Synthesis of Ni-based catalysts by hexamethylenetetramine-nitrates solution combustion method for co-production of hydrogen and nanofibrous carbon from methane

It was shown that hexamethylenetetramine (HMT)is a new effective fuel for single-step solutions combustion synthesis (SCS)of supported Ni catalysts for methane decomposition into hydrogen and nanofibrous carbon. Several generalized chemical equations reflecting different ideas about combustion of the HMT−Ni(NO 3 ) 2 −Cu(NO 3 ) 2 −Al(NO 3 ) 3 −H 2 O system have been derived. On the basis of those equations the adiabatic combustion temperature (T ad )and the amount of gaseous products (n g )have been calculated depending on the ignition temperature (T 1 ), water content (m), excess fuel coefficient (φ), and the composition of the obtained solid product. The calculations have shown that T ad , depending on m and φ, changes from hundreds to thousands of degrees Kelvin. Increase of Al 2 O 3 content in the catalyst up to 0.6 increases T ad by hundreds of degrees, and that increase of the Ni:NiO ratio up to 0.5 lowers T ad by tens of degrees. Three samples of the supported unreduced 0.97NiO/0.03Al 2 O 3 catalyst were successfully prepared with the help of the SCS method using HMT as the fuel at φ=0.7. Those samples, obtained at reaction mixture preliminary heating rates V = 1, 10, 15 K/min were characterised using XRD, TEM, and SEM, and further tested in a pure methane decomposition reaction (100 L CH4 /h/g cat , 823К, 1 bar). Nanoparticles of metal Ni were found in the SCS products, in contrast to cases when other types of fuel were used with

Fidelity of holonomic quantum computations in the case of random errors in the values of control parameters

We investigate the influence of random errors in external control parameters on the stability of holonomic quantum computation in the case of arbitrary loops and adiabatic connections. A simple expression is obtained for the case of small random uncorrelated errors. Due to universality of mathematical description our results are valid for any physical system which can be described in terms of holonomies. Theoretical results are confirmed by numerical simulations.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Chaos assisted instanton tunneling in one dimensional perturbed periodic potential

For the system with one-dimensional spatially periodic potential we demonstrate that small periodic in time perturbation results in appearance of chaotic instanton solutions. We estimate parameter of local instability, width of stochastic layer and correlator for perturbed instanton solutions. Application of the instanton technique enables to calculate the amplitude of the tunneling, the form of the spectrum and the lower bound for width of the ground quasienergy zone

Velocity field distributions due to ideal line vortices

We evaluate numerically the velocity field distributions produced by a bounded, two-dimensional fluid model consisting of a collection of parallel ideal line vortices. We sample at many spatial points inside a rigid circular boundary. We focus on ``nearest neighbor'' contributions that result from vortices that fall (randomly) very close to the spatial points where the velocity is being sampled. We confirm that these events lead to a non-Gaussian high-velocity ``tail'' on an otherwise Gaussian distribution function for the Eulerian velocity field. We also investigate the behavior of distributions that do not have equilibrium mean-field probability distributions that are uniform inside the circle, but instead correspond to both higher and lower mean-field energies than those associated with the uniform vorticity distribution. We find substantial differences between these and the uniform case.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures. To be published in Physical Review E (http://pre.aps.org/) in May 200