Pore size engineering applied to starved electrochemical cells and batteries

To maximize performance in starved, multiplate cells, the cell design should rely on techniques which widen the volume tolerance characteristics. These involve engineering capillary pressure differences between the components of an electrochemical cell and using these forces to promote redistribution of electrolyte to the desired optimum values. This can be implemented in practice by prescribing pore size distributions for porous back-up plates, reservoirs, and electrodes. In addition, electrolyte volume management can be controlled by incorporating different pore size distributions into the separator. In a nickel/hydrogen cell, the separator must contain pores similar in size to the small pores of both the nickel and hydrogen electrodes in order to maintain an optimum conductive path for the electrolyte. The pore size distributions of all components should overlap in such a way as to prevent drying of the separator and/or flooding of the hydrogen electrode

Performance Mapping Studies in Redox Flow Cells

Pumping power requirements in any flow battery system constitute a direct parasitic energy loss. It is therefore useful to determine the practical lower limit for reactant flow rates. Through the use of a theoretical framework based on electrochemical first principles, two different experimental flow mapping techniques were developed to evaluate and compare electrodes as a function of flow rate. For the carbon felt electrodes presently used in NASA-Lewis Redox cells, a flow rate 1.5 times greater than the stoichiometric rate seems to be the required minimum

Asymptotic Stability of Minkowski Space-Time with non-compactly supported massless Vlasov matter

We prove the global asymptotic stability of the Minkowski space for the massless Einstein-Vlasov system in wave coordinates. In contrast with previous work on the subject, no compact support assumptions on the initial data of the Vlasov field in space or the momentum variables are required. In fact, the initial decay in $v$ is optimal. The present proof is based on vector field and weighted vector field techniques for Vlasov fields, as developed in previous work of Fajman, Joudioux, and Smulevici, and heavily relies on several structural properties of the massless Vlasov equation, similar to the null and weak null conditions. To deal with the weak decay rate of the metric, we propagate well-chosen hierarchized weighted energy norms which reflect the strong decay properties satisfied by the particle density far from the light cone. A particular analytical difficulty arises at top order, when we do not have access to improved pointwise decay estimates for certain metric components. This difficulty is resolved using a novel hierarchy in the massless Einstein-Vlasov system, which exploits the propagation of different growth rates for the energy norms of different metric components

NASA Redox cell stack shunt current, pumping power, and cell performance tradeoffs

The NASA Redox energy storage system is under active technology development. The hardware undergoing laboratory testing is either 310 sq. cm. or 929 sq. cm. (0.33 sq. ft. or 1.0 sq. ft. per cell active area with up to 40 individual cells connected to make up a modular cell stack. This size of hardware allows rather accurate projections to be made of the shunt power/pump power tradeoffs. The modeling studies that were completed on the system concept are reviewed along with the approach of mapping the performance of Redox cells over a wide range of flow rates and depths of discharge of the Redox solutions. Methods are outlined for estimating the pumping and shunt current losses for any type of cell and stack combination. These methods are applicable to a variety of pumping options that are present with Redox systems. The results show that a fully developed Redox system has acceptable parasitic losses when using a fixed flow rate adequate to meet the worst conditions of current density and depth of discharge. These losses are reduced by about 65 percent if variable flow schedules are used. The exact value of the overall parasitics will depend on the specific system requirements of current density, voltage limits, charge, discharge time, etc

Design principles for nickel-hydrogen cells and batteries

Nickel-hydrogen cells and, more recently, bipolar batteries have been built by a variety of organizations. The design principles that have been used by the technology group at the NASA Lewis Research Center draw upon their extensive background in separator technology, alkaline fuel cell technology, and several alkaline cell technology areas. These design principles have been incorporated into both the more contemporary individual pressure vessel (IPV) designs that were pioneered by other groups, as well as the more recent bipolar battery designs using active cooling that are being developed at NASA Lewis Research Center and under contract. These principles are rather straightforward applications of capillary force formalisms, coupled with the slowly developing data base resulting from careful post test analyses. The objective of this overall effort is directed towards the low-Earth-orbit (LEO) application where the cycle life requirements are much more severe than the geosynchronous-orbit (GEO) application. A summary of the design principles employed is presented along with a discussion of the recommendations for component pore sizes and pore size distributions, as well as suggested materials of construction. These will be made based on our experience in these areas to show how these design principles have been translated into operating hardware

Is patient acceptance of the diagnosis of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures linked to symptomatology?

peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=ncen2

Slowly decaying classical fields, unitarity, and gauge invariance

In classical external gauge fields that fall off less fast than the inverse of the evolution parameter (time) of the system the implementability of a unitary perturbative scattering operator ($S$-matrix) is not guaranteed, although the field goes to zero. The importance of this point is exposed for the counter-example of low-dimensionally expanding systems. The issues of gauge invariance and of the interpretation of the evolution at intermediate times are also intricately linked to that point.Comment: 8 pages, no figure

Pedestrian index theorem a la Aharonov-Casher for bulk threshold modes in corrugated multilayer graphene

Zero-modes, their topological degeneracy and relation to index theorems have attracted attention in the study of single- and bilayer graphene. For negligible scalar potentials, index theorems explain why the degeneracy of the zero-energy Landau level of a Dirac hamiltonian is not lifted by gauge field disorder, for example due to ripples, whereas other Landau levels become broadened by the inhomogenous effective magnetic field. That also the bilayer hamiltonian supports such protected bulk zero-modes was proved formally by Katsnelson and Prokhorova to hold on a compact manifold by using the Atiyah-Singer index theorem. Here we complement and generalize this result in a pedestrian way by pointing out that the simple argument by Aharonov and Casher for degenerate zero-modes of a Dirac hamiltonian in the infinite plane extends naturally to the multilayer case. The degeneracy remains, though at nonzero energy, also in the presence of a gap. These threshold modes make the spectrum asymmetric. The rest of the spectrum, however, remains symmetric even in arbitrary gauge fields, a fact related to supersymmetry. Possible benefits of this connection are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. The second version states now also in words that the conjugation symmetry that in the massive case gets replaced by supersymmetry is the chiral symmetry. Changes in figure

Some new results concerning the vacuum in Dirac Hole Theory

In Dirac's hole theory the vacuum state is generally believed to be the state of minimum energy. It will be shown that this is not, in fact, the case and that there must exist states in hole theory with less energy than the vacuum state. It will be shown that energy can be extracted from the hole theory vacuum state through the application of an electric field.Comment: Accepted by Physica Scripta, 19 page

Travelling to exotic places with cavity QED systems

Recent theoretical schemes for utilizing cavity QED models as quantum simulators are reviewed. By considering a quadrature representation for the fields, it is shown how Jahn-Teller models, effective Abelian or non-Abelian gauge potentials, transverse Hall currents, and relativistic effects naturally arise in these systems. Some of the analytical predictions are verified numerically using realistic experimental parameters taking into account for system losses. Thereby demonstrating their feasibility with current experimental setups.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure