Advances in Microfluidic Technologies for Energy and Environmental Applications

Microfluidics have aroused a new surge of interest in recent years in environmental and energy areas, and inspired novel applications to tackle the worldwide challenges for sustainable development. This book aims to present readers with a valuable compendium of significant advances in applying the multidisciplinary microfluidic technologies to address energy and environmental problems in a plethora of areas such as environmental monitoring and detection, new nanofluid application in traditional mechanical manufacturing processes, development of novel biosensors, and thermal management. This book will provide a new perspective to the understanding of the ever-growing importance of microfluidics

Advances in Microfluidic Technologies for Energy and Environmental Applications

Microfluidics have aroused a new surge of interest in recent years in environmental and energy areas, and inspired novel applications to tackle the worldwide challenges for sustainable development. This book aims to present readers with a valuable compendium of significant advances in applying the multidisciplinary microfluidic technologies to address energy and environmental problems in a plethora of areas such as environmental monitoring and detection, new nanofluid application in traditional mechanical manufacturing processes, development of novel biosensors, and thermal management. This book will provide a new perspective to the understanding of the ever-growing importance of microfluidics

Workshops Proceedings

The idea behind the Workshops Proceedings document is to collect in an eBook the information of all the Nanouptake Working Group (WG) Workshops before April 2019 where the participants have been presenting their last research work in nanofluids

A Literature Review and Transport Modelling of Nanoparticles for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Master's thesis in Petroleum engineeringNanotechnology has been envisioned to transform every sector of industries, particularly in the petroleum industry. Numerous researches, especially on nano-EOR, have been done in the past few years and shown promising results for improving oil recovery. Injected nanoparticles (NPs) are believed to be able to form adsorption layers on the top of grain surface. The adsorptions layers then alter the wettability of the rock and reduce the interfacial tension. Due to the importance of the adsorption, numerous theoretical studies were performed to simulate the transport behavior of NPs in the porous media. The purpose of this thesis is to i) review the state-of-the-art progress of nanoparticles application in the petroleum industry especially in EOR, and ii) simulate the transport and adsorption of nanoparticles in the porous media. Literatures show that various types of nanoparticles can improve oil recovery through several mechanisms such as wettability alteration, interfacial tension reduction, disjoining pressure and mobility control. Parameters such as salinity, temperature, size, and concentration are substantial for nano-EOR. Several experiments indicate that NPs can improve the oil recovery significantly up to 20% after the primary recovery period. Classical Advection-Dispersion Equation (ADE) is commonly used to simulate particles flow in the porous media, but it fails to simulate NPs flow due to the adsorption that occurs. The colloidal filtration theory (CFT) is used in the study to accommodate the adsorption. Several modifications on CFT, such as dual site model (ISTM), increase the number of unknown variables that reduce the efficiency and the accuracy of the model. Therefore, a simple modified linear adsorption model (ML) is proposed by the author, followed by parameter sensitivity study to reduce the unknown parameters and understand each parameter affecting on the model. The simulation result indicates that CFT model is unable to predict the effluent history data. Differently, ML model demonstrates that it can predict the effluent history quite well. The comparison with ISTM indicates that both can simulate the behavior of NPs, and our ML model gives slightly better result than ISTM model. Therefore, the transport and adsorption of NPs can be predicted by the simple linear adsorption model

New advances in vehicular technology and automotive engineering

An automobile was seen as a simple accessory of luxury in the early years of the past century. Therefore, it was an expensive asset which none of the common citizen could afford. It was necessary to pass a long period and waiting for Henry Ford to establish the first plants with the series fabrication. This new industrial paradigm makes easy to the common American to acquire an automobile, either for running away or for working purposes. Since that date, the automotive research grown exponentially to the levels observed in the actuality. Now, the automobiles are indispensable goods; saying with other words, the automobile is a first necessity article in a wide number of aspects of living: for workers to allow them to move from their homes into their workplaces, for transportation of students, for allowing the domestic women in their home tasks, for ambulances to carry people with decease to the hospitals, for transportation of materials, and so on, the list don’t ends. The new goal pursued by the automotive industry is to provide electric vehicles at low cost and with high reliability. This commitment is justified by the oil’s peak extraction on 50s of this century and also by the necessity to reduce the emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere, as well as to reduce the needs of this even more valuable natural resource. In order to achieve this task and to improve the regular cars based on oil, the automotive industry is even more concerned on doing applied research on technology and on fundamental research of new materials. The most important idea to retain from the previous introduction is to clarify the minds of the potential readers for the direct and indirect penetration of the vehicles and the vehicular industry in the today’s life. In this sequence of ideas, this book tries not only to fill a gap by presenting fresh subjects related to the vehicular technology and to the automotive engineering but to provide guidelines for future research. This book account with valuable contributions from worldwide experts of automotive’s field. The amount and type of contributions were judiciously selected to cover a broad range of research. The reader can found the most recent and cutting-edge sources of information divided in four major groups: electronics (power, communications, optics, batteries, alternators and sensors), mechanics (suspension control, torque converters, deformation analysis, structural monitoring), materials (nanotechnology, nanocomposites, lubrificants, biodegradable, composites, structural monitoring) and manufacturing (supply chains). We are sure that you will enjoy this book and will profit with the technical and scientific contents. To finish, we are thankful to all of those who contributed to this book and who made it possible.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Recent advances of nanofluids in micro/nano scale energy transportation

As the continuing integration and size deflation of component dimensions in electronic circuits and increase in the number of transistors in modern microprocessor chips, especially for heat dissipation of micro/nano scale devise, traditionally used single phase fluid cannot meet the requirements for highly efficient heat transfer, which thus frequently results in the damage of electrical devices. Consequently, thermal conductivity enhancement of working fluids is of great significance for advanced thermal energy conservation and conversion. Nanofluids, which possess a superior thermal conductive performance, are studied towards an alternative to the traditionally used working fluids, have attracted ample attention within the past decades. In this paper, firstly, we summarized the recent progress in the preparation of nanofluids, in particular for a method involving a covalent concerning reorganization or generation; subsequently, the utilization of nanofluids in hitherto unsummerized micro/nano scale heat and mass transfer fields, especially for some chemistry relating applications were discussed. All works demonstrated in this review are aiming at clarifying the fact that advanced material technologies are required in preparation of recent nanofluids on the premise of continuing harsh energy transfer situation; on the other hand, nanofluids were also able to offer insights for novel micro/nano scale energy transportation which has not yet been reviewed before

Nanofluids based on molten nitrates for thermal energy storage and heat transfer in concentrated solar power.

385 p.El suministro de energía es un tema de vital importancia que afecta especialmente a la sociedad debido a la emisión de Gases de Efecto Invernadero (GEI) y la necesidad de reducir el uso de combustibles fósiles. Es bien conocido que estas emisiones contribuyen al cambio climático y el calentamiento global, al mismo tiempo que conducen a una seria degradación del entorno y provocan enfermedades. Además, existen otras cuestiones serias relacionadas con el uso de fuentes de energía no renovable, como la seguridad en la cadena de suministro y su disponibilidad limitada.En este contexto, la energía solar de concentración (CSP, por sus siglas en inglés) destaca como una opción muy valiosa dentro del marco de las energías renovables. Su disponibilidad es su característica principal comparada con otras energías alternativas. La energía solar no está disponible bajo demanda cuando y donde es necesaria. Como consecuencia, la mayoría de las plantas CSP cuentan con un sistema de almacenamiento térmico. Este sistema almacena la energía térmica como calor sensible, a través de dos tanques a diferentes temperaturas llenos con una sal fundida (Sal Solar, NaNO3:KNO3 60:40 %masa). El mismo material se utiliza como fluido de transferencia térmica para transportar el calor del campo solar al bloque de potencia. La madurez de esta tecnología está más que probada después de varias décadas desde que la primera planta CSP se puso en funcionamiento. Sin embargo, existen aún muchas oportunidades para desarrollar nuevos métodos de almacenamiento térmico o mejorar los que existen actualmente.Las modestas propiedades termofísicas (calor específico y conductividad térmica) están entre las principales desventajas de la Sal Solar utilizada actualmente, lo que obliga al uso de una gran cantidad de sal para poder almacenar calor durante el tiempo necesario. Varias soluciones se han propuesto, como el uso de otras sales inorgánicas dentro de complicados sistemas de almacenamiento térmico para alcanzar una tasa de transferencia de calor adecuada. Recientemente, ha emergido una opción que considera el uso de la nanotecnología. Esta solución consiste en añadir pequeñas cantidades de nanopartículas a las sales para mejorar su comportamiento térmico. Estos innovadores materiales se han denominado como nanofluidos basados en sales fundidas o materiales de cambio de fase nanomejorados, dependiendo del método empleado para almacenar la energía térmica: calor sensible o latente, respectivamente.Esta tesis analiza detalladamente el diseño, síntesis y caracterización de estos materiales. Su reciente descubrimiento, unido a las dificultades técnicas de trabajar con sales fundidas, han ocasionado que ciertas propiedades apenas se hayan estudiado. Se ha puesto especial atención en el desarrollo de un método preciso para medir el calor específico y un proceso de síntesis adecuado y escalable. La caracterización de los materiales incluye propiedades térmicas como el calor específico, la conductividad térmica, el calor latente y la temperatura de cambio de fase. También se han estudiado otras propiedades interesantes como la estabilidad de las nanopartículas en la sal fundida durante largos periodos y su comportamiento reológico.Zabalduz Tecnali