There is strong interest in the energy community to develop technologies that can diffuse low-cost, renewably generated electricity into difficult and slow to decarbonize sectors. One of the emerging areas of interest is renewable natural gas (RNG). RNG has low or no associated net greenhouse gas emissions and can be...
Worldwide production of natural gas has surged in the last few decades leading to an economic windfall for many communities, but sometimes these new sources of natural gas are located in geographically isolated locations. These areas are so remote that it isn’t economically feasible to transport this stranded gas to...
Hydrogen is an increasingly attractive low-carbon energy carrier for a variety of stationary and mobile applications. Currently, the vast majority of hydrogen in the United States is produced via the energy intensive steam reforming of natural gas. The cost and carbon emissions associated with hydrogen production can be reduced by...
Environmental scientists, land managers, and policy actors are increasingly presented with high-stakes high-uncertainty problems stemming from human-ecosystem interactions. To help address these problems, scientists frequently use models that produce enormous geospatial and temporal datasets that are constantly modified and often seek input from communities outside their discipline. To assist scientists—as...
Coastal communities in the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) are rapidly engaging with the idea that hazards and environmental pressures are changing and may be characteristically different in the near future. This has led to a need for scientific knowledge and tools that can help coastal communities prepare and build resilience...
Soft matter encapsulates a large array of materials ranging from electronics, plastics, and cosmetics to the biofluids making up all organisms. One of the most important properties of these materials that dictate their functionality is their rheology, which is the flow and deformation behavior in response to stress. The focus...
The photophysical properties of two-dimensional (2D) layered van der Waals (vdW) materials, and their heterostructures are manifestly distinct from crystalline bulk materials. Recently, the discovery of new 2D vdW materials and strongly-bound interlayer excitons in these materials has created a new branch in nanoscience. As such, there are a number...
Outflowing streams of matter or jets are a common phenomenon in the observeduniverse. The most extreme and powerful jets are relativistic, i.e., they travel at speedscomparable to the of speed light. Gamma Ray-Bursts (GRBs) and Active Galactic Nuclei(AGNs) are two sources of these relativistic jets. In this work I will...
Currently the production of biofuel from algae is not economically competitive with petroleum fuel. However, co-production of high-value products may be able to justify the cost of large-scale algae cultivation. The basic goal of this study is to develop a techno-economic analysis (TEA) and Life-cycle assessment (LCA) for the production...
Damage estimates to the built environment from tsunamis are important for disaster mitigation, including planning emergency response and recovery. This dissertation evaluates the damage states of buildings in a small urban coastal city, Seaside, Oregon, from tsunami hazards generated by a Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) event. This study is separated...