New research reveals link between childhood mental health problems and quality of life for young adults

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RCSI

Children with mental health issues are more likely to have poor mental and physical health in their late teens and early 20s, and are at greater risk of social isolation, low educational attainment, financial difficulties and heavy substance use. That’s according to new research led by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, which examined a wide range of data from more than 5,000 children and young adults in Ireland. 

The findings, published today in JAMA Network Open, are drawn from the ‘Growing up in Ireland’* study. The researchers from Ireland, the UK, and Australia followed trends of mental health throughout childhood (ages 9-13) for 5,141 people. 

The vast majority (72.5%) of participants whose data were analysed reported no significant mental health difficulties, but more than 1,400 individuals appeared to have some type of mental health or behavioural issue across childhood. 

“Mental health symptoms often come and go throughout childhood and adolescence, so we do not want to over-rely on symptom levels at one point in time. We decided to investigate children who had persistent reports of mental health symptoms, regardless of whether they met the criteria for an official diagnosis,” said study lead author Dr Niamh Dooley from the RCSI Department of Psychiatry.

The study looked at how these patterns of childhood mental health affected a range of outcomes in late adolescence and early 20s. The study took a broad approach to life outcomes, examining aspects such as Leaving Certificate results, social isolation and how often they used health services as young adults, poor physical health issues (e.g. obesity, sleep difficulties), heavy substance use (alcohol, smoking), and/or the young person’s general feelings of well-being. 

Importantly, the researchers also took different types of childhood symptoms into account, such as whether a child tended to internalise their symptoms (as in depression and anxiety), externalise their symptoms (as in hyperactivity and behavioural problems), or both. 

The research found that children with externalising symptoms are at increased risk of heavy substance use as young adults. Children with internalising symptoms are at the highest risk of poor physical health in their late teens and early 20s. 

“Our analysis shows that mental health problems in childhood are linked with a wide range of functional issues in adulthood, beyond the realms of mental health. And some groups were at particular risk for specific outcomes. For instance, females with persistent symptoms across childhood, particularly internalising symptoms, had very high rates of poor physical health by young adulthood,” said Dr Dooley.

The data also showed that those who had mental health issues in childhood were as likely to encounter educational/economic difficulties in young adulthood as they were to face further mental health problems. 

“Over 50% of children with mental health issues had at least one educational or economic difficulty by young adulthood, compared to around 30% of those without mental health issues in childhood,” said Dr Dooley.

The findings point to the need for better screening and treatment of mental health problems in childhood and adolescence, which may prevent problems later on in life, according to study co-author Professor Mary Cannon, who is RCSI Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Youth Mental Health. 

“Our study shows that mental health symptoms in childhood can cast a long-lasting shadow on adult life,” said Professor Cannon. “If we understand more about which children in the general population are at greatest risk of poor outcomes, it will help to inform and improve early screening and approaches to support those children.” 

Professor Cannon is a member of a working group tasked with implementing the “Sharing the Vision” mental health policy recommendations, with a particular focus on improving transition of young people from child to adult mental health services.

The study was funded by the Health Research board through an Investigator Led Project to Professor Mary Cannon.

* Growing up in Ireland was commissioned by the Irish Government and funded by the Department of Health and Children, the Department of Social and Family Affairs, and the Central Statistics Office.

ENDS

For further information:

Rosie Duffy, Communications Officer, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences 

+353 83 302 4611 | rosieduffy@rcsi.ie

About RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences

 

RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences is ranked first in the world for its contribution to UN Sustainable Development Goal 3, Good Health and Well-being, in the Times Higher Education (THE) University Impact Rankings 2023.

Exclusively focused on education and research to drive improvements in human health worldwide, RCSI is an international not-for-profit university, headquartered in Dublin. It is among the top 250 universities worldwide in the World University Rankings (2023). RCSI has been awarded Athena Swan Bronze accreditation for positive gender practice in higher education.

Founded in 1784 as the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) with national responsibility for training surgeons in Ireland, today RCSI is an innovative, world-leading international health sciences university and research institution offering education and training at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional level.

Visit the RCSI MyHealth Expert Directory to find the details of our experts across a range of healthcare issues and concerns. Recognising their responsibility to share their knowledge and discoveries to empower people with information that leads them to better health, these clinicians and researchers are willing to engage with the media in their area of expertise.

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.36520 

ARTICLE TITLE

Functional outcomes among young people with trajectories of persistent childhood psychopathology

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

29-Sep-2023

 

PPPL awarded $5 million to lead an Energy Earthshot Research Center focused on clean hydrogen

Grant and Award Announcement

DOE/PRINCETON PLASMA PHYSICS LABORATORY

 

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THE HYDROGEN SHOT ESTABLISHES A FRAMEWORK AND FOUNDATION FOR CLEAN HYDROGEN DEPLOYMENT IN THE American Jobs Plan, WHICH INCLUDES SUPPORT FOR DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS.

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CREDIT: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY / KIRAN SUDARSANAN, PPPL OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

Lessening the effects of climate change will require a variety of innovations and a lot of ingenuity. Now, a new center led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) will help these efforts by advancing the understanding of plasma-based clean hydrogen production.

PPPL was selected to lead a DOE Energy Earthshot Research Center (EERC) as part of the Hydrogen Shot™, which aims to reduce the cost of hydrogen by 80%. With funding from the DOE’s Office of Science, the EERCs support fundamental research to accelerate breakthroughs in support of the Energy Earthshots Initiative, which brings together collaborators to help achieve and advance national climate and economic competitiveness goals.

PPPL, on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, N.J., is devoted to creating new knowledge about the physics of plasmas — ultra-hot, charged gases — and to developing practical solutions for the creation of fusion energy. The Laboratory is managed by the University for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science

The award provides $5 million over four years to study the use of plasma –– the electrically charged fourth state of matter that makes up 99% of the visible universe –– to produce hydrogen, a carbon-free fuel and a common feedstock used in chemicals and materials manufacturing. Yiguang Ju, a PPPL managing principal research physicist and the Robert Porter Patterson Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University, will head the EERC at PPPL.

The center is part of the Laboratory’s efforts to diversify its research. While PPPL remains a world leader in the science and engineering behind the development of fusion, it is now using its expertise in low-temperature plasmas to advance low-carbon-emission technologies for a sustainable and competitive U.S. manufacturing industry.

Described by PPPL researchers as “electromanufacturing,” this emerging field of research investigates ways to replace the energy provided by fossil fuels with clean electricity, including using plasmas in several industrial processes. The new branch of work is housed within the larger Applied Materials and Sustainability Sciences (AMSS) directorate, which is led by Emily A. Carter, senior strategic advisor and associate laboratory director for AMSS at PPPL.

“The Energy Earthshot idea is a variation of the moonshot effort of the 1960s in that the country is mobilizing to accomplish the grand goal of producing massive quantities of clean energy,” said Carter, who is also the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment; professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and applied and computational mathematics at Princeton University.

“For 70 years, PPPL has been known as the place to go for fusion research, and we still are,” she said. “But a few years ago, PPPL scientists realized that the Lab’s expertise could also help improve many industrial processes that involve plasma. Producing hydrogen can be one of those.”

The EERC will be known as the Center for the Science of Plasma-Enhanced Hydrogen Production (PEHPr), and experiments will be conducted at both PPPL and Princeton University. The center will explore using catalysts and plasma, ultimately created with renewable electricity, to produce hydrogen –– increasing energy efficiency and reducing costs while also capturing, converting and storing carbon.

This plasma technique could replace current methods of synthesizing hydrogen molecules, which mostly rely on steam reforming of natural gas, which emits large amounts of carbon dioxide. “You can get higher temperatures from the hot electrons in a plasma than from today’s technique of burning methane,” Ju said. “That allows us to produce hydrogen more efficiently and for a lower cost without producing carbon emissions.”

The work could lead to a paradigm shift in clean hydrogen production.

Part of the center’s efforts will also include educating the public about their findings and attracting new researchers to the field. “We have a great team, and we’re excited for this opportunity to work on such a significant project. We plan to work on encouraging high school and college students to apply for hydrogen-related summer internships to help train the world’s future leaders in green energy production,” Ju said. “We will also organize workshops and summer schools to disseminate our findings to industry and the public.”

If the DOE’s Hydrogen Shot™ goals are achieved, scenarios show the opportunity for at least a five-fold increase in clean hydrogen use. A U.S. industry estimate shows the potential for 16% carbon dioxide emission reduction by 2050 as well as $140 billion in revenues and 700,000 jobs by 2030. Achieving the Hydrogen Shot™’s 80% cost reduction goal could also unlock new markets for hydrogen, including steel manufacturing, clean ammonia, energy storage, and heavy-duty trucks.

In addition to the Hydrogen Shot™, PPPL will receive $1 million to collaborate with another EERC led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This center will be part of the larger Industrial Heat Shot™, which focuses on using clean electricity instead of fossil fuels to produce the heat needed for many industrial processes.

The other Energy Earthshots include the Long Duration Storage Shot™, the Carbon Negative Shot™, the Enhanced Geothermal Shot™, the Floating Offshore Wind Shot™, and the Clean Fuels & Products Shot™.   

PPPL, on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, N.J., is devoted to creating new knowledge about the physics of plasmas — ultra-hot, charged gases — and to developing practical solutions for the creation of fusion energy. The Laboratory is managed by the University for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science

 

Novel battery technology with negligible voltage decay developed at CityU, a world’s first

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR REN YANG (RIGHT), PROFESSOR LIU QI OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS AND THEIR TEAM HAVE ACHIEVED PIVOTAL BREAKTHROUGH IN BATTERY TECHNOLOGY. view more 

CREDIT: CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

A pivotal breakthrough in battery technology that has profound implications for our energy future has been achieved by a joint-research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU).

The new development overcomes the persistent challenge of voltage decay and can lead to significantly higher energy storage capacity.

Lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) are widely used in electronic devices, while lithium-(Li) and manganese-rich (LMR) layered oxides are a promising class of cathodes for LiBs due to their high capacity and low cost. However, the long-standing problem of voltage decay hinders their application.

Professor Ren Yang, Head and Chair Professor of the Department of Physics (PHY), Professor Liu Qi, PHY, and their team have addressed the issue by unlocking the potential of LMR cathode materials. In their research, they stabilised the unique honeycomb-like structure within the cathode material, resulting in longer-lasting and more efficient batteries. Their insights are likely to transform the way we power our devices and are set to take the development of high-energy cathode materials to the next stage.

This research was recently published in Nature Energy titled “A Li-rich layered oxide cathode with negligible voltage decay”. 

The team’s innovative approach focused on stabilising the honeycomb structure at the atomic level. By incorporating additional transition metal ions into the cathode material, the team reinforced the honeycomb structure, resulting in a negligible voltage decay of only 0.02 mV per cycle, the first time that LMR cathode material with such a low level of voltage decay has been reported. 

Through advanced atomic-scale measurements and calculations, the team found that these interlayer transition metal ions act as a “cap” above or below the honeycomb structure, preventing cation migration and maintaining stability. The structure remained intact even at high cut-off voltages and throughout cycling, ensuring the batteries’ structural integrity.

“Our work has solved the voltage decay problem in the LMR cathode, with a capacity almost two times higher than the widely used cathode materials, ultimately paving the way for more powerful and sustainable energy storage solutions,” said Professor Liu.

These findings hold great potential for various applications, from powering electric vehicles to portable electronics. The next step involves scaling up the manufacturing process for large-scale battery production. 

The paper's first authors are Dr Luo Dong, Postdoc, Yin Zijia, PhD student from CityU PHY, Dr Zhu He from Nanjing University of Science and Technology (former Postdoc from CityU PHY), and Dr Xia Yi from Northwestern University/Portland State University, US. The corresponding authors are Professor Ren, Professor Liu, Professor Lu Wenquan from Argonne National Laboratory, US, and Professor Christopher M. Wolverton from Northwestern University. Other collaborators include researchers from the Chinese Academy of Science, Tsinghua University and Lanzhou University.

https://www.cityu.edu.hk/research/stories/2023/09/27/novel-battery-technology-negligible-voltage-decay-developed-cityu-worlds-first

The team develops novel battery technology with negligible voltage decay, resulting in longer-lasting and more efficient batteries which hold great potential for various applications.

CREDIT

City University of Hong Kon

JOURNAL

Nature Energy

DOI

10.1038/s41560-023-01289-6 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A Li-rich layered oxide cathode with negligible voltage decay

 

NPS team makes key breakthrough on path to electric aircraft propulsion

Business Announcement

NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

 

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NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DR. DI ZHANG LED A TEAM OF NPS STUDENTS TO CREATE AND SUCCESSFULLY TEST A CIRCUIT BREAKER THAT COULD SUPPORT LARGE ELECTRIC PLATFORMS RUNNING ON DIRECT CURRENT ELECTRICITY – A BREAKTHROUGH IN THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRIC AIRCRAFT PROPULSION.

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CREDIT: JAVIER CHAGOYA, NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

As an institution renowned for innovation efforts grounded in education and research, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has often been called upon to tackle some of the most difficult technological challenges facing the Navy and the nation.

Such a challenge emerged in 2020, when NASA charged NPS and two other research teams with solving a critical barrier facing the development of electric aircraft propulsion (EAP): the creation of a circuit breaker that could support large electric platforms running on direct current (DC) electricity. Thanks to the efforts of a diverse team of faculty and students, as well as several Navy and academic research partners, NPS delivered an innovative working prototype.

This past March, the successful test of the “Navy High Speed Solid-State Fault Management System for Electric Aircraft Propulsion” confirmed the breakthrough results. The NPS-led design was able to provide a viable DC circuit breaker to NASA, pushing the project development forward to Level 6 on the Technology Readiness Level scale – a 9-level measurement system used to assess the maturity of a particular technology.

The effort to research and design the DC circuit breaker for EAP was led by Dr. Di Zhang, NPS Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, along with a team of NPS students. Zhang, who came to NPS in 2019 after working on electric power converter designs with General Electric’s Global Research Center, is widely considered one of the nation’s leading experts on large electric vehicles.

As a result of his team’s work, Zhang was awarded a $750,000 research grant by NASA to continue his research with a goal to refine the weight and performance of the team’s initial breaker design.

The breakthrough achieved at NPS could be a critical step in the development of EAP, one of many emerging technologies receiving increased attention due to the emphasis placed by the Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, on accelerating innovation throughout the Department of the Navy.

“We are indeed in an innovation race — and it is one we must win,” said Del Toro during remarks at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 28. “Innovation must permeate every aspect of our Department’s approach to the delivery of the technologies and capabilities at a speed and scale necessary for our Navy and Marine Corps to confront the challenges of today and the future.”

NPS will play a significant role in supporting the development of EAP technology and other relevant innovation efforts following the establishment of the Naval Innovation Center (NIC) at NPS. First announced in December 2022, the NIC will leverage NPS education and research to drive “ideas to impact,” bringing research concepts out of the lab and into the field faster by empowering students, faculty and partners across the entire Naval Research & Development Establishment (NR&DE) to work with the naval innovation ecosystem and industry.

Accelerated innovation for technologies such as EAP is also facilitated through the Secretary of the Navy’s “Climate Action 2030” policy, which prioritizes the development of systems that are not dependent on fossil fuels, expanding the use of renewable energy and electric propulsion.

In addition to supporting Climate Action 2030 and similar policy goals, EAP can also enable numerous new design freedoms and functions, leading to lower energy consumption and higher propulsion efficiency. And, of course, the noise signature of combustion engines could be all but eliminated utilizing EAP, enhancing stealth capabilities of future systems.

“Electric propulsion technology is crucial for future Navy capabilities, offering enhanced design flexibility, supporting power-intensive advanced systems, and ensuring stealth, efficiency, and adaptability in evolving naval environments,” said Zhang. “The technology's integration also paves the way for the adoption of emerging energy sources, solidifying the Navy's technological edge.”

Zhang and his NPS student team were joined in their research efforts by partners from Virginia Tech, Clemson University and the University of Connecticut, and received engineering support from Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) in China Lake, Calif., and the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Philadelphia division.

According to Zhang, one of the fundamental questions when looking at utilizing electric power is the distinction between products that run on direct current and alternating current (AC).

“A hundred years ago, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison had a battle over the advantages of AC versus DC electric power. Tesla won, and now much of what we use and see is running on AC power,” said Zhang.

There are certain advantages to using AC electricity, he says. AC generators are the primary source of electric power, which are driven by steam, nuclear, or other power sources. AC can be transmitted across great distances and is also easily changed to different voltage levels through the use of transformers that can step voltage up and down. As its name implies, AC has an alternating current that runs in a sinusoidal pattern; this makes AC electricity relatively safe and easy to interrupt with a circuit breaker as the waveform naturally crosses zero.

Direct current has its own advantages that are rising in importance as technology looks to the future. DC systems require less cabling and can be smaller and lighter than AC systems, as well as more power efficient. Clean sources of energy – like wind and solar – store power in photovoltaic grids and batteries which are inherently DC compatible. Electric cars that use DC power are also able to use regenerative braking to return energy to their batteries, and they are run in a compact space that does not require long distance transmission.

“The trend we’re seeing in energy industries and in electric vehicles is this switch to DC, and that’s why it is so important to look towards this electric aircraft design,” explained Zhang. “With DC, we can make a design lighter and smaller with the same power which is critical for aviation and Navy applications. The target for this DC breaker design is to get the same amount of power while cutting the weight to one tenth of what’s been developed.”

One thing that doesn’t get smaller and lighter with DC systems is the circuit breaker. The challenge that NASA posed to NPS was to create a circuit breaker that could shut down an electric aircraft running at maximum power in a safe, simple – and size-efficient – way.

“Think of electricity flowing like water through a pipe. A circuit breaker is the tool you need to shut that water off. With DC, high amounts of current and voltage equate to a huge flow of water that is hard to shut down quickly,” explained U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Michael Smith, an NPS electrical engineering graduate. “That quick change from a high to low voltage, or high to low current, creates an electromagnetic field that can interfere with other electric systems.”

Capt. Smith is one of five NPS students who worked on the project with Zhang. Since his graduation in September 2022, he now applies his degree as an Expeditionary Energy Officer for the Marines. His master’s thesis focused on testing circuit boards to ensure they could withstand the electromagnetic interference of a large-scale DC circuit breaker, and he was able to successfully identify manufactured circuit boards that would function under the required conditions.

“The trick to reaching industry standards is in the balance,” said Zhang. “You need to design something new, but not too new or it is unproven and risky. You cannot only be innovative; you must also be practical. So, we had three years during a global pandemic, which hindered manufacturing and access to technology, to produce a result that is as safe and simple as possible.”

In spite of those challenges, the team was able to successfully meet the deadline. While Zhang is pleased with the achievement of his students and the positive feedback from NASA, he is far from done with this research.

“I’m very proud of the students that I’ve worked with who have shown great ability with hands-on research,” said Zhang. “I’m also proud of my team and colleagues here at NPS who have such strong industry experience and perspective towards electrical engineering. It’s with this perspective that we’re able to deliver something so practical, useful, and impactful.”

NPS Vice Provost for Research Dr. Kevin Smith complimented Zhang and his research team, noting the achievement as an exemplar of how basic and applied research at NPS leads to relevant technology solutions.

“Di Zhang’s accomplishment is a great example of how our faculty lead interdisciplinary research at NPS, leveraging our students’ operational insight and our innovation ecosystem of academic and industry partners to solve problems and drive concepts to capability,” said Dr. Smith.

Berkeley Lab awarded two new centers to counter climate change

The programs will advance clean hydrogen and carbon sequestration technologies as part of DOE’s Energy Earthshots Initiative

Business Announcement

DOE/LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

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THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY HAS ANNOUNCED THAT BERKELEY LAB WILL LEAD TWO ENERGY EARTHSHOT RESEARCH CENTERS.

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CREDIT: DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will host two new centers dedicated to advancing clean energy technology and combating climate change. The awards are part of DOE’s Energy Earthshots Initiative that launched in 2021 with the goal of speeding up technological breakthroughs and lowering costs. 

DOE has so far launched seven Earthshots spanning clean energy and carbon reduction technologies. The Berkeley Lab programs announced today will address two of them: the Hydrogen Shot and the Carbon Negative Shot. Each of the new Energy Earthshot Research Centers will receive $19 million over the next four years. 

The Hydrogen Shot aims to reduce the cost of hydrogen to $1 per kilogram of hydrogen (H2) in one decade. Switching from fossil fuels to clean hydrogen will reduce the emissions that cause climate change and local air pollution, and lowering hydrogen’s cost will open the door to use in new areas – including long-duration energy storage, manufacturing, and heavy-duty trucks and buses. But lowering future emissions is not enough to combat greenhouse gases already warming our atmosphere and exacerbating extreme weather events. The Carbon Negative Shot aims to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it at large scales for less than $100 per metric ton.

“Our Energy Earthshots are game-changing endeavors to unleash the technologies of the clean energy transition and make them accessible, affordable, and abundant,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The Energy Earthshot Research Centers and the related work happening on college campuses around the country will be instrumental in developing the clean energy and decarbonization solutions we need to establish a 100% clean grid and beat climate change.”

Hydrogen Shot: Center for Ionomer-based Water Electrolysis (CIWE)

Berkeley Lab’s Center for Ionomer-based Water Electrolysis (CIWE) will investigate how to improve efficiency and drive down the cost of a process to make hydrogen: “water-splitting electrolysis.”

This kind of electrolysis runs electricity through electrodes to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The setups for this process often incorporate materials called “ionomers” – polymers that move charged particles (ions) and speed up the reactions that produce hydrogen. But the way these ionomers interact with other electrolyzer components isn't yet well understood, and even subtle changes can cause big swings in how the materials and the electrolyzer behave.

CIWE researchers will use both physical systems and virtual “digital twins” to study these materials and their interfaces. With these approaches, they can closely examine the chemistry, structure, and reactions, greatly expanding the amount of available data for these complex interactions. With that information in hand, researchers aim to develop, optimize, and test new materials and processes in real-world devices. 

“Our goal is to understand what’s happening at the small scale so we can create durable, efficient, and cost-effective hydrogen technologies,” said Adam Weber, the director of CIWE. “If we can boost the use of clean hydrogen, we can slow down climate change and dramatically improve air quality.”

Partners in the center are Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Colorado School of Mines, Texas Tech University, University of Oregon, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and UC Merced. 

Carbon Negative Shot: RESTOR-C: Center for Restoration of Soil Carbon by Precision Biological Strategies

Berkeley Lab’s RESTOR-C will cultivate ways for plants and microbes to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stably store it for more than 100 years in the soil.  

The multi-disciplinary team will span biology, ecology, chemistry, and computer sciences. Researchers will study how carbon is fixed by plants and channeled into the soil, and test plant- and microbe-based strategies at field sites in California and New Mexico. Finally, the center will evaluate how to spread and scale the approaches to additional locations and crops. 

“We know that the soil is a vast potential reservoir to store carbon pulled out of our warming atmosphere by plants,” said Susannah Tringe, the director of RESTOR-C. “With the right method, we can potentially accumulate carbon in agricultural lands across the United States and move toward a carbon negative future.”

Partners in the center are Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico State University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, and California State University Monterey Bay.

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Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab’s facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

 

Department of Energy funds new center for decarbonization of steelmaking

Reimagining the steel production process

Grant and Award Announcement

DOE/ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: 

ELECTROCHEMICAL DISCOVERY LABORATORY AT ARGONNE. FAR RIGHT: DIRECTOR BRIAN INGRAM; LEFT TO RIGHT: DEPUTY DIRECTORS JUSTIN CONNELL, RAJEEV SURENDRAN ASSARY AND KRISTA HAWTHORNE.

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CREDIT: (IMAGE BY ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY.)

Center to develop cost-effective method for decarbonized manufacturing for steelmaking without a blast furnace.

Steel has a major impact on everyone’s lives and our economy. It is crucial to cars, trucks, airplanes, buildings and more. However, there is a significant issue with its production process. Globally, it accounts for a large percentage of greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial sector.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced $19 million in funding over four years for DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory to lead the multi-institutional Center for Steel Electrification by Electrosynthesis (C-STEEL). The center’s charge is to develop an innovative and low-cost process that would replace blast furnaces in steelmaking and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85%.

“It’s a big target that has a high reward if successful,” said Brian Ingram, the C-STEEL director and an Argonne group leader and materials scientist.

C-STEEL is a key project of the DOE’s Industrial Heat Energy Earthshot initiative, which aims to significantly cut emissions from the energy-intensive process of industrial heating. Partners in the center include Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Case Western Reserve University, Northern Illinois University, Purdue University Northwest and the University of Illinois Chicago.

“While current steelmaking requires intense heat from blast furnaces, our electrodeposition process will need low or even no heat input at all.” — Brian Ingram, C-STEEL director and an Argonne group leader and materials scientist

The most energy-intensive step in steel production involves converting iron ore into purified iron metal or iron alloys using blast furnaces. This demands temperatures of 2500 to 2700 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than an erupting volcano. The center’s target is to develop a process that will essentially eliminate that heat demand, achieving an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.

“While current steelmaking requires intense heat from blast furnaces, our electrodeposition process will need low or even no heat input at all,” Ingram said. ​“It will also be cost efficient and adaptable to industrial-scale operations.”

The electrodeposition process involves dissolving iron ore in a solution and using electricity to initiate a reaction that deposits a useable iron metal or alloy for steelmaking. The solution is a liquid electrolyte similar to those found in batteries.

“We will be building upon the immense knowledge base we gained about different battery electrolytes from the work done by the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, led by Argonne,” Ingram said.

The project has three thrusts. Two of them will investigate different processes for electrodeposition. One process will operate at room temperature using water-based electrolytes. The other will use a salt-based electrolyte and will function at temperatures 1800 to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit below current blast furnaces. The energy for this process is low enough that it could be provided by renewables or waste heat from a nuclear reactor.

A third thrust will focus on gaining an atomic-level understanding of each process. The goal of this thrust is to exert precise control over both the structure and composition of the metal products so that they can be incorporated into existing downstream processes of steelmaking.

Each thrust will incorporate an artificial intelligence-based platform to ensure a unified approach to electrolyte design. To that end, C-STEEL will be drawing upon the world-class computational resources of two Leadership Computing Facilities, one at Argonne and the other at Oak Ridge. Both are DOE Office of Science user facilities.

C-STEEL will also take advantage of the materials characterization capabilities of two other DOE user facilities at Argonne, the Advanced Photon Source and the Center for Nanoscale Materials.

“Another key part of the center is that one of the partner universities is a minority-serving institution, the University of Illinois Chicago,” said Ingram. ​“Through their participation and other actions, we will be forming a diverse team to contribute to our research efforts.” C-STEEL also plans to implement outreach initiatives, mentorship programs and career development opportunities for students and postdocs to excite the next generation of scientists.

This research is being funded by the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences and the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Research program.

About Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials
The Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit https://​sci​ence​.osti​.gov/​U​s​e​r​-​F​a​c​i​l​i​t​i​e​s​/​U​s​e​r​-​F​a​c​i​l​i​t​i​e​s​-​a​t​-​a​-​G​lance.

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility provides supercomputing capabilities to the scientific and engineering community to advance fundamental discovery and understanding in a broad range of disciplines. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, the ALCF is one of two DOE Leadership Computing Facilities in the nation dedicated to open science.

About the Advanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

 

Ball milling provides high pressure benefits to battery materials

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

Cheaper, more efficient lithium-ion batteries could be produced by harnessing previously overlooked high pressures generated during the manufacturing process.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham have discovered that routine ball milling can cause high pressure effects on battery materials in just a matter of minutes, providing a vital additional variable in the process of synthesizing battery materials.

The research (part of the Faraday Institution funded CATMAT project), led by Dr Laura Driscoll, Dr Elizabeth Driscoll and Professor Peter Slater at the University of Birmingham is published in RSC Energy Environmental Science.

The use of ball milling has been a huge area of growth in the lithium-ion battery space to make next generation materials. The process is simple and consists of milling powder compounds with small balls that mix and make the particles smaller, creating high-capacity electrode materials and leading to better performing batteries.

Previous studies had led experts to believe that the synthesis of these materials was caused by localised heating generated in the milling process. But now researchers have found that dynamic impacts from the milling balls colliding with the battery materials create a pressure effect which plays an important role in causing the changes.

Peter Slater, Professor of Materials Chemistry and Co-Director of the Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage at the University of Birmingham, said: “This discovery was almost an accident. We ball milled lithium molybdate as a model system to explore oxygen redox in batteries, and noticed that there was a phase transformation to the high-pressure spinel polymorph, a specific crystal structure that has only previously been made under high-pressure conditions.

“Local heating alone could not explain this transformation. To test this theory, we then ball milled three other battery materials and our findings from these milling experiments reinforced our conclusion that local heating could not be the only reason for these changes.”

The researchers also found that applying heat would cause some compounds to return to their pre-milled state, signifying that an additional variable was at play in the original synthesis: pressure being key.

As an example, production of the high-pressure spinel polymorph of Li2MoO4 was only previously achieved in a high temperature and high-pressure chamber under a pressure more than 10,000 times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere. The new research shows, however, that just a few minutes of ball milling can have the same effect.

Co-author Dr Elizabeth Driscoll said: “This discovery provides the opportunity to develop cheaper, more energy efficient processes for battery manufacturers, and also to explore avenues for new materials.  We found similar results, for example, when we ball milled disordered rocksalt phases which could be the key to producing better performing batteries.

“This improved understanding of the effect of ball milling on battery materials is incredibly exciting for researchers in this space, but also for the future of battery development as we were able to show that from five minutes of ball milling we could achieve the transformations that would usually require energy intensive and specialist equipment.

“As we move towards an increasingly electric future in order to limit pollution and reach net zero, it is vital that we continue to expand our knowledge and understanding of battery technology, so we can create the most efficient batteries possible. Our findings open the door to a world of new possibilities and discoveries and will hopefully play a part in a greener future for us all.”

ENDS

For more information please contact Tony Moran, International Communications Manager, University of Birmingham at t.moran@bham.ac.uk  or alternatively on +44 (0)7827 832312. You can also contact the Press Office out of hours on +44 (0)121 414 2772.

Notes to editors

• The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 8,000 international students from over 150 countries.
• 'Under Pressure: Offering Fundamental Insight into Structural Changes on Ball Milling Battery Materials' - Laura L. Driscoll, Elizabeth H. Driscoll, Bo Dong, Farheen N. Sayed, Jacob N. Wilson, Christopher A. O’Keefe, Clare P. Grey, Phoebe K. Allan, Adam M. L. Michalchuk, and Peter R. Slater.

 

 

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Under Pressure: Offering Fundamental Insight into Structural Changes on Ball Milling Battery Materials