Other Awards and Honors
1999 Discover Magazine Awards
Winner - Transportation Category - Micro-Plasmatron Fuel Converter
Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation were presented by the Christopher Columbus Foundation "to recognize the all-too-often neglected men and women behind the technologies that impact our lives."
Daniel Cohn of MIT and colleagues, including Jud Virden at PNNL, shared the winning award for developing the world's smallest oil refinery. The plasmatron looks a little like a fat spark plug, and it can use anything that burns as fuel to produce electricity that turns the fuel and surrounding air into plasma, a hot collection of charged atoms and electrons. The end product is a hydrogen-rich gas that burns far more cleanly than gasoline.