Carbon capture, metal bonding, and simulation tool included among R&D 100 Awards.
It’s been a record-breaking year for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), with the federally funded research and development center taking home a full fifth of the 2025 R&D 100 Awards. That’s a new record for ORNL, which led 17 of the winning innovations as well as co-developing three others.
“These honors recognize technological advances across computing, physical sciences, energy and biology — and highlight how ORNL is strengthening the nation’s scientific leadership, security and economy through innovation,” said ORNL director Stephen Streiffer, in a press release.
You can see the full list of awards on R&D World, but there are three in particular that are worth calling out in the context of 3D printing.
1) BIPHASICS: Point-source CO2 capture with biphasic solvents
Published in Chemical Engineering Journal, this research introduced a novel approach to capturing carbon dioxide using the biphasic solvent, diethylenetriamine (DETA), enabled via 3D printing. According to the ORNL researchers, the DETA formulation significantly improves CO2 capture efficiency compared to the conventional monoethanolamine solution by reducing the energy intensity of solvent regeneration.
More specifically, the DETA solvent’s energy consumption is up to 46 percent less per mole of CO2 recovered while also needing to regenerate only 50 percent of the solvent volume, making the carbon capture process more energy efficient and cost-effective. In this application, 3D printing enabled the researchers to create a packed bed design with integrated heat-exchange capabilities, minimizing heat loss and thereby reducing the cost of CO2 capture from point sources by 30 percent versus conventional methods.
Moreover, the 3D printing process used in BIPHASICS technology is suggestive of other industrial applications, such as distillation columns in chemical processing as well as heat and mass transfer systems in petroleum refining.
2) SAM+J: Solid-state additively manufactured transition joints for extreme environment
Recently approved for a US patent, the solid-state additively manufactured transition joint (SAM+J) enables seamless bonding of dissimilar metals using a combination of 3D printing and solid-state processes. According to its creators, SAM+J was designed for use in extreme environments and eliminates weak weld interfaces, enabling joints with six times the durability of traditional alternatives.
The technology was developed at ORNL in partnership with West Virginia University, GE Vernova, Carpenter Additive, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Utilizing ORNL’s Integrated Computational Weld Engineering software, the research team was able to model and validate their design to ensure the joints met or exceeded industry requirements. The result is a practical solution for developing high-performance, multi-material joints for aerospace and power generation applications.
3) DR-Weld: A high-performance digital reality simulation tool of large-scale welding and additive manufacturing
The last award we’ll cover is for a tool to improve 3D printing rather than for an application of 3D printing technology itself, but it’s impressive nonetheless. Digital Reality Welding Simulation (DR-Weld) is designed to enabled industry-scale modeling of welding and metal additive manufacturing (AM) processes faster and with greater precision than other techniques. As anyone who’s dabbled with simulating these processes knows, there are heavy computational requirements to predicting the interactions between the thermal, mechanical, metallurgical and fluid-dynamic phenomena involved.
DR-Weld was designed to reduce the computational load of such tasks via a patented adaptive acceleration scheme, enabling it to function efficiently on GPU workstations as well as supercomputers. By reducing prototyping costs and shortening development cycles (potentially by weeks or even months), the technology’s creators aim to make advanced simulation more accessible, particularly for small and midsize manufacturers.
For more information on this year’s R&D 100 Awards, visit the R&D World website.
