Energy

By Karen K Dunlap Prometheus Fuels has licensed an ethanol-to-jet-fuel conversion process developed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The ORNL technology will enable cost-competitive production of jet fuel and co-production of butadiene for use in renewable polymer synthesis. The mission of Prometheus Fuels, a startup based in Santa Cruz,…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers used additive manufacturing to build a first-of-its kind smart wall called EMPOWER. The wall, designed for a building’s interior, also functions as a cooling system to optimize energy use and lower overall cost. The prototype wall was manufactured with a cable-driven, field deployable concrete additive manufacturing system and embedded with…

Energy R&D With the COVID-19 recession, restricted travel and dramatically reduced aerospace demand, demand and production of oil and gas declined more than 20% in the spring. Global oil prices crashed in April. The West Texas and Eastern New Mexico Permian Basin, with its fracking technologies, helped lead the U.S. into global oil leadership just…

By Sara S Shoemaker A team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a novel, integrated approach to track energy-transporting ions within an ultra-thin material, which could unlock its energy storage potential leading toward faster charging, longer-lasting devices. Scientists have for a decade studied the energy-storing possibilities of an emerging class…

By Kristi L Bumpus Ten years ago, the Department of Energy put out a call for innovators to change the world of nuclear energy. What DOE hoped to accomplish with the then-new Energy Innovation Hubs concept was “translational research” — research and development on an accelerated timeline that could solve the problems facing the nuclear…

By Jennifer J Burke The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have designed and additively manufactured a first-of-its-kind aluminum device that enhances the capture of carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel plants and other industrial processes. Solutions for reducing global emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as CO2 address the continued use of…

By Rachel Berkowitz Capacitors that rapidly store and release electric energy are key components in modern electronics and power systems. However, the most commonly used ones have low energy densities compared to other storage systems like batteries or fuel cells, which in turn cannot discharge and recharge rapidly without sustaining damage. Now, as reported in…

UC Riverside engineers have developed a way to recycle PET plastic waste, such as soda or water bottles, into a nanomaterial useful for energy storage. Mihri and Cengiz Ozkan and their students have been working for years on creating improved energy storage materials from sustainable sources, such as glass bottles, beach sand, Silly Putty and…

Energy Exploration Technologies (EnergyX) and ProfMOF announce a partnership between their companies to promote the use of Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs), a relatively new class of nanotechnology materials suitable in the development of projects involving renewable energy and large-scale lithium-ion production and battery storage. ProfMOF is the world leader in the research and development of…

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced $40M in funding over five years for a new research center aimed at developing hybrid photoelectrodes for converting sunlight into liquid fuels. Chemists from DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory will be key partners in this effort, dubbed the Center for Hybrid Approaches in Solar Energy to Liquid Fuels…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a machine learning model that could help predict the impact pandemics such as COVID-19 have on fuel demand in the United States. Called the Pandemic Oil Demand Analysis, or PODA, this model compared mobility patterns before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing historical weekly motor travel trends and…

by Theresa Duque (Adapted from news release by Robert Perkins, Caltech) The quest for renewable fuels harvested from the sun continues, as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced two new major awards focused on advancing artificial photosynthesis technologies for the production of fuels from sunlight. As part of this effort, DOE has awarded…

A research proposal submitted by the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and Nuclear Science and Technology (NST) Department at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, with the startup Forge Nano as a partner, has been selected as a 2020 Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) project. Of the 82 technologies selected from among more…

By Jennifer Burke ORNL’s Innovation Crossroads new research fellows include Renee Carder, Danielle Castley, Joe Fortenbaugh, Thomas Foulkes, Garret Meyer and Erica Grant. Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory welcomed six technology innovators to join the fourth cohort of Innovation Crossroads, the Southeast’s only entrepreneurial research and development…

Southwest Research Institute is developing machine learning algorithms to measure fugitive methane emissions through a project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Office of Fossil Energy and managed at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). The project leverages an SwRI technology previously funded by DOE, Smart Methane Leak Detection, or SLED/M —…

By Julie Chao   Farmers have enough worries – between bad weather, rising costs, and shifting market demands – without having to stress about the carbon footprint of their operations. But now a new set of projects by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) could make agriculture both more sustainable and more profitable.…

By Stephanie G Seay Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in late February demonstrated a 20-kw bi-directional wireless charging system installed on a UPS medium-duty, plug-in hybrid electric delivery truck. The project is the first of its kind to achieve power transfer at this rate across an 11-in. air gap,…

HUBER+SUHNER, a global supplier of electrical and optical connectivity solutions, has launched the RADOX HPC500; a new addition to the RADOX high-power charging portfolio. It is the world’s first cooled charging-cable system that allows continuous charging at 500 Amperes even in high-temperature environments. The HPC500 cable and connecter builds on the proven performance and design…

New battery technology involving microwaves may provide an avenue for renewable energy conversion and storage. Purdue University researchers created a technique to turn waste polyethylene terephthalate, one of the most recyclable polymers, into components of batteries. “We use an ultrafast microwave irradiation process to turn PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, flakes into disodium terephthalate, and use…

Using electronic devices for too long can cause them to overheat, which might slow them down, damage their components or even make them explode or catch fire. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters have developed a hydrogel that can both cool down electronics, such as cell phone batteries, and convert their waste heat into…

By Chris Adam An innovation using material derived from the shells of crabs and other sea creatures may soon provide a new option for powering medical sensors, phone screens and other devices. A team from Purdue University used chitosan – an abundant natural biopolymer from marine crustacean shells – to create triboelectric nanogenerators. TENGs help…

Since their invention in the 1930s, electron microscopes have helped scientists peer into the atomic structure of ordinary materials like steel, and even exotic graphene. But despite these advances, such imaging techniques cannot precisely map out the 3D atomic structure of materials in a liquid solution, such as a catalyst in a hydrogen fuel cell,…

For years physicists have been trying to decipher the electronic details of high-temperature superconductors. These materials could revolutionize energy transmission and electronics because of their ability to carry electric current with no energy loss when cooled below a certain temperature. Details of “high-Tc” superconductors’ microscopic electronic structure could reveal how different phases (states of matter)…

Fiber optic cables, it turns out, can be incredibly useful scientific sensors. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have studied them for use in carbon sequestration, groundwater mapping, earthquake detection, and monitoring of Arctic permafrost thaw. Now they have been awarded new grants to develop fiber optics for two novel uses: monitoring offshore…

Scientists have designed a catalyst composed of very low concentrations of platinum (single atoms and clusters smaller than billionths of a meter) on the surface of titanium dioxide. They demonstrated how this catalyst significantly enhances the rate of breaking a particular carbon-oxygen bond for the conversion of a plant derivative (furfuryl alcohol) into a potential…