Adding Light Spotlight: Argonne National Labs

The Adding Light Spotlight highlights people or organizations working to make our communities stronger, more resilient, and safer for our improved quality of life. Through the Spotlight, I hope to demonstrate that EVERYONE does not have to do EVERYTHING to make our world better as long as EVERYONE does SOMETHING.

Driving down the vestiges and remnants of Route 66 as it leaves Chicago and heads toward downstate Illinois, you might never guess that tucked within the forest preserves southwest of the city lies the birthplace of contained nuclear energy. Formed as a "safer" location for the continued experimentation of controlled nuclear reactions that Enrico Fermi started at the University of Chicago, Argonne (named for the Palos forest in which it was first situated before moving to its current Lemont/Burr Ridge home) has led the research and development of peaceful nuclear energy reactors, the development of nuclear submarines, and visualization technologies (like x-ray and ultrasound) that have impacted the lives of almost every American. Growing up on Chicago's South Side, I never knew of Argonne National Laboratory until my junior year of high school, and then, I only heard about it because my physics teacher worked there in the summers. Fermilab (ironically enough named after the researcher whose work started Argonne) always received more attention from the press for having the nation's (and during my childhood, the world's) largest particle accelerator. While Fermi and the trailblazing adventurers who worked there searched for the fundamental building blocks of all nature, the worker bees at Argonne quietly developed understanding and technologies that have changed life in our country and the world.

My wife and I recently attended the Argonne Energy Showcase, an annual event where Argonne opens its doors to the public to meet with the researchers and learn about some of their work. I must admit that although I had some basic familiarity with their work through my time at IIT, I was not aware of the breadth of research activities that go on there. Here is a sampling of the variety of technologies and strategies under development at Argonne:

Nanotechnology: Energy and Material Applications

Some of the most exciting research comes in the area of nano tech. Particles one millionth the size of an ant and tubes one one-hundreth the size of a human hair can create vilms and structures and systems capable of providing strength with less material, films to protect or enhance, or even remove pollutants from water. Some of the most interesting applications come in the field of energy. For solar cells that convert sunlight to energy, typical efficiencies (energy output for solar energy input) max out at 31%, but with some nano scale gold - which at large scale does not react with other elements but at nano scale reacts more readily - we can capture more of the non-visible spectrum of light and produce more energy with more readily available materials than current structures. Nano particles also can extend the life and efficiency of batteries by coating internal elements to prevent degradation. In the growing arena of biofuels, nano particles can mimic natural processes to produce fuels from cellulose and other sugars. All of these hold hope that we can develop energy technologies that rely more on naturally available sources of energy and reduce our need for fossil fuels. Even with some great advances, we still run up against economic concerns unless we reduce our energy demand, which leads us to...

Building Systems, Modeling, and Risk Assessment

Argonne recognizes that buildings use a significant amount of our nation's energy resources, and as such if we are to make renewable energy systems more applicable to our country, we need to use energy more efficiently. The Renewable Energy Research and Development area of Argonne work with the Department of Energy's Building Technology program and regional partners to develop measurement and verification tools, enhance building management systems, and develop building retrofit strategies to reduce demand. The Decision and Information Sciences (DIS) Division develops modeling tools and risk management strategies that improve the design of buildings and organizational approaches to resource management. The Environmental Science Division has research initiatives in air quality monitoring that hope to better identify issues to allow for more proactive management and remediation. This area shows great, immediate promise because the systems involved are easily enhanceable and applicable in the near term.

Fuel Cells and Smartgrid

These areas of research overlap because they represent the great opportunity for the modernization of our electricity generation and distribution system. As part of the DOE Hydrogen Program, researchers at Argonne are looking for the best catalysts and designs to improve the cost and efficiency of fuel cells that will complement renewable energy generation systems to provide a storage mechanism that we can use in conjunction with better battery systems. DIS also coordinates research into modeling and flow monitoring systems that can help grid operators more effectively manage electricity flow to reduce waste.

Argonne has too many other research activities to include in one article: from continued research into nuclear energy, hazardous material transport, and climate change, to photon source rays and electron microscopy. The Chicago region needs to become more familiar with the great work being done at Argonne. For its part, Argonne has become an integral part of the Illinois technology development scene, a willing and well-known partner to those in the scientific community. Take a virtual tour and see for yourself...then maybe at next year's Energy Showcase, you can see things up close.