Understanding China’s past and future energy demand: an exergy efficiency and decomposition analysis

There are very few useful work and exergy analysis studies for China, and fewer still that consider how the results inform drivers of past and future energy consumption. This is surprising: China is the world’s largest energy consumer, whilst exergy analysis provides a robust thermodynamic framework for analysing the technical efficiency of energy use. In response, we develop three novel sub-analyses. First we perform a long-term whole economy time-series exergy analysis for China (1971–2010). We find a 10-fold growth in China’s useful work since 1971, which is supplied by a 4-fold increase in primary energy coupled to a 2.5-fold gain in aggregate exergy conversion efficiency to useful work: from 5% to 12.5%. Second, using index decomposition we expose the key driver of efficiency growth as not ‘technological leapfrogging’ but structural change: i.e. increasing reliance on thermodynamically efficient (but very energy intensive) heavy industrial activities. Third, we extend our useful work analysis to estimate China’s future primary energy demand, and find values for 2030 that are significantly above mainstream projections

Standardized postnatal management of infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernia in Europe: The CDH EURO Consortium Consensus - 2015 Update

In 2010, the congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) EURO Consortium published a standardized neonatal treatment protocol. Five years later, the number of participating centers has been raised from 13 to 22. In this article the relevant literature is updated, and consensus has been reached between the members of the CDH EURO Consortium. Key updated recommendations are: (1) planned delivery after a gestational age of 39 weeks in a high-volume tertiary center; (2) neuromuscular blocking agents to be avoided during initial treatment in the delivery room; (3) adapt treatment to reach a preductal saturation of between 80 and 95% and postductal saturation >70%; (4) target PaCO2 to be between 50 and 70 mm Hg; (5) conventional mechanical ventilation to be the optimal initial ventilation strategy, and (6) intravenous sildenafil to be considered in CDH patients with severe pulmonary hypertension. This article represents the current opinion of all consortium members in Europe for the optimal neonatal treatment of CDH

An investigation of a hypocycloid mechanism based twin-rotor piston engine

A unique mechanism is investigated in this paper to show the working principles of a novel hypocycloid twin-rotor piston engine (HTRPE), which provides the basis for the structural design, kinematic and dynamical analysis necessary to realize the engine. As a critical system for the HTRPE, the differential velocity mechanism is examined first by decomposing it into two non-uniform motion mechanisms and one hypocycloid mechanism, which allows an evaluation of different options of design parameters. Then analytical expressions are derived to calculate the rotor angular velocities and the relative angular velocities of pairs of rotors for a detailed performance analysis. Based on the results of this analysis a prototype HTRPE is proposed and benchmarked with both a conventional reciprocating and a Wankel engine. It is shown that the new engine outperforms the other two engines in key engine features including combustion gas force transmission, volumetric change of working chambers, power frequency, piston velocity and displacement, demonstrating that HTRPE is very promising as a more energy efficient engine due to its high compactness and power density, and consequently lightweight design