Almost 80% of plastic in the waste stream ends up in landfills or accumulates in the environment. Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a technology that converts a conventionally unrecyclable mixture of plastic waste into useful chemicals, presenting a new strategy in the toolkit to combat global plastic waste.
An advance in a topological insulator material — whose interior behaves like an electrical insulator but whose surface behaves like a conductor — could revolutionize the fields of next-generation electronics and quantum computing, according to scientists at ORNL.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists led the development of a supply chain model revealing the optimal places to site farms, biorefineries, pipelines and other infrastructure for sustainable aviation fuel production.
Warming a crystal of the mineral fresnoite, ORNL scientists discovered that excitations called phasons carried heat three times farther and faster than phonons, the excitations that usually carry heat through a material.
When aging vehicle batteries lack the juice to power your car anymore, they may still hold energy. Yet it’s tough to find new uses for lithium-ion batteries with different makers, ages and sizes. A solution is urgently needed because battery recycling options are scarce.
Researchers from Yale University and ORNL collaborated on neutron scattering experiments to study hydrogen atom locations and their effects on iron in a compound similar to those commonly used in industrial catalysts.
ORNL researchers have identified a mechanism in a 3D-printed alloy – termed “load shuffling” — that could enable the design of better-performing lightweight materials for vehicles.
A discovery by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers may aid the design of materials that better manage heat.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers determined that designing polymers specifically with upcycling in mind could reduce future plastic waste considerably and facilitate a circular economy where the material is used repeatedly.
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a method of adding nanostructures to high-entropy metal alloys, or HEAs, that enhance both strength and ductility, which is the ability to deform or stretch