Dairy Analytics and Nutrient Analysis (DANA) Prototype System User Manual

This document is a user manual for the Dairy Analytics and Nutrient Analysis (DANA) model. DANA provides an analysis of dairy anaerobic digestion technology and allows users to calculate biogas production, co-product valuation, capital costs, expenses, revenue and financial metrics, for user customizable scenarios, dairy and digester types. The model provides results for three anaerobic digester types; Covered Lagoons, Modified Plug Flow, and Complete Mix, and three main energy production technologies; electricity generation, renewable natural gas generation, and compressed natural gas generation. Additional options include different dairy types, bedding types, backend treatment type as well as numerous production, and economic parameters. DANA’s goal is to extend the National Market Value of Anaerobic Digester Products analysis (informa economics, 2012; Innovation Center, 2011) to include a greater and more flexible set of regional digester scenarios and to provide a modular framework for creation of a tool to support farmer and investor needs. Users can set up scenarios from combinations of existing parameters or add new parameters, run the model and view a variety of reports, charts and tables that are automatically produced and delivered over the web interface. DANA is based in the INL’s analysis architecture entitled Generalized Environment for Modeling Systems (GEMS) , which offers extensive collaboration, analysis, and integration opportunities and greatly speeds the ability construct highly scalable web delivered user-oriented decision tools. DANA’s approach uses server-based data processing and web-based user interfaces, rather a client-based spreadsheet approach. This offers a number of benefits over the client-based approach. Server processing and storage can scale up to handle a very large number of scenarios, so that analysis of county, even field level, across the whole U.S., can be performed. Server based databases allow dairy and digester parameters be held and managed in a single managed data repository, while allows users to customize standard values and perform individual analysis. Server-based calculations can be easily extended, versions and upgrades managed, and any changes are immediately available to all users. This user manual describes how to use and/or modify input database tables, run DANA, view and modify reports

AFIP-6 Characterization Summary Report

The AFIP-6 (ATR Full-size-plate In center flux trap Position) Characterization Summary Report outlines the fresh fuel characterization efforts performed during the AFIP-6 experiment. The AFIP-6 experiment was designed to evaluate the performance of monolithic uranium-molybdenum (U-Mo) fuels at a scale prototypic of Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) fuel plates (45-inches long). The AFIP-6 test was the first test with plates that were swaged into the rails of the assembly. This test served to examine the effects of a plate in a swaged condition with longer fuel zones (22.5-inches long), that were centered in the plate. AFIP-6 test plates employed a zirconium interlayer that was co-rolled with the fuel foil. Previous mini-plate and AFIP irradiation experiments performed in ATR have demonstrated the stable behavior of the interface between the U-Mo fuel and the zirconium interlayer

Molecular Mechanisms of Scale Deposition

Scales do not develop equally on different substrates, even when bulk physicochemical conditions are the same. The reason for these differential developments, one must presume, are due to subtle features of the near-surface region, either composition or structure. They intend to focus their studies on the structural aspects, including concerns about the molecular structures of solvated components that may be involved with the surface reactions. This approach is richly mechanistic in outlook. It involves concepts of stereo constraints on the chemical processes by which solutes exchange atoms or electrons with substrates. These constraints are a consequence of the more or less regular pattern of electropotential that exists at a crystalline surface. In principle, the electropotential pattern can be manipulated either through the substrate (more precisely by selecting or designing substrates that have desirable patterns) or through the components in the near-surface liquid which modify the basic substrate-induced patterns there

Chemical Interactions Between Metallic SFR Fuel and Advanced Claddings

Advanced cladding materials are being considered for high-temperature applications in Generation IV reactors (e.g. T91, ODS steels). These materials provide better mechanical properties (e.g., creep strength) at these higher temperatures than the more commonly employed cladding steels (e.g., HT-9). However, consideration must also be given to other high-temperature phenomenon besides just the mechanical properties of the cladding when using fuels at high temperatures. In particular, the compatibility of the fuel and cladding must be considered. In Sodium Fast Reactors (SFRs) that employ metallic fuel, interactions of fuel and cladding (FCI) during irradiation of a fuel element can result in the formation of strength-reducing zones or possibly the formation of low melting phases [1]. This paper reports the results of diffusion experiments that were conducted with metallic fuel and advanced cladding materials at the relatively high temperature of 700 C

WIPP Gas-Generation Experiments

An experimental investigation was conducted for gas generation in contact-handled transuranic (CH TRU) wastes subjected for several years to conditions similar to those expected to occur at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) should the repository eventually become inundated with brine. Various types of actual CH TRU wastes were placed into 12 corrosion-resistant vessels. The vessels were loosely filled with the wastes, which were submerged in synthetic brine having the same chemical composition as that in the WIPP vicinity. The vessels were also inoculated with microbes found in the Salado Formation at WIPP. The vessels were sealed, purged, and the approximately 750 ml headspace in each vessel was pressurized with nitrogen gas to approximately 146 atmospheres to create anoxic conditions at the lithostatic pressure estimated in the repository were it to be inundated. The temperature was maintained at the expected 30°C. The test program objective was to measure the quantities and species of gases generated by metal corrosion, radiolysis, and microbial activity. These data will assist in the specification of the rates at which gases are produced under inundated repository conditions for use in the WIPP Performance Assessment computer models. These experiments were very carefully designed, constructed, instrumented, and performed. Approximately 6 1/2 years of continuous, undisturbed testing were accumulated. Several of the vessels showed significantly elevated levels of generated gases, virtually all of which was hydrogen. Up to 4.2% hydrogen, by volume, was measured. Only small quantities of other gases, principally carbon dioxide, were detected. Gas generation was found to depend strongly on the waste composition. The maximum hydrogen generation occurred in vessels containing carbon steel. Visual examination of carbon-steel coupons confirmed the correspondence between the extent of observable corrosion and hydrogen generation. Average corrosion penetration rates in carbon-steel of up to 2.3 microns per year were deduced. Conversion of carbon to carbon dioxide was calculated to be as high as 4.7 µg mol/yr/g carbon. Carbon monoxide was detected in only two waste compositions, and methane was detected in only one. In all three of these cases, the concentrations of these lesser gases detected were barely above the detection limits. No hydrogen sulfide was ever detected. Initial rates of hydrogen generation measured in the carbon-steel-bearing wastes during the first year of testing did not always correspond to rates measured over the longer term. Compared to the long-term trends, the initial gas-generation rates for some waste types were higher, for some lower, and for others remained constant. Although carbon-steel corrosion was clearly the dominant hydrogen generator, the rates of generation were found to be reduced in test vessels where the same quantity of carbon steel was co-mingled with other waste types. This is a beneficial phenomenon relative to performance of the WIPP repository. Statistical analyses of the results were made to quantify these negative interaction effects. Electron microscopy analyses of the carbon-steel coupons revealed that corrosion products were predominantly iron chlorides and oxides. Iron, chlorine, oxygen, uranium, magnesium, calcium, aluminum, silicon were all present in the corrosion products. No americium nor neptunium, both present in the wastes, were detected in any of the corrosion products. Al

High Density Fuel Development for Research Reactors

An international effort to develop, qualify, and license high and very high density fuels has been underway for several years within the framework of multi-national RERTR programs. The current development status is the result of significant contributions from many laboratories, specifically CNEA in Argentina, AECL in Canada, CEA in France, TUM in Germany, KAERI in Korea, VNIIM, RDIPE, IPPE, NCCP and RIARR in Russia, INL, ANL and Y-12 in USA. These programs are mainly engaged with UMo dispersion fuels with densities from 6 to 8 gU/cm3 (high density fuel) and UMo monolithic fuel with density as high as 16 gU/cm3 (very high density fuel). This paper, mainly focused on the French & US programs, gives the status of high density UMo fuel development and perspectives on their qualification

The Assembly of Individual Chaplin Peptides from Streptomyces coelicolor into Functional Amyloid Fibrils

The self-association of proteins into amyloid fibrils offers an alternative to the natively folded state of many polypeptides. Although commonly associated with disease, amyloid fibrils represent the natural functional state of some proteins, such as the chaplins from the soil-dwelling bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor, which coat the aerial mycelium and spores rendering them hydrophobic. We have undertaken a biophysical characterisation of the five short chaplin peptides ChpD-H to probe the mechanism by which these peptides self-assemble in solution to form fibrils. Each of the five chaplin peptides produced synthetically or isolated from the cell wall is individually surface-active and capable of forming fibrils under a range of solution conditions in vitro. These fibrils contain a highly similar cross-β core structure and a secondary structure that resembles fibrils formed in vivo on the spore and mycelium surface. They can also restore the growth of aerial hyphae to a chaplin mutant strain. We show that cysteine residues are not required for fibril formation in vitro and propose a role for the cysteine residues conserved in four of the five short chaplin peptides