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Wall assembly with exterior insulation

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.

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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 ...
Temperature is represented by different colors for this heat sink for a 50-kilowatt DC-to-DC converter with red being the hottest.
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.
Temperature is represented by different colors for this heat sink for a 50-kilowatt DC-to-DC converter with red being the hottest.

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.

Future Formula E cars could be powered by batteries that feature up to 30 percent increased energy density.

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...

The GLIDES approach has the potential to change the way energy is stored.

The gap between electricity generation and use could be narrowed with an Oak Ridge National Laboratory system that extracts energy from thin air. Actually, Ground-Level Integrated Diverse Energy Storage, or GLIDES, stores electricity mechanically in the form of compressed gas that disp...

Discarded tires can provide material useful for lower-cost sodium-ion batteries for energy storage.
Hard carbon materials recycled from tires continue to show great promise as anodes in sodium-ion batteries for large-scale energy storage, according to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study led by Yunchao Li. The carbons, captured by pyrolyzing, or baking in the absence of oxygen, tir...
A 3D-printed thermoplastic mold manufactured at ORNL withstood testing in an industrial autoclave.

A successful test of 3D-printed thermoplastic molds demonstrates the potential of additive manufacturing in the tooling industry. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility collaborated with a team of industry partners to 3D-print and machine se...

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Clothes dryers that use thermoelectric heat pump technology being developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and industry partner Sheetak could use 40 percent less energy, potentially saving consumers $3 billion in utility costs. “Each month, electric clothes dryers typically consume more energy than any other household appliance,” said Kyle Gluesenkamp, who leads the development team for ORNL’s Building Equipment Research Group.

A barrier, or weir, near 5th Creek Road on the Oak Ridge Reservation used to measure discharge on White Oak Creek acted as a barrier (unintentional) to fish passage. Due to age and failure the structure was removed in the fall of 2015.
Fish communities recovering from environmental disturbances could potentially face obstacles presented by road culverts and equipment used to monitor water quality, according to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study conducted over two decades. Researchers Ryan McManamay and Robert J...