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The share of global CO2 emissions deriving from the cement industry is about 5%. More than 50% of these are process-related and cannot be avoided. This paper addresses the application of CO2 capture technology to the cement industry. Analyses focusing on post-combustion technology for cement plants are carried out on the basis of detailed model calculations. Different heat supply variants for the regeneration of loaded wash solution were investigated. CO2 avoidance costs are in a range of 77 to 115 EUR/tCO2. The achievable CO2 avoidance rate for the investigated cases was determined to be 70% to 90%. CO2 reduction potentials were identified using CCS technology, focusing on the German cement industry as a case study. The results show that adopting carbon capture technology could lead to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions.

Abstract This paper presents a data-driven identification framework with the objective to retrieve a flame model from the nonlinear limit cycle. The motivation is to identify a flame model for configurations, which do not allow the determination of the flame dynamics: that is commonly for industrial applications where (i) optical access for nonintrusive measurements of velocity and heat release fluctuations are not feasible and (ii) unstable combustion is monitored via multiple pressure recordings. To demonstrate the usefulness of the method, we chose three test cases: (i) a classical Rijke tube; (ii) an experiment of a laminar flame (EM2C case), (iii) and a high-pressure, turbulent premixed flame (German Aerospace Center (DLR) case). The procedure is as follows: First, acoustic network models for the three cases are generated for which the in-house software taX is employed. Next, the acoustic network models are embedded in an optimization framework with the objective to identify flame parameters that match the experimental limit cycle data: based on the instability frequency and pressure amplitudes, we formulate physical constraints and an objective function in order to identify the flame model parameters gain nopt and time delay τopt in the nonlinear regime. We demonstrate for the three cases that the identified flame parameters reproduce the unstable combustion processes and highlight the usefulness of the method for control purposes.

AbstractThe fluid flow coupled to radiative, convective and, conductive heat transfer is computed within a solar reactor containing a reticulated porous ceramics (RPC) domain made out of ceria (cerium dioxide, CeO2). A Monte-Carlo radiation model is used in the fluid regions of the reactor with source terms outside the cavity's window to account for the concentrated radiative power input. Darcy's lawfor the viscous regime and theForchheimer's term for the inertial regime are used in the momentum equation to account for the pressure drop within the porous region (RPC). Two separate energy equations for the solid and for the fluid regions of the porous domainare solved in order to capture the non-equilibrium effects in that region. Rosseland's diffusion approximation is used in the solid regions of the RPC domain. The material properties and boundary conditions were taken frompublished experimental measurements. The simulation results are compared to the measurement data collected during the pre-heating and the ceria reduction phases, which sum up to four different radiative power inputs. Results of the comparison are good and constitute the verification that the numerical methods, physical sub-process models and material properties are adequately selected and implemented.

AbstractIn order to investigate thermochemical energy storage in larger scale, a test bench as well as a reactor containing around 20kg of reaction material has been built and brought into operation. This investigation is based on the reversible decomposition reaction of calcium hydroxide, due to its wide availability, high reaction enthalpy and promising temperature range for CSP plants. Additionally, a developed simulation tool was used to analyze the experimental results. The comparison of the discharging processes showed a good agreement but also revealed thermal losses due to the experimental setup and the operation mode of the thermochemical storage. Therefore, first operation strategies of thermal energy storages based on chemical reactions can be derived.

Abstract Reference solar irradiance spectra are needed to specify key parameters of solar technologies such as photovoltaic cell efficiency, in a comparable way. The IEC 60904-3 and ASTM G173 standards present such spectra for Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) and Global Tilted Irradiance (GTI) on a 37° tilted sun-facing surface for one set of clear-sky conditions with an air mass of 1.5 and low aerosol content. The IEC/G173 standard spectra are the widely accepted references for these purposes. Hence, the authors support the future replacement of the outdated ISO 9845 spectra with the IEC spectra within the ongoing update of this ISO standard. The use of a single reference spectrum per component of irradiance is important for clarity when comparing and rating solar devices such as PV cells. However, at some locations the average spectra can differ strongly from those defined in the IEC/G173 standards due to widely different atmospheric conditions and collector tilt angles. Therefore, additional subordinate standard spectra for other atmospheric conditions and tilt angles are of interest for a rough comparison of product performance under representative field conditions, in addition to using the main standard spectrum for product certification under standard test conditions. This simplifies the product selection for solar power systems when a fully-detailed performance analysis is not feasible (e.g. small installations). Also, the effort for a detailed yield analyses can be reduced by decreasing the number of initial product options. After appropriate testing, this contribution suggests a number of additional spectra related to eight sets of atmospheric conditions and tilt angles that are currently considered within ASTM and ISO working groups. The additional spectra, called subordinate standard spectra, are motivated by significant spectral mismatches compared to the IEC/G173 spectra (up to 6.5%, for PV at 37° tilt and 10–15% for CPV). These mismatches correspond to potential accuracy improvements for a quick estimation of the average efficiency by applying the appropriate subordinate standard spectrum instead of the IEC/G173 spectra. The applicability of these spectra for PV performance analyses is confirmed at five test sites, for which subordinate spectra could be intuitively selected based on the average atmospheric aerosol optical depth (AOD) and precipitable water vapor at those locations. The development of subordinate standard spectra for DNI and concentrating solar power (CSP) and concentrating PV (CPV) is also considered. However, it is found that many more sets of atmospheric conditions would be required to allow the intuitive selection of DNI spectra for the five test sites, due in particular to the stronger effect of AOD on DNI compared to GTI. The matrix of subordinate GTI spectra described in this paper are recommended to appear as an option in the annex of future standards, in addition to the obligatory use of the main spectrum from the ASTM G173 and IEC 60904 standards.

Abstract The first technical developments on thermochemical cycles for hydrogen production are based on the use of sulphur as a redox material. After the oil crises of the 1970s, high temperature (over 1200 K) heat from nuclear very high temperature reactors (VHTRs) was considered as a promising energy vector to produce fuels for the transport sector. The chemical reactions to convert water into hydrogen must fit to this heat source. As metal-oxide based cycles need higher temperature levels they were not taken into account at that time. The development of the sulphur cycles lost momentum during the 1980s because of cheap fossil fuels. But in the beginning of the 2000s they came back into the focus with the intention to reduce CO 2 emissions. At that time their coupling to heat from concentrated solar radiation in large scale was developed. The interest from the nuclear energy side faded again when the interest in VHTRs lost momentum. In parallel concentrated solar technologies were not implemented fast enough. The developments were mainly achieved by research institutions that concentrated more on the metal-oxide technologies. However, sulphur based cycles remain very promising because the necessary temperature is low compared to metal-oxide cycles and sulphur and sulphuric acid are amongst the most important chemical products offering a high potential of synergies with other processes. The present analysis gives an overview on recent developments and the state-of-the-art of this type of cycles, has a look on the most important performance parameters involved, and gives an outlook on further potential and necessary developments.

The radiation risk assessment for long-term space missions requires knowledge on the biological effectiveness of different space radiation components, e.g. heavy ions, on the interaction of radiation and other space environmental factors such as microgravity, and on the physical and biological dose distribution in the human body. Space experiments and ground-based experiments at heavy ion accelerators require fast and reliable test systems with an easy readout for different endpoints. In order to determine the effect of different radiation qualities on cellular proliferation and the biological depth dose distribution after heavy ion exposure, a stable human cell line expressing a novel fluorescent protein was established and characterized. tdTomato, a red fluorescent protein of the new generation with fast maturation and high fluorescence intensity, was selected as reporter of cell proliferation. Human embryonic kidney (HEK/293) cells were stably transfected with a plasmid encoding tdTomato under the control of the constitutively active cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter (ptdTomato-N1). The stably transfected cell line was named HEK-ptdTomato-N1 8. This cytotoxicity biosensor was tested by ionizing radiation (X-rays and accelerated heavy ions) exposure. As biological endpoints, the proliferation kinetics and the cell density reached 100 h after irradiation reflected by constitutive expression of the tdTomato were investigated. Both were reduced dose-dependently after radiation exposure. Finally, the cell line was used for biological weighting of heavy ions of different linear energy transfer (LET) as space-relevant radiation quality. The relative biological effectiveness of accelerated heavy ions in reducing cellular proliferation peaked at an LET of 91 keV/μm. The results of this study demonstrate that the HEK-ptdTomato-N1 reporter cell line can be used as a fast and reliable biosensor system for detection of cytotoxic damage caused by ionizing radiation.

Abstract The proper optical characterization of solar reflector materials is a challenging task. Although several commercial instruments exist to measure reflectance, they have been developed for other applications and often do not meet all the specific requirements demanded by the solar thermal industry. In particular, the characterization of solar reflectors involve the complete solar spectral wavelength range, an incidence angle range from near normal to 70° and most importantly a very narrow acceptance angle range from near specular to 20 mrad. The accurate measurement of reflectance as a function of all the previously mentioned parameters has not been commercially implemented. This paper reviews the different alternatives to measure reflector materials, describes reflectance models used to approximate the missing information and presents current research work on prototype reflectometers to fill the gap.