(AGENPARL) – ven 05 aprile 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, April 5, 2024
Corn scraps are one form of biomass that can be made into alternative fuels.
Photo courtesy of USDA.
… Biomass is where it’s at
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/carbon-capture/burying-plant-waste-removes-co2-from-the-air.-but-can-it-scale
Scraps of biomass are rich in the carbon dioxide that plants absorb during
photosynthesis, presenting an opportunity for those looking to take on
climate change. Companies and scientists have dozens of ideas for how
nature’s leftovers might help the planet. They can be made into alternative
fuels for airplanes and cargo ships to displace petroleum. They can be turned
into chemical products, transformed into hydrogen or used to nourish
farmland.
Today, the United States uses roughly 340 million dry tons of biomass per
year, very little of which is from farm and forestry waste. Nearly all of the
nation’s supply comes from corn crops, wood chips and, to a lesser extent,
landfill gas.
Lawrence Livermore’s “Roads to Removal” study analyzed how the U.S.
could remove and store 1 billion metric tons of CO2 every year. Getting to
?“gigaton-scale” carbon removal is considered key to meeting the
nation’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
The country could potentially get 700 million metric tons of CO2 removal per
year by 2050, using only biomass wastes and residues from forest-thinning
practices, according to the report. 
“With the companies that are looking to just literally bury [biomass],
it’s kind of a wasted opportunity,” said Jennifer Pett-Ridge, a senior
staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore and lead author of the Roads to Removal
report.  “It’s good in the sense that you’re removing CO2. But there
are so many other materials that can be made out of biomass that benefits
society and financially creates an industry.”
Read More
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/carbon-capture/burying-plant-waste-removes-co2-from-the-air.-but-can-it-scale
In an LLNL laboratory, Zachary Murphy (front) and his mentor Gauthier
Deblonde (back) discuss the results of the chemical analyses conducted on the
underground rock samples using Raman spectroscopy (the equipment pictured on
the black table).
… Digging deep
https://www.materialsperformance.com/articles/material-selection-design/2024/04/us-researchers-dig-deep-to-prevent-spread-of-nuclear-waste
The groundbreaking discoveries and scientific advancements that take place at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and across the broader national
laboratory system rely on passing information from tenured staff scientists
to new interns and early career scientists.
In summer 2023, Zachary Murphy, a Ph.D. student studying chemistry at the
University of Central Florida, interned with LLNL’s Glenn T. Seaborg
Institute under the mentorship of Gauthier Deblonde, a radiochemist for the
nuclear and chemical sciences division.
“Despite there being a persistent and global demand for radiochemists,
there has been a decline in those entering the field,” Deblonde said.
“Providing young and motivated students like Zach the opportunity to
conduct research alongside Livermore staff scientists is key to bridging
knowledge gaps in radiochemistry.”
Murphy’s summer research focused on evaluating an organic-rich rock
formation. As part of his work, he aimed to characterize which minerals are
present and how radioactive elements interact with different rock layers.
This work is a part of a larger, ongoing project to evaluate new locations
for a potential nuclear waste repository used to store legacy waste deep
underground.
According to LLNL, the ideal repository site would have natural barriers to
stop the nuclear waste from spreading into the environment since engineered
barriers (such as metallic canisters) slowly break down over time due to
corrosion and other natural phenomena.
Read More
https://www.materialsperformance.com/articles/material-selection-design/2024/04/us-researchers-dig-deep-to-prevent-spread-of-nuclear-waste
The lenses for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera have been built at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Photo courtesty of Jacqueline
Ramseyer Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
… Eye in the sky

Construction complete on the 3200 megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera

Scientists and engineers have announced the completion of the Legacy Survey
of Space and Time (LSST) – the largest camera ever built. Taking almost two
decades to build, the 3,200 megapixel instrument will form the heart of the
8.4 m Simonyi Survey Telescope based at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in
Cerro Pachón in the Andes.
First proposed some three decades ago to help study the nature of dark
matter, the LSST has been built at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
It is 3 × 1.65 m – roughly the size of a small car – and with a mass of
3000 kg.
The LSST includes three lenses, which have been constructed at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory. The biggest being 1.57 m in diameter and is
the largest high-performance optical lens ever made. The LSST has now
completed a program of rigorous testing and will be shipped to Chile where it
will be installed atop the Simonyi Survey Telescope later this year.
The camera’s resolution of 3,200 megapixel – some 200 times larger than a
high-end consumer camera – means that it can take hundreds of
ultrahigh-definition TVs to display just one of the LSST’s images at full
size.
Read More

Construction complete on the 3200 megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera

LLNL researchers are looking into how wine could sequester carbon. Photo
courtesy of USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
… Carbon capture wines down
https://www.independentnews.com/news/livermore_news/llnl-explores-carbon-capture-with-wineries/article_34152a08-ec93-11ee-bf03-6f176695bdff.html
Wineries may soon play a significant part in carbon sequestration, thanks to
the work of local scientists.
A team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently completed a
proof-of-concept demonstration for the idea at the Continuum Estate winery in
St. Helena. The project captured off-gasses from fermenting wine grapes and
then mineralized the carbon dioxide, keeping the carbon out of the
atmosphere.
Fermenting wine grapes in California alone produce some 450,000 tons of
carbon dioxide per year, according to LLNL, equivalent to the annual
emissions of almost 100,000 cars.
To achieve our mid-century climate goals and avert the more disastrous
effects of climate change, the world must remove carbon from the air in
addition to reducing emissions, according to an LLNL carbon-removal report
released last year. Toward that end, the U.S. must remove carbon on the scale
of a billion metric tons per year by 2050.
One promising avenue for carbon removal involves rethinking how industries
handle biomass — the organic material created through agriculture.
“Plants have done the work of taking the sun’s energy and putting that
into chemical energy, into the sugar,” said LLNL staff scientist Nathan
Ellebracht. “Fruit is really packed with sugar. That is where the CO2 from
the atmosphere is going; it’s going into the sugar that is in the fruit.”
Read More
https://www.independentnews.com/news/livermore_news/llnl-explores-carbon-capture-with-wineries/article_34152a08-ec93-11ee-bf03-6f176695bdff.html
Supercomputer simulations predicting the synthesis pathways for the elusive
BC8 “super-diamond”, involving shock compressions of diamond precursor,
inspire ongoing Discovery Science experiments at NIF. Image by Mark
Meamber/LLNL.
… Putting the squeeze on diamond

Diamond Can Be Squeezed Into Something Even Harder. Now We Know How to Do It.

Simulations of an elusive carbon molecule that leaves diamonds in the dust
for hardness may pave the way to creating it in a lab.
Known as the eight-atom body-centered cubic (BC8) phase, the configuration is
expected to be up to 30% more resistant to compression than diamond – the
hardest known stable material on Earth.
Physicists from Lawrence Livermore ran quantum-accurate molecular-dynamics
simulations on a supercomputer to see how diamond behaved under high pressure
when temperatures rose to levels that ought to make it unstable, revealing
new clues on the conditions that could push the carbon atoms in diamond into
the unusual structure..
The BC8 phase has previously been observed here on Earth in two materials,
silicon and germanium. Extrapolating the properties of BC8 seen in those
materials has allowed scientists to determine how the phase would manifest in
carbon.
Carbon’s BC8 phase doesn’t exist on Earth, though it is thought to lurk
out in the cosmos in the high-pressure environments deep inside exoplanets.
Theory suggests it’s the hardest form of carbon that can remain stable at
pressures beyond 10 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure. If it could
be synthesized and stabilized closer to home, it would open up some amazing
research and material application possibilities.
Read More

Diamond Can Be Squeezed Into Something Even Harder. Now We Know How to Do It.

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challenges through innovative science, engineering and technology. Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory is managed by Lawrence Livermore National
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Administration.
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