Revitalize the US silicon/ferrosilicon industry through energy-efficient technology. Final report, Addendum furnace modeling

A project was undertaken to model and analyze the dc submerged plasma arc furnace. A reaction extent model was developed and useful results obtained. The code can be run with commercially hardware and software. Two free energy minimization models were formulated; they may be run by modifying public domain programs

Butterfly effect in a chemical oscillator

The strong sensitivity of aperiodic dynamics to initial conditions is one of the fingerprinting features of chaotic systems. While this dependence can be directly verified by means of numerical approaches, it is quite elusive and difficult to be isolated in real experimental systems. In this paper, we discuss a didactic and self-consistent method to show the divergent behaviour between two infinitesimally different solutions of the famous Belousov–Zhabotinsky oscillator simultaneously undergoing a transition to a chaotic regime. Experimental data are also used to give an intuitive visualization of the essential meaning of a Lyapunov exponent, which allows for a more quantitative characterization of the chaotic transient

Improving the Thermal Integrity of New Single-Family Detached Residential Buildings: Documentation for a Regional Database of Capital Costs and Space Conditioning Load Savings

This report summarizes the costs and space-conditioning load savings from improving new single-family building shells. It relies on survey data from the National Association of Home-builders (NAHB) to assess current insulation practices for these new buildings, and NAHB cost data (aggregated to the Federal region level) to estimate the costs of improving new single-family buildings beyond current practice. Space-conditioning load savings are estimated using a database of loads for prototype buildings developed at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, adjusted to reflect population-weighted average weather in each of the ten federal regions and for the nation as a whole