Energy

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…

Scientist Heinz Frei has spent decades working toward building an artificial version of one of nature’s most elegant and effective machines: the leaf. Frei, and many other researchers around the world, seek to use photosynthesis – the sunlight-driven chemical reaction that green plants and algae use to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into cellular fuel –…

A new device to help homeowners cut electricity bills also could provide more efficient and safer cooling options for companies and vehicles. Purdue University researchers developed their device to decrease energy consumption of the vapor-compression heat pump cycle, which is commonly used in homes, businesses and vehicles for cooling and heating. The team created a…

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Tennessee Valley Authority have signed a memorandum of understanding to evaluate a new generation of flexible, cost-effective advanced nuclear reactors. Under the agreement, ORNL and TVA will collaborate on ways to improve the economic feasibility of potentially licensing, building, operating and maintaining one or…

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers in the College of Engineering Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering will receive a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop next-generation rechargeable batteries. By redesigning the materials inside lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles, the researchers believe they can significantly extend battery life,…

Costs of solar panels have plummeted over the last several years, leading to rates of solar installations far greater than most analysts had expected. But with most of the potential areas for cost savings already pushed to the extreme, further cost reductions are becoming more challenging to find. Now, researchers at MIT and at the…

Scientists from Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have successfully demonstrated the world’s first capture and reuse of energy in a multiturn particle accelerator, where electrons are accelerated and decelerated in multiple stages and transported at different energies through a single beamline. This advance paves the way for…

Southwest Research Institute is now the home of a reciprocating compressor flow loop that is capable of recreating real-life gas pipeline pressures, temperatures and horsepower levels. The flow loop is one of only a handful of its kind available for industry research, development and testing and will play a central role in an ongoing SwRI…

Controllis, a supplier of hybrid power systems for mobile network operators (MNOs) and tower companies, has leveraged its experience to develop a carbon neutral site power system to help support a net zero emissions economy, established by the Paris Agreement. The new system, Controllis Zero will allow off-grid and poor-grid sites to produce cleaner energy…

Electricity production is one of the industries that uses the most water in the country each day. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are helping the largest power plant in the United States identify the most efficient and cost-effective strategies to reduce water use. They developed a first-of-its-kind comprehensive system dynamics analysis that can show power…

To better determine the potential energy cost savings among connected homes, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a computer simulation to more accurately compare energy use on similar weather days. “Since no two weather days are alike, we created a simulated weather identification model that keeps environmental impacts such as temperature changes and sunlight…

Evaporation ponds, which are commonly used in many industries to manage wastewater, can span acres, occupying a large footprint and often posing risks to birds and other wildlife. Yet they’re an economical way to deal with contaminated water because they take advantage of natural evaporation under sunlight to reduce large volumes of dirty water to…

Sandia National Laboratories is setting up a collaborative facility to help researchers worldwide study low-temperature plasmas, the most pervasive state of matter in the universe. The 5-year, $5.5 million project, called the Sandia Low Temperature Plasma Research Facility, is sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Participants will be selected biannually by Sandia…

Researchers led by the University of Manchester have designed a catalyst that converts biomass into fuel sources with remarkably high efficiency and offers new possibilities for manufacturing advanced renewable materials. Neutron scattering experiments at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory played a key role in determining the chemical and behavioral dynamics of a…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and five leading building equipment industries will collaborate to improve the energy performance of heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems and investigate climate-friendly alternative refrigerants. Through collaborative research and development agreements, or CRADAs, scientists at the Department of Energy’s only designated national user facility for buildings research – the Building Technologies…

A Purdue University-affiliated agbioscience startup is creating technology to help meet the growing global demand for bioenergy and, in partnership with Purdue, has received new support from the U.S. government. GRYFN offers precise geomatics solutions for coaligned and repeatable multi-sensor drone data collection. The approach enables breeders to scale research operations and empowers them with…

Southwest Research Institute engineers developed a new certification cycle, the Low-Load Cycle (LLC), to gauge the performance of heavy-duty diesel engine after-treatment systems in low-load conditions. Aftertreatment systems filter exhaust emissions and reduce pollutants escaping into the environment. SwRI’s Low-Load Cycle challenges aftertreatment systems by analyzing them in unfavorable, but common, low-load conditions, such as…

Increasing production of second-generation biofuels – those made from non-food biomass such as switchgrass, biomass sorghum, and corn stover – would lessen our reliance on burning fossil fuels, which contributes to climate change. Several barriers have prevented the efficient conversion of that biomass. Lignin, a complex compound in cell walls, blocks access to plant carbohydrates…

A team of engineers, agronomists and economists at Purdue University’s Center for Sustainable Food, Energy and Water Systems (SFEWS), supported by the National Science Foundation, are developing novel photovoltaic (PV) module designs for use on agricultural land to cogenerate electricity while growing food crops. The enabling insights from their modeling results were just published in…

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $21.4 million in funding for research in Quantum Information Science (QIS) related to both particle physics and fusion energy sciences. “QIS holds great promise for tackling challenging questions in a wide range of disciplines,” said Under Secretary for Science Paul Dabbar. “This research will open up important…

One of the main challenges of second-generation biofuel production is identifying enzymes produced by microorganisms for use in a “cocktail” of enzymes to catalyze biomass hydrolysis, in which the enzymes act together to break down the carbohydrates in sugarcane trash and bagasse, for example, and convert them into simple sugars for fermentation. A group of…

Carbon-neutral fuels are crucial for making aviation and maritime transport sustainable. ETH researchers have developed a solar plant to produce synthetic liquid fuels that release as much CO2 during their combustion as previously extracted from the air for their production. CO2 and water are extracted directly from ambient air and split using solar energy. This…