Experimental analysis of the evaporation of a thin liquid film deposited on a capillary heated tube: estimation of the local heat transfer coefficient

The aim of this work is to estimate the local heat flux and heat transfer coefficient for the case of evaporation of thin liquid film deposited on capillary heated channel: it plays a fundamental role in the two-phase heat transfer processes inside mini-channels. In the present analysis it is investigated a semi-infinite slug flow (one liquid slug followed by one single vapour bubble) in a heated capillary copper tube. The estimation procedure here adopted is based on the solution of the inverse heat conduction problem within the wall domain adopting, as input data, the temperature field on the external tube wall acquired by means of infrared thermography

A novel pyroelectric generator utilising naturally driven temperature fluctuations from oscillating heat pipes for waste heat recovery and thermal energy harvesting

Low temperature thermal to electrical energy converters have the potential to provide a route for recovering waste energy. In this paper, we propose a new configuration of a thermal harvester that uses a naturally driven thermal oscillator free of mechanical motion and operates between a hot heat source and a cold heat sink. The system exploits a heat induced liquid-vapour transition of a working fluid as a primary driver for a pyroelectric generator. The two-phase instability of a fluid in a closed looped capillary channel of an oscillating heat pipe (OHP) creates pressure differences which lead to local high frequency temperature oscillations in the range of 0.1–5 K. Such temperature changes are suitable for pyroelectric thermal to electrical energy conversion, where the pyroelectric generator is attached to the adiabatic wall of the OHP, thereby absorbing thermal energy from the passing fluid. This new pyroelectric-oscillating heat pipe (POHP) assembly of a low temperature generator continuously operates across a spatial heat source temperature of 55 °C and a heat sink temperature of 25 °C, and enables waste heat recovery and thermal energy harvesting from small temperature gradients at low temperatures. Our electrical measurements with lead zirconate titanate (PZT) show an open circuit voltage of 0.4 V (AC) and with lead magnesium niobate–lead titanate (PMN-PT) an open circuit voltage of 0.8 V (AC) at a frequency of 0.45 Hz, with an energy density of 95 pJ cm−3 for PMN-PT. Our novel POHP device therefore has the capability to convert small quantities of thermal energy into more desirable electricity in the nW to mW range and provides an alternative to currently used batteries or centralised energy generation

Production/maintenance cooperative scheduling using multi-agents and fuzzy logic

Within companies, production is directly concerned with the manufacturing schedule, but other services like sales, maintenance, purchasing or workforce management should also have an influence on this schedule. These services often have together a hierarchical relationship, i.e. the leading function (most of the time sales or production) generates constraints defining the framework within which the other functions have to satisfy their own objectives. We show how the multi-agent paradigm, often used in scheduling for its ability to distribute decision-making, can also provide a framework for making several functions cooperate in the schedule performance. Production and maintenance have been chosen as an example: having common resources (the machines), their activities are actually often conflicting. We show how to use a fuzzy logic in order to model the temporal degrees of freedom of the two functions, and show that this approach may allow one to obtain a schedule that provides a better compromise between the satisfaction of the respective objectives of the two functions

A novel pyroelectric generator utilising naturally driven temperature fluctuations from oscillating heat pipes for waste heat recovery and thermal energy harvesting

Low temperature thermal to electrical energy converters have the potential to provide a route for recovering waste energy. In this paper, we propose a new configuration of a thermal harvester that uses a naturally driven thermal oscillator free of mechanical motion and operates between a hot heat source and a cold heat sink. The system exploits a heat induced liquid-vapour transition of a working fluid as a primary driver for a pyroelectric generator. The two-phase instability of a fluid in a closed looped capillary channel of an oscillating heat pipe (OHP) creates pressure differences which lead to local high frequency temperature oscillations in the range of 0.1–5 K. Such temperature changes are suitable for pyroelectric thermal to electrical energy conversion, where the pyroelectric generator is attached to the adiabatic wall of the OHP, thereby absorbing thermal energy from the passing fluid. This new pyroelectric-oscillating heat pipe (POHP) assembly of a low temperature generator continuously operates across a spatial heat source temperature of 55 °C and a heat sink temperature of 25 °C, and enables waste heat recovery and thermal energy harvesting from small temperature gradients at low temperatures. Our electrical measurements with lead zirconate titanate (PZT) show an open circuit voltage of 0.4 V (AC) and with lead magnesium niobate–lead titanate (PMN-PT) an open circuit voltage of 0.8 V (AC) at a frequency of 0.45 Hz, with an energy density of 95 pJ cm−3 for PMN-PT. Our novel POHP device therefore has the capability to convert small quantities of thermal energy into more desirable electricity in the nW to mW range and provides an alternative to currently used batteries or centralised energy generation