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Media Contacts
![Distinguished Inventors](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-12/inventors.jpg?h=4631f1c1&itok=xhAGY0kv)
Six scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory were named Battelle Distinguished Inventors, in recognition of obtaining 14 or more patents during their careers at the lab.
![Water from local creeks now flows through these simulated streams in the Aquatic Ecology Laboratory, providing new opportunities to study mercury pollution and advance solutions. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-10/img_3692.jpg?h=77bd3ecb&itok=dM1eszup)
New capabilities and equipment recently installed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are bringing a creek right into the lab to advance understanding of mercury pollution and accelerate solutions.
![Nuclear – Finally, a benchmark](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-05/67051_0.jpg?h=add82d74&itok=xR-EnPtz)
In the 1960s, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's four-year Molten Salt Reactor Experiment tested the viability of liquid fuel reactors for commercial power generation. Results from that historic experiment recently became the basis for the first-ever molten salt reactor benchmark.
![Researchers discovered the Tennessee cavesnail, Antrorbis tennesseensis, in caves near Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The snail measures in at less than 2 millimeters long. Credit: Nathaniel Shoobs and Matthew Niemiller](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2020-04/Cave_snailREV.jpg?h=c96bab7a&itok=6rjc3NQL)
Sometimes conducting big science means discovering a species not much larger than a grain of sand.
![Costas Tsouris portrait](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2019-12/2019-P16550_0.jpg?h=036a71b7&itok=0wysIPxo)
While Tsouris’ water research is diverse in scope, its fundamentals are based on basic science principles that remain largely unchanged, particularly in a mature field like chemical engineering.
![Water and energy are inextricably linked, yet in our 20th-century water systems we use freshwater once then throw it away. With innovations designed to enhance desalination technologies, agricultural runoff, produced water from industry, and inland brackish groundwater that are now seen as untreatable could all be sources of clean, safe, and affordable water.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2019-09/thumb_nawi.jpg?h=f7696e41&itok=hnr0jkMY)
The National Alliance for Water Innovation, a partnership of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, other national labs, university and private sector partners, has been awarded a five-year, $100 million Energy-Water Desalination Hub by DOE to address water security issues in the United States.
![Desalination process](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2019-07/hydrophopicDesal04_0.jpg?h=5473d993&itok=bUBkpGOa)
A new method developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory improves the energy efficiency of a desalination process known as solar-thermal evaporation.
![ORNL collaborator Hsiu-Wen Wang led the neutron scattering experiments at the Spallation Neutron Source to probe complex electrolyte solutions that challenge nuclear waste processing at Hanford and other sites. Credit: Genevieve Martin/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy.](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2019-05/2019-P01240_0.jpg?h=c6980913&itok=RLLi1M-g)
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University teamed up to investigate the complex dynamics of low-water liquids that challenge nuclear waste processing at federal cleanup sites.
![Desalination diagram](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/2019-04/DesalDiagram-_0.jpg?h=d4f5ec8a&itok=-yhECJ4V)
A team of scientists led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory used carbon nanotubes to improve a desalination process that attracts and removes ionic compounds such as salt from water using charged electrodes.
![At the salt–metal interface, thermodynamic forces drive chromium from the bulk of a nickel alloy, leaving a porous, weakened layer. Impurities in the salt drive further corrosion of the structural material. Credit: Stephen Raiman/Oak Ridge National Labora At the salt–metal interface, thermodynamic forces drive chromium from the bulk of a nickel alloy, leaving a porous, weakened layer. Impurities in the salt drive further corrosion of the structural material. Credit: Stephen Raiman/Oak Ridge National Labora](/sites/default/files/styles/list_page_thumbnail/public/story%20tip%20image%20BW%20only.jpg?itok=Vbc0iTLt)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists analyzed more than 50 years of data showing puzzlingly inconsistent trends about corrosion of structural alloys in molten salts and found one factor mattered most—salt purity.