unit, spectral data acquisition unit, LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) touch screen display unit, power unit and the cooling unit. Linux operating system and quality parameters acquisition processing application were designed. This system has realized collecting spectral signal, storing, displaying and processing as integration with the weight of 3.5 kg. 40 pieces of beef were used in experiment to validate the stability and reliability. The results indicated that prediction model developed using PLSR method using SNV as pre-processing method had good performance, with the correlation coefficient of 0.90 and root mean square error of 1.56 for validation set for L*, 0.95 and 1.74 for a*，0.94 and 0.59 for b*, 0.88 and 0.13 for pH, 0.79 and 12.46 for tenderness, 0.89 and 0.91 for water content, respectively. The experimental result shows that this device can be a useful tool for detecting quality of meat.

Fuel Cell/Reformers Technology Development

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

2004-01-01

NASA Glenn Research Center is interested in developing Solid Oxide Fuel Cell for use in aerospace applications. Solid oxide fuel cell requires hydrogen rich feed stream by converting commercial aviation jet fuel in a fuel processing process. The grantee's primary research activities center on designing and constructing a test facility for evaluating injector concepts to provide optimum feeds to fuel processor; collecting and analyzing literature information on fuel processing and desulfurization technologies; establishing industry and academic contacts in related areas; providing technical support to in-house SOFC-based system studies. Fuel processing is a chemical reaction process that requires efficient delivery of reactants to reactor beds for optimum performance, i.e., high conversion efficiency and maximum hydrogen production, and reliable continuous operation. Feed delivery and vaporization quality can be improved by applying NASA's expertise in combustor injector design. A 10 KWe injector rig has been designed, procured, and constructed to provide a tool to employ laser diagnostic capability to evaluate various injector concepts for fuel processing reactor feed delivery application. This injector rig facility is now undergoing mechanical and system check-out with an anticipated actual operation in July 2004. Multiple injector concepts including impinging jet, venturi mixing, discrete jet, will be tested and evaluated with actual fuel mixture compatible with reforming catalyst requirement. Research activities from September 2002 to the closing of this collaborative agreement have been in the following areas: compiling literature information on jet fuel reforming; conducting autothermal reforming catalyst screening; establishing contacts with other government agencies for collaborative research in jet fuel reforming and desulfurization; providing process design basis for the build-up of injector rig facility and individual injector design.

Catalytic partial oxidation reforming of hydrocarbon fuels.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ahmed, S.

1998-09-21

The polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) is the primary candidate as the power source for light-duty transportation systems. On-board conversion of fuels (reforming) to supply the required hydrogen has the potential to provide the driving range that is typical of today's automobiles. Petroleum-derived fuels, gasoline or some distillate similar to it, are attractive because of their existing production, distribution, and retailing infrastructure. The fuel may be either petroleum-derived or other alternative fuels such as methanol, ethanol, natural gas, etc. [1]. The ability to use a variety of fuels is also attractive for stationary distributed power generation [2], such as inmore » buildings, or for portable power in remote locations. Argonne National Laboratory has developed a catalytic reactor based on partial oxidation reforming that is suitable for use in light-duty vehicles powered by fuel cells. The reactor has shown the ability to convert a wide variety of fuels to a hydrogen-rich gas at less than 800 C, temperatures that are several hundreds of degrees lower than alternative noncatalytic processes. The fuel may be methanol, ethanol, natural gas, or petroleum-derived fuels that are blends of various hydrocarbons such as paraffins, olefins, aromatics, etc., as in gasoline. This paper will discuss the results obtained from a bench-scale (3-kWe) reactor., where the reforming of gasoline and natural gas generated a product gas that contained 38% and 42% hydrogen on a dry basis at the reformer exit, respectively.« less

[Investigation of emission characteristics for light duty vehicles with a portable emission measurement system].

PubMed

Wang, Hai-Kun; Fu, Li-Xin; Zhou, Yu; Lin, Xin; Chen, Ai-Zhong; Ge, Wei-hu; Du, Xuan

2008-10-01

Emission from 7 typical light-duty vehicles under actual driving conditions was monitored using a portable emission measurement system to gather data for characterization of the real world vehicle emission in Shenzhen, including the effects of driving modes on vehicle emission, comparison of fuel consumption based emission factors (g x L(-1) with mileage based emission factors (g x km(-1)), and the average emission factors of the monitored vehicles. The acceleration and deceleration modes accounted for 66.7% of total travel time, 80.3% of traveling distance and 74.6%-79.2% of vehicle emission; the acceleration mode contributed more than other driving modes. The fuel based emission factors were less dependent on the driving speed; they may be utilized in building macro-scale vehicle emission inventory with smaller sensitivity to the vehicle driving conditions. The effect of vehicle technology on vehicle emission was significant; the emission factors of CO, HC and NO(x) of carbureted vehicles were 19.9-20.5, 5.6-26.1 and 1.8-2.0 times the more advanced vehicles of Euro II, respectively. Using the ECE + EUDC driving cycle would not produce the desired real-world emission rates of light duty vehicles in a typical Chinese city.

Diesel-fired self-pumping water heater

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gertsmann, Joseph

1994-07-01

The object of this project was to study the feasibility of pumping and heating water by sustained oscillatory vaporization and condensation in a fired heat exchanger. Portable field liquid fueled water heaters would facilitate heating water for sanitation, personal hygiene, food service, laundry, equipment maintenance, and decontamination presently available only from larger, less portable, motorized pumping units. The technical tasks consisted of: development of an analytical model, operation of proof-of-principal prototypes, and determination of the thermal and mechanical relationships to evaluate operating range and control characteristics. Four successive pump models were analyzed and tested. The final analytical model gave reasonable agreement with the experimental results, indicating that the actual pumping effect was an order of magnitude lower than originally anticipated. It was concluded that a thermally-activated self pumping water heater based on the proposed principle is not feasible.

Hardware description ADSP-21020 40-bit floating point DSP as designed in a remotely controlled digital CW Doppler radar

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morrison, R. E.; Robinson, S. H.

A continuous wave Doppler radar system has been designed which is portable, easily deployed, and remotely controlled. The heart of this system is a DSP/control board using Analog Devices ADSP-21020 40-bit floating point digital signal processor (DSP) microprocessor. Two 18-bit audio A/D converters provide digital input to the DSP/controller board for near real time target detection. Program memory for the DSP is dual ported with an Intel 87C51 microcontroller allowing DSP code to be up-loaded or down-loaded from a central controlling computer. The 87C51 provides overall system control for the remote radar and includes a time-of-day/day-of-year real time clock, system identification (ID) switches, and input/output (I/O) expansion by an Intel 82C55 I/O expander.

How can wireless, mobile data acquisition be used for taking part of the lab to the sample, and how can it join the internet of things?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Trzcinski, Peter; Karanassios, Vassili

2016-05-01

During the last several years, the world has moved from wired communications (e.g., a wired ethernet, wired telephone) to wireless communications (e.g., cell phones, smart phones, tablets). However, data acquisition has lagged behind and for the most part, data in laboratory settings are still acquired using wired communications (or even plug in boards). In this paper, approaches that can be used for wireless data acquisition are briefly discussed using a conceptual model of a future, mobile, portable micro-instrument as an example. In addition, past, present and near-future generations of communications are discussed; processors, operating systems and benchmarks are reviewed; networks that may be used for data acquisition in the field are examined; and, the possibility of connecting sensor or micro-instrument networks to the internet of things is postulated.

Evaluation of a parallel implementation of the learning portion of the backward error propagation neural network: experiments in artifact identification.

PubMed Central

Sittig, D. F.; Orr, J. A.

1991-01-01

Various methods have been proposed in an attempt to solve problems in artifact and/or alarm identification including expert systems, statistical signal processing techniques, and artificial neural networks (ANN). ANNs consist of a large number of simple processing units connected by weighted links. To develop truly robust ANNs, investigators are required to train their networks on huge training data sets, requiring enormous computing power. We implemented a parallel version of the backward error propagation neural network training algorithm in the widely portable parallel programming language C-Linda. A maximum speedup of 4.06 was obtained with six processors. This speedup represents a reduction in total run-time from approximately 6.4 hours to 1.5 hours. We conclude that use of the master-worker model of parallel computation is an excellent method for obtaining speedups in the backward error propagation neural network training algorithm. PMID:1807607

STS-53 Discovery, OV-103, DOD Hercules digital electronic imagery equipment

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1992-01-01

STS-53 Discovery, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 103, Department of Defense (DOD) mission Hand-held Earth-oriented Real-time Cooperative, User-friendly, Location, targeting, and Environmental System (Hercules) spaceborne experiment equipment is documented in this table top view. HERCULES is a joint NAVY-NASA-ARMY payload designed to provide real-time high resolution digital electronic imagery and geolocation (latitude and longitude determination) of earth surface targets of interest. HERCULES system consists of (from left to right): a specially modified GRID Systems portable computer mounted atop NASA developed Playback-Downlink Unit (PDU) and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) developed HERCULES Attitude Processor (HAP); the NASA-developed Electronic Still Camera (ESC) Electronics Box (ESCEB) including removable imagery data storage disks and various connecting cables; the ESC (a NASA modified Nikon F-4 camera) mounted atop the NRL HERCULES Inertial Measurement Unit (HIMU) containing the three

Simultaneous multi-beam planar array IR (pair) spectroscopy

DOEpatents

Elmore, Douglas L.; Rabolt, John F.; Tsao, Mei-Wei

2005-09-13

An apparatus and method capable of providing spatially multiplexed IR spectral information simultaneously in real-time for multiple samples or multiple spatial areas of one sample using IR absorption phenomena requires no moving parts or Fourier Transform during operation, and self-compensates for background spectra and degradation of component performance over time. IR spectral information and chemical analysis of the samples is determined by using one or more IR sources, sampling accessories for positioning the samples, optically dispersive elements, a focal plane array (FPA) arranged to detect the dispersed light beams, and a processor and display to control the FPA, and display an IR spectrograph. Fiber-optic coupling can be used to allow remote sensing. Portability, reliability, and ruggedness is enhanced due to the no-moving part construction. Applications include determining time-resolved orientation and characteristics of materials, including polymer monolayers. Orthogonal polarizers may be used to determine certain material characteristics.

STS-53 Discovery, OV-103, DOD Hercules digital electronic imagery equipment

NASA Image and Video Library

1992-04-22

STS-53 Discovery, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 103, Department of Defense (DOD) mission Hand-held Earth-oriented Real-time Cooperative, User-friendly, Location, targeting, and Environmental System (Hercules) spaceborne experiment equipment is documented in this table top view. HERCULES is a joint NAVY-NASA-ARMY payload designed to provide real-time high resolution digital electronic imagery and geolocation (latitude and longitude determination) of earth surface targets of interest. HERCULES system consists of (from left to right): a specially modified GRID Systems portable computer mounted atop NASA developed Playback-Downlink Unit (PDU) and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) developed HERCULES Attitude Processor (HAP); the NASA-developed Electronic Still Camera (ESC) Electronics Box (ESCEB) including removable imagery data storage disks and various connecting cables; the ESC (a NASA modified Nikon F-4 camera) mounted atop the NRL HERCULES Inertial Measurement Unit (HIMU) containing the three-axis ring-laser gyro.

Vital signs monitoring system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Steffen, Dale A. (Inventor); Sturm, Ronald E. (Inventor); Rinard, George A. (Inventor)

1981-01-01

A system is disclosed for monitoring vital physiological signs. Each of the system components utilizes a single hybrid circuit with each component having high accuracy without the necessity of repeated calibration. The system also has low power requirements, provides a digital display, and is of sufficiently small size to be incorporated into a hand-carried case for portable use. Components of the system may also provide independent outputs making the component useful, of itself, for monitoring one or more vital signs. The overall system preferably includes an ECG amplifier and cardiotachometer signal conditioner unit, an impedance pneumograph and respiration rate signal conditioner unit, a heart/breath rate processor unit, a temperature monitoring unit, a selector switch, a clock unit, and an LCD driver unit and associated LCDs, with the system being capable of being expanded as needed or desired, such as, for example, by addition of a systolic/diastolic blood pressure unit.

Extensions to the Parallel Real-Time Artificial Intelligence System (PRAIS) for fault-tolerant heterogeneous cycle-stealing reasoning

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Goldstein, David

1991-01-01

Extensions to an architecture for real-time, distributed (parallel) knowledge-based systems called the Parallel Real-time Artificial Intelligence System (PRAIS) are discussed. PRAIS strives for transparently parallelizing production (rule-based) systems, even under real-time constraints. PRAIS accomplished these goals (presented at the first annual C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS) conference) by incorporating a dynamic task scheduler, operating system extensions for fact handling, and message-passing among multiple copies of CLIPS executing on a virtual blackboard. This distributed knowledge-based system tool uses the portability of CLIPS and common message-passing protocols to operate over a heterogeneous network of processors. Results using the original PRAIS architecture over a network of Sun 3's, Sun 4's and VAX's are presented. Mechanisms using the producer-consumer model to extend the architecture for fault-tolerance and distributed truth maintenance initiation are also discussed.

Room Temperature Sulfur Battery Cathode Design and Processing Techniques

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carter, Rachel

As the population grows and energy demand increases, climate change threatens causing energy storage research to focus on fulfilling the requirements of two major energy sectors with next generation batteries: (1) portable energy and (2) stationary storage.1 Where portable energy can decrease transportation-related harmful emissions and enable advanced next-generation technologies,1 and stationary storage can facilitate widespread deployment of renewable energy sources, alleviating the demand on fossil fuels and lowering emissions. Portable energy can enable zero-emission transportation and can deploy portable power in advanced electronics across fields including medical and defense. Currently fully battery powered cars are limited in driving distance, which is dictated by the energy density and weight of the state-of-the-art Li-ion battery, and similarly advancement of portable electronics is significantly hindered by heavy batteries with short charge lives. In attempt to enable advanced portable energy, significant research is aiming to improve the conventional Li-ion batteries and explore beyond Li-ion battery chemistries with the primary goal of demonstrating higher energy density to enable lighter weight cells with longer battery life. Further, with the inherent intermittency challenges of our most prominent renewable energy sources, wind and solar, discovery of batteries capable of cost effectively and reliably balancing the generation of the renewable energy sources with the real-time energy demand is required for grid scale viability. Stationary storage will provide load leveling to renewable resources by storing excess energy at peak generation and delivering stored excess during periods of lower generation. This application demands highly abundant, low-cost active materials and long-term cycle stability, since infrastructure costs (combined with the renewable) must compete with burning natural gas. Development of a battery with these characteristics will require exploration of chemistries beyond the Li-ion battery for a system consisting of low cost active materials and promising device performance. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.).

ms2: A molecular simulation tool for thermodynamic properties

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deublein, Stephan; Eckl, Bernhard; Stoll, Jürgen; Lishchuk, Sergey V.; Guevara-Carrion, Gabriela; Glass, Colin W.; Merker, Thorsten; Bernreuther, Martin; Hasse, Hans; Vrabec, Jadran

2011-11-01

This work presents the molecular simulation program ms2 that is designed for the calculation of thermodynamic properties of bulk fluids in equilibrium consisting of small electro-neutral molecules. ms2 features the two main molecular simulation techniques, molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte-Carlo. It supports the calculation of vapor-liquid equilibria of pure fluids and multi-component mixtures described by rigid molecular models on the basis of the grand equilibrium method. Furthermore, it is capable of sampling various classical ensembles and yields numerous thermodynamic properties. To evaluate the chemical potential, Widom's test molecule method and gradual insertion are implemented. Transport properties are determined by equilibrium MD simulations following the Green-Kubo formalism. ms2 is designed to meet the requirements of academia and industry, particularly achieving short response times and straightforward handling. It is written in Fortran90 and optimized for a fast execution on a broad range of computer architectures, spanning from single processor PCs over PC-clusters and vector computers to high-end parallel machines. The standard Message Passing Interface (MPI) is used for parallelization and ms2 is therefore easily portable to different computing platforms. Feature tools facilitate the interaction with the code and the interpretation of input and output files. The accuracy and reliability of ms2 has been shown for a large variety of fluids in preceding work. Program summaryProgram title:ms2 Catalogue identifier: AEJF_v1_0 Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEJF_v1_0.html Program obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. Ireland Licensing provisions: Special Licence supplied by the authors No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 82 794 No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 793 705 Distribution format: tar.gz Programming language: Fortran90 Computer: The simulation tool ms2 is usable on a wide variety of platforms, from single processor machines over PC-clusters and vector computers to vector-parallel architectures. (Tested with Fortran compilers: gfortran, Intel, PathScale, Portland Group and Sun Studio.) Operating system: Unix/Linux, Windows Has the code been vectorized or parallelized?: Yes. Message Passing Interface (MPI) protocol Scalability. Excellent scalability up to 16 processors for molecular dynamics and >512 processors for Monte-Carlo simulations. RAM:ms2 runs on single processors with 512 MB RAM. The memory demand rises with increasing number of processors used per node and increasing number of molecules. Classification: 7.7, 7.9, 12 External routines: Message Passing Interface (MPI) Nature of problem: Calculation of application oriented thermodynamic properties for rigid electro-neutral molecules: vapor-liquid equilibria, thermal and caloric data as well as transport properties of pure fluids and multi-component mixtures. Solution method: Molecular dynamics, Monte-Carlo, various classical ensembles, grand equilibrium method, Green-Kubo formalism. Restrictions: No. The system size is user-defined. Typical problems addressed by ms2 can be solved by simulating systems containing typically 2000 molecules or less. Unusual features: Feature tools are available for creating input files, analyzing simulation results and visualizing molecular trajectories. Additional comments: Sample makefiles for multiple operation platforms are provided. Documentation is provided with the installation package and is available at http://www.ms-2.de. Running time: The running time of ms2 depends on the problem set, the system size and the number of processes used in the simulation. Running four processes on a "Nehalem" processor, simulations calculating VLE data take between two and twelve hours, calculating transport properties between six and 24 hours.

Commercialisation of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells - opportunities and forecasts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dziurdzia, B.; Magonski, Z.; Jankowski, H.

2016-01-01

The paper presents the analysis of commercialisation possibilities of the SOFC stack designed at AGH. The paper reminds the final design of the stack, presented earlier at IMAPS- Poland conferences, its recent modifications and measurements. The stack consists of planar double-sided ceramic fuel cells which characterize by the special anode construction with embedded fuel channels. The stack features by a simple construction without metallic interconnectors and frames, lowered thermal capacity and quick start-up time. Predictions for the possible applications of the stack include portable generators for luxurious caravans, yachts, ships at berth. The SOFC stack operating as clean, quiet and efficient power source could replace on-board diesel generators. Market forecasts shows that there is also some room on a market for the SOFC stack as a standalone generator in rural areas far away from the grid. The paper presents also the survey of SOFC market in Europe USA, Australia and other countries.

High-throughput investigation of catalysts for JP-8 fuel cracking to liquefied petroleum gas.

PubMed

Bedenbaugh, John E; Kim, Sungtak; Sasmaz, Erdem; Lauterbach, Jochen

2013-09-09

Portable power technologies for military applications necessitate the production of fuels similar to LPG from existing feedstocks. Catalytic cracking of military jet fuel to form a mixture of C₂-C₄ hydrocarbons was investigated using high-throughput experimentation. Cracking experiments were performed in a gas-phase, 16-sample high-throughput reactor. Zeolite ZSM-5 catalysts with low Si/Al ratios (≤25) demonstrated the highest production of C₂-C₄ hydrocarbons at moderate reaction temperatures (623-823 K). ZSM-5 catalysts were optimized for JP-8 cracking activity to LPG through varying reaction temperature and framework Si/Al ratio. The reducing atmosphere required during catalytic cracking resulted in coking of the catalyst and a commensurate decrease in conversion rate. Rare earth metal promoters for ZSM-5 catalysts were screened to reduce coking deactivation rates, while noble metal promoters reduced onset temperatures for coke burnoff regeneration.

PFLOTRAN User Manual: A Massively Parallel Reactive Flow and Transport Model for Describing Surface and Subsurface Processes

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Lichtner, Peter C.; Hammond, Glenn E.; Lu, Chuan

PFLOTRAN solves a system of generally nonlinear partial differential equations describing multi-phase, multicomponent and multiscale reactive flow and transport in porous materials. The code is designed to run on massively parallel computing architectures as well as workstations and laptops (e.g. Hammond et al., 2011). Parallelization is achieved through domain decomposition using the PETSc (Portable Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation) libraries for the parallelization framework (Balay et al., 1997). PFLOTRAN has been developed from the ground up for parallel scalability and has been run on up to 218 processor cores with problem sizes up to 2 billion degrees of freedom. Writtenmore » in object oriented Fortran 90, the code requires the latest compilers compatible with Fortran 2003. At the time of this writing this requires gcc 4.7.x, Intel 12.1.x and PGC compilers. As a requirement of running problems with a large number of degrees of freedom, PFLOTRAN allows reading input data that is too large to fit into memory allotted to a single processor core. The current limitation to the problem size PFLOTRAN can handle is the limitation of the HDF5 file format used for parallel IO to 32 bit integers. Noting that 2 32 = 4; 294; 967; 296, this gives an estimate of the maximum problem size that can be currently run with PFLOTRAN. Hopefully this limitation will be remedied in the near future.« less

DIissolution of low enriched uranium from the experimental breeder reactor-II fuel stored at the Idaho National Laboratory

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Daniel, G.; Rudisill, T.; Almond, P.

The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is actively engaged in the development of electrochemical processing technology for the treatment of fast reactor fuels using irradiated fuel from the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) as the primary test material. The research and development (R&D) activities generate a low enriched uranium (LEU) metal product from the electrorefining of the EBR-II fuel and the subsequent consolidation and removal of chloride salts by the cathode processor. The LEU metal ingots from past R&D activities are currently stored at INL awaiting disposition. One potential disposition pathway is the shipment of the ingots to the Savannah River Sitemore » (SRS) for dissolution in H-Canyon. Carbon steel cans containing the LEU metal would be loaded into reusable charging bundles in the H-Canyon Crane Maintenance Area and charged to the 6.4D or 6.1D dissolver. The LEU dissolution would be accomplished as the final charge in a dissolver batch (following the dissolution of multiple charges of spent nuclear fuel (SNF)). The solution would then be purified and the 235U enrichment downblended to allow use of the U in commercial reactor fuel. To support this potential disposition path, the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) developed a dissolution flowsheet for the LEU using samples of the material received from INL.« less

Progress towards an Optimization Methodology for Combustion-Driven Portable Thermoelectric Power Generation Systems

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Krishnan, Shankar; Karri, Naveen K.; Gogna, Pawan K.

2012-03-13

Enormous military and commercial interests exist in developing quiet, lightweight, and compact thermoelectric (TE) power generation systems. This paper investigates design integration and analysis of an advanced TE power generation system implementing JP-8 fueled combustion and thermal recuperation. Design and development of a portable TE power system using a JP-8 combustor as a high temperature heat source and optimal process flows depend on efficient heat generation, transfer, and recovery within the system are explored. Design optimization of the system required considering the combustion system efficiency and TE conversion efficiency simultaneously. The combustor performance and TE sub-system performance were coupled directlymore » through exhaust temperatures, fuel and air mass flow rates, heat exchanger performance, subsequent hot-side temperatures, and cold-side cooling techniques and temperatures. Systematic investigation of this system relied on accurate thermodynamic modeling of complex, high-temperature combustion processes concomitantly with detailed thermoelectric converter thermal/mechanical modeling. To this end, this work reports on design integration of systemlevel process flow simulations using commercial software CHEMCADTM with in-house thermoelectric converter and module optimization, and heat exchanger analyses using COMSOLTM software. High-performance, high-temperature TE materials and segmented TE element designs are incorporated in coupled design analyses to achieve predicted TE subsystem level conversion efficiencies exceeding 10%. These TE advances are integrated with a high performance microtechnology combustion reactor based on recent advances at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Predictions from this coupled simulation established a basis for optimal selection of fuel and air flow rates, thermoelectric module design and operating conditions, and microtechnology heat-exchanger design criteria. This paper will discuss this simulation process that leads directly to system efficiency power maps defining potentially available optimal system operating conditions and regimes. This coupled simulation approach enables pathways for integrated use of high-performance combustor components, high performance TE devices, and microtechnologies to produce a compact, lightweight, combustion driven TE power system prototype that operates on common fuels.« less

A demonstration of pig lard as an industrial boiler fuel

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Miller, B.G.; Badger, M.; Larsen, J.

Hatfield Quality Meats is a family owned regional meat processor and vendor and has multiple facilities in Pennsylvania. The main plant and corporate offices are located in Hatfield, Pennsylvania where they process 7,000 hogs per day. Two of Hatfield's by-products are lard and choice white grease (CWG), both of which are produced in large quantities. The lard, which is stored warm and liquid, is sold by tanker truck to veal producers, by 55-gallon drums to commercial bakeries, in 5-gallon pails to a variety of restaurants, and periodically in 1-pound tins to grocery stores. The CWG, which is a rendered product,more » is also sold to veal producers. A decrease in sales could leave the company with large excess of these products and difficult disposal problems. Hatfield Quality Meats, Lehigh University, and Penn State's the Energy Institute evaluated the liquid lard as an industrial boiler fuel and obtained the necessary handleability and combustion data to allow for its use as a supplemental fuel in Hatfield's process, were burned in Penn State's research boiler. The boiler, which has a nominal firing rate of two million Btu/h, is a 150 psig working pressure, A-frame watertube boiler. In addition to the lard samples, No.6 fuel oil was fired for baseline comparison. This paper discusses the comparison of lard and No.6 fuel oil as boiler fuels. Issues discussed include fuel characterization, material handling, combustion performance, flame character and stability, and emissions.« less

Spinoff 1999

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1999-01-01

A survey is presented of NASA-developed technologies and systems that were reaching commercial application in the course of 1999. Attention is given to the contributions of each major NASA Research Center. Representative 'spinoff' technologies include the predictive AI engine monitoring system EMPAS, the GPS-based Wide Area Augmentation System for aircraft navigation, a CMOS-Active Pixel Sensor camera-on-a-chip, a marine spectroradiometer, portable fuel cells, hyperspectral camera technology, and a rapid-prototyping process for ceramic components.

Design, Synthesis, and Characterization of High Performance Polymer Electrolytes for Printed Electronics and Energy Storage

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-03-31

release. 2 energy conversion and storage devices – including supercapacitors, lithium ion batteries , and fuel cells – that power portable electronics...main innovations were the development of ion gels, materials that combine an ionic liquid with a gelating block copolymer to give mechanical strength...resulted in the training of 3 graduate students and two postdoctoral fellows. The main innovations were the development of ion gels, materials that

Final Summary Report on Project 3310 Marine Diesel Exhaust Emissions (Alternative Fuels)

DTIC Science & Technology

1997-09-01

of five types) operating on the West Coast. Of the 14 vessels tested, eight were found to exceed the proposed NOx limits, although some by very small amounts....develop methodology applicable for use on small vessels by using portable emission analyzers, and to examine various potential means of reducing excessive...This report summarizes the results of a 5-year study to ascertain the magnitude of emission problems from Coast Guard and

Graphics enhanced computer emulation for improved timing-race and fault tolerance control system analysis. [of Centaur liquid-fuel booster

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Szatkowski, G. P.

1983-01-01

A computer simulation system has been developed for the Space Shuttle's advanced Centaur liquid fuel booster rocket, in order to conduct systems safety verification and flight operations training. This simulation utility is designed to analyze functional system behavior by integrating control avionics with mechanical and fluid elements, and is able to emulate any system operation, from simple relay logic to complex VLSI components, with wire-by-wire detail. A novel graphics data entry system offers a pseudo-wire wrap data base that can be easily updated. Visual subsystem operations can be selected and displayed in color on a six-monitor graphics processor. System timing and fault verification analyses are conducted by injecting component fault modes and min/max timing delays, and then observing system operation through a red line monitor.

Fabrication and characterization of solid oxide cells for energy conversion and storage

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Chenghao

2011-12-01

There has been an increasing interest in clean and renewable energy generation for highlighted energy and environmental concerns. Solid oxide cells (SOCs) have been considered as one of the promising technologies, since they can be operated efficiently both in electrolysis mode by generating hydrogen through steam electrolysis and fuel cell mode by electrochemically combining fuel with oxidant. The present work is devoted to performing a fundamental study of SOC in both fuel cell mode for power generation and electrolysis mode for fuel production. The research work on SOCs that can be operated reversibly for power generation and fuel production has been conducted in the following six projects: (1) High performance solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) Fabrication of novel structured SOEC oxygen electrode with the conventional and commercial solid oxide fuel cell materials by screen-printing and infiltration fabrication methods. The microstructure, electrochemical properties and durability of SOECs has been investigated. It was found that the LSM infiltrated cell has an area specific resistance (ASR) of 0.20 Ω cm2 at 900°C at open circuit voltage with 50% absolute humidity (AH), which is relatively lower than that of the cell with LSM-YSZ oxygen electrode made by a conventional mixing method. Electrolysis cell with LSM infiltrated oxygen electrode has demonstrated stable performance under electrolysis operation with 0.33 A/cm2 and 50 vol.% AH at 800°C. (2) Advanced performance high temperature micro-tubular solid oxide fuel cell (MT-SOFC) Phase-inversion, dip-coating, high temperature co-sintering process and impregnation method were used to fabricate micro-tubular solid oxide fuel cell. The micro-structure of the micro-tubular fuel cell will be investigated and the power output and thermal robustness has been evaluated. High performance and rapid start-up behavior have been achieved, indicates that the MT-SOFC developed in this work can be a promising technology for portable applications. (3) Promising intermediate temperature micro-tubular solid oxide fuel cells for portable power supply applications Maximum power densities of 0.5, 0.38 and 0.27 W/cm2 have been obtained using H2-15% H2O as fuel at 550, 600 and 650°C, respectively. Quick thermal cycles performed on the intermediate temperature MT-SOFC stability demonstrate that the cell has robust performance stability for portable applications. (4) Micro-tubular solid oxide cell (MT-SOC) for steam electrolysis The electrochemical properties of MT-SOC will be investigated in detail in electrolysis mode. The mechanism of the novel hydrogen electrode structure benefiting the cell performance will be demonstrated systematically. The high electrochemical performance of the MT-SOC in electrolysis mode indicates that MT-SOC can provide an efficient hydrogen generation process. (5) Micro-tubular solid oxide cell (MT-SOC) for steam and CO2 co-electrolysis The MT-SOC will be operated in co-electrolysis mode for steam and CO 2, which will provide an efficient approach to generate syngas (H2+CO) without consuming fossil fuels. This can potentially provide an alternative superior approach for carbon sequestration which has been a critical issue facing the sustainability of our society. (6) Steam and CO2 co-electrolysis using solid oxide cells fabricated by freeze-drying tape-casting Tri-layer scaffolds have been prepared by freeze-drying tape casting process and the electrode catalysts are obtained by infiltrating the porous electrode substrates. Button cells will be tested for co-electrolysis of steam and CO2. The mechanism and efficiency of steam and CO2 co-electrolysis will be systemically investigated. In conclusion, SOCs have been fabricated with conventional materials and evaluated, but their performance has been found to be limited in either SOFC or SOEC mode. The cell performance has been significantly improved by employing an infiltrated LSM-YSZ electrode, due to dramatically decreased polarization resistance. However, mass transport limitation has been observed, particularly in electrolysis mode. By utilizing micro-tubular SOCs with novel hydrogen electrode produced via a phase inversion method, mass transport limitation has been mitigated. Finally, mass transport has been further improved by using cells with electrodes fabricated through a freeze-drying tape-casting method. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Time-domain seismic modeling in viscoelastic media for full waveform inversion on heterogeneous computing platforms with OpenCL

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fabien-Ouellet, Gabriel; Gloaguen, Erwan; Giroux, Bernard

2017-03-01

Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) aims at recovering the elastic parameters of the Earth by matching recordings of the ground motion with the direct solution of the wave equation. Modeling the wave propagation for realistic scenarios is computationally intensive, which limits the applicability of FWI. The current hardware evolution brings increasing parallel computing power that can speed up the computations in FWI. However, to take advantage of the diversity of parallel architectures presently available, new programming approaches are required. In this work, we explore the use of OpenCL to develop a portable code that can take advantage of the many parallel processor architectures now available. We present a program called SeisCL for 2D and 3D viscoelastic FWI in the time domain. The code computes the forward and adjoint wavefields using finite-difference and outputs the gradient of the misfit function given by the adjoint state method. To demonstrate the code portability on different architectures, the performance of SeisCL is tested on three different devices: Intel CPUs, NVidia GPUs and Intel Xeon PHI. Results show that the use of GPUs with OpenCL can speed up the computations by nearly two orders of magnitudes over a single threaded application on the CPU. Although OpenCL allows code portability, we show that some device-specific optimization is still required to get the best performance out of a specific architecture. Using OpenCL in conjunction with MPI allows the domain decomposition of large models on several devices located on different nodes of a cluster. For large enough models, the speedup of the domain decomposition varies quasi-linearly with the number of devices. Finally, we investigate two different approaches to compute the gradient by the adjoint state method and show the significant advantages of using OpenCL for FWI.

Bench-Scale Monolith Autothermal Reformer Catalyst Screening Evaluations in a Micro-Reactor With Jet-A Fuel

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tomsik, Thomas M.; Yen, Judy C.H.; Budge, John R.

2006-01-01

Solid oxide fuel cell systems used in the aerospace or commercial aviation environment require a compact, light-weight and highly durable catalytic fuel processor. The fuel processing method considered here is an autothermal reforming (ATR) step. The ATR converts Jet-A fuel by a reaction with steam and air forming hydrogen (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO) to be used for production of electrical power in the fuel cell. This paper addresses the first phase of an experimental catalyst screening study, looking at the relative effectiveness of several monolith catalyst types when operating with untreated Jet-A fuel. Six monolith catalyst materials were selected for preliminary evaluation and experimental bench-scale screening in a small 0.05 kWe micro-reactor test apparatus. These tests were conducted to assess relative catalyst performance under atmospheric pressure ATR conditions and processing Jet-A fuel at a steam-to-carbon ratio of 3.5, a value higher than anticipated to be run in an optimized system. The average reformer efficiencies for the six catalysts tested ranged from 75 to 83 percent at a constant gas-hourly space velocity of 12,000 hr 1. The corresponding hydrocarbon conversion efficiency varied from 86 to 95 percent during experiments run at reaction temperatures between 750 to 830 C. Based on the results of the short-duration 100 hr tests reported herein, two of the highest performing catalysts were selected for further evaluation in a follow-on 1000 hr life durability study in Phase II.

Implementation of Portable Emissions Measurement Systems (PEMS) for the Real-driving Emissions (RDE) Regulation in Europe.

PubMed

Giechaskiel, Barouch; Vlachos, Theodoros; Riccobono, Francesco; Forni, Fausto; Colombo, Rinaldo; Montigny, Francois; Le-Lijour, Philippe; Carriero, Massimo; Bonnel, Pierre; Weiss, Martin

2016-12-04

Vehicles are tested in controlled and relatively narrow laboratory conditions to determine their official emission values and reference fuel consumption. However, on the road, ambient and driving conditions can vary over a wide range, sometimes causing emissions to be higher than those measured in the laboratory. For this reason, the European Commission has developed a complementary Real-Driving Emissions (RDE) test procedure using the Portable Emissions Measurement Systems (PEMS) to verify gaseous pollutant and particle number emissions during a wide range of normal operating conditions on the road. This paper presents the newly-adopted RDE test procedure, differentiating six steps: 1) vehicle selection, 2) vehicle preparation, 3) trip design, 4) trip execution, 5) trip verification, and 6) calculation of emissions. Of these steps, vehicle preparation and trip execution are described in greater detail. Examples of trip verification and the calculations of emissions are given.

Implementation of Portable Emissions Measurement Systems (PEMS) for the Real-driving Emissions (RDE) Regulation in Europe

PubMed Central

Giechaskiel, Barouch; Vlachos, Theodoros; Riccobono, Francesco; Forni, Fausto; Colombo, Rinaldo; Montigny, Francois; Le-Lijour, Philippe; Carriero, Massimo; Bonnel, Pierre; Weiss, Martin

2016-01-01

Vehicles are tested in controlled and relatively narrow laboratory conditions to determine their official emission values and reference fuel consumption. However, on the road, ambient and driving conditions can vary over a wide range, sometimes causing emissions to be higher than those measured in the laboratory. For this reason, the European Commission has developed a complementary Real-Driving Emissions (RDE) test procedure using the Portable Emissions Measurement Systems (PEMS) to verify gaseous pollutant and particle number emissions during a wide range of normal operating conditions on the road. This paper presents the newly-adopted RDE test procedure, differentiating six steps: 1) vehicle selection, 2) vehicle preparation, 3) trip design, 4) trip execution, 5) trip verification, and 6) calculation of emissions. Of these steps, vehicle preparation and trip execution are described in greater detail. Examples of trip verification and the calculations of emissions are given. PMID:28060306

Integrated anode structure for passive direct methanol fuel cells with neat methanol operation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Huijuan; Zhang, Haifeng; Chen, Peng; Guo, Jing; Yuan, Ting; Zheng, Junwei; Yang, Hui

2014-02-01

A microporous titanium plate based integrated anode structure (Ti-IAS) suitable for passive direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) fueled with neat methanol is reported. This anode structure incorporates a porous titanium plate as a methanol mass transfer barrier and current collector, pervaporation film for passively vaporizing methanol, vaporous methanol cavity for evenly distributing fuel, and channels for carbon dioxide venting. With the effective control of methanol delivery rate, the Ti-IAS based DMFC allows the direct use of neat methanol as the fuel source. In the meantime, the required water for methanol-oxidation reaction at the anode can also be fully recovered from the cathode with the help of the highly hydrophobic microporous layer in the cathode. DMFCs incorporating this new anode structure exhibit a power density as high as 40 mW cm-2 and a high volumetric energy density of 489 Wh L-1 operating with neat methanol and at 25 °C. Importantly, no obvious performance degradation of the passive DMFC system is observed after more than 90 h of continuous operation. The experimental results reveal that the compact DMFC based on the Ti-IAS exhibits a substantial potential as power sources for portable applications.

Towards operating direct methanol fuel cells with highly concentrated fuel

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, T. S.; Yang, W. W.; Chen, R.; Wu, Q. X.

A significant advantage of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) is the high specific energy of the liquid fuel, making it particularly suitable for portable and mobile applications. Nevertheless, conventional DMFCs have to be operated with excessively diluted methanol solutions to limit methanol crossover and the detrimental consequences. Operation with diluted methanol solutions significantly reduces the specific energy of the power pack and thereby prevents it from competing with advanced batteries. In view of this fact, there exists a need to improve conventional DMFC system designs, including membrane electrode assemblies and the subsystems for supplying/removing reactants/products, so that both the cell performance and the specific energy can be simultaneously maximized. This article provides a comprehensive review of past efforts on the optimization of DMFC systems that operate with concentrated methanol. Based on the discussion of the key issues associated with transport of the reactants/products, the strategies to manage the supply/removal of the reactants/products in DMFC operating with highly concentrated methanol are identified. With these strategies, the possible approaches to achieving the goal of concentrated fuel operation are then proposed. Past efforts in the management of the reactants/products for implementing each of the approaches are also summarized and reviewed.

A paper-based microbial fuel cell: instant battery for disposable diagnostic devices.

PubMed

Fraiwan, Arwa; Mukherjee, Sayantika; Sundermier, Steven; Lee, Hyung-Sool; Choi, Seokheun

2013-11-15

We present a microfabricated paper-based microbial fuel cell (MFC) generating a maximum power of 5.5 μW/cm(2). The MFC features (1) a paper-based proton exchange membrane by infiltrating sulfonated sodium polystyrene sulfonate and (2) micro-fabricated paper chambers by patterning hydrophobic barriers of photoresist. Once inoculum and catholyte were added to the MFC, a current of 74 μA was generated immediately. This paper-based MFC has the advantages of ease of use, low production cost, and high portability. The voltage produced was increased by 1.9 × when two MFC devices were stacked in series, while operating lifetime was significantly enhanced in parallel. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Hydrogen generation at ambient conditions: application in fuel cells.

PubMed

Boddien, Albert; Loges, Björn; Junge, Henrik; Beller, Matthias

2008-01-01

The efficient generation of hydrogen from formic acid/amine adducts at ambient temperature is demonstrated. The highest catalytic activity (TOF up to 3630 h(-1) after 20 min) was observed in the presence of in situ generated ruthenium phosphine catalysts. Compared to the previously known methods to generate hydrogen from liquid feedstocks, the systems presented here can be operated at room temperature without the need for any high-temperature reforming processes, and the hydrogen produced can then be directly used in fuel cells. A variety of Ru precursors and phosphine ligands were investigated for the decomposition of formic acid/amine adducts. These catalytic systems are particularly interesting for the generation of H2 for new applications in portable electric devices.

Thermopower Wave-Driven Hybrid Supercapacitor Charging System.

PubMed

Shin, Dongjoon; Hwang, Hayoung; Yeo, Taehan; Seo, Byungseok; Choi, Wonjoon

2016-11-16

The development of new energy sources and harvesting methods has increased with the rapid development of multiscale wireless and portable systems. A thermopower wave (TW) is a potential portable energy source that exhibits a high power density. TWs generate electrical energy via the transport of charges inside micro- or nanostructured materials. This transport is induced by self-propagating combustion. Despite the high specific power of TWs, the generation of energy by TWs is transient, making a TW device a one-time use source, which is a critical limitation on the further advancement of this technology. Herein, we first report the development of a hybrid supercapacitor charging system driven by consecutive TWs to accumulate multiple amounts of energy generated by the repetitive combustion of the chemical fuel. In this study, hybrid layers composed of a supercapacitor (poly(vinyl alcohol)/MnO 2 /nickel) and solid fuel layer (nitrocellulose film) were fabricated as one integrated platform. Combustion was initiated by the ignition of the fuel layer, resulting in the production of electrical energy, attributed to the potential difference between two electrodes, and the transport of charges inside one of the electrodes. Electrical energy could simultaneously and directly charge the supercapacitor, and the discharged voltage could be significantly increased in comparison with the voltage level before the application of a TW. Furthermore, the application of multiple TWs in succession in the hybrid supercapacitor charging system successfully allowed for stack voltage amplification, which was synchronized to each TW. The results of this study could be used to understand the underlying phenomena for charging supercapacitors with the variation of thermal energy and to advance the application of TWs as more efficient, practical energy sources.

Life cycle inventory energy consumption and emissions for biodiesel versus petroleum diesel fueled construction vehicles.

PubMed

Pang, Shih-Hao; Frey, H Christopher; Rasdorf, William J

2009-08-15

Substitution of soy-based biodiesel fuels for petroleum diesel will alter life cycle emissions for construction vehicles. A life cycle inventory was used to estimate fuel cycle energy consumption and emissions of selected pollutants and greenhouse gases. Real-world measurements using a portable emission measurement system (PEMS) were made forfive backhoes, four front-end loaders, and six motor graders on both fuels from which fuel consumption and tailpipe emission factors of CO, HC, NO(x), and PM were estimated. Life cycle fossil energy reductions are estimated it 9% for B20 and 42% for B100 versus petroleum diesel based on the current national energy mix. Fuel cycle emissions will contribute a larger share of total life cycle emissions as new engines enter the in-use fleet. The average differences in life cycle emissions for B20 versus diesel are: 3.5% higher for NO(x); 11.8% lower for PM, 1.6% higher for HC, and 4.1% lower for CO. Local urban tailpipe emissions are estimated to be 24% lower for HC, 20% lower for CO, 17% lower for PM, and 0.9% lower for NO(x). Thus, there are environmental trade-offs such as for rural vs urban areas. The key sources of uncertainty in the B20 LCI are vehicle emission factors.

A comparison of sodium borohydride as a fuel for proton exchange membrane fuel cells and for direct borohydride fuel cells

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wee, Jung-Ho

Two types of fuel cell systems using NaBH 4 aqueous solution as a fuel are possible: the hydrogen/air proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) which uses onsite H 2 generated via the NaBH 4 hydrolysis reaction (B-PEMFC) at the anode and the direct borohydride fuel cell (DBFC) system which directly uses NaBH 4 aqueous solution at the anode and air at the cathode. Recently, research on these two types of fuel cells has begun to attract interest due to the various benefits of this liquid fuel for fuel cell systems for portable applications. It might therefore be relevant at this stage to evaluate the relative competitiveness of the two fuel cells. Considering their current technologies and the high price of NaBH 4, this paper evaluated and analyzed the factors influencing the relative favorability of each type of fuel cell. Their relative competitiveness was strongly dependent on the extent of the NaBH 4 crossover. When considering the crossover in DBFC systems, the total costs of the B-PEMFC system were the most competitive among the fuel cell systems. On the other hand, if the crossover problem were to be completely overcome, the total cost of the DBFC system generating six electrons (6e-DBFC) would be very similar to that of the B-PEMFC system. The DBFC system generating eight electrons (8e-DBFC) became even more competitive if the problem of crossover can be overcome. However, in this case, the volume of NaBH 4 aqueous solution consumed by the DBFC was larger than that consumed by the B-PEMFC.

A portable magnetic induction measurement system (PIMS).

PubMed

Cordes, Axel; Foussier, Jérôme; Pollig, Daniel; Leonhardt, Steffen

2012-02-22

For contactless monitoring of ventilation and heart activity, magnetic induction measurements are applicable. As the technique is harmless for the human body, it is well suited for long-term monitoring solutions, e.g., bedside monitoring, monitoring of home care patients, and the monitoring of persons in critical occupations. For such settings, a two-channel portable magnetic induction system has been developed, which is small and light enough to be fitted in a chair or bed. Because demodulation, control, and filtering are implemented on a front-end digital signal processor, a PC is not required (except for visualization/data storage during research and development). The system can be connected to a local area network (LAN) or wireless network (WiFi), allowing to connect several devices to a large monitoring system, e.g., for a residential home for the elderly or a hospital with low-risk patients not requiring standard ECG monitoring. To visualize data streams, a Qt-based (Qt-framework by Nokia, Espoo, Finland) monitoring application has been developed, which runs on Netbook computers, laptops, or standard PCs. To induce and measure the magnetic fields, external coils and amplifiers are required. This article describes the system and presents results for monitoring respiration and heart activity in a (divan) bed and for respiration monitoring in a chair. Planar configurations and orthogonal coil setups were examined during the measurement procedures. The measurement data were streamed over a LAN to a monitoring PC running Matlab (The MathWorks Inc, Natick, MA, USA).

Gas dispersion concentration of trace inorganic contaminants from fuel gas and analysis using head-column field-amplified sample stacking capillary electrophoresis.

PubMed

Yang, Jianmin; Li, Hai-Fang; Li, Meilan; Lin, Jin-Ming

2012-08-21

The presence of inorganic elements in fuel gas generally accelerates the corrosion and depletion of materials used in the fuel gas industry, and even leads to serious accidents. For identification of existing trace inorganic contaminants in fuel gas in a portable way, a highly efficient gas-liquid sampling collection system based on gas dispersion concentration is introduced in this work. Using the constructed dual path gas-liquid collection setup, inorganic cations and anions were simultaneously collected from real liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and analyzed by capillary electrophoresis (CE) with indirect UV absorbance detection. The head-column field-amplified sample stacking technique was applied to improve the detection limits to 2-25 ng mL(-1). The developed collection and analytical methods have successfully determined existing inorganic contaminants in a real LPG sample in the range of 4.59-138.69 μg m(-3). The recoveries of cations and anions with spiked LPG samples were between 83.98 and 105.63%, and the relative standard deviations (RSDs) were less than 7.19%.

An improved alkaline direct formate paper microfluidic fuel cell.

PubMed

Galvan, Vicente; Domalaon, Kryls; Tang, Catherine; Sotez, Samantha; Mendez, Alex; Jalali-Heravi, Mehdi; Purohit, Krutarth; Pham, Linda; Haan, John; Gomez, Frank A

2016-02-01

Paper-based microfluidic fuel cells (MFCs) are a potential replacement for traditional FCs and batteries due to their low cost, portability, and simplicity to operate. In MFCs, separate solutions of fuel and oxidant migrate through paper due to capillary action and laminar flow and, upon contact with each other and catalyst, produce electricity. In the present work, we describe an improved microfluidic paper-based direct formate FC (DFFC) employing formate and hydrogen peroxide as the anode fuel and cathode oxidant, respectively. The dimensions of the lateral column, current collectors, and cathode were optimized. A maximum power density of 2.53 mW/cm(2) was achieved with a DFFC of surface area 3.0 cm(2) , steel mesh as current collector, 5% carbon to paint mass ratio for cathode electrode and, 30% hydrogen peroxide. The longevity of the MFC's detailed herein is greater than eight hours with continuous flow of streams. In a series configuration, the MFCs generate sufficient energy to power light-emitting diodes and a handheld calculator. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.