Paper mills across the country have more reliable and efficient recovery boilers because of ORNL and partners. The problem faced by numerous paper mills was that their recovery boilers, which burn organic waste to generate steam and electric power for the mills, were developing cracks. Repairs or re...
Chemists at ORNL are the first to build a three-dimensional chain of spherical polymer particles with unique optical and physical properties they believe will be useful for probing properties of materials. The finding, to be published in Physical Review Letters, represents a big step toward fabricat...
ORNL's 3,500 strains of mice made at ORNL can be shared for studies among the seven partners in the Tennessee Mouse Genome Consortium because researchers were able to develop a way to transfer mouse stocks via embryo. Researchers could not simply send existing mice at ORNL to the other institutions ...
Manure from the hundreds of millions of farm animals is a big problem, but it's one that, with some work, could become a strong renewable energy resource. As farm animal production has become more concentrated, handling the manure and run-off have become a serious problem. But animal manure, a valu...
In a project called Metaalicus, researchers at ORNL hope to learn once and for all what happens to fish mercury concentrations when there is a change in the levels of mercury released into the environment. Despite massive amounts of scientific information published on mercury contamination, there re...
Nano-transistors 10 times smaller than conventional ones and being developed at ORNL could change the complexion of the electronics industry. Transistors, which can be used as amplifiers, detectors or switches, are integral parts of computers, telephones and virtually all electronic components. Trad...
Methane hydrate isn't a familiar term to most people, but it's gaining popularity in the energy sector. Researchers believe there may be enough of this resource, which is methane locked in ice-like crystals, to supply energy for perhaps hundreds of years. Methane hydrates, which form at low temperat...
Researchers at the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility recently chalked up a physics "first": the simultaneous emission of two protons from an atom's decaying nucleus. The finding, based on preliminary experiments with the Holifield Facility's unique fluorine-17 beam, also represents a new type ...
With water heating consuming about 17 percent of the energy for a typical household, it's a good place to start when cutting costs. ORNL's Building Technology Center is assisting in developing a heat pump water heater as a "drop-in" replacement for a conventional 50- or 80-gallon water heater. It fe...
An ORNL team will receive more than $1.1 million over the next three years to develop technology for reliable and automatic forewarning of failure in critical equipment at next-generation nuclear power plants. Such forewarning would allow timely maintenance to reduce unanticipated shutdown time and ...