Commodity Profile Series #1: Crude Oil in the Delaware Valley

This brochure has been developed by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) as part of a series of commodity profiles that seek to illustrate the supply chain of select commodities. This series is meant to help municipalities and the general public better understand a specific commodity's: history in the region; impact on economic development and employment; key facilities and modal distribution; and trends and transportation planning implications. The first part in this series explores crude oil, historically one of the highest-volume commodities to be imported into the region. Crude oil was identified by regional private-sector partners participating in the Delaware Valley Goods Movement Task Force, DVRPC's freight advisory committee, as a key commodity to consider in planning due to recent changes in the regional supply chain

The design and implementation of a demonstration supplementary control system

The overall goal of the Chestnut Ridge Supplemental Control System (SCS) demonstration project was to demonstrate how an existing monitoring network, existing air quality models, and existing meteorological forecasting methods could be combined with a new control strategy to integrate SCS into electric power system operation. This final report covers the period February 1, 1974 to May 31, 1976.A complete SCS for four power plants in the Chestnut Ridge region of Pennsylvania was implemented. The design is described in Section 2. The demonstration period, discussed in Section 3, showed that it is definitely possible to integrate a sophisticated SCS into electric power systems operation. The basic methods used in this project are felt to be directly extendable to other situations.The only new technology originally envisioned for this project was the control strategy which decides the power system's response to predicted or potential violations. One of the key problems was the need for the control strategy to ensure that standards are not violated in spite of the presence of uncertainties in predicted ambient concentration levels. As discussed in Section 2.6, the implemented control strategy accounted explicitly for the uncertainties.The only new technology originally envisioned for this project was the control strategy which decides the power system's response to predicted or potential violations. One of the key problems was the need for the control strategy to ensure that standards are not violated in spite of the presence of uncertainties in predicted ambient concentration levels. As discussed in Section 2.6, the implemented control strategy accounted explicitly for the uncertainties.The point source air quality model-used during the demonstration period was primarily a state-of-the-art model. However, as discussed in Section 2.5, a relatively new innovation involving downwash modeling was critical to the success of the demonstration.During the course of the project, a large data base of SO concentrations, meteorological measurements, weather forecasts, and power systim data was established and stored in a manner which was easy to access and manipulate. Studies were done using these data, both before and after the actual demonstration. Some of the methodologies used and developed are applicable to a variety of problems including many non-SCS types. The results of these studies will now be summarized.State-of-the-art air quality modeling was not as satisfactory as initially hoped in coping with the rough terrain in the Chestnut Ridge area. Research on improving point source air quality modeling for rough terrain was successfully undertaken using the data base after the demonstration period was over. The results are discussed in Section 5 with details provided in Appendix E.The Chestnut Ridge area was discovered to have an unexpectedly high background SO level. The data base enabled this background problem to be addressed in %he four ways summarized in Section 4: mean concentration analysis, peak concentration analysis, EPA Larson method, and stochastic modeling. All four approaches are felt to be applicable in other situations where it is desired to understand the true nature of a background concentration. The stochastic modeling appears to be a new methodology with particularly great potential. Details of these four methods are given in Appendixes A, B, C, and D.Uncertainty arising from air quality modeling errors, weather forecasting errors, fuel sulfur contents, power system economics, and plant availability plays a central role in SCS analysis, design, and implementation. A systematic analysis methodology was applied to the data base to explore how these various uncertainties propagate through the overall SCS and affect its operation. This work is discussed in Section 6.The control strategy minimizes cost subject to the constraint that ambient standards are not violated. Because of the uncertainties, the control strategy operates in a conservative fashion, that is, it often takes control actions that would not be required if the uncertainties did not exist. The control strategy was applied to the data base to determine how the overall economics behave and how they are affected by the presence of uncertainty. These results are discussed in Section 7.During the course of the project, opinions were developed on the potentia l future role of SCS. We feel that SCS provides a viable tool for dealing with the energy, economic, environmental crisis. These opinions are discussed in more detail in Section 8

Structured substrates for optical surface profiling

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/28/6e/fa/47f9ff9aeff556/US11275030.pdfPublished versio

Cost evaluation of air pollution control standards

Prepared in association with Electric Power Systems Engineering Laboratory and Dept. of Civil EngineeringA modAl is developed to describe the sulfur dioxide and particulate air pollution characteristics of a fossil fueled steam electric power plant. The model contains three stages. The first considers boiler emissions and the application of one of four parameterized abatement methods: wet limestone scrubbing, catalytic oxidation, magnesium oxide scrubbing, and the use of tall stacks. The second stage tests stack emissions and uses meteorological dispersion models, particularly the double gaussian model, to determine and test three hour, twenty-four hour and annual worst case ground level concentrations. The third stage calculates the performance of the abatement method used in terms of economics and resource costs. The model can be used to determine feasible combinations of plant types, site types and abatement methods as support for a separate generation expansion model. It can also be used independently to study environmental and economic sensitivities to changes in air pollution standards. General descriptions of the operation of the abatement methods and explanations of meteorological modeling are included. Examples of the use of the model as an evaluative planning tool and as a sensitivity analysis tool, examining sulfur dioxide standards, are given. A computer listing of the model is included.NSF Grant no. GI-3493

Observing Exoplanets with High-Dispersion Coronagraphy. II. Demonstration of an Active Single-Mode Fiber Injection Unit

High-dispersion coronagraphy (HDC) optimally combines high contrast imaging techniques such as adaptive optics/wavefront control plus coronagraphy to high spectral resolution spectroscopy. HDC is a critical pathway towards fully characterizing exoplanet atmospheres across a broad range of masses from giant gaseous planets down to Earth-like planets. In addition to determining the molecular composition of exoplanet atmospheres, HDC also enables Doppler mapping of atmosphere inhomogeneities (temperature, clouds, wind), as well as precise measurements of exoplanet rotational velocities. Here, we demonstrate an innovative concept for injecting the directly-imaged planet light into a single-mode fiber, linking a high-contrast adaptively-corrected coronagraph to a high-resolution spectrograph (diffraction-limited or not). Our laboratory demonstration includes three key milestones: close-to-theoretical injection efficiency, accurate pointing and tracking, on-fiber coherent modulation and speckle nulling of spurious starlight signal coupling into the fiber. Using the extreme modal selectivity of single-mode fibers, we also demonstrated speckle suppression gains that outperform conventional image-based speckle nulling by at least two orders of magnitude.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted by Ap

Minimizing the polarization leakage of geometric-phase coronagraphs with multiple grating pattern combinations

The design of liquid-crystal diffractive phase plate coronagraphs for ground-based and space-based high-contrast imaging systems is limited by the trade-off between spectral bandwidth and polarization leakage. We demonstrate that by combining phase patterns with a polarization grating (PG) pattern directly followed by one or several separate PGs, we can suppress the polarization leakage terms by additional orders of magnitude by diffracting them out of the beam. \textcolor{black}{Using two PGs composed of a single-layer liquid crystal structure in the lab, we demonstrate a leakage suppression of more than an order of magnitude over a bandwidth of 133 nm centered around 532 nm. At this center wavelength we measure a leakage suppression of three orders of magnitude.} Furthermore, simulations indicate that a combination of two multi-layered liquid-crystal PGs can suppress leakage to $<10^{-5}$ for 1-2.5 $\mu$m and $<10^{-10}$ for 650-800 nm. We introduce multi-grating solutions with three or more gratings that can be designed to have no separation of the two circular polarization states, and offer even deeper suppression of polarization leakage. We present simulations of a triple-grating solution that has $<10^{-10}$ leakage on the first Airy ring from 450 nm to 800 nm. We apply the double-grating concept to the Vector-Vortex coronagraph of charge 4, and demonstrate in the lab that polarization leakage no longer limits the on-axis suppression for ground-based contrast levels. Lastly, we report on the successful installation and first-light results of a double-grating vector Apodizing Phase Plate pupil-plane coronagraph installed at the Large Binocular Telescope. We discuss the implications of these new coronagraph architectures for high-contrast imaging systems on the ground and in space.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

The McDonald Accelerating Stars Survey (MASS): White Dwarf Companions Accelerating the Sun-like Stars 12 Psc and HD 159062

We present the discovery of a white dwarf companion to the G1 V star 12 Psc found as part of a Keck adaptive optics imaging survey of long-term accelerating stars from the McDonald Observatory Planet Search Program. Twenty years of precise radial-velocity monitoring of 12 Psc with the Tull Spectrograph at the Harlan J. Smith telescope reveals a moderate radial acceleration ($\approx$10 m s$^{-1}$ yr $^{-1}$), which together with relative astrometry from Keck/NIRC2 and the astrometric acceleration between $Hipparcos$ and $Gaia$ DR2 yields a dynamical mass of $M_B$ = 0.605$^{+0.021}_{-0.022}$ $M_{\odot}$ for 12 Psc B, a semi-major axis of 40$^{+2}_{-4}$ AU, and an eccentricity of 0.84$\pm$0.08. We also report an updated orbit fit of the white dwarf companion to the metal-poor (but barium-rich) G9 V dwarf HD 159062 based on new radial velocity observations from the High-Resolution Spectrograph at the Hobby-Eberly Telescope and astrometry from Keck/NIRC2. A joint fit of the available relative astrometry, radial velocities, and tangential astrometric acceleration yields a dynamical mass of $M_B$ = 0.609$^{+0.010}_{-0.011}$ $M_{\odot}$ for HD 159062 B, a semi-major axis of 60$^{+5}_{-7}$ AU, and preference for circular orbits ($e$$<$0.42 at 95% confidence). 12 Psc B and HD 159062 B join a small list of resolved "Sirius-like" benchmark white dwarfs with precise dynamical mass measurements which serve as valuable tests of white dwarf mass-radius cooling models and probes of AGB wind accretion onto their main-sequence companions.Comment: Accepted to A