57 research outputs found

    Steam Turbine Efficiency Improvement Application And Conversion

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    LecturePg. 25-38This paper presents some recent technical innovations to improve mechanical drive steam turbine efficiency and presents a case study of a recent retrofit application of these features to a compressor driver. Various external and internal factors for consideration of the balance of plant efficiency gains are discussed. Descriptions of the turbine steam path improvements, testing, and results of the steam turbine conversion are also presented

    Ultrafast manipulation of mirror domain walls in a charge density wave

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    Domain walls (DWs) are singularities in an ordered medium that often host exotic phenomena such as charge ordering, insulator-metal transition, or superconductivity. The ability to locally write and erase DWs is highly desirable, as it allows one to design material functionality by patterning DWs in specific configurations. We demonstrate such capability at room temperature in a charge density wave (CDW), a macroscopic condensate of electrons and phonons, in ultrathin 1T-TaS2_2. A single femtosecond light pulse is shown to locally inject or remove mirror DWs in the CDW condensate, with probabilities tunable by pulse energy and temperature. Using time-resolved electron diffraction, we are able to simultaneously track anti-synchronized CDW amplitude oscillations from both the lattice and the condensate, where photo-injected DWs lead to a red-shifted frequency. Our demonstration of reversible DW manipulation may pave new ways for engineering correlated material systems with light

    Investigating dissociation pathways of nitrobenzene via mega-electron-volt ultrafast electron diffraction

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    As the simplest nitroaromatic compound, nitrobenzene is an interesting model system to explore the rich photochemistry of nitroaromatic compounds. Previous measurements of nitrobenzene's photochemical dynamics have probed structural and electronic properties, which, at times, paint a convoluted and sometimes contradictory description of the photochemical landscape. A sub-picosecond structural probe can complement previous electronic measurements and aid in determining the photochemical dynamics with less ambiguity. We investigate the ultrafast dynamics of nitrobenzene triggered by photoexcitation at 267 nm employing megaelectronvolt ultrafast electron diffraction with femtosecond time resolution. We measure the first 5 ps of dynamics and, by comparing our measured results to simulation, we unambiguously distinguish the lowest singlet and triplet electronic states. We observe ground state recovery within 160 +/- 60 fs through internal conversions and without signal corresponding to photofragmentation. Our lack of dissociation signal within the first 5 ps indicates that previously observed photofragmenation reactions take place in the vibrationally "hot" ground state on timescales considerably beyond 5 ps.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, and 1 tabl

    Bayesian inferencing and deterministic anisotropy for the retrieval of the molecular geometry ∣Ψ(r)∣2|\Psi(\mathbf{r})|^2 in gas-phase diffraction experiments

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    Currently, our general approach to retrieve the molecular geometry from ultrafast gas-phase diffraction heavily relies on complex geometric simulations to make conclusive interpretations. In this manuscript, we develop a broadly applicable ultrafast gas-phase diffraction method that approximates the molecular frame geometry ∣Ψ(r,t)∣2|\Psi(\mathbf{r}, t)|^2 distribution using Bayesian Inferencing. This method does not require complex molecular dynamics simulation and can identify the unique molecular structure. We demonstrate this method's viability by retrieving the ground state geometry distribution ∣Ψ(r)∣2|\Psi(\mathbf{r})|^2 for both simulated stretched NO2_2 and measured ground state N2_2O. Due to our statistical interpretation, we retrieve a coordinate-space resolution on the order of 100~fm, depending on signal quality, an improvement of order 100 compared to commonly used Fourier transform based methods. By directly measuring the width of ∣Ψ(r)∣2|\Psi(\mathbf{r})|^2, this is generally only accessible through simulation, we open ultrafast gas-phase diffraction capabilities to measurements beyond current analysis approaches. Our method also leverages deterministic ensemble anisotropy; this provides an explicit dependence on the molecular frame angles. This method's ability to retrieve the unique molecular structure with high resolution, and without complex simulations, provides the potential to effectively turn gas-phase ultrafast diffraction into a discovery oriented technique, one that probes systems that are prohibitively difficult to simulate.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Please find the analysis code and templates for new molecules at https://github.com/khegazy/BIG

    Diffractive Imaging of Coherent Nuclear Motion in Isolated Molecules

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    Observing the motion of the nuclear wave packets during a molecular reaction, in both space and time, is crucial for understanding and controlling the outcome of photoinduced chemical reactions. We have imaged the motion of a vibrational wave packet in isolated iodine molecules using ultrafast electron diffraction with relativistic electrons. The time-varying interatomic distance was measured with a precision 0.07 Ã… and temporal resolution of 230 fs full width at half maximum. The method is not only sensitive to the position but also the shape of the nuclear wave packet
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