Feature Stories

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Argonne researchers are experimenting to improve solar cells to harness more of the sun's energy.
Argonne launches unique research initiative to realize solar energy’s full potential

Dozens of researchers at Argonne National Laboratory are exploring new solar technologies as part of its Alternative Energy & Efficiency Initiative.

 February 22, 2010
Venus flytraps are selective in their prey—just as a new chemical material from Argonne and Northwestern selectively picks up radioactive cesium ions from contaminated water. (Photo Credit: Jeremy Hiebert. / CC BY-NC 2.0)
 New material traps radioactive ions using "Venus flytrap" method

Mercouri Kanatzidis, a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and Nan Ding, a chemist at Northwestern University, have crafted a sulfide framework that can trap radioactive cesium ions. This mechanism has the potential to help speed clean-up at power plants and contaminated sites.

 February 25, 2010
Elizabeth Mader, a Director’s postdoctoral fellow, aligns a diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectrometer to record the infrared spectrum of molecules absorbed on catalyst surfaces at Argonne’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division.
 Argonne named a 'Best Place' to work for postdocs in 2010

Argonne National Laboratory is one of the best places in the country for postdocs to work, according to a survey released today by the life sciences magazine, The Scientist.

 February 25, 2010
Researchers Guldem Kartal (left) and Alyssa Skulborstad operate Argonne’s pilot-scale ultrafast boriding reactor.
Scaling up Argonne’s ultrafast boriding process

U.S.

 March 1, 2010
Argonne scientists Ken Kemner (right) and Ed O’Loughlin work to better understand exactly how bacteria chemically changes uranium.
 Argonne scientists seek natural remediation for uranium-rich sites

While most of us are focused on life above ground, scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are trying to understand the drama unfolding beneath our feet. Their work centers on the more than billions of tons of bacteria living within the Earth’s subsurface, below the root zone, and how they change the chemical composition of the rocks and minerals they touch, including uranium. The result could prove useful in a surprising way.

 March 18, 2010
Today manufacturers are meeting to agree on a standard plug for the home hub, cars and appliances. But it turns out that American manufacturers already agreed on a standardized electric vehicle plug—in 1913! In the early days of cars, electric vehicles seemed a likely competitor for gasoline-powered engines and 30,000 were on the road; thus, the plug seen here—complete with wooden handle.
 Argonne helps the grid get smart

A multidisciplinary mix of scientists from Argonne National Laboratory is working to help develop a "smart grid" that will not only adapt in real-time to handle larger electricity loads, but also operate more cheaply and efficiently than the existing grid.

 March 25, 2010
Modeling nickel fractures and next-generation reactors

A multidisciplinary team of physicists, chemists, materials scientists and computer scientists from Argonne, the University of Southern California, Harvard University, Pennsylvania State University, and California State University at Northridge simulated the introduction of small amounts of sulfur into the boundaries between the nickel grains to investigate a material property known as “embrittlement.”

 June 1, 2010
Students from the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (Albuquerque, NM) pose with their windmill, constructed for the Indian Education Renewable Energy Challenge hosted by Argonne National Laboratory.
 Tribal internship students energize alternative fuel science

Argonne National Laboratory, together with the U.S. Department of the Interior, are working together to help educate future tribal leaders on energy resource development and environmental evaluations by offering several hands-on learning opportunities such as Tribal Energy Internships and the Indian Education Renewable Energy Challenge.

 June 15, 2010
Above, the project that pushed the ACLF over two billion processor-hours: a visualization of Rayleigh-Taylor instability, which is the result of the mixing of two fluids at different densities. The heavy fluid (top) is accelerated by the light fluid (bottom), yielding bubbles of light fluid and spikes of heavy fluid, each penetrating into the other fluid, followed by the development of a chaotic mixing layer. Gravity is going down in the plot. Accurate simulation of the turbulent mixing of two fluids is a long-standing challenge. Image courtesy Research team from SUNY at Stony Brook, Department of Applied Mathematics & Statistics.
Over two billion hours served

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, located at Argonne National Laboratory, has run over two billion processor-hours of computations at a mind-boggling speed of over 557 trillion calculations a second as it enables scientists and engineers to conduct cutting-edge research in just weeks or months rather than years.

 June 18, 2010
Ethanol engineers found that ethanol-fueled engines produced more horsepower than traditional racecar engines with environmentally unfriendly leaded fuel. Photo credit: Darryl Moran / Creative Commons.
 Ethanol-fueled racecar engines outpower lead-fueled engines

A group of automotive researchers from Argonne National Laboratory and industry have shown that a fuel-injected racing car engine fueled by E-85, an ethanol-based fuel, outperforms the same engine with a carburetor and leaded racing fuel.

 July 7, 2010
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