Radu Custelcean, an organic chemist at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is working with colleagues to develop an energy-efficient and sustainable method for scrubbing carbon dioxide directly from the air so that it can be stored underground or converted into useful products such as ethanol, which can be used to make products ranging from fuel to hand sanitizer. The technology won an R&D 100 Award and is currently being licensed to private companies including Holocene and Reactwell.