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Kim Tutin, founder and chief executive officer of Captis Aire, receives the EPA Green Chemistry Challenge Award. Credit: Eric Vance/USEPA

The founder of a startup company who is working with ORNL has won an Environmental Protection Agency Green Chemistry Challenge Award for a unique air pollution control technology. 

Sarah Walters portrait

Walters is working with a team of geographers, linguists, economists, data scientists and software engineers to apply cultural knowledge and patterns to open-source data in an effort to document and report patterns of human movement through previously unstudied spaces.

The sun sets behind the ORNL Visitor Center in this aerial photo from April 2023. Credit: Kase Clapp/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

In fiscal year 2023 — Oct. 1–Sept. 30, 2023 — Oak Ridge National Laboratory was awarded more than $8 million in technology maturation funding through the Department of Energy’s Technology Commercialization Fund, or TCF.

ORNL’s David Sholl is director of the new DOE Energy Earthshot Non-Equilibrium Energy Transfer for Efficient Reactions center to help decarbonize the industrial chemical industry. Credit: Genevieve Martin, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL has been selected to lead an Energy Earthshot Research Center, or EERC, focused on developing chemical processes that use sustainable methods instead of burning fossil fuels to radically reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions to stem climate change and limit the crisis of a rapidly warming planet.
 

Xiaohan Yang is using his expertise in synthetic biology and capabilities like the Advanced Plant Phenotyping Laboratory at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to accelerate the development of drought-tolerant, fast-growing bioenergy crops suited for conversion into clean jet fuels. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Scientist Xiaohan Yang’s research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory focuses on transforming plants to make them better sources of renewable energy and carbon storage.

As a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tugba Turnaoglu is investigating new thermal energy storage materials and ways to incorporate them into cost-effective and energy-efficient heat pump designs. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept of Energy

The common sounds in the background of daily life – like a refrigerator’s hum, an air conditioner’s whoosh and a heat pump’s buzz – often go unnoticed. These noises, however, are the heartbeat of a healthy building and integral for comfort and convenience.

Buildings technologies researcher Philip Boudreaux uses a camera and a technique known as background-oriented schlieren photography to identify air leak sources in a concrete block wall mock-up. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created a new detection system that allows home energy auditors to see air leaking from a building in real time with the help of a camera.

Michelle Kidder is the recipient of the 2023 American Chemical Society’s Mid-Career Award. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Michelle Kidder, a senior R&D staff scientist at ORNL, has received the American Chemical Society’s Energy and Fuels Division’s Mid-Career Award for sustained and distinguished contributions to the field of energy and fuel chemistry.

Bryan Maldonado, a researcher in the Buildings and Transportation Science Division at ORNL, will receive the 2023 Most Promising Engineer Award from the Hispanic Engineer National Achievements Awards Conference. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Bryan Maldonado, a dynamic systems and controls researcher at ORNL, has been recognized by the 2023 Hispanic Engineer National Achievements Awards Conference, or HENAAC, with the Most Promising Engineer Award.  

ORNL-developed software tools for identifying and quantifying energy efficiency will be demonstrated to participants during an Energy Bootcamp sponsored by DOE’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL researchers have developed a training camp to help manufacturing industries reduce energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and improve cost savings.