The DoD is devoting considerable effort to reducing fuel costs and emissions by developing advanced gas turbine engines as well as reducing the dependence on foreign oil by developing and testing alternative fuels. In anticipation of an increased use of alternative fuels across DoD, new tools are needed to predict the formation of air emissions from advanced engines burning alternative fuels. Two SERDP projects are developing a more fundamental understanding of the formation of air emissions in gas turbine engines. More
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla, plans for the Gigafactory to not only supply Tesla and other car companies with batteries, but also to produce stationary batteries for buildings and renewable energy assets. These batteries are very similar to batteries involved in three ESTCP demonstrations, which are part of ESTCP’s portfolio of projects demonstrating various components of microgrids on military installations. More
Summer is a time when things slow down just a bit in the SERDP and ESTCP Office. The rest of the year is anything but slow for the Programs! SERDP and ESTCP kept busy this Spring with our annual proposal review efforts and In-Progress Review (IPR) meetings. More
Source zone natural attenuation (SZNA) is often used as a basis for assessing the performance and relative benefits of engineered remediation and is also a component of the cleanup strategy at most chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbon-impacted sites. ESTCP has funded Dr. Paul Johnson and his team from Arizona State University to develop a data-driven method to confirm the presence and quantify the rates of SZNA. More
High latitude (cold) regions are on the front line with respect to rapid climate change. Because DoD manages large extents of training lands and other assets in cold regions, SERDP is looking into the effects of climate change on natural and built infrastructure in these regions. More
SERDP and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) hosted a workshop on the acoustic detection and classification of underwater unexploded ordnance (UXO) in late 2013 and the Workshop Report has just been posted. The workshop brought together modelers and experimentalists working in both the ONR Mine Countermeasures (MCM) and SERDP Underwater Munitions programs to assess the state-of-the-art and plan future research directions for the application of acoustic sensors to munitions response. More
Testing and training on DoD ranges and weapons platforms generate several types of emissions, not the least of which is noise. Blast noise—the noise produced by large weapons, heavy artillery, and explosions—on DoD ranges can lead to restrictions and curfews, thereby impacting military readiness. More
In support of our military forces, SERDP and ESTCP fund a variety of efforts to ensure the sustainability of our testing and training ranges, including mitigation of the release of munition compounds. One aspect of these mitigation efforts is the prediction of the potential fate and transport of new munition compounds under development. More
With more than 300,000 buildings across the United States, the Department of Defense (DoD) needs to rapidly locate and identify sources of energy leaks to help reduce facility energy consumption. A new technology developed by Essess and demonstrated by ESTCP has the potential to do just that, at a fraction of the time of traditional handheld building infrared (IR) thermography. More
Since 2000, SERDP has funded research to develop military-specific emission factors and dispersion models to aid in the quantification of fugitive dust emissions. This research provides information to develop cost-effective management strategies to mitigate the potential impact from military activities. More