Design and implementation of a data acquisition system for combustion tests

En los últimos años, el mercado de la biomasa ha aumentado constantemente. La industria de fabricación de pellets ha comenzado a buscar nuevos productos, como desechos de bosques, agricultura y residuos agroindustriales, entre otros, con el potencial de ser utilizados como biocombustibles. Sin embargo, algunos de estos desechos tienen algunas características que dificultan tanto el proceso de combustión como las condiciones de operación y mantenimiento de los equipos térmicos. Por lo tanto, se necesita más investigación para optimizar el rendimiento y garantizar el cumplimiento de los niveles atmosféricos máximos. Para llevar a cabo estos estudios, se llevó a cabo el diseño e implementación de un sistema de supervisión, control y adquisición de datos para una caldera de pellets doméstica, lo que hace posible obtener más información sobre el rendimiento de los biocombustibles no convencionales. Así, estos biocombustibles, provenientes de diferentes fuentes, se sometieron a diferentes regímenes de trabajo, facilitando la comprensión de los resultados y la corrección de los elementos limitantes. Los resultados de las pruebas iniciales fueron confiables y precisos, coincidiendo con las lecturas de verificación que se realizaron con un termómetro y un analizador de gases de combustión. Bajo estas condiciones, el sistema diseñado constituye una herramienta fundamental para examinar los procesos térmicos con biocombustibles alternativos, con el objetivo de aprovechar al máximo los diferentes desechos de biomasa como fuentes de energía renovables.In recent years, the biomass market has constantly increased. The pellet manufacture industry has started looking for new products, such as wastes from forest, agriculture, and agroindustrial residues, among others, with the potential to be used as biofuels. However, some of these wastes have some characteristics that make both the combustion process and operating and maintenance conditions of thermal equipment difficult. Thus, further research to optimize the performance and ensure the compliance of the maximum atmospheric levels is needed. In order to carry out these studies, the design and implementation of a supervision, control, and data acquisition system for a domestic pellet boiler was carried out, which makes obtaining further information about the performance of non-conventional biofuels possible. Thus, these biofuels, coming from different sources, underwent different working regimes, facilitating the understanding of the results and the correction of limiting elements. The results from initial tests were reliable and precise, coinciding with the check readings that were done with a thermometer and a combustion gas analyser. Under these conditions, the system designed constitutes a fundamental tool to examine thermal processes with alternative biofuels, with the objective of making the most of different biomass wastes as renewable energy sources.• Gobierno de Extremadura . Ayuda GR10151peerReviewe

A review of pellets from different sources

El aumento en el consumo de pellets se ha traducido en una amplia variedad de materiales para la fabricación de pellets. Por lo tanto, la industria de pellets ha empezado a buscar productos alternativos, tales como desechos de actividades agrícolas, de silvicultura y de las industrias afines, junto con la combinación de los mismos, obteniendo una amplia gama de estos productos. Además, la entrada en vigor de la norma EN ISO 17225 en el mercado de pellets de madera hace (entre otros tipos) posible para la industria y el uso doméstico. Por lo tanto, los desechos que son adecuados para el uso de la biomasa han aumentado recientemente. En este estudio, se han analizado las principales características de pelotillas de diez clases, hechas en laboratorios a partir de diferentes materias primas. Así, nos hemos centrado en los factores limitantes de la mayoría de los estándares de calidad que determinan la idoneidad para el mercado de biomasa, dependiendo del tipo de sedimento. Los resultados mostraron diferencias considerables entre las pastillas analizadas, excediendo los límites establecidos por el estándar en casi todos los casos, especialmente en lo que se refiere a contenido de cenizas y N y S la composición. Los requisitos de la norma estudiada, muy exigentes en ciertos factores, desactivar la entrada de estos desechos densificado en mercados de mayor valor añadido.The rise in pellet consumption has resulted in a wider variety of materials for pellet manufacture. Thus, pellet industry has started looking for alternative products, such as wastes from agricultural activities, forestry and related industries, along with the combination thereof, obtaining a broad range of these products. In addition, the entry into force of EN ISO 17225 standard makes wood pellet market (among other types) possible for industry and household purposes. Therefore, wastes that are suitable for biomass use have recently increased. In this study, the main characteristics of ten kinds of laboratory-made pellets from different raw materials were analyzed. Thus, we have focused on the most limiting factors of quality standards that determine the suitability for biomass market, depending on the kind of pellet. The results showed considerable differences among the analyzed pellets, exceeding the limits established by the standard in almost all cases, especially concerning ash content and N and S composition. The requirements of the studied standard, very demanding for certain factors, disable the entry of these densified wastes in greater added value markets.• Gobierno de Extremadura. Proyectos PCJ100502 y PCJ100603 • Gobierno de Extremadura. Ayuda a grupos de investigación GR10151peerReviewe

Building and surroundings: thermal coupling

Energy building performance can be different according to outdoor conditions or urban environment, at the same time that this last assess, buildings are also affected by the building envelope, as obvious consequence of the thermal and Aeraulic coupling existing between the indoor and outdoor conditions in buildings. Thus, in this coupling is fundamental to typify the transmission phenomenon through the building envelope. Doing this, it is possible to estimate transmission heating losses and gains and also the superficial temperatures of the envelope. In order to assess the transient behaviour of the building envelope it is necessary to develop a predictive model, precise enough, to be integrated in a simulating tool. Detailed and multidimensional models, based in numerical methods, like Finite Element Method (FEM), has a high precision, but its complexity imply resources consumption and computational time, too high to be integrated in these kind of tools. On the contrary, simplified methods are good enough because they are simple and fast, with an acceptable precision in almost all the situations. The present work is focused: (a) Firstly, to develop a simplified RC-network model. The aim of the model is to characterize and to implement with precision the behaviour of a wall in a simulating software tool based on urban environment, (b) secondly, to express in form of equivalences, the different indoor and outdoor excitations that can exist in the building envelope, and (c) finally, to calibrate the simplified model through its characteristic parameters. For a homogeneous wall and two types of excitations, it has been obtained the characteristic parameters of the model that represent the better adjustment to the real wall. In a first step, it has been obtained the results of the proposal model and a reference model based on FEM, in terms of wall external surface heat flow. Results of both models have been compared, and the resultant characteristic parameters of the model have been obtained through an optimisation method. Results for the wall and for the excitations under analysis show: (1) Characteristic longitude ec, or capacitive node position, it is determined according to a certain value of Fo equal to 2 for both excitations, this value remains constant in time, (2) useful wall thickness, on the contrary, vary as time function, according to a logarithmic law for both excitations, although this function is different depending on the considered excitation, (3) using a constant excitation, coefficients from the previous logarithmic function depends on the range of the excitation, while these are practically independent of the lineal excitation gradient

Performance of the reconstruction of large impact parameter tracks in the inner detector of ATLAS

Searches for long-lived particles (LLPs) are among the most promising avenues for discovering physics beyond the Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). However, displaced signatures are notoriously difficult to identify due to their ability to evade standard object reconstruction strategies. In particular, the ATLAS track reconstruction applies strict pointing requirements which limit sensitivity to charged particles originating far from the primary interaction point. To recover efficiency for LLPs decaying within the tracking detector volume, the ATLAS Collaboration employs a dedicated large-radius tracking (LRT) passwith loosened pointing requirements. During Run 2 of the LHC, the LRT implementation produced many incorrectly reconstructed tracks and was therefore only deployed in small subsets of events. In preparation for LHC Run 3, ATLAS has significantly improved both standard and large-radius track reconstruction performance, allowing for LRT to run in all events. This development greatly expands the potential phase-space of LLP searches and streamlines LLP analysis workflows. This paper will highlight the above achievement and report on the readiness of the ATLAS detector for track-based LLP searches in Run 3

Measurements of the suppression and correlations of dijets in Xe+Xe collisions at Formula Presented TeV

Measurements of the suppression and correlations of dijets is performed using 3 µ b − 1 of Xe+Xe data at s N N = 5.44 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Dijets with jets reconstructed using the R = 0.4 anti- k t algorithm are measured differentially in jet p T over the range of 32 to 398 GeV and the centrality of the collisions. Significant dijet momentum imbalance is found in the most central Xe+Xe collisions, which decreases in more peripheral collisions. Results from the measurement of per-pair normalized and absolutely normalized dijet p T balance are compared with previous Pb + Pb measurements at s N N = 5.02 TeV. The differences between the dijet suppression in Xe+Xe and Pb + Pb are further quantified by the ratio of pair nuclear-modification factors. The results are found to be consistent with those measured in Pb + Pb data when compared in classes of the same event activity and when taking into account the difference between the center-of-mass energies of the initial parton scattering process in Xe+Xe and Pb + Pb collisions. These results should provide input for a better understanding of the role of energy density, system size, path length, and fluctuations in the parton energy loss

Search in diphoton and dielectron final states for displaced production of Higgs or Z bosons with the ATLAS detector in Formula Presented pp collisions

A search is presented for displaced production of Higgs bosons or Z bosons, originating from the decay of a neutral long-lived particle (LLP) and reconstructed in the decay modes H → γ γ and Z → e e . The analysis uses the full Run 2 dataset of proton-proton collisions delivered by the LHC at an energy of s = 13 TeV between 2015 and 2018 and recorded by the ATLAS detector, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb - 1 . Exploiting the capabilities of the ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter to precisely measure the arrival times and trajectories of electromagnetic objects, the analysis searches for the signature of pairs of photons or electrons which arise from a common displaced vertex and which arrive after some delay at the calorimeter. The results are interpreted in a gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking model with pair-produced Higgsinos that decay to LLPs, and each LLP subsequently decays into either a Higgs boson or a Z boson. The final state includes at least two particles that escape direct detection, giving rise to missing transverse momentum. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation. The results are used to set upper limits on the cross section for Higgsino pair production, up to a χ ˜ 1 0 mass of 369 (704) GeV for decays with 100% branching ratio of χ ˜ 1 0 to Higgs ( Z ) bosons for a χ ˜ 1 0 lifetime of 2 ns. A model-independent limit is also set on the production of pairs of photons or electrons with a significant delay in arrival at the calorimeter

Measurement of isolated-photon plus two-jet production in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The dynamics of isolated-photon plus two-jet production in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV are studied with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using a dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb. Cross sections are measured as functions of a variety of observables, including angular correlations and invariant masses of the objects in the final state, γ + jet + jet. Measurements are also performed in phase-space regions enriched in each of the two underlying physical mechanisms, namely direct and fragmentation processes. The measurements cover the range of photon (jet) transverse momenta from 150 GeV (100 GeV) to 2 TeV. The tree-level plus parton-shower predictions from Sherpa and Pythia as well as the next-to-leading-order QCD predictions from Sherpa are compared with the measurements. The next-to-leading-order QCD predictions describe the data adequately in shape and normalisation except for regions of phase space such as those with high values of the invariant mass or rapidity separation of the two jets, where the predictions overestimate the data. [Figure not available: see fulltext.

Search for flavour-changing neutral tqH interactions with H -> gamma gamma in pp collisions at root s=13 TeV using the ATLAS detector

A search for flavour-changing neutral interactions involving the top quark, the Higgs boson and an up-type quark q ( q = c, u) is presented. The proton-proton collision data set used, with an integrated luminosity of 139 fb(-1), was collected at root s = 13TeV by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Both the decay process t -> qH in tt production and the production process pp. tH, with the Higgs boson decaying into two photons, are investigated. No significant excess is observed and upper limits are set on the t. cH and the t. uH branching ratios of 4.3x10(-4) and 3.8x10(-4), respectively, at the 95% confidence level, while the expected limits in the absence of signal are 4.7x10(-4) and 3.9x10(-4). Combining this search with ATLAS searches in the H. t+ t- and H. b b final states yields observed (expected) upper limits on the t -> cH branching ratio of 5.8 x 10(-4) (3.0 x 10(-4)) at the 95% confidence level. The corresponding observed (expected) upper limit on the t -> uH branching ratio is 4.0 x 10(-4) (2.4 x 10(-4))

Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass from the Formula Presented and Formula Presented Decay Channels with the ATLAS Detector Using Formula Presented, 8, and 13 TeV Formula Presented Collision Data

A measurement of the mass of the Higgs boson combining the Formula Presented and Formula Presented decay channels is presented. The result is based on Formula Presented of proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS detector during LHC run 2 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV combined with the run 1 ATLAS mass measurement, performed at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, yielding a Higgs boson mass of Formula Presented. This corresponds to a 0.09% precision achieved on this fundamental parameter of the Standard Model of particle physics

Search for Dark Photons in Rare Z Boson Decays with the ATLAS Detector

A search for events with a dark photon produced in association with a dark Higgs boson via rare decays of the standard model Z boson is presented, using 139  fb^{-1} of sqrt[s]=13  TeV proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The dark boson decays into a pair of dark photons, and at least two of the three dark photons must each decay into a pair of electrons or muons, resulting in at least two same-flavor opposite-charge lepton pairs in the final state. The data are found to be consistent with the background prediction, and upper limits are set on the dark photon's coupling to the dark Higgs boson times the kinetic mixing between the standard model photon and the dark photon, α_{D}ϵ^{2}, in the dark photon mass range of [5, 40] GeV except for the ϒ mass window [8.8, 11.1] GeV. This search explores new parameter space not previously excluded by other experiments