Researchers from PNNL have been assessing installation and use of electric heat pumps in an Alaskan community that relies on fuel oil for heat. The resulting information could advance electrification in cold rural areas across the nation.
Mandy Mahoney, director of the DOE Building Technologies Office, visited PNNL in late November. One key agenda item involved meeting with staff for a discussion of effective equity and justice integration in buildings-related research.
PNNL is at the midpoint of a study focused on the installation of electric heat pump water heaters in New Orleans homes. The efficient water heaters offer a unique capability that could help speed the transition from fossil fuels.
For her most recent efforts, Bruckner-Lea, a senior technical advisor at PNNL, received the Secretary’s Appreciation Award from the U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in July.
PNNL’s extensive portfolio of buildings-grid research included three projects that helped answer some of the technical questions related to leveraging energy consumption in buildings to enhance grid operations.
PNNL receives a 2023 Federal Laboratory Consortium Far West Regional Award for a technological innovation that could help make the U.S. a producer of critical minerals used in electronics and energy production.
The Northwest Connected Communities Summit brought together representatives of five Department of Energy-funded Connected Communities Projects to share ideas and discuss potential collaboration opportunities.
A PNNL innovation uses steam to recover heat from the high-temperature reactor effluent in the HTL process, substantially reducing the propensity for fouling and potentially reducing costs.
Staff at PNNL recently completed a report highlighting commercial products enabled through projects funded by the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office.
PNNL’s Ján Drgoňa and Draguna Vrabie are part of an international team that authored a most-cited paper on Model Predictive Control, an approach for improving operations, energy efficiency, and comfort in buildings.
PNNL’s Reid Hart and Bing Liu have earned individual Champions of Energy Efficiency in Buildings awards from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
Plastic upcycling efficiently converts plastics to valuable commodity chemicals while using less of the precious metal ruthenium. The method could recycle waste plastic pollution into useful products, helping keep it out of landfills.
A PNNL study has shown the nation’s wastewater resource recovery facilities could generate revenue by converting sludge into biofuel—while significantly reducing disposal costs—using an in-house-developed technology.
