In pre-pandemic days, the Office of Research and Engagement launched Coffee and Convergence, a series of casual gatherings focused on the University of Tennessee’s strategic areas of emphasis. Tom Zawodzinski, the UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair Professor for Electrical Energy Conversion and Storage, was among the first to participate, and he said the event helped him build new collaborations. Continue reading
The US Department of Energy has chosen a project led by UT–Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair for Electrical Energy Conversion and Storage Thomas Zawodzinski as one of 10 recipients of Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) grants.
The grants are part of the agency’s focus on research that can provide a minimum of 100 hours of power to the grid as part of its Duration Addition to electricitY Storage (DAYS) program.
For his part, Zawodzinski’s team is taking a new approach to an old problem—efficiency—by changing a critical reaction.
“It has long been a goal to make a regenerative fuel cell, a single device that functions as both a fuel cell and an electrolyzer,” Zawodzinski said. “However, such devices have previously suffered from poor overall efficiency. The new project uses an alternative approach by changing one of the chemical reactions in the cell and bypassing the efficiency bottleneck.” Continue reading
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