Fluidized bed combustor modeling

A general mathematical model for the prediction of performance of a fluidized bed coal combustor (FBC) is developed. The basic elements of the model consist of: (1) hydrodynamics of gas and solids in the combustor; (2) description of gas and solids contacting pattern; (3) kinetics of combustion; and (4) absorption of SO2 by limestone in the bed. The model is capable of calculating the combustion efficiency, axial bed temperature profile, carbon hold-up in the bed, oxygen and SO2 concentrations in the bubble and emulsion phases, sulfur retention efficiency and particulate carry over by elutriation. The effects of bed geometry, excess air, location of heat transfer coils in the bed, calcium to sulfur ratio in the feeds, etc. are examined. The calculated results are compared with experimental data. Agreement between the calculated results and the observed data are satisfactory in most cases. Recommendations to enhance the accuracy of prediction of the model are suggested

Superconductors with Topological Order

We propose a mechanism of superconductivity in which the order of the ground state does not arise from the usual Landau mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking but is rather of topological origin. The low-energy effective theory is formulated in terms of emerging gauge fields rather than a local order parameter and the ground state is degenerate on topologically non-trivial manifolds. The simplest example of this mechanism of superconductivty is concretely realized as global superconductivty in Josephson junction arrays.Comment: 4 pages, no figure

Non-canonical statistics of finite quantum system

The canonical statistics describes the statistical properties of an open system by assuming its coupling with the heat bath infinitesimal in comparison with the total energy in thermodynamic limit. In this paper, we generally derive a non-canonical distribution for the open system with a finite coupling to the heat bath, which deforms the energy shell to effectively modify the conventional canonical way. The obtained non-canonical distribution reflects the back action of system on the bath, and thus depicts the statistical correlations through energy fluctuations