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Projects/Programs

Displaying 51 - 75 of 89

Nanostructures for Energy Conversion

Completed
Transportation is the single largest contributor to U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Moving to an electrically powered transportation system that draws on sustainable energy supplies has the potential to lower transportation costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and help further reduce the nation's

Pipeline Safety

Ongoing
The U.S. operates more than 2.5M miles of natural gas, petroleum and hazardous liquid pipelines, crossing all 50 states and operated by more than 3,000 companies. Fluid hydrocarbon fossil fuels remain the world leading source of energy. The safest and most reliable means of transporting these fuels

Polymers for Next-Generation Lithography

Completed
We work closely with the semiconductor industry to develop and apply measurements with high-spatial and chemically-specific resolution to elucidate the critical materials properties and process kinetics at nanometer scales that are needed to advance next-generation photolithography, including both

Power Conditioning Systems for Renewables, Storage, and Microgrids

Ongoing
Objective: To establish standards and measurement methods, and test for smart grid and microgrid Power Conditioning Systems needed to transition from today’s low penetration of nondispatchable intermittent renewable energy sources to flexible grid operations that can actively adjust to varying grid

Prediction of Global Warming Potential

Ongoing
Goals Use ANN models to fit RF and .OH rate constant data k(.OH). Be able to predict RF, k(.OH), and GWP with reasonable accuracy using readily available information. Create a screening tool based on the ANNs.  Research Activities Improve the performance of rate constant prediction. Compare rate

Premise Plumbing Systems for High-Performance Buildings

Ongoing
Objective To develop new measurement methods, modeling approaches, and data to support improvements in building plumbing design, utility consumption, and water quality. The results of these efforts are intended to support standards development and industry programs to advance innovative technology

Reactivity of Nanoparticle Catalysts

Ongoing
Goals: Provide mechanisms for various prototypical electrocatalytic reactions on different metallic surfaces an nanoparticles. Validate the results of DFT calculations versus experimental data. Research Activities: Studying the methanol oxidation reaction on Pt and PtRu surfaces. Studying the effect

Real Fuels

Ongoing
The variability of the price of oil, the need for energy efficiency and pollution minimization has led to increasing interest in alternative fuels. These fuels are structurally and compositionally different than the conventional fuels presently used.  Past work on conventional fuels have established

Reference Fluid Thermodynamic and Transport Properties Database (REFPROP)

Ongoing
REFPROP is a computer program, distributed through the Standard Reference Data program of NIST, that provides thermophysical properties of pure fluids and mixtures over a wide range of fluid conditions including liquid, gas, and supercritical phases. It contains critically evaluated mathematical

Refrigerants and Working Fluids

Ongoing
We apply a wide range of experimental apparatus to the task of measuring the properties of working fluids. Many of these instruments are the same as those used in our work on standard reference fluids, and our data for working fluids approach the accuracy of the reference fluids. Thermodynamic

Renewable Energy and Fuels

Ongoing
Fuel volatility and chemical characterization. We specialize in the Advanced Distillation Curve (ADC) method, developed at NIST, which is a powerful tool for the measurement of distillation curves to characterize complex fluids. We have applied this to simple hydrocarbons, gasolines, diesel fuels

Semantic Interoperability for Building Data

Ongoing
Objective To pursue an effort that results in national and international standards that define concepts and a methodology to create interoperable, machine-readable semantic models for representing building system information for analytics, automation, and control. Technical Idea The new technical

Semiconductor Nanowire Metrology: Electronics, Photonics, and Sensors

Completed
One of the key issues hampering progress in semiconductor nanotechnology is the absence of standardized nanostructures. We address this need through the controlled fabrication and assembly of semiconductor nanowire test structures with well-defined properties. To achieve this, we have manufactured

Smart Grid Communication Networks

Ongoing
Objective: To accelerate the development of scalable, reliable, secure, and interoperable communications and standards for smart grid applications; and to enable informed decision making by smart grid operators by developing measurement science-based guidelines and tools. What is the new technical

Smart Grid Communications

Completed
In 2007, Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which tasked NIST with developing standards and protocols to ensure that Smart Grid systems are interoperable. An important part of the Smart Grid is the communications infrastructure, which utilities use to send command information

Smart Grid Interoperability Testbed Facility

Ongoing
Objective - To develop and progress an advanced multi-mode interacting measurement testbed that leverage cross-OU expertise to facilitate implementation, validation, and full characterization of smart grid interoperability standards and smart grid performance, with a particular emphasis on DER

Smart Grid Program

Completed
Objective: To develop and demonstrate advances in measurement science to enable integration of interoperable and secure real-time sensing, control, communications, information and power technologies, in order to increase the system efficiency, reliability, resiliency and sustainability of the nation

Smoke Stack Flow Measurement

Completed
The Fluid Metrology Group is using its smoke stack simulator (See Fig. 1.) and field tests in operating smoke stacks to critically test conventional and improved ways of measuring the flow of stack gases. In the NIST stack simulator, the inlet cone and reference (upstream) section of the simulator

Special Functions

Ongoing
Special function evaluation is among the more venerable problems of numerical mathematics and remains a staple for engineers, physicists, and scientific computation. What is more, the need for detailed numerical evaluations grows steadily as new quantitative theories are developed for an increasing

Springback

Ongoing
Springback, or the elastic change in shape when a part is released from the manufacturing process, has been a problem for decades and accounts for a significant fraction of the expense that the US auto industry spends each year trying out die sets for new body designs. The inability to predict the

Standard Reference Measurements

Ongoing
State-of-the art property measurements have been the hallmark of the Fluid Properties Group for more than four decades. Many of these measurements have been carried out on one-of-a-kind instruments developed at NIST. In some cases the older instruments are still among the very best of their kind

Standards Development to Ensure Reliable Breath Analysis in the Field

Ongoing
Numerous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have been identified in human breath. These compounds can be produced by the body or by organisms in the body (e.g., bacteria or viruses) and provide a non-invasive window into human health. Inexpensive point-of-care devices are being developed to diagnose