49 research outputs found
Remarkable magnetostructural coupling around the magnetic transition in CeCoFeSi
We report a detailed study of the magnetic properties of
CeCoFeSi under high magnetic fields (up to 16 Tesla)
measuring different physical properties such as specific heat, magnetization,
electrical resistivity, thermal expansion and magnetostriction.
CeCoFeSi becomes antiferromagnetic at 6.7 K.
However, a broad tail (onset at 13 K) in the specific heat
precedes that second order transition. This tail is also observed in the
temperature derivative of the resistivity. However, it is particularly
noticeable in the thermal expansion coefficient where it takes the form of a
large bump centered at . A high magnetic field practically washes out that
tail in the resistivity. But surprisingly, the bump in the thermal expansion
becomes a well pronounced peak fully split from the magnetic transition at
. Concurrently, the magnetoresistance also switches from negative to
positive just below . The magnetostriction is considerable and
irreversible at low temperature (
410 at 2 K) when the magnetic interactions dominate. A broad
jump in the field dependence of the magnetostriction observed at low may be
the signature of a weak ongoing metamagnetic transition. Taking altogether, the
results indicate the importance of the lattice effects in the development of
the magnetic order in these alloys.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure
Lattice specific heat for the RMIn (R = Gd, La, Y, M = Co, Rh) compounds: non-magnetic contribution subtraction
We analyze theoretically a common experimental process used to obtain the
magnetic contribution to the specific heat of a given magnetic material. In the
procedure, the specific heat of a non-magnetic analog is measured and used to
subtract the non-magnetic contributions, which are generally dominated by the
lattice degrees of freedom in a wide range of temperatures. We calculate the
lattice contribution to the specific heat for the magnetic compounds GdMIn
(M = Co, Rh) and for the non-magnetic YMIn and LaMIn (M = Co, Rh),
using density functional theory based methods. We find that the best
non-magnetic analog for the subtraction depends on the magnetic material and on
the range of temperatures. While the phonon specific heat contribution of
YRhIn is an excellent approximation to the one of GdCoIn in the full
temperature range, for GdRhIn we find a better agreement with LaCoIn,
in both cases, as a result of an optimum compensation effect between masses and
volumes. We present measurements of the specific heat of the compounds
GdMIn (M = Co, Rh) up to room temperature where it surpasses the value
expected from the Dulong-Petit law. We obtain a good agreement between theory
and experiment when we include anharmonic effects in the calculations
Enhancement of PHA Production by a Mixed Microbial Culture Using VFA Obtained from the Fermentation of Wastewater from Yeast Industry
Wastewater from the yeast production industry (WWY) is potentially harmful to surface water due to its high nitrogen and organic matter content; it can be used to produce compounds of higher commercial value, such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA). PHA are polyester-type biopolymers synthesized by bacteria as energy reservoirs that can potentially substitute petrochemical-derived plastics. In this exploratory work, effluent from WWY was used to produce PHA, using a three-step setup of mixed microbial cultures involving one anaerobic and two aerobic reactors. First, volatile fatty acids (VFA; 2.5 g/L) were produced on an anaerobic batch reactor (reactor A) fed with WWY, using a heat pretreated sludge inoculum to eliminate methanogenic activity. Concurrently, PHA-producing bacteria were enriched using synthetic VFA in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR, reactor C) operated for 78 days. Finally, a polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB)-producing reactor (reactor B) was assembled using the inoculum enriched with PHA-producing bacteria and the raw and distilled effluent from the anaerobic reactor as a substrate. A maximum accumulation of 17% of PHB based on cell dry weight was achieved with a yield of 1.2 g PHB/L when feeding with the distilled effluent. Roche 454 16S rRNA gene amplicon pyrosequencing of the PHA-producing reactor showed that the microbial community was dominated by the PHA-producing bacterial species Paracoccus alcalophilus (32%) and Azoarcus sp. (44%). Our results show promising PHB accumulation rates that outperform previously reported results obtained with real substrates and mixed cultures, demonstrating a sustainable approach for the production of PHA less prone to contamination than a pure culture
First Monte Carlo simulation study of Galeras volcano structure using muon tomography
\circledC Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Muon radiography is based on the observation of the absorption of muons in matter, as the ordinary radiography does by using X-rays. The interaction of cosmic rays with the atmosphere produce Extensive Air Showers (EAS), which provide abundant source of muons. These particles can be used for various applications of muon radiography, in particular to study the internal structure of different volcanoes edifice. We will focus on Galeras volcano located 9 km from Pasto city (Colombia). In this work we present the first study of the muon lateral distribution at Pasto altitude (4276 m a.s.l.) and a preliminary simulation the volcanic cone using GEANT41. For the interaction of the cosmic rays with the atmosphere we have used CORSIKA 740042 software with an atmosphere tropical model and QGSJETII-043 as hadronic model for the high energies and GHEISHA2002d4 for low energies. The analysis considers two different primary particle (proton and iron), four zenith angles (0°, 30°, 45° and 60°) with energies values of 5, 10 and 100 TeV