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Abstract In this paper, coupled governing equations were proposed to simulate three-dimensional heat conduction and moisture transport in the nuclear waste repository. Because there will be a large temperature gradient near inner and outer boundaries of the bentonite buffer layer, and the heat driven moisture transport is introduced in the governing equation of moisture transport. By applying the Fourier and Laplace transforms, the governing equations were converted to the Bessel equations, and the Laplace-domain solutions to temperature and moisture distributions were derived through the inverse Fourier transform. The reliability of the proposed solutions was verified through comparative analysis with the line heat source model. These analytical solutions were applied to obtain the evolutions of temperature field and moisture distribution near the waste canister. Finally, a sensitivity study was performed to analyze the effects of relevant parameters on the heat driven moisture transport.

Abstract Despite the fact that Nanofluids and nanofluid based phase change materials (PCMs) have been identified as potential candidate for various heat transfer and energy storage applications, they are still facing various challenges such as stability, pressure drop and high pumping power. Nanoparticle size plays a bigger role in hindering nanofluid applications, yet effect of nanoparticles size does not receive the attention it deserves. The inconsistence and contradiction of information gives an impression that the area is not well understood therefore more information need to be made available in the literature. In this paper, the effect of nanoparticle size on thermophysical properties of nanofuid and nanofluid PCMs is reviewed. The work involves discussing the effect of nanoparticle size on thermo-physical properties of nanofluid and nanofluid PCMs through systematic analysis of past experimental and theoretical work. The results show that, thermal conductivity generally increase as nanoparticle size decreases while surface tension increases as nanoparticle size increases. Latent heat of fusion reduces as nanoparticle diameter decreases. Although, nanoparticles increase viscosity, the effect of particle size diameter is not yet clear. More research is therefore needed in this area of nanoparticle size effect on nanofluid and nanofluid PCMs so that optimum size can be established for each application.

Abstract Thermal performance of three naturally ventilated public buildings in which the wind tower is an important architectural freature is studied. One of the three builidings as well as it's wind tower is instrumented for temperature, relative humidity and airflow velocity measurements, and the other two are instrumented for temperature measurement. The results have led to a discussion concerning the degree of wind tower effectiveness in achieving thermal comfort.

Impact loads in large iron and steel enterprise bring the power system reactive power impact, which makes the fluctuation of the system voltage, power factor and other parameters are out of the limitation of the national standard. Substation bus reactive load forecasting in large iron and steel enterprise can be introduced to determine reactive power optimization strategy and the switching of capacitors. In this paper, a combination forecasting model of quadratic self-adaptive exponential smoothing (QSES) model and converse exponential (CE) model has been proposed for substation bus reactive load forecasting. The numerical results in Jinan iron and steel Group show the application of this model is encouraging. Introduction

An all-round supramolecular zwitterionic hydrogel electrolyte with the advantages ofin siturepair, H2O-poor interface, and boosting the desolvation of hydrated Zn2+is proposed to enable the fabrication of environment-adaptive dendrite-free zinc ion capacitors.

Forest soil acidification caused by acid deposition is a serious threat to the forest ecosystem. To investigate the liming effects of biomass ash (BA) and alkaline slag (AS) on the acidic topsoil and subsoil, a three-year field experiment under artificial Masson pine was conducted at Langxi, Anhui province in Southern China. The surface application of BA and AS significantly increased the soil pH, and thus decreased exchangeable acidity and active Al in the topsoil. Soil exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ in topsoil were significantly increased by the surface application of BA and AS, while an increase in soil exchangeable K+ was only observed in BA treatments. The soil acidity and active Al in subsoil were decreased by the surface application of AS. Compared with the control, soluble monomeric and exchangeable Al in the subsoil was decreased by 38.0% and 29.4% after 3 years of AS surface application. There was a minimal effect on soluble monomeric and exchangeable Al after the application of BA. The soil exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ in the subsoil increased respectively by 54% and 141% after surface application of 10 t ha-1 AS. The decrease of soil active Al and increase of base cations in subsoil were mainly attributed to the high migration capacity of base cations in AS. In conclusion, the effect of surface application of AS was superior to BA in ameliorating soil acidity and alleviating soil Al toxicity in the subsoil of this Ultisol.

Abstract Bio-based polyurethane (BPU) foams were successfully prepared using hydrothermally liquefied wheat straw (WS) to substitute a mass fraction of up to 50% of polyols. Response surface methodology (RSM) based on central composite design (CCD) was employed to optimize four process parameters: NCO/OH molar ratio, loading of crosslinking agent (glycerol), loading of catalyst (a mixture of triethylene diamine, stannous octoate, and triethanolamine), and loading of blowing agent (water) for the maximum compression strength of the rigid BPU foams. With the quadratic orthogonal regression model, verified by experimentation, the maximum compression strength of approximately 180 kPa was obtained at the following optimal conditions: NCO/OH molar ratio of 1.24:1, glycerol addition of 12.11%, catalyst loading of 0.76%, and blowing agent addition of 1.31% in relation to the total mass of polyols. The BPU foam prepared at the optimal conditions exhibits good thermal conductivity (0.045 Wm−1K−1) and thermal stability, comparable to those of a reference foam prepared with 100% PPG400.

Flue gas desulfurization (FGD) and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technologies have been widely used to control the emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX) from coal-fired power plants (CFPPs). Field measurements of emission characteristics of four conventional CFPPs indicated a significant increase in particulate ionic species, increasing PM2.5 emission with FGD and SCR installations. The mean concentrations of PM2.5 from all CFPPs tested were 3.79 ± 1.37 mg/m3 and 5.02 ± 1.73 mg/m3 at the FGD inlet and outlet, respectively, and the corresponding contributions of ionic species were 19.1 ± 7.7% and 38.2 ± 7.8%, respectively. The FGD was found to enhance the conversion of NH3 slip from the SCR to NH4+ in the PM2.5, together with the conversion of SO2 to SO42-, and increased the primary NH4+ and SO42- aerosol emissions by approximately 18.9 and 4.2 times, respectively. This adverse effect should be considered when updating the emission inventory of CFPPs and should draw the attention of policy-makers for future air pollution control.

Abstract Adding high thermal conductive fillers to base materials has been recognized as an efficient way to increase the thermal conductivity of composites materials. The heat conductive path is formed by filler contacts, this is a key point. In this paper, the effects of filler contacts are investigated based on generalized model and isolated model. The results indicate that the thermal conductivity is always linearly increased with the sphere filler contents. However, for cube filler, when the volume content exceeds 10%, the growth of thermal conductivity is accelerated along with filler contents. The 10% filler content is the inflection point and percolation threshold for cube filler. It is much lower than previously reported. The effect of filler contacts is very small for sphere fillers. Meanwhile, the deviation of thermal conductivity between two-dimensional and three-dimensional model is also very small for sphere filler. The cube fillers have substantial effects on the consequently thermal conductivity than sphere fillers. A series of new three-dimensional generalized model are proposed by numerical method. The filler contacts are considered in this model, the deviation with the experiment tested is in an acceptable range at wide filler contents.