Electric vehicles can drive longer distances if their lithium-ion batteries deliver more energy in a lighter package. A prime weight-loss candidate is the current collector, a component that often adds 10% to the weight of a battery cell without contributing energy.
Carl Dukes’ career as an adept communicator got off to a slow start: He was about 5 years old when he spoke for the first time. “I’ve been making up for lost time ever since,” joked Dukes, a technical professional at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Having passed the midpoint of his career, physicist Mali Balasubramanian was part of a tight-knit team at a premier research facility for X-ray spectroscopy. But then another position opened, at ORNL— one that would take him in a new direction.
A new report published by ORNL assessed how advanced manufacturing and materials, such as 3D printing and novel component coatings, could offer solutions to modernize the existing fleet and design new approaches to hydropower.
Scientists at ORNL developed a competitive, eco-friendly alternative made without harmful blowing agents.
ORNL researchers have identified a mechanism in a 3D-printed alloy – termed “load shuffling” — that could enable the design of better-performing lightweight materials for vehicles.
The presence of minerals called ash in plants makes little difference to the fitness of new naturally derived compound materials designed for additive manufacturing, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led team found.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists designed a recyclable polymer for carbon-fiber composites to enable circular manufacturing of parts that boost energy efficiency in automotive, wind power and aerospace applications.
Materials scientist Denise Antunes da Silva researches ways to reduce concrete’s embodied carbon in the Sustainable Building Materials Laboratory at ORNL, a research space dedicated to studying environmentally friendly building materials. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
What’s getting Jim Szybist fired up these days? It’s the opportunity to apply his years of alternative fuel combustion and thermodynamics research to the challenge of cleaning up the hard-to-decarbonize, heavy-duty mobility sector — from airplanes to locomotives to ships and massive farm combines.