Titan Probes Depths of Biofuel's Biggest Barrier
Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - 14:32
in Earth & Climate
To better understand exactly how lignin persists, researchers at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) created one of the largest biomolecular simulations to date--a 23.7-million atom system representing pretreated biomass (cellulose and lignin) in the presence of enzymes. The size of the simulation required Titan, the flagship supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, to track and analyze the interaction of millions of atoms.