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Operations center is the real deal

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Grid operators who spend their days managing a piece of the nation's electric grid could walk into the Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center (EIOC) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and feel right at home.

A closer look at the Northwest hydro system

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory brought together public and private utilities, technology vendors and research institutions from across the Northwest to gather insight into challenges and opportunities for the region's power grid.

Moving grid operations from minutes to seconds

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

In the last century, the electric power grid has grown from a system that served one square mile in New York into a highlycomplex interconnected system that serves all of North America. Initially, individual local systems would connect to each other to share resources and increase reliability.

Coal: An energy bridge to the future

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

For years, coal drove the transportation business in this country, and it may be poised for a comeback. A hundred years ago, steam engines burned tons of coal as they pulled trains across the country. Now researchers are looking at converting that coal to liquid fuel to fill our gas tanks and move cars and trucks.

PNNL positioned to meet nation's energy challenges

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Innovative science and technological advances will play a key role in solving the energy challenges facing the United States, and PNNL stands ready to help.

Night of the living enzyme

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Inactive enzymes entombed in tiny honeycomb-shaped holes in silica -- nano-chambers that mimic conditions in living cells -- can spring to life, scientists discovered while attempting salvaging enzymes that had been in a refrigerator long past their expiration date. The finding opens up new possibilities for exploiting these enzyme traps in food processing, decontamination, biosensor design and any other pursuit that requires controlling catalysts and sustaining their activity.

Journal: Nanotechnology
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Plague proteome reveals proteins linked to infection

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Recreating growth conditions in flea carriers and mammal hosts, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists have uncovered 176 proteins and likely proteins in the plague-bacterium Yersinia pestis whose numbers rise and fall according to the disease's virulence.

Journal: Journal of Proteome Research
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy, US Department of Homeland Security

Fuel cell prototypes exceed expectations

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Fuel prices continue to rise. However, one solution -- fuel cells -- is gaining on that problem. The Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance (SECA) has achieved the first of a threepart goal: developing solid oxide fuel cell systems that reduce fuel cell production costs by a factor of ten.

Technology improves food processing quality

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed an ultrasonic technology that could tell food manufacturers if foreign objects have fallen into their product long before it reaches the consumer.

ScalaBLAST solves problems in record time

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Scientists are dedicated to making discoveries that influence our world, but making these discoveries takes time. It took Albert Einstein 16 years to express his general theory of relativity. Benjamin Franklin was first introduced to electricity experiments on a trip to Boston in 1746, but his famous lightning rod experiment didn't occur until six years later -- and he knocked himself unconscious more than once in the process.

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