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ORNL researcher Louise Evans is working to ensure safeguards approaches and verification technologies are integrated early in the design process of advanced reactor technologies. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Decades of nuclear expertise guides global nonproliferation innovation
To turn carbon dioxide, or CO2, into methanol, or CH3OH, copper (shown in yellow) on a hydride-substituted support speeds reactions mediated by hydrides and catalyzed by hydrogen atoms (shown in black) from surface-adsorbed formate, HCOO*. Credit: Yang He/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Ion swap improves CO2-defeating catalyst
Caption: The Na-CO2 battery developed at ORNL, consisting of two electrodes in a saltwater solution, pulls atmospheric carbon dioxide into its electrochemical reaction, and releases only valuable biproducts. Credit: Andy Sproles/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Carbon-capture batteries store renewable energy

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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 that are easier to remove during pretreatment. (ORNL image)

Energy – Treating biofuel in situ

Breaking down cellulosic biomass for biofuel is a costly and complex process, requiring lots of acid, water, and heat. Experimental pretreatments, however, hold the promise of driving down these costs by making more biomass available to enzymes for fermentation. To gain a better...
A new app developed at ORNL makes fuel economy and other information more readily accessible to car buyers.

Vehicles – Dandy FuelEconomy.gov app

Fuel economy data, sticker price, emissions information, safety ratings and much more is available at your fingertips with the latest Find-a-Car tool, an app designed specifically for easy searches on mobile devices. FuelEconomy.gov, maintained by the Department of Energy with d...

The Cheng research team is working to understand how different nanoscopic domains in lipids’ bilayers regulate the mechanical properties of proteins passing in and out of the cell. (Image by Barmak Mostofian, John Nickels and Renee Manning)

Biology – Breaking the barrier

Researchers are making leaps in understanding how viruses invade healthy cells by using a combination of ORNL’s Titan supercomputer and Spallation Neutron Source. An ORNL research team is simulating the lipid bilayer, or cell membrane, and verifying these simulations with experi...
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.

Energy – Hot savings

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...

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Sabau, Wagner elected American Society of Mechanical Engineers fellows

Adrian Sabau and Robert Wagner of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been appointed fellows of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), an honor conferred to members who have demonstrated significant, long-term engineering achievements.

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ORNL's Daniel delivers NAE Gilbreth Lecture

Claus Daniel, materials scientist and deputy director of the Sustainable Transportation program at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, delivered a Gilbreth Lecture at the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) annual meeting, held February 11 in...

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)

Reactors summit at ORNL charts course for clean energy

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, ...

New HPC4Mfg projects pair manufacturers with resources at Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. From left to right are Robin Miles, LLNL; Horst Simon, LBNL; Peter Nugent, LBNL; Trish Damkroger, LLNL; Dona Crawford, LLN

New projects pair U.S. manufacturers with ORNL computing resources

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will support four new industry projects announced today as part of DOE’s High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) Program. The program pairs selected companies with national labs, including ORNL...

Vincent Pontello of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency displays a Harris’s hawk during a 2015 nature walk. Photo by Nicholas Morris.

Oak Ridge nature walk features American woodcock, birds of prey

A study of the American woodcock and birds of prey will be the theme of the first spring nature walk of 2016 on the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26. Limited to 30 participants, including children, the n...
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)

Titan Probes Depths of Biofuel’s Biggest Barrier

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...