Two teams from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have won awards for excellence in technology transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium.
The FLC awards recognize laboratory employees who have accomplished outstanding work in the process of transferring a technology developed by a federal laboratory to the commercial marketplace. The ORNL recipients will be honored at an awards ceremony in May at the FLC national meeting in Nashville.
Flexible Thin-Film Solar Photovoltaics on RABiTS is a technology developed in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The Rolling Assisted Biaxially Textured Substrate, or RABiTS, technology portfolio, developed at ORNL, is a flexible metal foil that provides a platform for an entire generation of today's high-temperature superconducting materials and products. ORNL and NREL teamed to license their technologies to Ampulse Corporation, a venture-backed startup in Golden, Colorado.
The combination of RABiTS with NREL's work in depositing crystalline silicone onto various substrates offers promise in flexible, highly efficient, low-cost and durable photovoltaic materials. The ORNL team included Parans Paranthaman, Lee Heatherly, Sung-Hun Wee, Claudia Cantoni, Daniela Bogorin, Kyunghoon Kim, Fred List, Tolga Aytug, Amit Goyal, Dominic Lee, Frank Damiano and Mark Reeves.
The Laser-Induced Fluorescence Fiber-Optic Measurement of Fuel in Oil technology enables real-time measurements of the amount of fuel contamination in oil in an operating engine. Fuel contamination can thin the oil, lower its lubricating ability, and can lead to higher engine wear, increased oil consumption, and in extreme cases, engine failure.
The Fuel in Oil technology was developed under a collaborative research and development agreement project with Cummins Inc. and later licensed to Da Vinci Emissions Services. The ORNL team included James Parks, Bill Partridge and David Sims.
The FLC, which was organized in 1974, is a nationwide network of federal laboratories that provides the forum to develop strategies and opportunities for linking laboratory mission technologies and expertise with the marketplace. Today, more than 250 federal laboratories and centers and their parent departments and agencies are FLC members.
ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy's Office of Science.
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Image: http://www.ornl.gov/info/press_releases/photos/fuel_in_oil.jpg
Caption: One of ORNL's FLC-winning technologies enables real-time measurements of the amount of fuel contamination in oil in an operating engine.