(AGENPARL) - Roma, 15 Marzo 2024(AGENPARL) – ven 15 marzo 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, March 15, 2024
LLNL’s Jennifer Pett-Ridge discusses findings of the “Roads to Removal”
report on a recent news segment on KCRA.
… The road to carbon removal
Drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions is critical to stemming the
impacts of human-caused climate change for future generations. “Roads to
Removal” is a recent report from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
that highlights opportunities for the United States to cut carbon by removing
CO2 that is already in the air.
“The reality is we have some industries that are very, very difficult to
stop all of the emissions,” said Jennifer Pett-Ridge, the lead author of
the report.
Pett-Ridge specifically pointed to agriculture, a vital industry for the U.S.
and global food supply.
“If we want to feed ourselves, we’re going to get a certain amount of
[emissions],” Pett-Ridge said. “That means we need to make up for a certain
amount of emissions that we’re not actually able to prevent.”
Read More
Hiroshimaites are microscopic glass spheres. Photo courtesy of Nathan
Asset/Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris.
… A snapshot in time
Hiroshima Fallout May Offer a Glimpse of the Early Solar System
Studying the conditions in the cloud of gas and dust that birthed our sun and
planets is quite difficult. The few bits of information we have often come
locked inside ancient materials formed 4.5 billion years ago when the solar
system was being born. Those materials look like nothing on Earth — with a
few potential exceptions.
In a new study, researchers found that tiny spheres of glass created by the
atomic fireball that devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World
War II look distinct from most materials formed on Earth. The superhot
environment they formed in might instead bear some similarities to the solar
nebula from which our sun formed.
“We don’t necessarily have a lot of access to these extreme conditions,
and using samples like this is an interesting way of tapping into the
conditions that existed in the early solar system,” said Greg Brennecka, a
cosmochemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who wasn’t involved
in the study.
“Because they’re the first solids, they represent the first snapshots of
what the solar system was built from,” Brennecka said, referring to the
fragments. “And they really haven’t changed since then, so you’ve got
four and a half billion years of time locked in there.”
Read More
Hiroshima Fallout May Offer a Glimpse of the Early Solar System
El Capitan, the world’s fastest supercomputer, is set to go online later
this year. Photo by Garry McLeod/LLNL.
… Scaling El Capitan
Rows of tall black cabinets, webbed with multi-colored wires and hoses, lined
the computing floor. A clear pane separates visitors. That and another
security door, warning of the noise beyond.
Once opened, the whirring was apparent. It was mid-January and the second
floor of LLNL’s Computing Center was alive with noise. Contributing to the
sound was El Capitan, LLNL’s forthcoming supercomputer, which was
undergoing some equipment testing amid functioning systems on the floor.
El Capitan is expected to be the world’s fastest supercomputer, or
high-performance computing system, when it becomes operational this year in
late summer or early fall.
The system will enable researchers from the National Nuclear Security
Administration weapons design laboratories to create models and run
simulations, previously considered challenging, time-intensive or impossible,
for the maintenance and modernization of the United States’ nuclear weapons
stockpile.
Read More
LLNL researcher Nitish Govindarajan displays a heatmap showing the effect of
the active site type and concentration on the delay time and a schematic
summarizing the key findings of this study. Photo by Blaise Douros/LLNL.
… Catalysts on tap for CO2 conversion
https://phys.org/news/2024-02-importance-catalyst-sites-electrochemical-conversion.html
Intense research efforts have been directed toward studying the
electrochemical conversion of CO2, a major greenhouse gas, into platform
chemicals and fuels. The success of this technology can enable the
decarbonization of some of the largest CO2 emitters, including steel, cement
and chemical manufacturing industries.
Copper is unique in its ability to convert CO2 at low temperatures to a
diverse range of products, such as carbon monoxide, ethylene and ethanol at
industrially viable current densities. As a result, there is widespread
interest in understanding CO2 conversion on copper electrodes as efficient
and stable CO2 electrolyzers.
In a recent study involving a multi-disciplinary team from Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (LLNL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University
of California Berkeley, and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology (KAIST), researchers used chemical transient kinetics and
microkinetic modeling to understand the atomistic-scale workings
of copper electrodes during electrochemical conversion of carbon monoxide,
a key reaction intermediate in electrochemical CO2 conversion.
“Our surprising finding from this work is that the effective catalytic
activity of the reaction improves when there is a larger fraction of
less-active sites [termed reservoir sites]. We developed a microkinetic model
involving three site types to explain our findings,” said LLNL researcher
and co-first author Nitish Govindarajan.
Read More
https://phys.org/news/2024-02-importance-catalyst-sites-electrochemical-conversion.html
This graphic depicts cellulose that are structural components of plants that
are being broken down into simple sugars by enzymes. Graphic by Jennifer
Nill.
… From residue to sustainable products
https://bnnbreaking.com/breaking-news/agriculture/groundbreaking-research-advances-biomass-conversion-technologies/
A consortium involving Lawrence Livermore has made substantial progress in
the development of technologies for converting plant residues into
sustainable products.
The research team’s primary focus was to liberate sugars found in plant
materials like grasses, weeds, wood and other agricultural byproducts.
The team’s findings are expected to lower technological barriers and expedite
the sustainable conversion of biomass into valuable products. Consequently,
this not only mitigates environmental impact but also steers clear of
competition with food supply chains.
Importantly, the research also has potential implications for bio-national
security applications, given that the technology can be used for
high-throughput characterization of biomolecules in their native state, such
as tissues and soil samples.
Read More
https://bnnbreaking.com/breaking-news/agriculture/groundbreaking-research-advances-biomass-conversion-technologies/
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