Commercial Buildings
PNNL helps realize an ultralow-energy future for the nation’s commercial buildings.
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear-generated electricity produces benefits beyond keeping our homes warm, lights on, and cell phones charged. The federal government estimates use of carbon-free nuclear energy in America avoids some 650 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
Atmospheric Science
If Earth were the size of an apple, its atmosphere would be no thicker than the apple’s skin. What happens within that thin atmospheric layer is essential to life on the planet, from the quality of the air we breathe to the rainfall that supports agriculture and ecosystems.
Human Health
PNNL scientists specialize in the use of omics technologies, such as metabolomics, lipidomics, and genomics, to gain a closer look at activity at the molecular level.
Vehicle Technologies
At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, vehicle research is about more than how vehicles are powered—it’s also about how they’re made and used. The Lab’s vehicle technology research portfolio advances all types of vehicles—on-road, rail, maritime, aviation, and off-road—through a range of innovations, from helping manufacturers produce high-performance vehicle components using low-cost domestic materials, to optimizing the movement of goods and people around the nation, to effectively and reliably integrating vehicles with electricity and energy systems.
Friction Stir
Friction stir techniques involve the use of a spinning tool to generate intense levels of deformation and heat, transforming or joining the target material(s). For instance, the tool could be traversed across metal sheets along a joint line, causing the metals to physically mix together to be precisely joined without the use of rivets and fasteners (friction stir welding). Alternatively, the tool could be translated across the surface of a material, creating a modified region with superior properties (friction stir processing). Friction stir techniques can join dissimilar materials that cannot be joined by other methods, enabling the production of next-generation products—and they also require less energy than conventional methods, reducing costs.
Smart Advanced Manufacturing
PNNL—with a rich, successful history of materials research and development—is delving deeper into the world of materials manufacturing. Solid Phase Processing, or SPP, is an emerging approach to producing a wide range of metal and multi-material products that has the potential to decrease the energy intensity of manufacturing and deliver higher-performing components, all at a lower cost.
Cold Spray
The Smart Advanced Manufacturing (SAM) program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is using its cold spray capabilities to research alternative approaches for repairing hydropower turbines and nuclear waste tanks. With cold spray, neither melting nor material degradation occurs, and in the case of hydroelectric turbines, the blades remain in their original shape. The technology facilitates in-field repairs to large, high-value structures.
ShAPE
Typically, metal extrusion involves the use of external heat to soften or homogenize the feedstock before it is pressed through the die. By contrast, the patented, R&D 100 award–winning ShAPE technique involves the use of a shearing action at the face of the billet to locally heat and plasticize the feedstock material before it is pressed through a shaping die. ShAPE—which is capable of both direct and indirect extrusion—imparts significantly more deformation into the material than does conventional extrusion, offering a number of unique advantages.
Transportation
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is advancing transportation technologies that offer American manufacturers and consumers more choices with fewer compromises. PNNL researchers leverage innovation in a wide range of sectors to strengthen domestic transportation industries and ensure that people and goods can move safely, reliably, quickly, and affordably.