Publications & Presentations

High Yield and Economical Production of Rare Earth Elements from Coal Ash

Physical Sciences Inc., Andover, MA; Center for Applied Energy Research, Lexington, KY; and Winner Water Services, LLC, Sharon, PA
Presentation to: Rare Earth Elements (REE) Program Portfolio, 2021 Annual Review Meeting (Virtual), 25 May 2021

Plant located at KY ash landfill site: ~ 300 m x 300 m footprint, includes physical and chemical processing plants as well as ash feedstock delivery, preparation, and staging operations

Acknowledgement: This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Award DE FE0027167.
Disclaimer: This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.

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Development of the Virtual Source Training Toolkit for physically accurate simulation of the response of handheld radiation detectors

Development of the Virtual Source Training Toolkit for physically accurate simulation of the response of handheld radiation detectors
John Wright, Kirill Shokhirev, Eric Rappeport, Daniel Brown and Bogdan R. Cosofret
SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing, Orlando, FL, 15 - 19 April 2018

Law enforcement officers and public safety personnel are a critical component of the Global Nuclear Detection Architecture, and would benefit from additional opportunities to train for this mission in realistic threat scenarios. Physical Sciences Inc.

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(PSI) is developing a Virtual Source Training Toolkit (VSTT) system capable of reproducing the response of handheld radiation detectors to a virtual source in a complex occlusion and shielding environment. The toolkit will allow additional low-cost training opportunities for these officers inside operationally relevant public areas in order to reduce the time required to detect and localize a realistic radiological threat.

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Copyright © 2018 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. This paper was presented at SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing, Orlando, FL, 15 - 19 April 2018 and is made available as an electronic reprint (preprint) with permission of SPIE. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic or multiple reproduction, distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.

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Active standoff chemical identification detector

Active standoff chemical identification detector
Jay P. Giblin*, Julia R. Dupuis, John P. Dixon, Joel M. Hensley, David J. Mansur, and William J. Marinelli
SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing, Orlando, FL, 15 - 19 April 2018

An active, standoff, all-phase chemical detection capability has been developed under IARPA’s SILMARILS program. The detection platform utilizes reflectance spectroscopy in the longwave infrared coupled with an automated detection algorithm that implements physics-based reflectance models for planar chemical films, particulate in the solid and liquid phase, and vapors.

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Target chemicals include chemical warfare agents, toxic industrial chemicals, and explosives. The platform employs broadband Fabry-Perot quantum cascade lasers with a spectrally selective detector to interrogate target surfaces at tens of meter standoff. A statistical F-test in a noise whitened space is used for detection and discrimination over a large target spectral library in high clutter environments. The capability is described with an emphasis on the physical reflectance models used to predict spectral reflectivity signatures as a function of surface contaminant presentation and loading. Developmental test results from a breadboard version of the detector platform are presented. Specifically, solid and liquid surface contaminants were detected and identified from a library of 325 compounds down to 30 μg/cm2 surface loading at a 5 m standoff. Vapor detection was demonstrated via topographic backscatter.

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Copyright © 2018 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. This paper was presented at SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing, Orlando, FL, 15 - 19 April 2018 and is made available as an electronic reprint (preprint) with permission of SPIE. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic or multiple reproduction, distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.

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Compact Lidar for Continuous Monitoring of Atmospheric Extinction

Compact Lidar for Continuous Monitoring of Atmospheric Extinction
David M. Sonnenfroh*, Robert J. Minelli, Joseph A.K. Goodwin, and W. Terry Rawlins
SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing, Orlando, FL, 15 - 19 April 2018

Physical Sciences Inc. is developing an advanced, compact lidar capable of continuous mapping of atmospheric extinction to provide environmental situational awareness for high energy laser weapon operations by the Navy.

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The lidar uses a MicroPulse Lidar architecture and combines a solid state Nd:YLF laser operating at 1 micron with photon counting detectors and advanced aerosol retrieval algorithms. We report on the design of the engineering prototype and provide a summary of the system performance demonstrated during the Comprehensive Atmospheric Boundary Layer Extinction / Turbulence Refinement eXperiment conducted at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in June, 2017.

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Copyright © 2018 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. This paper was presented at SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing, Orlando, FL, 15 - 19 April 2018 and is made available as an electronic reprint (preprint) with permission of SPIE. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic or multiple reproduction, distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.

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Standoff Detection from Diffusely Scattering Surfaces using Dual Quantum Cascade Laser Comb Spectroscopy

Standoff Detection from Diffusely Scattering Surfaces using Dual Quantum Cascade Laser Comb Spectroscopy
Joel M. Hensley, Justin M. Brown, Mark G. Allen, Markus Geiser, Pitt Allmendinger, Markus Mangold, Andreas Hugi, Pierre Jouy, and Jérôme Faist
SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing Conference, Orlando, FL, April 15-19, 2018

Designed dispersion compensated quantum cascade OFC sources at 8 and 10mm

At 8mm demonstrated ~1W cw average power (per laser) at room temperature with comb ~80 cm-1 comb width

Demonstrated surface mass loading sensitivity of few mg/cm2 at standoff distances of 0.3 and 1 meter from diffuse surfaces

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Primary improvement needed: increased bandwidth
–150 cm-1 possible with improve dispersion control
–beyond 150 cm-1, will also require faster detectors or better matching between individual comb spacing

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Acknowledgement of Support and Disclaimer
This material is based upon work supported by the Defense Advanced research Projects Agency (DARPA) under Contract Number W31P4Q 15 C 0083. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DARPA Program Office

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High-efficiency thermophotovoltaic energy conversion enabled by a metamaterial selective emitter

High-efficiency thermophotovoltaic energy conversion enabled by a metamaterial selective emitter
DAVID N. WOOLF, EMIL A. KADLEC, DON BETHKE, ALBERT D. GRINE, JOHN J. NOGAN, JEFFREY G. CEDERBERG, D. BRUCE BURCKEL, TING SHAN LUK, ERIC A. SHANER, and JOEL M. HENSLEY
Optica Vol. 5, Issue 2, pp. 213-218 (2018) •https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.5.000213

Thermophotovoltaics (TPV) is the process by which photons radiated from a thermal emitter are converted into electrical power via a photovoltaic cell.

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Selective thermal emitters that can survive at temperatures at or above ∼1000°C have the potential to greatly improve the efficiency of TPV energy conversion by restricting the emission of photons with energies below the photovoltaic (PV) cell bandgap energy. In this work, we demonstrated TPV energy conversion using a high-temperature selective emitter, dielectric filter, and 0.6 eV In0.68Ga0.32As photovoltaic cell. We fabricated a passivated platinum and alumina frequency-selective surface by conventional stepper lithography. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of TPV energy conversion using a metamaterial emitter. The emitter was heated to >1000°C, and converted electrical power was measured. After accounting for geometry, we demonstrated a thermal-to-electrical power conversion efficiency of 24.1  0.9% at 1055°C. We separately modeled our system consisting of a selective emitter, dielectric filter, and PV cell and found agreement with our measured efficiency and power to within 1%. Our results indicate that high-efficiency TPV generators are possible and are candidates for remote
power generation, combined heat and power, and heat-scavenging applications.

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© 2018 Optical Society of America. This paper was published in Optica Vol. 5, Issue 2, pp. 213-218 (2018) •https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.5.000213 and is made available as an electronic reprint with the permission of OSA. The paper can be found at the OSA website: High-efficiency thermophotovoltaic energy conversion enabled by a metamaterial selective emitter . Systematic or multiple reproduction or distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means is prohibited and is subject to penalties under law.

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