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Chelsea Chen, a polymer physicist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is studying ion transport in solid electrolytes that could help electric vehicle battery charges last longer. “The challenge with current EVs is to further increase driving range, and that means higher energy density,” said Chen. “This requires revolutionary design of the battery chemistry.”

A modeling analysis led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory gives the first detailed look at how geothermal energy can relieve the electric power system and reduce carbon emissions if widely implemented across the United States within the next few decades.

Researchers at the Statewide California Earthquake Center, or SCEC, are unraveling the mysteries of earthquakes by using physics-based computational models running on high-performance computing systems at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The team’s findings will provide a better understanding of seismic hazards in the Golden State. 

In a win for chemistry, inventors at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed a closed-loop path for synthesizing an exceptionally tough carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer and later recovering all of its starting materials.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers, or ASHRAE, selected Jason DeGraw, a researcher with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, as one of 23 members elevated to Fellow during its 2024 winter conference.

David Sholl, director of the Transformational Decarbonization Initiative at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions in addressing large-scale chemical separation challenges, including carbon dioxide capture, using quantitative materials modeling.

Research led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Marti Checa and Liam Collins has pioneered a groundbreaking approach, described in the journal Nature Communications, toward understanding the behavior of an electric charge at the microscopic level. 

ORNL climate modeling expertise contributed to a project that assessed global emissions of ammonia from croplands now and in a warmer future, while also identifying solutions tuned to local growing conditions.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are looking for a happy medium to enable the grid of the future, filling a gap between high and low voltages for power electronics technology that underpins the modern U.S. electric grid.