25,652 research outputs found
Preliminary assessment of systems for deriving liquid and gaseous fuels from waste or grown organics
The overall feasibility of the chemical conversion of waste or grown organic matter to fuel is examined from the technical, economic, and social viewpoints. The energy contribution from a system that uses waste and grown organic feedstocks is estimated as 4 to 12 percent of our current energy consumption. Estimates of today's market prices for these fuels are included. Economic and social issues are as important as technology in determining the feasibility of such a proposal. An orderly program of development and demonstration is recommended to provide reliable data for an assessment of the viability of the proposal
A preliminary assessment of the feasibility of deriving liquid and gaseous fuels from grown and waste organics
The anticipated depletion of our resources of natural gas and petroleum in a few decades has caused a search for renewable sources of fuel. Among the possibilities is the chemical conversion of waste and grown organic matter into gaseous or liquid fuels. The overall feasibility of such a system is considered from the technical, economic, and social viewpoints. Although there are a number of difficult problems to overcome, this preliminary study indicates that this option could provide between 4 and 10 percent of the U.S. energy needs. Estimated costs of fuels derived from grown organic material are appreciably higher than today's market price for fossil fuel. The cost of fuel derived from waste organics is competitive with fossil fuel prices. Economic and social reasons will prohibit the allocation of good food producing land to fuel crop production
Internally coated air-cooled gas turbine blading
Ten candidate modified nickel-aluminide coatings were developed using the slip pack process. These coatings contain additives such as silicon, chromium and columbium in a nickel-aluminum coating matrix with directionally solidified MAR-M200 + Hf as the substrate alloy. Following a series of screening tests which included strain tolerance, dynamic oxidation and hot corrosion testing, the Ni-19A1-1Cb (nominal composition) coating was selected for application to the internal passages of four first-stage turbine blades. Process development results indicate that a dry pack process is suitable for internal coating application resulting in 18 percent or less reduction in air flow. Coating uniformity, based on coated air-cooled blades, was within + or - 20 percent. Test results show that the presence of additives (silicon, chromium or columbium) appeared to improve significantly the ductility of the NiA1 matrix. However, the environmental resistance of these modified nickel-aluminides were generally inferior to the simple aluminides
Unitarity and the Hilbert space of quantum gravity
Under the premises that physics is unitary and black hole evaporation is
complete (no remnants, no topology change), there must exist a one-to-one
correspondence between states on future null and timelike infinity and on any
earlier spacelike Cauchy surface (e.g., slices preceding the formation of the
hole). We show that these requirements exclude a large set of semiclassical
spacetime configurations from the Hilbert space of quantum gravity. In
particular, the highest entropy configurations, which account for almost all of
the volume of semiclassical phase space, would not have quantum counterparts,
i.e. would not correspond to allowed states in a quantum theory of gravity.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, revtex; minor changes in v2 (version published in
Class. Quant. Grav.
Interpenetration as a Mechanism for Liquid-Liquid Phase Transitions
We study simple lattice systems to demonstrate the influence of
interpenetrating bond networks on phase behavior. We promote interpenetration
by using a Hamiltonian with a weakly repulsive interaction with nearest
neighbors and an attractive interaction with second-nearest neighbors. In this
way, bond networks will form between second-nearest neighbors, allowing for two
(locally) distinct networks to form. We obtain the phase behavior from analytic
solution in the mean-field approximation and exact solution on the Bethe
lattice. We compare these results with exact numerical results for the phase
behavior from grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations on square, cubic, and
tetrahedral lattices. All results show that these simple systems exhibit rich
phase diagrams with two fluid-fluid critical points and three thermodynamically
distinct phases. We also consider including third-nearest-neighbor
interactions, which give rise to a phase diagram with four critical points and
five thermodynamically distinct phases. Thus the interpenetration mechanism
provides a simple route to generate multiple liquid phases in single-component
systems, such as hypothesized in water and observed in several model and
experimental systems. Additionally, interpenetration of many such networks
appears plausible in a recently considered material made from nanoparticles
functionalized by single strands of DNA.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Transverse force generated by an electric field and transverse charge imbalance in spin-orbit coupled systems
We use linear response theory to study the transverse force generated by an
external electric field and hence possible charge Hall effect in spin-orbit
coupled systems. In addition to the Lorentz force that is parallel to the
electric field, we find that the transverse force perpendicular to the applied
electric field may not vanish in a system with an anisotropic energy
dispersion. Surprisingly, in contrast to the previous results, the transverse
force generated by the electric field does not depend on the spin current, but
in general, it is related to the second derivative of energy dispersion only.
Furthermore, we find that the transverse force does not vanish in the
Rashba-Dresselhaus system. Therefore, the non-vanishing transverse force acts
as a driving force and results in charge imbalance at the edges of the sample.
The estimated ratio of the Hall voltage to the longitudinal voltage is . The disorder effect is also considered in the study of the
Rashba-Dresselhaus system. We find that the transverse force vanishes in the
presence of impurities in this system because the vertex correction and the
anomalous velocity of the electron accidently cancel each other
Thermal gravity, black holes and cosmological entropy
Taking seriously the interpretation of black hole entropy as the logarithm of
the number of microstates, we argue that thermal gravitons may undergo a phase
transition to a kind of black hole condensate. The phase transition proceeds
via nucleation of black holes at a rate governed by a saddlepoint configuration
whose free energy is of order the inverse temperature in Planck units. Whether
the universe remains in a low entropy state as opposed to the high entropy
black hole condensate depends sensitively on its thermal history. Our results
may clarify an old observation of Penrose regarding the very low entropy state
of the universe.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, RevTex. v4: to appear in Phys. Rev.
Baryon resonances and hadronic interactions in a finite volume
In a finite volume, resonances and multi-hadron states are identified by
discrete energy levels. When comparing the results of lattice QCD calculations
to scattering experiments, it is important to have a way of associating the
energy spectrum of the finite-volume lattice with the asymptotic behaviour of
the S-matrix. A new technique for comparing energy eigenvalues with scattering
phase shifts is introduced, which involves the construction of an exactly
solvable matrix Hamiltonian model. The model framework is applied to the case
of decay, but is easily generalized to include
multi-channel scattering. Extracting resonance parameters involves matching the
energy spectrum of the model to that of a lattice QCD calculation. The
resulting fit parameters are then used to generate phase shifts. Using a sample
set of pseudodata, it is found that the extraction of the resonance position is
stable with respect to volume for a variety of regularization schemes, and
compares favorably with the well-known Luescher method. The model-dependence of
the result is briefly investigated.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Talk presented at the 30th International
Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2012), June 24-29, 2012, Cairns,
Australi
Tunneling conductance of graphene ferromagnet-insulator-superconductor junctions
We study the transport properties of a graphene ferromagnet-insulator
superconductor (FIS) junction within the Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk formalism by
solving spin-polarized Dirac-Bogoliubov-de-Gennes equation. We find that the
retro and specular Andreev reflections in the graphene FIS junction are
drastically modified in the presence of exchange interaction and that the
spin-polarization () of tunneling current can be tuned from the positive
to negative value by bias voltage (). In the thin-barrier limit, the
conductance of a graphene FIS junction oscillates as a function of barrier
strength . Both the amplitude and phase of the conductance oscillation
varies with the exchange energy . For (Fermi energy), the
amplitude of oscillation decreases with . For ,
the amplitude of oscillation increases with , where
( is the applied electrostatic potential on
the superconducting segment of the junction). For , the
amplitude of oscillation decreases with again. Interestingly, a
universal phase difference of in exists between the
curves for and . Finally, we find that the transitions
between retro and specular Andreev reflections occur at and
, and hence the singular behavior of the conductance near
these bias voltages results from the difference in transport properties between
specular and retro Andreev reflections.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review
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