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Abstract The emission parameters and expose–response functions of some pollutants, such as sulphur dioxide (SO 2 ) and Inhalable Particulate Matter (PM10), were introduced to calculate the emission caused by energy consumption in various sectors and regions in China under different scenarios. The impacts of economic growth, population, and technology progress on energy consumption and on the environment were also analyzed. Finally, the economic value of public health damage caused by the changes of pollutants' concentration related to energy consumption under various scenarios, different regions and sectors in China was analyzed. The results show that the PM-10 and SO 2 emissions and consequent health damage will increase significantly in the next 12 years. Thus, energy efficiency, population, economy, and urbanization are the main factors to be considered in this system.

Inefficient biomass combustion in traditional cookstoves generates high levels of household air pollution (HAP) that is associated with numerous adverse environmental and human health conditions. Many cookstoves have been evaluated using laboratory tests, but past studies revealed discrepancies between laboratory and field measurements. Fuel re-loading, a common operation in actual use but not required in the laboratory test, might be a contributing factor to this laboratory-field gap. In this study, we evaluated the pollutant emissions performance of a semi-gasifier cooking stove using both laboratory and field measurements. Emission factors and real-time properties of CO and PM2.5 were separately measured during the following 4 phases of a typical cooking event: lighting, stable combustion, fuel re-loading and post fuel re-loading. We quantified the CO and PM2.5 contributions to total cooking event emissions in each phase. We found over 70% lower PM2.5 emissions and 60% lower CO emissions during 3 no re-loading laboratory tests compared with all 16 field tests. Lighting generated 83.8% ± 15.6% of the total PM2.5 and 39.1% ± 7.8% of the total CO in laboratory tests without fuel re-loading, and 57.8% ± 33.5% and 37.9% ± 21.2% of the total PM2.5 and CO in field tests, respectively. On average, fuel re-loading led to 29.1% ± 30.8% of PM2.5 emissions and 24.9% ± 22.6% of CO emissions in 16 field tests, which also contributed to significant discrepancies between laboratory and field-based emissions. According to the ISO IWA tiered stove ratings for emissions, fuel re-loading led to at least one tier lower ranking in both laboratory and field cookstove tests. Fuel re-loading could be an important factor causing laboratory-field discrepancy of emissions, thus it could be considered in future cookstove selection and intervention projects.

Abstract Fine particle and trace element emissions from energy production are associated with significant adverse human health effects. In this investigation, the fine particles and trace elements emitted from the combustion of pulverized anthracite coal at a 220 MW power plant were determined experimentally in the size range from 30 nm to 10 μm with 12 channels. The particulate size distributions and morphological characteristics before and after the bag-house were evaluated. The uncontrolled and controlled emission factors of particles are compared with the calculated values from the US Environment Protection Agency, AP-42. Size-classified relative enrichment factors of As, Hg, Se, Cd, Cr, Cu, Al, V, Zn, Mn, Fe were obtained. Relative distributions of trace elements between bottom ash, fly ash and flue gas are determined by mass balance method. The bag-house collection efficiencies of particles and trace elements in the particulate phase are obtained. Finally, the controlled and uncontrolled emission factors of elements of different particulate size fractions are obtained, which will provide useful information for PM2.5 and PM10 emission inventory development, toxic and hazardous pollutant emission estimates and emission standards established for metal-based pollutants from a pulverized coal-fired boiler.

CO2 emissions are the leading causes of deterioration in air quality and global warming. Likewise, it has been shown that clean energy reduces air pollution, so this would be a way out of environmental pollution. Some previous studies have focused on knowing the determinants of environmental pollution; however, they have omitted the State's role. Thus, this study explores the long-term nexus between CO2 emissions and renewable energy, energy efficiency, fossil fuels, GDP, property rights from 1995 to 2019 in nine developed countries. The results reveal a long-term equilibrium relationship in developed European countries, but not in developed non-European countries. The main results show that renewable energy and energy efficiency are negatively correlated with CO2 emissions. In developed European countries, a 1% increase in renewable energy consumption represents a 0.03% decrease in CO2 emissions. Finally, some policy measures are suggested to achieve environmental sustainability.

The pH-universal ORR performance and reaction-mechanism scheme of the Fe1/d-CN catalyst, which acts as the cathode for flexible quasi-solid-state alkaline/neutral rechargeable Zn–air batteries.

Abstract A detailed two-dimensional model of direct flame fuel cell (DFFC) was developed by considering the coupling effects of heterogeneous chemical and electrochemical reactions, electrode microstructure, transport processes of mass, charge and energy, as well as the thermal mechanical stress. The stress distribution was simulated at different heat-up rates which represent the typical DFFC and the common solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) operation. Transient temperature field and associated thermal stress distributions are determined and analyzed for two different cell structures. The failure probability of the fuel cell is defined and estimated by employing the Weibull statistic. The model is demonstrated to be a useful tool for understanding the mechanical stress distribution within a DFFC cell and for the cell structure design and optimization. The results reveal that the failure probability of an SOFC cell plate working in flame conditions may be 6 orders higher than that in the common SOFC operation conditions. The anode-supported SOFC shows better thermal shock resistance compared with the electrolyte-supported SOFC. The uniformity of the flame temperature is vital in the DFFC system since the non-uniform distribution of the flame temperature greatly increases the failure probability.

Abstract Previous investigations have shown that high-energy lithium-ion sulfur batteries could be directly assembled with lithium sulfide (Li 2 S) cathode and a non-lithium anode. However, the existing lithium-ion sulfur battery suffers from the multistep sophisticated preparation process, high activation potential and also polysulfides corrosion to the anode. In this work, we propose and prepare a facile and feasible Li 2 S-based lithium-ion sulfur battery system, which is enabled by a bifunctional electrolyte additive. At first, Li 2 S particles were loaded on the low-cost carbonized commercial wipes by a solution-based infiltration method. Interestingly, for the first time, it is found that the well-designed indium triiodide (InI 3 ) electrolyte additive not only performed as a cathodic redox mediator, reducing the activation potential of Li 2 S cathode, but also resulted in a passivation layer, preventing the anode from corrosion due to the shuttle effect. The obtained SnO 2 /Li 2 S full cell exhibits a stable electrochemical performance (983, 878, 746 and 675 mA h/g at 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, and 1.5 C, 647 mA h/g after 200 cycles at 0.5 C). Moreover, the manageable amount of lithium ions and the voltage cooperation between the cathode and anode in the full cell rendered the battery with a strong recovery ability against the abusive conditions test, such as over-charge, over-discharge and short-circuit, showing a great potential for practical use.

Gastrodia elata is an obligate fungal symbiont used in traditional Chinese medicine. There are currently 4 grades of the plant based on the "Commodity Specification Standard of 76 Kinds of Medicinal Materials". The traditional discrimination methods for determining the medicinal grade of G. elata powders are complex and time-consuming which are not suitable for rapid analysis. We developed a rapid analysis method for this plant using attenuated total reflection and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) together with machine learning algorithms. The original spectroscopic data was first pre-treated using the multiplicative scatter correction (MSC) method and 4 principal components were extracted using extremely randomized trees (Extra-trees) and principal component analysis (PCA) algorithms, and different kinds of classification models were established. We found that multilayer perceptron classifier (MLPC) modeling was superior to support vector machine (SVM) and resulted in validation and prediction accuracies of 99.17% and 100%, respectively and a modeling time of 2.48 s. The methods established from the current study can rapidly and effectively distinguish the 4 different types of G. elata powders and thus provides a platform for rapid quality inspection.