Reducing Grid Distortions Utilizing Energy Demand Prediction and Local Storages

© 2021 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Energy storage systems will play a key role in the establishment of future smart grids. Specifically, the integration of storages into the grid architecture serves several purposes, including the handling of the statistical variation of energy supply through increasing usage of renewable energy sources as well as the optimization of the daily energy usage through load scheduling. This article is focusing on the reduction of the grid distortions using non-linear convex optimization. In detail an analytic storage model is used in combination with a load forecasting technique based on socio-economic information of a community of households. It is shown that the proposed load forecasting technique leads to significantly reduced forecasting errors (relative reductions up-to 14.2%), while the proposed storage optimization based on non-linear convex optimizations leads to 12.9% reductions in terms of peak to average values for ideal storages and 9.9% for storages with consideration of losses respectively. Furthermore, it was shown that the largest improvements can be made when storages are utilized for a community of households with a storage size of 4.6-8.2 kWh per household showing the effectiveness of shared storages as well as load forecasting for a community of households.Peer reviewe

Preparation of a Bimetal Using Mechanical Alloying for Environmental or Industrial Use

Following the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act ban on their manufacture, PCBs remain an environmental threat. PCBs are known to bio-accumulate and concentrate in fatty tissues. Further complications arise from the potential for contamination of commercial mixtures with other more toxic chlorinated compounds such as polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs). Until recently, only one option was available for the treatment of PCB-contaminated materials: incineration. This may prove to be more detrimental to the environment than the PCBs themselves due to the potential for formation of PCDDs. Metals have been used for the past ten years for the remediation of halogenated solvents and other contaminants in the environment; however, zero-valent metals alone do not possess the activity required to dehalogenate PCBs. Palladium has been shown to act as an excellent catalyst for the dechlorination of PCBs with active metals. This invention is a method for the production of a palladium/magnesium bimetal capable of dechlorinating PCBs using mechanical milling/mechanical alloying. Other base metals and catalysts may also be alloyed together (e.g., nickel or zinc) to create a similarly functioning catalyst system. Several bimetal catalyst systems currently can be used for processes such as hydrogen peroxide synthesis, oxidation of ethane, selective oxidation, hydrogenation, and production of syngas for further conversion to clean fuels. The processes for making these bimetal catalysts often involve vapor deposition. This technology provides an alternative to vapor deposition that may provide equally active catalysts. A hydrogenation catalyst including a base material coated with a catalytic metal is made using mechanical milling techniques. The hydrogenation catalysts are used as an excellent catalyst for the dehalogenation of contaminated compounds and the remediation of other industrial compounds. The mechanical milling technique is simpler and cheaper than previously used methods for producing hydrogenation catalysts. Preferably, the hydrogenation catalyst is a bimetallic particle formed from a zero-valent iron or zero-valent magnesium particle coated with palladium that is impregnated onto a high-surface-area graphite support. The zero-valent metal particles should be microscale or nanoscale zero-valent magnesium or zero-valent iron particles. Other zero-valent metal particles and combinations may be used. Additionally, the base material may be selected from a variety of minerals including, but not limited to, alumina and zeolites. The catalytic metal is preferably selected from the group consisting of noble metals and transition metals, preferably palladium. The mechanical milling process includes milling the base material with a catalytic metal impregnated into a high-surface-area support to form the hydrogenation catalyst. In a preferred mechanical milling process, a zero-valent metal particle is provided as the base material, preferably having a particle size of less than about 10 microns, preferably 0.1 to 10 microns or smaller, prior to milling. The catalytic metal is supported on a conductive carbon support structure prior to milling. For example, palladium may be impregnated on a graphite support. Other support structures such as semiconductive metal oxides may also be used

Multithreaded parallelism for heterogeneous clusters of QPUs

In this work, we present MILQ, a quantum unrelated parallel machines scheduler and cutter. The setting of unrelated parallel machines considers independent hardware backends, each distinguished by differing setup and processing times. MILQ optimizes the total execution time of a batch of circuits scheduled on multiple quantum devices. It leverages state-of-the-art circuit-cutting techniques to fit circuits onto the devices and schedules them based on a mixed-integer linear program. Our results show a total improvement of up to 26 % compared to a baseline approach.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, 1 algorith

«Was lange währt …» – Rückkehr als Heimsuchung. Zum neuen Weiterbildungskonzept am Psychoanalytischen Seminar Zürich

Seit der 1977 erfolgten Trennung von der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Psychoanalyse (SGPsa) befasst sich das Psychoanalytische Seminar Zürich (PSZ) obsessiv und ununterbrochen mit Fragen von Institutionalisierung und Ausbildung. Diese Arbeit zeigt, dass dies als Wiederholungszwang in Folge des Traumas, welches die Aussperrung der «non-konformen» KandidatInnen durch die SGPsa bedeutete, gedeutet werden kann. An diesem Trauma arbeiten sich seither alle PSZ-Generationen ab. Noch das im April 2007 von der TeilnehmerInnen-Versammlung des PSZ abgesegnete Weiterbildungskonzept steht mit seinem nur als Symptom zu verstehenden Abschlusskolloquium ebenfalls in dieser Tradition

Assessment of lung density in pediatric patients using three-dimensional ultrashort echo-time and four-dimensional zero echo-time sequences.

PURPOSE Lung magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using conventional sequences is limited due to strong signal loss by susceptibility effects of aerated lung. Our aim is to assess lung signal intensity in children on ultrashort echo-time (UTE) and zero echo-time (ZTE) sequences. We hypothesize that lung signal intensity can be correlated to lung physical density. MATERIALS AND METHODS Lung MRI was performed in 17 children with morphologically normal lungs (median age: 4.7 years, range 15 days to 17 years). Both lungs were manually segmented in UTE and ZTE images and the average signal intensities were extracted. Lung-to-background signal ratios (LBR) were compared for both sequences and between both patient groups using non-parametric tests and correlation analysis. Anatomical region-of-interest (ROI) analysis was performed for the normal cohort for assessment of the anteroposterior lung gradient. RESULTS There was no significant difference between LBR of normal lungs using UTE and ZTE (p < 0.05). Both sequences revealed a LBR age-dependency with a high negative correlation for UTE (Rs =  - 0.77; range 2.98-1.41) and ZTE (Rs =  - 0.82; range 2.66-1.38)). Signal-to-noise (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratios (CNR) were age-dependent for both sequences. SNR was higher for children up to 2 years old with 3D UTE Cones while for the rest it was higher with 4D ZTE. CNR was similar for both sequences. Posterior lung areas exhibited higher signal intensity compared to anterior ones (UTE 9.4% and ZTE 12% higher), both with high correlation coefficients (R2UTE = 0.94, R2ZTE = 0.97). CONCLUSION The ZTE sequence can measure signal intensity similarly to UTE in pediatric patients. Both sequences reveal an age- and gravity-dependency of LBR