June 2013 Story Tips
(Story Tips Archive)
Story ideas from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge
National Laboratory. To arrange for an interview with a researcher, please contact the
Communications staff member identified at the end of each tip.
For more information on ORNL and its research and development activities, please refer to one of our Media Contacts. If you have a general media-related question or comment, you can send it to news@ornl.gov.
Transportation—Better, cleaner engines . . .
Air in the United States could be cleaner in years
to come because of a laboratory researchers expect
will help in the development of new standards for
fuel economy and emissions evaluations. The
Vehicle Systems Integration Laboratory provides
unprecedented capabilities that will be invaluable
to manufacturers of diesel and conventional
engines, transmissions, and other drivetrain and
emissions components. The payoff is that
manufacturers can test different designs under
real-world conditions, saving time and money. "We
can test virtually every parameter of light-duty
vehicles to hybrid heavy-duty rigs and everything
in between," said David Smith of Oak Ridge
National Laboratory's Energy and Transportation
Science Division. Partners in this Department of
Energy project include the Environmental
Protection Agency, Cummins, Meritor, the Society
of Automotive Engineers and other national
laboratories.
[Contact: Ron Walli;
865.576.0226;
wallira@ornl.gov]
Biosurveillance—Biodetection symposium . . .
Improving point of care diagnostics and decision
support capabilities will be among the topics for
Oak Ridge National Laboratory's 2nd Annual
Biosurveillance Symposium conference in
Alexandria, Va., June 17. Medical professionals
and industry leaders from around the world will
also be discussing point of care DNA sequencing,
data standards for interoperability of point of
care systems, electronic health records and
biosurveillance-related databases. More
information is available at
http://knowledgefoundation.com/viewevents.php?
event_id=295&act=evt. This meeting precedes the
Biodetection Technologies Conference
(http://www.knowledgefoundation.com/viewevents.php
?event_id=290&act=evt) June 18-19, also being held
at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center and organized
by The Knowledge Foundation.
[Contact: Ron Walli;
865.576.0226;
wallira@ornl.gov]
Batteries—Manufacturing breakthrough . . .
By using water instead of expensive, flammable and
toxic solvents to make lithium-ion batteries, Oak
Ridge National Laboratory researchers have
discovered and demonstrated a path to reduce
manufacturing costs and removed environmental
concerns. The method also eliminates the
explosion-proof processing equipment requirement.
"Others have done what we're doing to make anodes,
but no one has been successful with both anodes
and cathodes," said Jianlin Li, one of the
developers of the technology, which has a patent
pending. The new manufacturing method uses
deionized water instead of a slurry containing the
solvent N-methylpyrrolidone, which is expensive,
toxic and produces flammable vapors during the
electrode manufacturing process. ORNL researchers
have demonstrated a battery that features
excellent performance.
[Contact: Ron Walli;
865.576.0226;
wallira@ornl.gov]
Nanoscience—Chip harnesses mysterious force . . .
A research team that includes scientists at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory has for the first time
demonstrated a compact integrated silicon chip
that harnesses the power of the Casimir effect.
This puzzling force, first measured more than a
decade ago, is thought to cause objects to stick
together at a very small scale, but its behavior
is not fully understood because of difficulties in
measuring the effect experimentally. "Our results
represent the first step toward on-chip
exploitation of the Casimir force," said ORNL's
Ivan Kravchenko, co-author on the research
reported in Nature Communications. Understanding
how the different components in microscale
integrated chips interact with each other is key
for the development of micro- and nano-machinery
with applications in devices such as sensors and
tiny motors.
[Contact: Morgan McCorkle;
865.574.7308;
mccorkleml@ornl.gov]
Energy—Safer lithium-ion batteries . . .
Research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is
addressing the need for better battery technology,
demonstrated recently when aircraft were grounded
because of safety issues. ORNL researchers used a
combination of neutron scattering at NOMAD, the
Nanoscale-Ordered Materials Diffractometer at the
Spallation Neutron Source, and computational
simulation to characterize low-cost lignin-based
carbon materials from biomass for a more reliable
anode for lithium-ion batteries. The anode is the
positive terminal of an electrolytic cell. The
combination of neutron scattering experiments and
computation provides researchers with a
fundamental understanding of the structure-
property relationships in batteries. The expected
payoff is safer long-lasting batteries.
[Contact: Agatha Bardoel;
865.574.0644;
bardoelaa@ornl.gov]
Climate—Bogs and forests as ecosystem labs . . .
Whole-ecosystem warming technologies for the 10-
year Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Climatic
and Environmental Change project have been
finalized using prototypes designed at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory. Construction has begun in
Minnesota to deploy the technologies, which will
warm the ecosystem and elevate carbon dioxide
levels when experimental treatments begin in
FY2014. SPRUCE aims to better understand feedbacks
of boreal forests to global warming. In the past
year, ORNL supported construction of local access
roads and installation of more than three miles of
electrical supply lines and extensive "dock"
boardwalks to service 17 experimental plots.
[Contact: Dawn Levy;
865.576.6448;
levyd@ornl.gov]
