Solution to high energy costs could lie underground

Sandia’s Georgianne Peek aids Iowa with compressed air energy storage project

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researcher Georgianne Peek thinks a possible solution to high energy costs lies underground. And it’s not coal or oil.

It’s compressed air energy storage (CAES).

“Until recently energy has been relatively inexpensive. But now prices are rising dramatically, and we need solutions,” Peek says. “CAES and other storage technologies are not the only answer to our energy needs, but they can be an important part of the solution.”

CAES facilities function like big batteries. Electric motors drive compressors that compress air into an underground geologic formation during off-peak electric use times like evenings and weekends. Then, when electricity is needed most during high-demand times, the precompressed air is used in modified combustion turbines to generate electricity. Natural gas or other fossil fuels are still required to run the turbines, but the process is more efficient. This method uses up to 50 percent less natural gas than standard electricity production.

While the concept of compressed air energy storage is more than 30 years old, only two such plants exist — a 17-year-old facility in McIntosh, Ala., located about 40 miles north of Mobile, and a 30-year-old plant in Germany, both in caverns in salt domes. A third is being developed near Des Moines, Iowa, in an aquifer. In addition, the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) and several other U.S. utilities are considering CAES to help mitigate potential problems associated with the high penetrations of wind generation in their systems.

Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratory.

Iowa project management

Sandia is currently managing DOE money to support the design of the Iowa facility, called the Iowa Stored Energy Park (ISEP). Peek is the project manager. Developers include more than 100 municipal utilities in Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas.

ISEP will be a nominal 268 megawatt/13,400 megawatts per hour CAES plant with about 50 hours of storage. It will utilize the abundant wind generation already in Iowa to charge the plant. When ISEP is up and running, it could account for 20 percent of the energy used in a year at a typical municipal Iowa utility and could save cities and their utilities as much as $5 million each year in purchased energy.

Peek says the Iowa project is pretty far along and is expected to be operational by 2012.

“One of the most important tasks that has to be done before a CAES facility can be built is to find a geologic formation that will support it,” Peek says. “ISEP developers are 95 percent sure that they have the right formation, based on the seismic testing at the site, computer modeling, and data from a sister formation.”

Sandia to study core samples

This summer multiple core samples from the potential Iowa aquifer CAES site will be taken and sent to Sandia for analysis by a team led by Steve Bauer. The analysis will include collection and assessment of the geologic, hydrologic, and rock physics data in the geomechanics laboratory.  The data will provide necessary fundamental information used for the design and performance of the underground air storage vessel.

In 2000 Bauer did similar analysis of rock mechanics of a limestone mine in Norton, Ohio, that was being studied for a potential CAES facility. That project is still under development.

PNM analyzes CAES

Peek says that PNM is also studying the application of CAES in its New Mexico service territory to help manage its current renewable energy portfolio and foster the growth of renewable energy sources.

“Wind often blows at night,” she says. “As electricity is produced at night from the wind farms, it could be stored and eventually make its way into PNM’s transmission lines during periods of higher need.”

CAES technology development can trace its roots to the early 1960s when evaluation of gas turbine technology for power production began. The technology gained momentum during the next decade due to its promising fuel efficiency and response capabilities to provide load-following and peaking power support.

Now utilities are starting to tie CAES technology to wind power — first with the Iowa plant and soon with possible facilities through the nation, Peek says.

“The wind blows in some areas when electricity is not needed or where the transmission system can’t accept all of the energy,” she says. “Storage enables delivery of the off-peak energy that has been saved in storage to be delivered when it is needed most or has the highest value. Thus, more renewable energy can be delivered than might be possible without storage.”

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Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.

Sandia news media contact: Chris Burroughs, 505-844-0948, coburro@sandia.gov

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories and Kirtland Air Force Base may soon share a wind farm that will provide as much as one-third of the electricity used by the two entities.

Global energy demand is forecasted to be 50 percent higher in 2030 than it is today and according to the International Energy Agency, seventy percent of this growth is expected to come from developing countries.

The question is: what will provide the additional energy?

News Release

Media Contact: Ron Walli Communications and External Relations 865.576.0226

Oak Ridge pegged for national ecological network

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., June 26, 2008 — Dozens of instruments to be deployed on the Oak Ridge Reservation and other sites around the nation will provide valuable information related to climate change, biodiversity and invasive species, infectious diseases and other areas of interest.

Walker Branch Watershed and other portions of the Department of Energy reservation will be part of the National Ecological Observatory Network, a multi-decade continental-scale research platform supported by the National Science Foundation. Oak Ridge is one of 20 sites selected from more than 80 proposed locations. Sixteen are within the continental United States while Alaska has two and Hawaii and Puerto Rico each have one.

“Being selected as a candidate core site to represent the Southern Appalachians and Cumberland Plateau domain is a reflection of the unique environmental and infrastructure qualities and the long history of excellent research conducted at Walker Branch Watershed,” said Pat Mulholland, a senior scientist in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Environmental Sciences Division.

“This study will complement other DOE climate change research in Walker Branch and other areas of the Oak Ridge Reservation and reflects ORNL’s leadership in the science of climate change and its impacts.”

The watershed comprises a 240-acre forest and has been the site of short- and long-term studies of the ecological effects of environmental change. These studies have focused on the effects of energy technology-driven environmental changes on ecological processes within forest ecosystems over the past 40 years.

ORNL researchers continue to study the hydrological and biogeochemical responses to climate variability and change as well as conduct experiments on the response to climate change on forest growth, species composition, and stream organisms and metabolism.

With this new project, each site will include an intensively instrumented area as well as a variety of mobile instruments. All of the state-of-the-art instruments connected via wireless data communication devices will be standardized and focused on a core set of questions. The instruments will measure carbon dioxide and other gas exchanges between the forest, soil and atmosphere as well as physical, chemical and microbial properties of vegetation, soils and the stream. Some instruments will track specific organism populations. Data will be transmitted electronically to a central processing center and made available to scientists as well as the public.

When complete, this new effort will provide a continental-scale research platform for discovering and understanding the impacts of climate change, land-use change and invasive species on ecology. The National Science Foundation has funded NEON since September 2004. The network is expected to gather ecological data for more than 30 years.

Researchers are already looking forward to new views of ecology that will be created by continental-scale data. Just as meteorologists today can predict the path of a tornado or hurricane, ecologists using NEON data in the future may be able to more accurately forecast biological phenomena such as the spread of avian flu and the West Nile virus or the emergence of an invasive species.

“Being part of the NEON network will attract leading national and international ecologists to Oak Ridge,” Mulholland said. “NEON infrastructure will also provide unique educational and research opportunities for students at all levels through website access to NEON results and on-site studies.”

More information about Walker Branch Watershed is available at: http://walkerbranch.ornl.gov. Additional information about NEON is available at: http://wwwneoninc.org.

UT-Battelle manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the Department of Energy.

Number 264 June 30, 2008 Combining coal and biomass in co-gasification Dr. Bryan Morreale stands next to the test rig used for studying the effects of coal and biomass mixtures on gasification products. Researchers at DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory are studying the co-gasification process in which various types of coal and biomass are combined and converted into synthesis gas for use in producing electricity, hydrogen, chemicals and liquid transportation fuels. The biomass includes energy crops such as wheat straw, corn stover, switchgrass, mixed hardwood and distillers’ dried grains with corn fiber, and even algae. Using coal in co-gasification provides a steady supply that can be supplemented by biomass whenever available. The researchers are examining how best to couple the coals and biomasses that makes sense geographically. They are using a small-scale gasification system to evaluate various products. [Linda Morton, 304/285-4543, Linda.morton@netl.doe.gov] Detector monitors four threats at once Physicist Paul Steele (kneeling) and chemist Keith Coffee adjust the LLNL detection instrument known as SPAMS. Security and law enforcement officials may have a new ally – a universal detection system that can monitor the air for virtually all major threat agents that could be used by terrorists. The system is under development by a team of scientists and engineers from DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and has been tested in laboratory and field experiments. In their latest advance, the team has conceptually shown that they can almost simultaneously detect four potential threat materials—biological, chemical, explosives and radiological—along with illicit drugs, using Single-Particle Aerosol Mass Spectrometry, or SPAMS. [Steve Wampler, 925/423-3107, wampler1@llnl.gov] The unique lessons of XPD for cancer, aging Computer model of the four domains of XPD, with a strand of unwound DNA. XPD is an essential component of the molecular factory that performs DNA nucleotide excision repair. Now a group at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Scripps Research Institute have solved XPD’s structure, revealing how pinpoint mutations in its remarkable architecture—as seemingly insignificant as a change in adjacent amino acid residues—lead to three diseases with completely different phenotypes: xeroderma pigmentosum’s cancer-promoting sensitivity to sunlight; stunted growth and premature aging in Cockayne syndrome; and accelerated aging characterized by brittle hair and scaly skin in trichothiodystrophy. The structure of XPD gives novel insight into mechanisms of aging and cancer. [Paul Preuss, 510/486-6249, paul_preuss@lbl.gov] One molecule at a time The infrared spectra of liquid water obtained by experimentation map closely to results from PNNL’s new computational model. Researchers at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a new and improved computational model that describes the interactions and spectroscopic signatures of water molecules in different environments. “Until now, no model could as fully describe the vibrations of water molecules, from a single water molecule and small water clusters, to liquid water, ice and clathrate hydrates,” said PNNL scientist Sotiris Xantheas. Researchers tested the new model by measuring the average structure and other thermodynamic and transport properties of liquid water. Close agreement of the simulation with experimental results gained from infrared spectroscopy validated the model’s effectiveness. Understanding water at the molecular level is essential to advancing frontiers in such areas as aqueous chemistry, hydrogen generation and storage, and the transport of contaminants in surface and subsurface environments. [Judith Graybeal, 509/375-4351, graybeal@pnl.gov] Reflections of a fusion leader PPPL Deputy Director Rich Hawryluk. (The photo collage includes Hawryluk and images of TFTR and a TFTR plasma.) An exhibit at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows piqued then youngster Rich Hawryluk—and the future fusion world was indelibly changed. “The World’s Fair actually had a fusion exhibit by GE,” recalled Hawryluk, Deputy Director of the DOE Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He wrote to the Atomic Energy Commission to find out more. “I hadn’t yet taken physics and didn’t really think my future would be fixed on physics, but I was interested in learning more.” Around the same time, Hawryluk scoured the limited offerings at his neighborhood library in Brooklyn for books of interest before encountering a shelf devoted to science and engineering, topics he’d gravitated toward. “I was fascinated by what people had done and were doing. Reading about these endeavors sparked my interest and imagination in science and engineering,” said Hawryluk, who received B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics in 1972 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1974, all from MIT, before joining the staff at PPPL. “I’ve had a long-standing and deep interest in science and its impact on society. It was clear to me even in the sixties that new sources of energy would be important in the future as it had been historically. Fusion was an option, but the science and technology needed to be developed to make it practical.” During the past three decades, the magnetic fusion energy research leader has headed past and present fusion projects at PPPL—including the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) project when it produced record breaking results—and contributed to ITER, the international fusion project being planned for construction in France. “One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about PPPL is the range of opportunities I’ve had here, from being a physics operator of the Princeton Large Torus project to leading the TFTR experiments, to performing computer simulations and most recently managing operations at the Lab,” Hawryluk said. Submitted by DOE’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Idaho reactor attracts nation’s academics, industry leaders Idaho National Laboratory’s new Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility (ATR NSUF) is hosting engineers from across this country this summer as representatives of 20 universities attended a weeklong information session and four new research teams are starting experiments at the facility. Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility (ATR NSUF) “I think it’s great,” said ATR NSUF Education Coordinator Jeff Benson. “We’re bringing experts in from around the country. It’s a fantastic opportunity for the upcoming generation.” The User Facility Summer Session is intended as an introduction to the capabilities of the ATR, which can replicate in a short amount of time the effects of radiation that a material would receive over years of use in a commercial nuclear reactor. The Department of Energy established the User Facility last year to make access to the ATR easier for new researchers. The session’s attendees included representatives of INL, private industry and 20 different universities. Participants listened to presentations from experts in modeling, fuels and materials, toured the ATR and other INL facilities, and networked with fellow researchers. Heng Ban, a professor of thermophysical properties and materials at Utah State University, described the session as “one-stop shopping for everything.” “You really find a place to meet all these people in one place,” he said. Research teams from the University of Florida, the University of Illinois, North Carolina State University, and University of California–Santa Barbara have won the opportunity to stay the summer at INL. Their proposals were chosen out of 19 applicants to conduct experiments at the ATR involving the effects of irradiation on specific materials. The teams are working with INL officials to conduct their research and will receive joint authorship when the results are published in academic journals. ATR NSUF Scientific Director Todd Allen said he hopes to repeat the program in years to come. “Our goal [is that] from now on out we’ll have a continuing set of experiments in the reactor,” he said. Andrew Frerichs, a Ph.D student at Iowa State University, said he attended the facility’s summer session partly in hopes of gaining a spot for his research team in an upcoming summer, calling the experience “very beneficial.” “It’s an interesting networking experience,” he said. “It’s an interesting perspective with so many people from different universities.” Representatives of private industry expressed similar feelings. Dr. Edgar Vidal studies beryllium for Brush Wellman Inc. in Elmore, Ohio. He said the session helped him understand the impact nuclear science will have on his research and make contact with experts who will help him further his company’s goals. “It’s great,” he said. “The interaction, meeting people from universities.” Submitted by DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory