Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are taking cleaner transportation to the skies by creating and evaluating new batteries for airborne electric vehicles that take off and land vertically.
With the powerful, 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), astronomers have constructed a massive 1.3-gigapixel image showcasing the central part of the Vela Supernova Remnant, the cosmic corpse of a gigantic star that exploded as a supernova.
A recent study has highlighted the insignificant health hazards posed by the emissions from waste-to-energy (WtE) facilities in China's Bohai Rim. This investigation brings to light the negligible impact of WtE plant emissions on public health, grounded in sophisticated regression analysis techniques.
With the Leopoldina Prize for young scientists 2023, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina honors Dr. Jingyuan Xu, who researches novel heating and cooling technologies for the energy transition at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Currently, the young engineer can boast two more significant awards: the Hector RCD Award as well as admission to the Global Young Academy, an exclusive association of international young scientists.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have tested the performance of a new device that boosts particle signals.
At high temperatures and densities, plasmas in fusion devices can develop gradients that can grow into instabilities, including edge localized modes (ELMs) that can damage reactor walls. In this research, scientists studied negative triangularity, a way the plasma shape can deviate from an oval. The research found this shaping was inherently free of instabilities across various plasma conditions, including operating reactor conditions.
High-temperature superconductor magnets have the potential to lower the costs of operating particle accelerators and enable powerful new technologies like fusion reactors. But quenches – the sudden, destructive events wherein a part of the material loses superconductivity – are a major barrier to their deployment.
A recent study introduces a novel methodology for evaluating the economic viability and competitive edge of onshore wind energy against traditional power sources. This approach underscores the potential of wind power to reach grid parity, where its cost becomes comparable or lower than conventional electricity sources. The research marks a significant step in understanding the dynamics of renewable energy markets and highlights the role of wind power in China's ambitious environmental goals.
UC San Diego engineers developed a cathode material for lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries that is healable and highly conductive, overcoming longstanding challenges of traditional sulfur cathodes. The advance holds promise for bringing more energy dense and low-cost Li-S batteries closer to market.
More than 120 people gathered for the 2024 Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) Workshop at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory from Feb. 27-28. The event, which was sponsored by the DOE’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (FES), is a part of the INFUSE awards program that funds laboratories or universities so they can partner with private sector companies working on the science and technology solutions that will bring fusion energy to the power grid. To date, DOE has granted 90 awards, with most ranging from $100,000 to $350,000 for a 12-month project.
Is it possible to convert CO2 back to fuels or other useful chemicals? Absolutely – but not in a very targeted way just yet. Empa researcher Alessandro Senocrate is looking at defects in materials that will help us achieve this goal.
Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a novel triple-junction perovskite/Si tandem solar cell that can achieve a certified world-record power conversion efficiency of 27.1 per cent across a solar energy absorption area of 1 sq cm, representing the best-performing triple-junction perovskite/Si tandem solar cell thus far. To achieve this, the team engineered a new cyanate-integrated perovskite solar cell that is stable and energy efficient.
Scientists are using the imperfections in magnetic fields that confine a fusion reaction to improve and enhance the plasma in an approach outlined in a new paper in the journal Nature Communications. PPPL Physicist Seong-Moo Yang led the research team, which spans various institutions in the U.S. and South Korea. Yang says this is the first time any research team has validated a systematic approach to tailoring magnetic field imperfections to make the plasma suitable for use as a power source. These magnetic field imperfections are known as error fields.
Experimentalists and theorists have provided strong evidence for the creation of an exotic isotope, nitrogen-9, which has two neutrons and seven protons. This unbalanced ratio of protons to neutrons produces a nucleus that only survives for less than one-billionth of a nanosecond. The work also provides information on nitrogen-9’s mirror nucleus, helium-9, which has two protons to its seven neutrons.
Research groups from Argonne National Laboratory receive 2023 Secretary of Energy Honor Awards, considered the highest form of recognition by the U.S. Department of Energy.
High in the sky over an Alaskan tundra, a small aircraft ran the same pattern over and over again. It swooped through clouds and flew down close to the ground. But there were no people experiencing the flight from inside the plane – it was an unmanned aerial system (UAS). UASs are aircraft that people can operate remotely from the ground. Building on years of testing, researchers working with the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Department of Energy Office of Science user facility are now gaining access to these helpful tools.
Fengqui "Frank" Li is a computational developer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory who uses his background as an architect to expand the landscape of design for his research into building energy modeling and beyond.
Argonne’s enhanced NERDE data explorer provides community leaders with insights into local economic distress, employment and gross domestic product, local industry clusters, climate risk, and innovation to inform economic resilience planning.
The year-long project seeks to examine the risks to export control that still-developing SMR technology will play for the next several decades.
A greater understanding of how plants and microbes work together to store vast amounts of atmospheric carbon in the soil will help in the design of better bioenergy crops for the fight against climate change. Deciphering the mechanics of this mutually beneficial relationship is, however, challenging as conditions in nature are extremely difficult for scientists to replicate in the laboratory. To address this challenge, researchers created fabricated ecosystems or EcoFABs.
New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that models commonly used to shape climate mitigation need to include human behaviors and rules—and shows models can be adapted to do so
Dr. Jung Unho's research team at the Hydrogen Research Department of the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has developed Korea's first clean hydrogen production technology.
The work will help researchers tune surface properties of perovskites, a promising alternative and supplement to silicon, for more efficient photovoltaics.
A collaborative team of researchers led by the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis is working toward that goal by developing an energy storage system that would have a much higher energy density than existing systems.
The recent spike of activity from the sun occurred during what NASA has dubbed the Heliophysics Big Year—a celebration of solar science centered on the April 8 total eclipse, the last that will be visible from the continental U.S. for 20 years.
The U.S. Department of Energy is supporting an Iowa State-led project to build the first “microgrid” in rural Iowa. The project will create a utility-scale microgrid in Montezuma to provide reliable, resilient and affordable electricity. The new system will feature power generation from solar panels, a battery storage system and two chargers for electric vehicles.
As nuclear energy is increasingly recognized as a vital component of the clean energy transition, American companies have answered the call with dozens of new reactor and fuel designs.
Researchers have made a significant breakthrough in developing efficient, cost-effective noble metal-free electro-catalysts for oxygen electrocatalysis in alkaline electrolytes, crucial for advancing energy conversion devices such as electrolyzers, fuel cells, and metal–air batteries.
The Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT) successfully implemented an electrostatic environment that simulates the Moon's surface conditions, not in space but on Earth. The researchers also assessed its performance and effectiveness.
Scientists are a step closer to unravelling the mysterious forces of the universe after working out how to measure gravity on a microscopic level.
In response to the rapidly evolving landscape of data collection and analysis driven by advances in artificial intelligence, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have established a Research Coordination Network (RCN) dedicated to advancing privacy research and the development, deployment and scaling of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs). Fulfilling a mandate from the "Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence," the initiative advances the recommendations in the National Strategy to Advance Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing and Analytics to move towards a data ecosystem where the beneficial power of data can be unlocked while protecting privacy.
To become carbon neutral by 2060, as mandated by President Xi Jinping, China will have to build eight to 10 times more wind and solar power installations than currently exist in the country. Reaching carbon neutrality will also require major construction of transmission lines.
Neutrinos from the Sun result from a chain of nuclear fusion reactions. Scientists use theoretical calculations to extrapolate the rate of these reactions using theory and data from experiments on Earth. A new evalution protocol dramatically reduces the uncertainty in these extrapolations. This will help scientists better understand neutrinos and the interior of the Sun.
With time scheduled to use a certain beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source-II (NSLS-II), scientists from NSLS-II and their partner institutions faced a challenge. They planned on researching a special type of region in magnetic materials that could be useful for next-generation computers. Regions in magnetic materials - called magnetic domains - determine a material's magnetic properties. The scientists wanted to study how these magnetic domains changed over time under the influence of an outside magnetic field.
Nuclear physicists with Jefferson Lab have shattered a nearly 30-year-old record for precision in electron beam polarimetry. The groundbreaking result sets the stage for high-profile experiments that could open the door to new physics discoveries.
Niobium has long been considered an underperformer in superconducting qubits. Scientists supported by Q-NEXT, a US DOE quantum center led by Argonne, have now engineered a high-quality niobium-based qubit, taking advantage of niobium’s superior qualities.
An interdisciplinary team of experts from the University of Notre Dame, in collaboration with the University of Maryland and University of Utah, have found a way to use artificial intelligence to analyze a household’s passive design characteristics and predict its energy expenses with more than 74 percent accuracy. By combining their findings with demographic data including poverty levels, the researchers have created a comprehensive model for predicting energy burden across 1,402 census tracts and nearly 300,000 households in Chicago.
This study unveils a breakthrough in battery technology, utilizing coffee grounds to produce high-performance P-doped hard carbon anodes for sodium-ion batteries. The optimal doping level of phosphorus (2M H3PO4) enhances electrochemical performance, resulting in a remarkable reversible capacity of 341 mAh g-1 at 20 mA g-1 and an 83% initial Coulombic efficiency. The material's porous structure, increased interlayer spacing, and C-P bonds contribute to its outstanding performance, marking a promising advancement in sustainable energy storage solutions.
Argonne awarded $4 million to research new materials to develop energy-efficient microchips.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s managing contractor, UT-Battelle, presented a donation of $186,000 to Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development, or SEEED, to support the nonprofit’s third green solar home as part of their Green Construction Program.
KIER has achieved advancements in the stability and efficiency of semi-transparent perovskite solar cells.
Scientists at the University of California San Diego and CEA-Leti have developed a ground-breaking piezoelectric-based DC-DC converter that unifies all power switches onto a single chip to increase power density. This new power topology, which extends beyond existing topologies, blends the advantages of piezoelectric converters with capacitive-based DC-DC converters.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced awards totaling $61 million for small businesses in 17 states. The 50 projects funded by DOE’s Office of Science include the development of advanced scientific instruments, advanced materials, and clean energy conversion and storage technologies that will conduct climate research and advance the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of a net-zero emissions economy.
More than 75 college students competed to test their skills in the fundamentals of IT and cybersecurity infrastructure in the DOE CyberForce Program’s inaugural Conquer the Hill — Command Edition competition.
A team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have discovered an intriguing “cooperative” behavior among components in batteries that points to an exciting new approach to designing next-generation technologies. The team found that combining two different types of anions, negatively charged ions, with cations, positively charged ions, can significantly improve the overall battery’s performance.
An ingredient in many toothpastes is sodium fluoride, a compound of fluorine. It is added to protect teeth against decay. But compounds containing fluorine have other practical uses that might surprise you. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory scientists have discovered a fluoride electrolyte that could protect a next generation battery against performance decline.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory scientists have discovered a new pathway to enhance lithium-sulfur batteries, addressing their major drawback of short lifetimes. The discovery, published in Nature, reveals a previously unknown reaction mechanism that overcomes rapid performance decline in lithium-sulfur batteries.
The U.S, Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory researchers have invented and patented a new cathode material that could pave the way for eco- and budget-friendly electric vehicles. The material is inspired by earlier work at Argonne that led to the lithium-ion batteries in the Chevy Volt and Bolt. It could help the supply of low-cost and abundant elements for electric vehicle batteries.
The KIMM has succeeded in conducting the cooling test of a large-capacity ultra-low temperature (hereinafter referred to as ULT) Turbo-Brayton cooling system using a zero GWP refrigerant.
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