While trying to decide on an area of technical study as an undergraduate, Madhu Chinthavali visited labs at his college in India. One particular lab where an electrical engineer had devised various motor controls caught his eye. "It wasn't the motor that drew my attention," Ma...
Oak Ridge National Laboratory will lead the 13th international conference on Thermal Performance of the Exterior Envelopes of Whole Buildings XIII on December 5-8 in Clearwater, Florida, an event that attracts building envelope experts from around the world to share state-of-the-art research and technology applications. One topic of interest will be a mold growth index model workshop, explaining the model’s development and application and providing examples of how MGI usage could vary depending on building materials.
As a boy growing up in China, Xiaobing Liu knew all about Oak Ridge and the World War II Manhattan Project. He had no idea that he would one day work at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Secret City’s successor. Liu is a lead researcher in geothermal heat pump (GHP) techn...
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have produced the next generation of the National Hydropower Map – a visualization tool that provides updated statistics on overall capacity and performance on the nation’s hydropower fleet. The map is part of the lab’s National Hydropower ...
Just a few years ago, Emilio Ramirez spent his days operating and adjusting settings to optimize thermal performance at a Central California bioenergy power plant. Ramirez, a California native who is now a University of Tennessee doctoral candidate working with the Department of Energy's Oak Ridg...
When Diana Hun left her home in Panama City, Panama, to attend school at the University of Texas in Austin, she knew she wanted to be an engineer. Exactly which branch of engineering to pursue was not quite as straight-forward. Hun studied both mechanical and electrical engin...
A scientist that sings opera and performs in musical theater? Sure. If you're a Renaissance Man like Simon Pallin. Pallin is a researcher in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Buildings Technologies Research & Integration Center. But his early interests and activities reveal a versatile person that could have chosen a number of occupations.
Increased power densities in electronics will require more efficient heat sinks, and additive manufacturing combined with a simple thermal annealing process could help designers meet that goal. A team that includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Tong Wu reported that while a 3-D printed aluminum alloy heat sink equaled or measured 10 percent worse than those manufactured conventionally, after the treatment the performance gap vanished.
Production run spot checks of materials for lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells could be a thing of the past because of a process developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The infrared/thermal nondestructive evaluation technique invented by a team led by David Wood examines key parameters such as porosity and thickness of the coating in real time without destroying product.
Drivers of Formula E cars may soon no longer have to change cars midway through the race, thanks to a battery coating technology developed by XALT Energy of Michigan and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. By depositing a nanoscale layer of alumina on oxide cathodes, researchers have incre...