Fluidized Bed Combustion of Liquid Bio-Fuels: Application of Integrated Diagnostics for Micro-Explosions Characterization

A novel integrated diagnostic technique has been developed for the analysis of the “regime with microexplosions” that may be established during the low-temperature (T < 800 °C) fluidized bed combustion of liquid fuels. It consists of the comparison among three analogue data series: (i) pressure signals measured in the freeboard and high-pass filtered, (ii) oxygen molar fractions measured by zirconia-based probes at two elevations in the bed and in the splash region, and (iii) video frames of the bed surface recorded and purposely worked out. The integrated technique has been applied to the combustion of biodiesel at minimum fluidization and has proven to be a valid tool to provide the fingerprints of the mechanism of the low-temperature fluidized combustion of liquid fuels. The time series generated from the measured data sets have been analyzed with the aid of the Hurst’s rescaled range analysis, the V-statistic, and the Lyapunov exponents’ evaluation. The issue of localizing micro-explosions throughout bed, bubbles, and splash zone has been tackled by the V-statistic analysis, which has proven that the location of micro-explosions is just at the bed surface when T = 650 °C and moves deeper and deeper into the bed when its temperature increased to about 800 °C. The values found for the largest Lyapunov exponent in the time series demonstrate that the investigated system is not only dynamic but also chaotic in its nature

A simple stochastic model for the evolution of protein lengths

We analyse a simple discrete-time stochastic process for the theoretical modeling of the evolution of protein lengths. At every step of the process a new protein is produced as a modification of one of the proteins already existing and its length is assumed to be random variable which depends only on the length of the originating protein. Thus a Random Recursive Trees (RRT) is produced over the natural integers. If (quasi) scale invariance is assumed, the length distribution in a single history tends to a lognormal form with a specific signature of the deviations from exact gaussianity. Comparison with the very large SIMAP protein database shows good agreement.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

ATTRITION OF BED MATERIALS AND FUEL PELLETS FOR FLUIDIZED BED GASIFICATION APPLICATION

This paper reports on a study of the attrition/fragmentation behavior of different bed materials and fuel pellets for application in fluidized bed gasification. Three different bed materials displaying catalytic activity, namely fresh and sintered dolomite and a Ni-alumina catalyst, were tested for their resistance to fragmentation and attrition in fluidized bed. The fresh dolomite displayed extensive particle breakage upon calcination and a large production of attrited fines during fluidized bed operation. The other two materials were much more resistant to attrition and appeared to be suitable for further long-term operation testing. The attrition/fragmentation resistance of three pelletized fuels, one based on wood and the other two on a mixture of wood and coal, was also characterized under both inert and gasification conditions. Pellet breakage by primary fragmentation upon devolatilization appeared to be rather limited for all fuels. On the contrary, attrition of carbon fines from the char particles during gasification was extensive, due to a gasification-assisted attrition mechanism

A brief overview on valorization of industrial tomato by-products using the biorefinery cascade approach

The industrial processing of tomato leads to substantial amounts of residues, typically known as tomato pomace or by-products, which can represent as much as 10% by weight of fresh tomatoes. At present, these residues are either used as feedstock for animals or, in the worst case, disposed of in landfills. This represents a significant waste because tomato pomace contains high-value compounds like lycopene, a powerful antioxidant, cutin, which can be used as a starting material for biopolymers, and pectin, a gelling agent. This article presents an overview of technologies that valorize tomato by-products by recovering added-value compounds as well as generating fuel for energy production. These technologies include operations for extraction, separation, and exploitation of lycopene, cutin and pectin, as well as the processes for conversion of the solid residues to fuels. Data collected from the review has been used to develop a biorefinery scheme with the related mass flow balance, for a scenario involving the tomato supply chain of Regione Campania in Italy, using tomato by-products as feedstock

Testing and integrating the WLCG/EGEE middleware in the LHC computing

The main goal of the Experiment Integration and Support (EIS) team in WLCG is to help the LHC experiments with using proficiently the gLite middleware as part of their computing framework. This contribution gives an overview of the activities of the EIS team, and focuses on a few of them particularly important for the experiments. One activity is the evaluation of the gLite workload management system (WMS) to assess its adequacy for the needs of the LHC computing in terms of functionality, reliability and scalability. We describe in detail how the experiment requirements can be mapped to validation criteria, and the WMS performances are accurately measured under realistic load conditions over prolonged periods of time. Another activity is the integration of the Service Availability Monitoring system (SAM) with the experiment monitoring framework. The SAM system is widely used in the EGEE operations to identify malfunctions in Grid services, but it can be adapted to perform the same function on experiment-specific services. We describe how this has been done for some LHC experiments, which are now using SAM as part of their operations

doi:10.2167/beb376.0

This investigation examined the Spanish and English receptive vocabulary and language comprehension abilities of bilingual preschoolers who attended Head Start over a two-year period. It was hypothesised that bilingual children&apos;s development would follow linear trajectories and that the development of children who were only exposed to Spanish in the home prior to school entry would differ from children with exposure to Spanish and English from birth. Results revealed that the two groups&apos; language abilities in Spanish and English differed at the beginning of the study as measured by raw and standard scores and that these differences were maintained over the two years. The exceptions to this were found in the children&apos;s vocabulary abilities, with the difference between the two groups&apos; English standard scores narrowing over time and the difference between their Spanish standard scores increasing during the two-year period. Similar to research on monolingual and bilingual children with low socioeconomic status (SES), children&apos;s development in both languages essentially followed linear trajectories. Children&apos;s raw scores on the English receptive vocabulary test accelerated, similar to research findings on monolingual children of middle SES. Also, children&apos;s standard scores on the Spanish language comprehension measure decelerated after an initial period of linear growth. Future directions for research are discussed

Strain dependent light-off temperature in catalysis revealed by planar laser-induced fluorescence

Understanding how specific atom sites on metal surfaces lower the energy barrier for chemical reactions is vital in catalysis. Studies on simplified model systems have shown that atoms arranged as steps on the surface play an important role in catalytic reactions, but a direct comparison of how the light-off temperature is affected by the atom orientation on the step has not yet been possible due to methodological constraints. Here we report in situ spatially resolved measurements of the CO production over a cylindrical-shaped Pd catalyst and show that the light-off temperature at different parts of the crystal depends on the step orientation of the two types of steps (named A and B). Our finding is supported by density functional theory calculations, revealing that the steps, in contrast to what has been previously reported in the literature, are not directly involved in the reaction onset but have the role of releasing stress.The authors thank the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, and the Crafoord Foundation. Support by the MAX IV staff is gratefully acknowledged. The calculations were performed at C3SE through a SNIC grant. J.E.O. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy (MAT2013-46593-C6-4-P) and the Basque Government (IT621-13).Peer Reviewe

Optical reconstruction of digital holograms recorded at 10.6 μm: Route for 3D imaging at long infrared wavelengths

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Time-reversed adapted-perturbation (TRAP) optical focusing onto dynamic objects inside scattering media

The ability to steer and focus light inside scattering media has long been sought for a multitude of applications. At present, the only feasible strategy to form optical foci inside scattering media is to guide photons by using either implanted or virtual guide stars, which can be inconvenient and limits the potential applications. Here we report a scheme for focusing light inside scattering media by employing intrinsic dynamics as guide stars. By adaptively time-reversing the perturbed component of the scattered light, we show that it is possible to focus light to the origin of the perturbation. Using this approach, we demonstrate non-invasive dynamic light focusing onto moving targets and imaging of a time-variant object obscured by highly scattering media. Anticipated applications include imaging and photoablation of angiogenic vessels in tumours, as well as other biomedical uses