Modern vehicles are governed by nonlinear dynamics spanning multiple timescales and physical domains. Due to electrification and increasing on-board power demands, managing both the electrical and thermal energy of these systems has become a significant challenge, limiting capability, safety, and efficiency. This talk will present a hierarchical control framework for vehicle energy management that meets this challenge by coordinating control actions throughout complex systems.
Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive
You're viewing an archived collection of past energy and environment events from around Penn State and beyond. Please visit our Event Calendar to view current and upcoming events.
Oxygen electrochemistry plays an essential role in many important electrochemical devices for energy conversion and storage, such as fuel cells, batteries, and electrolyzers. However, the efficiency of these devices is limited due to the sluggish kinetics associated with oxygen electrocatalysis, which prompted intense research efforts in developing efficient catalysts for oxygen electrochemistry.
Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, Meteo Colloquium: The Critical Role of Cloud–Infrared Radiation Feedback in Tropical Cyclone Development by James Ruppert Jr., Assistant Research Professor, Penn State
Geosciences Colloquium Seminar: Quartz as a Record of Magmatic Thermal Histories by Michael Ackerson, Research Geologist & Petrology Curator, Department of Mineral Sciences, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Coffee & Cookies Speaker Reception preceding the presentation at 3:45 PM in the EMS Museum.
Large watersheds are a patchwork of differing land types, climate, and human influences, which store and export pollutants over time scales ranging from days to centuries. Scientists’ understanding of these watersheds’ response to changing conditions has historically been based on com-plex models with many built-in assumptions. This work describes a simpler alternative, based on a differential ex-tension of the USGS’ SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes (SPARROW) steady-state water-quality model.
Human heat stress is the most dangerous, and the most imminent, problem associated with anthropogenic global warming. Global warming may leave people in the tropics and subtropics without access to air conditioning highly vulnerable to heat waves in several decades. Many may try to resolve this problem by migrating northward. This seminar will evaluate various ways to curb CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning now.
Using Natural Variation to Study Function in the Human Microbiome by Dr. Patrick J. H. Bradley, University of California, San Francisco
The characterization of plant germplasm has tremendous potential to help address forthcoming challenges that the field of plant health is facing, such as climate change continuously modifying the regions of previously known disease occurrence. The worldwide trade of the plant genus Phlox represents a key revenue for the horticulture industry. However, Phlox species are highly susceptible to the fungal disease powdery mildew (PM), and infected materials shipping across borders accelerate the risk of disease spread.
David Lowry, Michigan State University. Sponsored by Center for Parasitic and Carnivorous Plants
Movement is a fundamental process driving population connectivity as well as the spread of infectious disease and invasive species. Recent advances in technology have made it possible to track animals at extremely high resolution. Hanks will show tracking data from a wide range of systems, including insects, birds, and mammals, and illustrate approaches for analyzing tracking data using modern statistical and machine learning tools.
The visitation to natural wonders like the Galapagos Islands poses questions towards its sustainability (natural, social and economic). After a short journey towards the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development and identifying two clear models of influx of tourists to the islands, it is clear the uniqueness of the Galapagos Islands faces the pressures from the increasing number of tourists.
Katherine Zipp, PSU AESE, will present
Biological systems flourish through collective functionality, by self-assembling into cells, tissues, flocks and parliaments. Understanding this multi-scale organization also lies at the heart of modern engineering and medicine: Pathologies can arise from deficiencies in collective functionality, while active and adaptive materials can be designed from controlling systems out of equilibrium. In this talk, I will overview our recent work on building first-principle theories, numerical tools, and experiments for studying the fascinating physics of life.
Join us for one of the two user group meetings to review potential new CT system acquisitions that will expand our current capabilities. The Center for Quantitative Imaging (CQI) is a shared core facility managed by the Energy and Environmental Sustainability Laboratories (EESL) equipped with a nano/microCT system that offers non-destructive high resolution three-dimensional (3D) imaging. Odette Mina, EESL Managing Director, and Tim Stecko, CQI lab manager will provide an overview of new systems being considered for acquisition.
The electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) to multi-carbon products, such as ethanol and ethylene, offers a route to produce fuels and chemicals from renewable energy. CO2RR technology is a promising solution to address the intermittency of renewable electricity and, ultimately, enable renewable fuels to contribute to displacing fossil fuels. In CO2RR to multi-carbon products, the electrocatalyst plays a vital role in determining the activity as well as the selectivity of the reaction.
The Role of Subsidence during the Development of North American Polar/Subtropical Jet Superpositions
The atmosphere often exhibits a three-step pole-to-equator tropopause structure, with each break in the tropopause associated with a jet stream. The polar jet (PJ) stream resides in the break between the polar and the subtropical tropopause and is positioned above the strongly baroclinic, tropospheric-deep polar front at ~50°N. The subtropical jet (SJ) stream resides in the break between the subtropical and the tropical tropopause and is situated on the poleward edge of the Hadley cell at ~30°N.
We summarize the volume of non-market valuation (NMV) work in the academic literature, summarize the volume of NMV work generated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through their grants programs, and summarize the extent to which NMV methods and estimates have played a role in the EPA's rulemaking process for major environmental rules during the past decade. This work is meant to provide some glimpse into whether, and to what extent, NMV plays a role in environmental policymaking.
David Bercovici from Yale University to present 'Emergence of Plate Tectonic Boundaries from Mineral Grain Damage and Mixing
Many of the products we use in our everyday lives contain chemicals that, while deemed safe for human use, are known to disrupt the endocrine systems of aquatic species such as fish and amphibians. As these contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are increasingly found in surface and groundwater, there is a pressing need to understand both their environmental and human health impacts.
Since its inception in 2015, the Low-Temperature Plasma Science and Engineering Research group has forged cross-disciplinary collaborations to investigate a myriad of opportunities in medicine, energy, environment, and materials science. We will provide an update on the results of some collaborations, as well as advancements in experimental capabilities. Finally, we invite members of the Penn State community to engage with us in an emerging broader plasma science and engineering initiative to maximize the potential of this transformational technology.