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Biofuels

Dan Jacobson, ORNLPeopleScience

Laying the Groundwork for a New ‘Green Revolution’

In 2015, all member states of the United Nations pledged to pursue the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set forth by the UN General Assembly in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The goals serve as a framework to tackle many of the world’s challenges, ranging from practical issues like infrastructure…
Coury Turczyn
August 10, 2020
Science

Unraveling the Science Behind Biomass Breakdown

Lignocellulosic biomass—plant matter such as cornstalks, straw, and woody plants—is a sustainable source for production of bio-based fuels and chemicals. However, the deconstruction of biomass is one of the most complex processes in bioenergy technologies. Although researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) had already uncovered information…
Rachel McDowell
October 18, 2016
Science

Boosting Bioenergy

A team led by ORNL’s Jeremy Smith, the director of ORNL’s Center for Molecular Biophysics and a Governor’s Chair at the University of Tennessee, has uncovered information that could help others harvest energy from plant mass.
OLCF Staff Writer
January 2, 2014
Science

The Problem with Cellulosic Ethanol

Simulation provides a close-up look at the molecule that complicates next-generation biofuels Leadership-class molecular dynamics simulation of the plant components lignin and cellulose. This 3.3 million-atom simulation was performed on 30,000 cores of the Jaguar XT5 supercomputer and investigated lignin precipitation on cellulose fibrils, a process that poses a significant…
Leo Williams
September 12, 2011