Jesse Labbé: Innovating biotechnology for energy, security and health
In a step toward increasing the cost-effectiveness of renewable biofuels and bioproducts, scientists at ORNL discovered a microbial enzyme that degrades tough-to-break bonds in lignin, a waste product of biorefineries.
As rising global temperatures alter ecosystems worldwide, the need to accurately simulate complex environmental processes under evolving conditions is more urgent than ever.
ORNL’s Zhenglong Li led a team tasked with improving the current technique for converting ethanol to C3+ olefins and demonstrated a unique composite catalyst that upends current practice and drives down costs. The research was published in ACS Catalysis.
Scientists at ORNL have discovered a single gene that simultaneously boosts plant growth and tolerance for stresses such as drought and salt, all while tackling the root cause of climate change by enabling plants to pull more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
A research team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory bioengineered a microbe to efficiently turn waste into itaconic acid, an industrial chemical used in plastics and paints.
Esther Parish is one of eight scientists from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory talking to students in nine schools across East Tennessee as part of National Environmental Education Week, or EE Week.
As ORNL’s fuel properties technical lead for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Co-Optimization of Fuel and Engines, or Co-Optima, initiative, Jim Szybist has been on a quest for the past few years to identify the most significant indicators for predicting how a fuel will perform in engines designed for light-duty vehicles such as passenger cars and pickup trucks.
Popular wisdom holds tall, fast-growing trees are best for biomass, but new research by two U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories reveals that is only part of the equation.
The combination of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage could cost-effectively sequester hundreds of millions of metric tons per year of carbon dioxide in the United States, making it a competitive solution for carbon management, according to a new analysis by ORNL scientists.
Prometheus Fuels has licensed an ethanol-to-jet-fuel conversion process developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The ORNL technology will enable cost-competitive production of jet fuel and co-production of butadiene for use in renewable polymer synthesis.