(AGENPARL) – ven 09 febbraio 2024 A weekly compendium of media reports on science and technology achievements
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Though the Laboratory reviews
items for overall accuracy, the reporting organizations are responsible for
the content in the links below.
….. LLNL Report, Feb. 9, 2024
The spent target assembly from LLNL’s first achievement on ignition on Dec.
5, 2022, which is reported in the cover article of the Feb. 5, 2023, issue of
/Physical Review Letters/. Photo by Jason Laurea/LLNL.
… Twice as nice
In late 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved
an important fusion energy milestone with their laser-powered reactor:
getting more energy out than they put in.
Now, the results have cleared the peer review process, confirming the
achievement.
And it gets even better. The scientists claim in a separate paper
https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.109.025204 to have
gotten even better results in subsequent experiments, releasing close to
twice the amount of energy the system consumed.
However, as the team was quick to point out, there’s still a long road to a
commercial fusion reactor.
Nonetheless, they hope that by demonstrating it’s possible — despite many
decades of research, the feat of achieving a net energy gain had long seemed
to remain perpetually elusive — the industry will be encouraged to keep
trying to realize its goal of a greener future.
Read More
Microbe models leverage extensive genomic data to power soil carbon
simulations. Illustration by Victor O. Leshyk.
… Underneath it all
https://interestingengineering.com/science/enzymes-petroleum-free-fuels-medicine
Research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and UC Davis sheds new light on how to
access the sugars locked up in plants to produce petroleum-free fuels,
chemicals and medicines.
Using microbes to convert grasses, weeds, wood, and other plant residues into
sustainable products will be key to achieving carbon neutrality and could
even help eliminate drug shortages. But cellulose, the tough tissue that
makes up a large proportion of herbaceous and woody plant bodies, is hard to
break down into its composite sugars, which the microbes need to build other
molecules. Only organisms that have evolved specialized enzymes, or those
that host microbiomes of those organisms, are able to get sugars from
cellulose-rich plant matter.
Scientists are studying how these enzymes work so that they can develop more
efficient methods to convert plant waste into sweet ingredients.
At LLNL, researchers intend to employ the same approach to investigate
biomolecules present in soil, plant, and animal tissues, focusing on those
relevant to biosecurity applications.
Read More
https://interestingengineering.com/science/enzymes-petroleum-free-fuels-medicine
High-Voltage Stable Solid-State Electrolytes Design Strategies. Image
courtesy of Korea Institute of Science and Technology.
… High voltage gets stable
https://www.newswise.com/articles/kist-llnl-raises-expectations-for-commercialization-of-high-energy-density-all-solid-state-batteries
Researchers are actively working on non-flammable solid electrolytes as a
safer alternative to liquid electrolytes commonly found in lithium-ion
batteries, which are vulnerable to fires and explosions. While sulfide-based
solid electrolytes exhibit excellent ionic conductivity, their chemical
instability with high-voltage cathode materials necessary for
high-energy-density batteries has impeded their commercial viability.
Consequently, there has been a growing interest in chloride-based solid
electrolytes, which are offer stability in high-voltage conditions due to
their strong bonding properties.
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology announced that a KIST-Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory joint research team led by Seungho Yu of the
Energy Storage Research CenterSang Soo Han of the Computational Science
Research Center and Brandon Wood of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
(LLNL) has developed a fluorine substituted high-voltage stable
chloride-based solid-state electrolyte through computational science.
LLNL is a leading national laboratory under the U.S. National Nuclear
Security Administration, renowned for its excellent supercomputing
facilities. KIST and LLNL have been conducting collaborative research in the
field of secondary batteries in 2019.
To improve the high-voltage stability of chloride-based solid electrolyte
(Li3MCl6), the research team proposed the optimal composition and design
principle of chloride-based solid electrolyte (Li3MCl5F) substituted with
fluorine(F), which has strong chemical bonding ability. For the proposed
strategy to improve the high-voltage stability of chloride-based solid
electrolytes by KIST, LLNL contributed by utilizing their cutting-edge
supercomputing resources for calculations and subsequent experimental
validations were conducted at KIST. The collaborative research team adopted a
cost-effective and time-saving strategy, wherein computational science guides
the initial material design, followed by rigorous laboratory validation.
Read More
https://www.newswise.com/articles/kist-llnl-raises-expectations-for-commercialization-of-high-energy-density-all-solid-state-batteries
The target chamber of LLNL’s National Ignition facility where researchers
achieved fusion.
… Stay tuned for more to come
Scientists have confirmed that a fusion reaction in 2022 reached a historic
milestone by unleashing more energy than was put into it – and subsequent
trials have produced even better results, they say. The findings, now
published in a series of papers, give encouragement that fusion reactors will
one day create clean, plentiful energy.
Today’s nuclear power plants rely on fission reactions, where atoms are
smashed apart to release energy and smaller particles works in reverse,
squeezing smaller particles together into larger atoms; the same process
powers our sun.
Fusion can create more energy with none of the waste involved in fission, but
finding a way to contain and control this process, let alone extract energy
from it, has eluded scientists and engineers for decades.
Experiments to do this using capsules of deuterium and tritium fuel bombarded
with a laser – a process called inertial confinement fusion (ICF) – began
at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2011. The energy
released was initially only a tiny fraction of the laser energy put in, but
it gradually increased until an experiment on Dec. 5, 2022 finally broke more
than even. That reaction put out 1..5 times the laser energy required to
kickstart it.
In one paper, the Lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) claims that trial
runs since then have yielded even greater ratios, peaking at 1.9 times the
energy input on Sept. 4, 2023.
Richard Town at LLNL says the team’s checks and double-checks since the
2022 result have proved that it “wasn’t a flash in the pan,” and he
believes there is still room for improvement.
Read More
LLNL scientist Xavier Mayali used the LLNL nanoSIMS analysis instrument to
quantify the flux of ammonia and urea into the cells. Photo by Blaise
Douros/LLNL.
… A nitrogen mystery unraveled

A global Nitrogen mystery unraveled

Ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms (AOM) play a significant role in the global
nitrogen cycle. There are four types of AOM: ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA),
beta- and gamma-proteobacterial ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (?-AOB and
?-AOB), and complete ammonia oxidizers (comammox). They are believed to
compete for ammonia as their main nitrogen source. Additionally, many AOM
species can use urea as an alternative energy source and nitrogen by
converting it to ammonia.
But one major question that has remained unanswered for decades is how
different AOM species coexist in the same environment: do they compete for
ammonia or instead use other alternative compounds for their energy needs?
New research by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University
of Oklahoma and other collaborators found an answer that significantly
changes the understanding of ammonia oxidation, a critical component of the
global nitrogen cycle.
The study aimed to figure out why and how different types of microorganisms
that play a role in ammonia oxidation can coexist without directly competing
for inorganic nitrogen (ammonia). They also examined how these microorganisms
use organic nitrogen (urea) instead.
More than half of these AOM lineages have adapted to using urea. However,
using urea requires extra energy because it’s a more complex molecule that
must be broken down into ammonia before use. The researchers wanted to
understand how these microorganisms acquire and process both ammonia and urea
when both are present.
Read More

A global Nitrogen mystery unraveled

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