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Thermodynamic cycles requiring high operating temperatures (≥750 °C up to 1200 °C) are currently being explored to improve the sun-to-electricity conversion efficiency of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants. This is calling for the design of new efficient high-temperature (≥750 °C) Thermochemical Energy Storage (TCES) systems, which are fundamental for supplying power on demand during off-sun periods. Recently, Fe-doped CaMnO3 oxides have been proposed as TCES candidate materials, and the determination of their thermodynamics properties via thermogravimetric (TG) analysis allowed evaluation of their heat storage capacity at a very small scale (mg scale). A 10 % Fe-doped CaMnO3 composition (CaMn0.9Fe0.1O3-δ – CMF91) emerged as optimum candidate material for TCES application due to its large heat storage capacity complemented by enhanced thermal stability over multiple oxidation/reduction cycles. To advance in the thermal characterization of these materials at a multigram scale, here we carried out bench-scale reactor tests using CMF91 under conditions considered representative of future CSP plants. The redox-active material has been extruded in the form of porous pellets through a simple production method that required the use of carboxymethylcellulose as a removable binder and water. With the bench-scale reactor tests, the CMF91 pellets showed fully reversible reduction-oxidation in cycles between 500 and 1100 °C under relevant operating pO2 conditions without any deterioration of the pellet's structural integrity. Remarkably, the material exhibited the same δ(T, pO2) profile at this significantly larger scale (~40 g) than the one derived from thermodynamics. Nevertheless, slight differences in oxygen release/uptake profiles between cooling and heating branches can be tracked down to an excess heat generation in the perovskite bed not efficiently extracted by the carrier gas. These results demonstrate that CMF91 oxide is ideally suited for thermal energy storage applications with a large total (thermochemical and sensible) heat storage capacity (~ 916 kJ/kgABO3 or ~ 400 kWh/m3) and good scalability. © 2022 This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska- Curie grant agreement N◦ 74616. Support of the ACES2030-CM from “Comunidad de Madrid” and European Structural Funds to (P2018/EMT-4319), and the Spanish “Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad” through Research Challenges project ARROPAR-CEX (ENE2015-71254-C3-1-R) are also fully acknowledged. M. S´anchez is grateful to Spanish “Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad” by funding through internship FPI (BES-2016-077031). It is greatly acknowledged the Technical Research Support Unit of the Institute of Catalysis and Petroleum Chemistry (ICP-CSIC). The authors fully appreciate the advice provided by Prof. Pedro Avila and Dr. Raquel Portela from the SpeICat group of ICP-CSIC, about the procedure for pellets preparation. Supporting Information Peer reviewed

This work has been developed under the AGROinLOG Project, “Demonstration of innovative integrated biomass logistics centres for the Agro-industry sector in Europe”. An Integrated Biomass Logistics Center (IBLC), is based on the introduction of new production chains into existing agro-industries by using new biomass feedstock. The AGROinLOG Project has dedicated great attention to investigate the potential of cereal chaff as a valuable resource.Chaff is the fine fraction of the thrashing residues, not usually collected. Chaff is made up of glumes, seed husks, rachis and the tinner part of the cereal stems, whole and cracked kernels, as well as weed seeds.Currently there are several mechanical solutions available on the market for chaff recovery, and others are still at prototype stage, but theyare not so common and very often unknown to the farmers.So far, the literature reportsfew cases of chaff collection with the specific purpose of weed seeds removal, but it still lacks specificexperiments on these machinesintentionally used for biomass collection.For this reason, during the Project AGROinLOG a series of large field tests were performed using an independent scientific approach with different kind of chaff harvesting technologiesin France, Sweden and Italy from 2017 to 2019.The present study collects the results of these activities with the aim to fill that gap and provide deeper understanding in the possibility to enhance the current cereal harvesting method, in order to improve the quantity of biomass collected by including the chaff. Proceedings of the 29th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 26-29 April 2021, Online, pp. 62-68

Sustainable food supply has gained considerable consumer concern due to the high percentage of spoilage microorganisms. Food industries need to expand advanced technologies that can maintain the nutritive content of foods, enhance the bio-availability of bioactive compounds, provide environmental and economic sustainability, and fulfill consumers’ requirements of sensory characteristics. Heat treatment negatively affects food samples’ nutritional and sensory properties as bioactives are sensitive to high-temperature processing. The need arises for non-thermal processes to reduce food losses, and sustainable developments in preservation, nutritional security, and food safety are crucial parameters for the upcoming era. Non-thermal processes have been successfully approved because they increase food quality, reduce water utilization, decrease emissions, improve energy efficiency, assure clean labeling, and utilize by-products from waste food. These processes include pulsed electric field (PEF), sonication, high-pressure processing (HPP), cold plasma, and pulsed light. This review describes the use of HPP in various processes for sustainable food processing. The influence of this technique on microbial, physicochemical, and nutritional properties of foods for sustainable food supply is discussed. This approach also emphasizes the limitations of this emerging technique. HPP has been successfully analyzed to meet the global requirements. A limited global food source must have a balanced approach to the raw content, water, energy, and nutrient content. HPP showed positive results in reducing microbial spoilage and, at the same time, retains the nutritional value. HPP technology meets the essential requirements for sustainable and clean labeled food production. It requires limited resources to produce nutritionally suitable foods for consumers’ health.

Spain has a high level of energy consumption and CO2 emissions in detached houses, being the lack of an adequate insulation level and efficient energy systems the main causes. The Spanish Government has been performing modifications on its Building Technical Code (BTC) to address this issue, following European Directives. An assessment of the development of the Spanish BTC from its first 2006 version has been conducted in this work. A standard Spanish detached house was placed in the different Spanish climatic zones, designed with the minimum requirements of the 2006 and 2013 BTCs, and was then analyzed using the software Cerma. The results show that energy demand is reduced and the energy rating is improved with the stricter requirements introduced in the 2013 BTC. Although energy demand and CO2 emissions vary significantly among the 13 different climatic zones studied, the BTC modifications allow to reach a minimum energy rating independently of the climatic zone where the house is located. Opaque enclosures and internal loads were found to be the main contributors to building-related emissions. Additionally, possible actions to improve energy rating in detached houses are evaluated, finding that a moderate insulation thickness increase and the installation of heat pumps allow to reach the highest energy rating, being the improvement more apparent in northern and central regions. The results of this work may be extrapolated to other countries with similar climatic conditions to the studied zones, providing guidelines to fulfill energy saving regulations, evaluate emission sources and improve building energy efficiency.

This paper presents the application of isogeometric analysis (IGA) to the spatial discretisation of the multi-group, self-adjoint angular flux (SAAF) form of the neutron transport equation with a discrete ordinate (SN) angular discretisation. The IGA spatial discretisation is based upon non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) basis functions for both the test and trial functions. In addition a source iteration compatible maximum principle is used to derive the IGA spatially discretised SAAF equation. It is demonstrated that this maximum principle is mathematically equivalent to the weak form of the SAAF equation. The rate of convergence of the IGA spatial discretisation of the SAAF equation is analysed using a method of manufactured solutions (MMS) verification test case. The results of several nuclear reactor physics verification benchmark test cases are analysed. This analysis demonstrates that for higher-order basis functions, and for the same number of degrees of freedom, the FE based spatial discretisation methods are numerically less accurate than IGA methods. The difference in numerical accuracy between the IGA and FE methods is shown to be because of the higher-order continuity of NURBS basis functions within a NURBS patch as well as the preservation of both the volume and surface area throughout the solution domain within the IGA spatial discretisation. Finally, the numerical results of applying the IGA SAAF method to the OECD/NEA, seven-group, two-dimensional C5G7 quarter core nuclear reactor physics verification benchmark test case are presented. The results, from this verification benchmark test case, are shown to be in good agreement with solutions of the first-order form as well as the second-order even-parity form of the neutron transport equation for the same order of discrete ordinate (SN) angular approximation. Funding was provided by the following grants: EPSRC impact acceleration award grant reference number: EP/R511547/1, Adaptive Hierarchical Radiation Transport Methods to Meet Future Challenges in Reactor Physics (EPSRC Grant No.: EP/ J002011/1), RADIANT: A Parallel, Scalable, High Performance Radiation Transport Modelling and Simulation Framework for Reactor Physics, Nuclear Criticality Safety Assessment and Radiation Shielding Analyses (EPSRC Grant No.: EP/K503733/1)

To fulfill the ever-increasing power demands of deep space exploration, the output performance of radioisotope thermoelectric generators, the only accessible power source, must be enhanced in several aspects, including thermoelectric properties of materials, geometry, welding, etc. In this study, we present our results on the development of a novel thermoelectric slurry suitable for the 3D printing of thermoelectric generators with optimized leg geometry. The rheological properties of the slurry are optimized by combining proper amounts of organic solvent, binder, and bismuth telluride-based thermoelectric powder. The addition of Cu to the slurry as a conductive additive are also investigated. The homogeneous dispersion of Cu within the material not only increases the electrical conductivity of the final thermoelectric leg significantly but also promotes the crystallization of the thermoelectric particles during the sintering process. These effects result in 3D-printed thermoelectric composites exhibiting ZT values up to 0.91 and extended optimum operating temperature range. Thermoelectric modules composed of 3D-printed thermoelectric legs show excellent output performance and structural strength. This work could also produce other special shaped thermoelectric devices to match irregularly shaped heat sources to reduce contact heat loss and improve output performance.

AbstractImproving the long-term stability of perovskite solar cells is critical to the deployment of this technology. Despite the great emphasis laid on stability-related investigations, publications lack consistency in experimental procedures and parameters reported. It is therefore challenging to reproduce and compare results and thereby develop a deep understanding of degradation mechanisms. Here, we report a consensus between researchers in the field on procedures for testing perovskite solar cell stability, which are based on the International Summit on Organic Photovoltaic Stability (ISOS) protocols. We propose additional procedures to account for properties specific to PSCs such as ion redistribution under electric fields, reversible degradation and to distinguish ambient-induced degradation from other stress factors. These protocols are not intended as a replacement of the existing qualification standards, but rather they aim to unify the stability assessment and to understand failure modes. Finally, we identify key procedural information which we suggest reporting in publications to improve reproducibility and enable large data set analysis.