Researchers at the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility recently chalked up a physics "first": the simultaneous emission of two protons from an atom's decaying nucleus. The finding, based on preliminary experiments with the Holifield Facility's unique fluorine-17 beam, also represents a new type ...
With water heating consuming about 17 percent of the energy for a typical household, it's a good place to start when cutting costs. ORNL's Building Technology Center is assisting in developing a heat pump water heater as a "drop-in" replacement for a conventional 50- or 80-gallon water heater. It fe...
An ORNL team will receive more than $1.1 million over the next three years to develop technology for reliable and automatic forewarning of failure in critical equipment at next-generation nuclear power plants. Such forewarning would allow timely maintenance to reduce unanticipated shutdown time and ...
ORNL researchers are developing a system that would provide an eight- to 50-minute warning before an epileptic seizure, giving a person time to take appropriate action. The system uses dime-size scalp electrodes that relay electroencephalographic signals to a computer for analysis. A warning alert w...
In many of today's chemical applications, efficient mixing is critical to achieve product quality and uniformity, and ORNL engineers have devised a better way to do the mixing. The electrohydrodynamic micromixing reactor uses a specially designed electrified injection nozzle that mixes the chemicals...
Emergency responders have a new tool developed by ORNL that could save perhaps thousands of lives around the world. The LandScan Global Population Database is a worldwide source of population data with spatial precision to assess local impacts from floods, airborne contamination and other natural or...
A whole new technology awaits exploration with the discovery of a technique for trapping single atoms, according to scientists at ORNL. Researchers at ORNL and Nanocrystals Technology in Briarcliff, N.Y., have collaborated to cage single europium atoms in nanocrystals not much larger than the atoms ...
Lumberyards everywhere could revolutionize their businesses with a microwave pretreatment system that reduces from about two months to 10 days the amount of time needed to dry hardwoods. The system could save the lumber industry a significant amount in energy costs and reduce inventory requirements ...
Low- or zero-emission high-mileage automobiles powered by fuel cells could be just around the curve with the development of a carbon composite bipolar plate developed at ORNL. A bipolar plate is a key component of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell, the technology of choice in the automobile indus...
Using a beam of fluorine-17 thought to be too difficult to create in sufficient quantities for experiments, ORNL researchers are gaining a better understanding of what happens in stellar explosions. Precision measurements performed with fluorine-17, which lives for just a minute, help physicists und...