A biomimetic red blood cell inspired encapsulation design for advanced hydrate-based carbon capture

Enhancing gas-liquid mass transfer is key to promote gas hydrate formation kinetics. Encapsulation of CO2 hydrate is expected to dramatically increase gas-liquid contact to enhance mass transfer. However, gas hydrate encapsulation has never been proposed as the technical issues of gas permeation through capsule shells have never been addressed. In this work, based on the principles of biomimetics, we proposed a novel red blood cell (RBC) inspired carbon capture capsule to promote CO2 hydrate formation kinetics. An experimentally validated model is established to compare the carbon capture performance in an RBC-shaped and a spherical capsule. It is revealed that the gas uptake efficiency of the RBC-shaped capsule is 143% higher than that of the spherical one. The effect of initial pressure and capsule size on CO2 hydrate formation kinetics is also investigated. Furthermore, the structure of RBC is optimised and it is found the average amount of hydrate formation per surface area achieves a peak when the ratio of the height at the centre to the width of the ring is between 0.128 and 0.160, which is close to that of real RBCs in human bodies. This work enables the informed design of hydrate-based carbon capture units with high gas uptake efficiency.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Process and Energ

A Crystal-Less Clock Generation Technique for Battery-Free Wireless Systems

The size of wireless systems is required to be reduced in many applications, such as ultra-low-power sensor nodes and wearable/implantable devices, where battery and crystal are the two main bottlenecks in system miniaturization. In recent years, battery-free radios based on wireless power transfer (WPT) have shown great potential in miniature wireless systems, while a reliable on-chip clock without a crystal remains a design challenge. Conventional methods utilized the RF WPT tone as the reference for clock generation, but the high RF frequency leads to high power consumption. In comparison, using a lower WPT frequency results in an antenna with a larger size. In this work, the 2nd-order inter-modulation (IM2) component of the two RF WPT tones is extracted to lock an on-chip oscillator, providing a low-jitter PVT-robust clock. In this way, the wireless systems can benefit from: 1) The clock recovery circuits operate at a low IM2 frequency, reducing the power consumption. 2) The WPT can be set to a high RF frequency to minimize the antenna. Fabricated in 65 nm CMOS process, the proposed crystal-less clock generator takes a small area of 0.023 mm2 in a wireless system chip. Measured results show -92 dBc/Hz@10 kHz phase noise and 6.8 μ W power.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Electronic Instrumentatio

Design and characterization of zero magnetic field chambers for high efficiency neutron polarization transport

Several methods of polarized neutron scattering call for a zero magnetic field (ZF) region to reduce magnetic field integral aberrations while preserving the neutron polarization. Though the design for large angle neutron scattering has been presented in various places, the design characterization and tuning has not been discussed before. In this report, the tuning procedure will be discussed with both neutron polarization transport method and utilization of fluxgate magnetometers. As a tuning procedure, polarized neutrons are sensitive to any local field distortions along all trajectories within the beam, but the process is slow. With fluxgates, the entire beam region cannot be accessed simultaneously, but very fast and precise measurements can be made in accessible regions of interest. Consequently, we would like to benchmark the usage of fluxgates as a fast tuning probe compared with polarization measurements made with neutrons. Polarization transport results for tuned ZF chambers, up to 2.25 m in length, are presented.Accepted Author ManuscriptInstrumenten groe

A 2m-Range 711uW Body Channel Communication Transceiver Featuring Dynamically-Sampling Bias-Free Interface Front End

Body Channel Communication (BCC) offers a low-loss signal transmission medium for ultra-low-power wearable devices on human body [1]. However, the effective communication range on human body is limited to less than 1m in the state-of-the-art BCC transceivers [2], where the signal loss at the interface of body surface and BCC receiver remains to be one of the main bottlenecks. The limited communication range has blocked the popularization in many WBAN applications, such as signal transmission from to an intelligent insole to smart watch [3]. Relative to the high impedance of human body [4], the lower input impedance of BCC receiver induces significant signal loss. To reduce the interface loss, conventional interface front end (IFE) of BCC receivers was designed to be with a high input impedance [5], but the DC voltage bias decreased both the input impedance and signal gain of IFE.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Electronic Instrumentatio