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Green, two-story house is being assembled with the help of a yellow crane.

Building innovations from ORNL will be on display in Washington, D.C. on the National Mall June 7 to June 9, 2024, during the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Innovation Housing Showcase. For the first time, ORNL’s real-time building evaluator was demonstrated outside of a laboratory setting and deployed for building construction. 

People in a large convention room networking before a presentation

Vanderbilt University and ORNL announced a partnership to develop training, testing and evaluation methods that will accelerate the Department of Defense’s adoption of AI-based systems in operational environments.

Blue background with three rectangles. The first and third silver rectangles are showing the inside metal part of a fridge with small alternating horizontal rectangles going down the side in darker grey/silver.

A technology developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory works to keep food refrigerated with phase change materials, or PCMs, while reducing carbon emissions by 30%.

This dataset, showing electricity outages from 2014-22 in the 50 U.S. states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, details outages at 15-minute intervals for up to 92% of customers for the eight-year period.

ORNL researchers have produced the most comprehensive power outage dataset ever compiled for the United States. This dataset, showing electricity outages from 2014-22 in the 50 U.S. states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, details outages at 15-minute intervals for up to 92% of customers for the eight-year period.

In a win for chemistry, inventors at ORNL have designed a closed-loop path for synthesizing an exceptionally tough carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer, or CFRP, and later recovering all of its starting materials.

In a win for chemistry, inventors at ORNL have designed a closed-loop path for synthesizing an exceptionally tough carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer, or CFRP, and later recovering all of its starting materials.

An encapsulation system developed by ORNL researchers prevents salt hydrates, which are environmentally friendly thermal energy storage materials, from leaking and advances their use in heating and cooling applications. Credit: Andy Sproles/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL researchers have developed a novel way to encapsulate salt hydrate phase-change materials within polymer fibers through a coaxial pulling process. The discovery could lead to the widespread use of the low-carbon materials as a source of insulation for a building’s envelope.

ORNL's Kyle Gluesenkamp received the FLC Outstanding Researcher Award.

Four ORNL teams and one researcher were recognized for excellence in technology transfer and technology transfer innovation. 
 

Caption: Jaswinder Sharma makes battery coin cells with a lightweight current collector made of thin layers of aligned carbon fibers in a polymer with carbon nanotubes. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Electric vehicles can drive longer distances if their lithium-ion batteries deliver more energy in a lighter package. A prime weight-loss candidate is the current collector, a component that often adds 10% to the weight of a battery cell without contributing energy.

From left, Cable-Dunlap, Chi, Smith and Thornton have been named ORNL Corporate Fellows. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Four researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been named ORNL Corporate Fellows in recognition of significant career accomplishments and continued leadership in their scientific fields.

2023 Battelle Distinguished Inventors

Four scientists affiliated with ORNL were named Battelle Distinguished Inventors during the lab’s annual Innovation Awards on Dec. 1 in recognition of being granted 14 or more United States patents.