Potential of interdigitated back contact silicon heterojunction solar cells for liquid phase crystallized silicon on glass with efficiency above 14

Liquid phase crystallization of silicon LPC Si on glass is a promising method to produce high quality multi crystalline Si films with macroscopic grains. In this study, we report on recent improvements of our interdigitated back contact silicon heterojunction contact system IBC SHJ , which enabled open circuit voltages as high as 661 mV and efficiencies up to 14.2 using a 13 m thin n type LPC Si absorbers on glass. The influence of the BSF width on the cell performance is investigated both experimentally and numerically. We combine 1D optical simulations using GenPro4 and 2D electrical simulations using Sentaurus TCAD to determine the optical and electrical loss mechanisms in order to estimate the potential of our current LPC Si absorbers. The simulations reveal an effective minority carrier diffusion length of 26 m and further demonstrate that a doping concentration of 4 1016 cm 3 and a back surface field width of 60 m are optimum values to further increase cell efficiencie

Implementation of model predictive control on a hydrothermal oxidation reactor

This paper describes the model-based control algorithm developed for a hydrothermal oxidation reactor at the Pantex Department of Energy facility in Amarillo, Texas. The combination of base hydrolysis and hydrothermal oxidation is used for the disposal of PBX 9404 high explosive at Pantex. The reactor oxidizes the organic compounds in the hydrolysate solutions obtained from the base hydrolysis process. The objective of the model predictive controller is to minimize the total aqueous nitrogen compounds in the effluent of the reactor. The controller also maintains a desired excess oxygen concentration in the reactor effluent to ensure the complete destruction of the organic carbon compounds in the hydrolysate

Hot blast stove process model and model-based controller

This paper describes the process model and model-based control techniques implemented on the hot blast stoves for the No. 7 Blast Furnace at the Inland Steel facility in East Chicago, Indiana. A detailed heat transfer model of the stoves is developed and verified using plant data. This model is used as part of a predictive control scheme to determine the minimum amount of fuel necessary to achieve the blast air requirements. The model is also used to predict maximum and minimum temperature constraint violations within the stove so that the controller can take corrective actions while still achieving the required stove performance

Reactor design for thin film catalyst activity characterization

Thin film based systems hold enormous potential for atomic scale control of catalysts and their supports. So far, there is only limited reactor design with dedicated characterization methods for such catalyst systems. Thus, this work focuses on designing and prototyping a tailored reactor to characterize thin films catalysts. Herein, an electrically driven reactor and its virtual replica are designed together in a way to measure and describe the reaction processes over thin film catalysts. The developed numerical model comprised of coupled fluid , thermal , and chemical reaction models in combination with the well defined geometry of the prototype allows a fast and comprehensive testing of novel catalysts systems, which is illustrated by acetylene hydrogenation with a palladium based thin film catalyst on silicon substrates as first model reaction. A power law model was found to be most appropriate to describe the kinetics of the corresponding reaction. It is shown that the codesigned virtual replica offers a strong platform for comprehensive testing and fairly accurate description of thin film catalysi

State estimation of chemical engineering systems tending to multiple solutions

A well-evaluated state covariance matrix avoids error propagation due to divergence issues and, thereby, it is crucial for a successful state estimator design. In this paper we investigate the performance of the state covariance matrices used in three unconstrained Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) formulations and one constrained EKF formulation (CEKF). As benchmark case studies we have chosen: a) a batch chemical reactor with reversible reactions whose system model and measurement are such that multiple states satisfy the equilibrium condition and b) a CSTR with exothermic irreversible reactions and cooling jacket energy balance whose nonlinear behavior includes multiple steady-states and limit cycles. The results have shown that CEKF is in general the best choice of EKF formulations (even if they are constrained with an ad hoc clipping strategy which avoids undesired states) for such case studies. Contrary to a clipped EKF formulation, CEKF incorporates constraints into an optimization problem, which minimizes the noise in a least square sense preventing a bad noise distribution. It is also shown that, although the Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) provides greater robustness to a poor guess of the initial state, converging in less steps to the actual states, it is not justified for our examples due to the high additional computational effort

Real-time coordinated trajectory planning and obstacle avoidance for mobile robots

A novel method for real-time coordinated trajectory planning and obstacle avoidance of autonomous mobile robot systems is presented. The desired autonomous system trajectories are generated from a set of first order ODEs. The solution to this system of ODEs converges to either a desired target position or a closed orbit de.ned by a limit cycle. Coordinated control is achieved by utilizing the nature of limit cycles where independent, non-crossing paths are automatically generated from different initial positions that smoothly converge to the desired closed orbits. Real-time obstacle avoidance is achieved by specifying a transitional elliptically shaped closed orbit around the nearest obstacle blocking the path. This orbit determines an alternate trajectory that avoids the obstacle. When the obstacle no longer blocks a direct path to the original target trajectory, a transitional trajectory that returns to the original path is defined. The coordination and obstacle avoidance methods are demonstrated experimentally using differential-drive wheeled mobile robots

Implicit Newton-Krylov methods for modeling blast furnace stoves

In this paper the authors discuss the use of an implicit Newton-Krylov method to solve a set of partial differential equations representing a physical model of a blast furnace stove. The blast furnace stove is an integral part of the iron making process in the steel industry. These stoves are used to heat air which is then used in the blast furnace to chemically reduce iron ore to iron metal. The solution technique used to solve the discrete representations of the model and control PDE`s must be robust to linear systems with disparate eigenvalues, and must converge rapidly without using tuning parameters. The disparity in eigenvalues is created by the different time scales for convection in the gas, and conduction in the brick; combined with a difference between the scaling of the model and control PDE`s. A preconditioned implicit Newton-Krylov solution technique was employed. The procedure employs Newton`s method, where the update to the current solution at each stage is computed by solving a linear system. This linear system is obtained by linearizing the discrete approximation to the PDE`s, using a numerical approximation for the Jacobian of the discretized system. This linear system is then solved for the needed update using a preconditioned Krylov subspace projection method