Investigar e inovar na educação em ciências para um futuro sustentável

No pico de uma real situação de emergência planetária, a educação torna-se a melhor aliada de uma luta global com vista a um desenvolvimento sustentável. Para concretizar a Década da Educação para um Futuro Sustentável, a investigação em educação em ciências e a correspondente inovação na formação de professores e no ensino, apresentam-se entre os contributos mais fortes, amplos e eficazes. Parte do nosso contributo, que se apresenta neste artigo, tem passado pelo desenvolvimento de alguns estudos situados no quadro teórico que sustenta a educação CTS e assentes em temáticas centrais para a educação para a sustentabilidade ambiental: os transportes e a mobilidade, o uso da água, a fome no mundo, a preservação da biodiversidade. A aposta tem-se dirigido para o ensino nos primeiros anos através do desenho de propostas didácticas validadas por especialistas e em sala de aula e utilizadas quer no ensino quer como ferramentas de formação inicial e contínua de professores

Potential of red and white whole grain sorghum flour in gluten-free breadmaking: a study on consumer acceptability.

31st EFFoST

CFD ANALYSIS OF PULVERIZED COAL COMBUSTION IN A BLAST FURNACE TUYERE: COMPARISON BETWEEN WSGG AND GG MODELS FOR RADIATION MODELING

Combustion processes are being employed for many years, and remains a major source of energy for industrial operations through the conversion of chemical energy in thermal energy, besides being usually accompanied by formation of pollutants. This work presents a numerical investigation using the software Ansys CFX to model the process of combustion of pulverized coal injected into a blast furnace for production of pig iron making a comparison between WSGG and GG spectral models for gas radiation aim to verify the influence on the radiation heat transfer and the temperature field. Since global coal reserves are being constantly reduced, new techniques using coal are being studied. Among some effective techniques, there is the injection of pulverized coal through a tuyere installed at the bottom of the blast furnace. Thus, among the objectives of this work is to obtain information about the pulverized coal burning process injected. Firstly, it will be employed a North American coal as a base case in order to better understand the involved phenomena. Simulations were made using the actual operating conditions of a blast furnace, which uses atmospheric air enriched with oxygen for burning the coal. The same boundary conditions and operation of other investigations were considered in order to validate the model developed for this work, and so that it can be applied in similar situations, either in assessments or in projects of coal injection systems and combustion in blast furnaces. The results include temperature and velocity fields, oxygen concentration, and the formation of CO and CO2 and they are in agreement with data from literature. Comparing the results of this study with the results obtained in the work (Gu et al., 2010) It observed a qualitative similarity between them and also quantitative. Furthermore, it was found that, in this case, modeling the absorption spectrum of the combustion gases resulting in changes in flame form, but did not significantly alter the magnitude of temperatures, since the walls of the equipment are considered adiabatic

On the Magnetic Field Strength of Active Region Filaments

We study the vector magnetic field of a filament observed over a compact Active Region Neutral Line. Spectropolarimetric data acquired with TIP-II (VTT, Tenerife, Spain) of the 10830 \AA spectral region provide full Stokes vectors which were analyzed using three different methods: magnetograph analysis, Milne-Eddington inversions and PCA-based atomic polarization inversions. The inferred magnetic field strengths in the filament are of the order of 600 - 700 G by all these three methods. Longitudinal fields are found in the range of 100 - 200 G whereas the transverse components become dominant, with fields as large as 500 - 600 G. We find strong transverse fields near the Neutral Line also at photospheric levels. Our analysis indicates that strong (higher than 500 G, but below kG) transverse magnetic fields are present in Active Region filaments. This corresponds to the highest field strengths reliably measured in these structures. The profiles of the Helium 10830 \AA lines observed in this Active Region filament are dominated by the Zeeman effect.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 9 pages, 4 figure

Features of spatial distribution of oscillations in faculae regions

We found that oscillations of LOS velocity in H-alpha are different for various parts of faculae regions. Power spectra show that the contribution of low-frequency modes (1.2 - 2 mHz) increase at the network boundaries. Three and five- minute periods dominate inside cells. The spectra of photosphere and chromosphere LOS velocity oscillations differ for most faculae. On the other hand, we detected several cases where propagating oscillations in faculae were manifest with a five-minute period. Their initiation point on spatial-temporal diagrams coincided with the local maximum of the longitudinal magnetic field.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Growth of carbonaceous nanomaterials over stainless steel foams. Effect of activation temperature

Some of the problems that occur during the operation of chemical reactors based of structured catalytic substrates, as monoliths, foams, membranes, cloths, fibres and other systems, are related to the preparation of long term stable coatings. Frequently, the deposition of the catalytic layer is carried out by washcoating, requiring this step a cautious attention, especially in the case of complex geometries, like of that of foams or cloths. In the case of the deposition of layers of carbonaceous materials (CNMs), an alternative route, avoiding the washcoating, it is their direct growth by catalytic decomposition light hydrocarbons (also called CCVD), over the surface of the metallic substrate. In this case, if the metallic substrate is of stainless steel, it already contains the catalytic active phases like Fe and Ni. In order to optimize the process of CNMs growth over structured metallic substrates, we are studying the effect of the main operational variables of the ethane decomposition reaction on stainless steel foams. In this contribution we present a study of the influence of the temperature of the activation (oxidation and reduction) stage on the type and morphology of the carbonaceous materials formed. The results obtained allow us to determine the optimal operating conditions to maximize the amount and the selectivity of the process to obtain a given type of CNM