Technology Transfer and Economic Development
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
PO Box 2008, Bethel Valley Road
Oak Ridge TN 37831-6196

ORNL User Facilities

How to Gain Access to Oak Ridge National Laboratory User Facilities

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the home of 18 highly sophisticated experimental user facilities. These research laboratories are designed to serve not only our staff scientists and engineers, but also researchers from universities, industry, foreign institutions, and other government laboratories. They simultaneously advance national research and development and fulfill the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) missions by minimizing unnecessary duplication of effort, promoting beneficial scientific interactions, and making the most effective use of costly and, in many cases, unique equipment.

The diverse and sophisticated research conducted by our staff scientists, coupled with the availability of unique resource equipment, is attracting a growing number of guest researchers. In FY 2001, there were over 4,000 experimenters from over 380 organizations that utilized the user facilities.

How to Gain Access to Oak Ridge National Laboratory User Facilities

Access to the Oak Ridge user facilities is a twofold process: (1) the review and approval of the user's proposal and (2) an executed agreement between the user institution and UT-Battelle. Prospective users are invited to submit a proposal directly to the user facility of interest. Acceptance of proposals depends on scientific merit, suitability of Oak Ridge facilities for the proposed project, selection of an Oak Ridge collaborator, and appropriateness of the work to DOE objectives. Once a proposal is approved, the specific operating procedures, time allotted for work, user fees (if any), and collaborative arrangements will be determined.

Concurrent with the proposal procedure, the Technology Transfer Office begins the process to execute a user agreement with the user institution. This User Facility Agreement, which can be either proprietary or nonproprietary, stipulates the terms and conditions (including disposition of intellectual property for the interaction.

Buildings Technology Center www.ornl.gov/btc/ is identifying, developing, and deploying sustainable and energy-efficient building technologies and systems. The Center offers a unique collection of testing and analysis capabilities expertise to U.S. building industry on building envelopes, heating and cooling, and equipment. Other areas of research are the monitoring and systems analysis of existing buildings performance.

Californium User Facility for Neutron Science www.ornl.gov/divisions/nuclear_science_technology/cuf/ is a unique neutron irradiation facility that uses compact (finger-sized) californium-252 neutron source capsules. These sources are stored at the CUF for the U.S. Department of Energy 252Cf distribution program. Two uncontaminated hot cells are available for entry and experimental setup by researchers, after which 252Cf sources capable of emitting >1011 neutrons/s can be used for irradiations. The fast neutron spectrum (average energy ~2.1 MeV) can be moderated to a thermal spectrum, and small sample volumes can be irradiated by thermal and/or fast neutron fluxes >108 cm-2 s-1. Corresponding gamma dose is significantly less than the neutron dose. Experimenters using the CUF avoid the regulatory and radiological concerns of neutron source custody and handling.

Computational Center for Industrial Innovation http://www-ccstest.ccs.ornl.gov/ccii/index.html Thanks to our computational capabilities, CCII users are solving challenging, industrially relevant problems--problems that have previously eluded solution because of insufficient computational power or inadequate software availability.

Cooling, Heating and Power Integration Laboratory www.ornl.gov/btc/pdfs/fs-der-chp.pdf is a facility that will enable researchers from industries, universities and other institutions to conduct tests on distributed energy products and systems for building applications. It will enable developers to do both performance and
reliability testing.

Fuels, Engines, and Emissions Research Center www.ornl.gov/etd/aptc/index.htm is specialized in the detailed characterization of internal combustion engine emissions and efficiency. The facility's comprehensive capabilities include bench-top engine exhaust simulators, a wide range of dynamometers, and full vehicles. The FEERC boasts several special diagnostic and measurement tools-including many rarely found at other facilities around the country-that aid in development and evaluation of engine and emission control technologies.

High Flux Isotope Reactor www.ornl.gov/hfir/hfirhome.html is a versatile 85-MW isotope production and reactor with the capability and facilities for performing a wide variety of irradiation experiments. It has a peak thermal neutron flux of 2.6×1015 neutrons per square centimeter per second, which is the highest in the western world. The HFIR is a beryllium-reflected, light water-cooled and moderated flux-trap type swimming pool reactor that uses highly enriched uranium-235 as the fuel. A fuel cycle normally consists of full-power operation for a period of 23 to 27 days at 85-MW, followed by an outage that lasts approximately 4 to 7 days.

High Temperature Materials Laboratory www.ms.ornl.gov/htmlhome/default.htm is offering state-of-the-art instruments and facilities for characterizing high-tech materials that determines composition and microstructure of surfaces and bulk materials down to the atomic level; measures the mechanical properties of materials under various environmental conditions, particularly life prediction studies, long-term creep and fatigue testing under simulated use environments, and micromechanical testing and analysis; used for high-temperature and room-temperature studies of a material's transformations, structure, stability, reactions, and expansion via in situ diffraction; measures residual stress and texture (pole figures) via diffraction methods; provides extensive, unique, high-temperature thermal transport and thermal analysis facilities for a wide range of specimens, such as coatings, thin films, composites, and bulk; researches optimum grinding parameters using a specialized suite of instrumented grinders and makes high-precision measurements of machined parts, and conducts research in friction and wear.

Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility www.phy.ornl.gov/hribf/ is providing high quality beams of short-lived radioactive isotopes. These isotopes are produced when intense beams of light ions from the Oak Ridge Isochronous Cyclotron strike highly refractory targets. The radioactive isotopes diffuse out of the production target and are ionized, formed into a beam and mass selected. The radioactive ion beam is then injected in the 25-MV Tandem, the world's highest voltage electrostatic accelerator, and is provided for nuclear reaction, structure, and astrophysics research.

Metals-Processing Laboratory Users Facility are providing specialized equipment for studies of materials synthesis (melting, casting, and powder metallurgy); deformation processing (forging, rolling, extrusion and thermomechanical processing); materials characterization (mechanical properties, fracture mechanics, non-destructive examination, corrosion, computer-controlled dilatometer analyses [quenching, deformation, and cryogenic], and data base generation); joining (welding, brazing, bonding and solidification monitoring and control); and mathematical modeling (to predict thermal gradients, molten metal flow, phase equilibria, solidification rates, strain distributions, residual stresses, etc.) utilizing some of the world's largest massively parallel computers and specialized computing codes developed by ORNL staff. Extensive experience in the utilization of ceramics and composites also provides MPLUS with a major advantage in integrating metals processing skills with the more generic materials issues of interest to the development of end-use products.

Mouse Genetics Research Facility consists of a colony of approximately 800 standard or mutant strains of laboratory mice. Of these 800 strains, 350 are currently actively maintained, and 450 are banked only as cryopreserved embryos, sperm, and/or ovaries. For over 50 years, the MGRF has attracted a highly qualified staff of mouse geneticists and molecular biologists to use the resources for basic research in analyzing gene function and identifying mouse models of human genetic diseases.

National Transportation Research Center www.ntrc.gov is established to develop and evaluate advanced transportation technologies and systems, by utilizing state-of-the-art hardware and computing technologies to address problems of national and international significance such as declining air quality, dependence on unstable oil supplies, traffic congestion, and highway safety.

Oak Ridge National Environmental Research Park www.esd.ornl.gov/facilities/nerp/index.html is an outdoor laboratory and has field research sites on which are located maintenance and support facilities sufficient to permit sophisticated and well-instrumented environmental experiments. Among these facilities are elaborate monitoring systems that enable users to measure environmental factors precisely and accurately for extended periods. Various sites in the park offer opportunities for aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem analyses such as biogeochemical cycling of pollutants resulting from energy-producing facilities, landscape alterations, and forest and wildlife management. Because the park is under the jurisdiction of the federal government, the integrity of land and water resources and the preservation of undisturbed lands are ensured.

Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator www.phy.ornl.gov/astrophysics/nuc/neutrons/neutrons.html is used to produce intense, nanosecond pulses of neutrons with a broad energy spectrum (10-3 eV to 108 eV) for a wide range of experiments. By using time-of-flight techniques, many different types of neutron reactions can be studied with very high resolution and precision. The current ORELA program is centered around research in basic and applied nuclear physics. Simultaneous, yet virtually independent experiments can be run on the 10 evacuated flight paths at distances between 9 and 200 m from the neutron source.

Physical Properties Research Facility www.ornl.gov/divisions/nuclear_science_technology/pprf/index.htm is dedicated to physiochemical properties measurements that can obtain unique data, modeling (macro- and micro-scale) to derive fundamental physical properties, and evaluating their impact on industrial process optimization.

Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Research Facility is recognized worldwide for their expertise in developing and prototyping advanced power converters, adjustable speed drives, and electric machines, power transmission and distribution research and development, and power quality, efficiency, and measurement. The Center provides unique expertise in power converter topologies, thermal management, packaging technologies for electromagnetic interference minimization and for space and weight reduction, digital signal processing-based control techniques for motor drives, system energy management, flywheel energy storage applications and ultra-high speed drive applications.

Shared Research Equipment Collaborative Research Center www.ornl.gov/share is offering state-of-the-art capabilities in the areas of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atom probe field ion microscopy, and mechanical properties microanalysis (MPM).

Surface Modification and Characterization Collaborative Research Center is a unique facility for the alteration and characterization of the near-surface properties of materials using ion beams.