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This prototype heat pump installed at the Ohio field test site in January 2015 produced savings of more than 40 percent compared to the baseline heat pump.

People in cold climates who heat with electricity could realize savings of up to 70 percent with a new heat pump developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Emerson Climate Technologies. The tandem compressor system, developed through a cooperative research and development ag...

The Advanced Reactors Technical Summit III, hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory Feb. 10-11, had a record 180-plus participants. (Photo by Rachel Brooks)

Moving advanced nuclear reactors from the drawing board to the field was the focus of the Advanced Reactors Technical Summit III, hosted by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and attended by 180 experts from industry, government and academia. The conference, ...

Researchers used experimental data to create a 23.7-million atom biomass model featuring cellulose (purple), lignin (brown), and enzymes (green). (Image credit: Mike Matheson, ORNL)
Ask a biofuel researcher to name the single greatest technical barrier to cost-effective ethanol, and you’re likely to receive a one-word response: lignin. Cellulosic ethanol—fuel derived from woody plants and waste biomass—has the potential to become an affordable, renew...
In pure water, lignin adopts a globular conformation (left) that aggregates on cellulose and blocks enzymes. In a THF-water cosolvent, lignin adopts coil conformations (right) that are easier to remove during pretreatment.
When the Ford Motor Company’s first automobile, the Model T, debuted in 1908, it ran on a corn-derived biofuel called ethanol, a substance Henry Ford dubbed “the fuel of the future.”
ORNL’s new battery design holds significant promise for grid and stationary power storage.
Batteries for grid and stationary applications could get a boost with an approach that uses inexpensive and plentiful aluminum and lithium-containing cathodes to increase capacity, cycling performance and safety. The hybrid battery, developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National L...
A neuromorphic, or brain-like, network reading and recognizing a handwritten number.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory will play host this summer to researchers whose goal is to design computers that combine the best of human and machine.

With just a few small sticks, Envirofit International’s M-5000 Wood clean cookstove can boil water in seven minutes. Two-thirds of the company’s 1 million stoves sold used alloys developed by the research team.
Some of the estimated 4 million premature deaths each year attributed to indoor cookstove smoke might be prevented because of the work of researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Colorado State University and Envirofit International. With 3 billion people in developing countr...
ORNL researchers are developing an idealized collector molecule that has a shape complementary to the surface atomic structure of xenotime, a rare earth yttrium-rich phosphate mineral.

Ensuring a reliable supply of rare earth elements, including four key lanthanides and yttrium, is a major goal of the Critical Materials Institute (https://cmi.ameslab.gov) as these elements are essential to many clean-energy technologies. These include energy-efficient lighting, ...

Researchers developed a framework to learn physical and chemical phenomena defining nanocrystal growth from scanning transmission electron microscopy.
To tailor tiny nanocrystals for catalysts, semiconductors and other applications, scientists must predict what happens inside the particle, at the boundary and in the solvent during particle growth. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Kentucky tackle...
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Increased extreme weather events expected to accompany climate change pose a significant risk to coastal regions, home to more than half of the U.S. population with more people on the way.