Plasmonic Oxygen-Deficient TiO2-x Nanocrystals for Dual-Band Electrochromic Smart Windows with Efficient Energy Recycling

Dual-band electrochromic smart windows capable of the spectrally selective modulation of visible (VIS) light and near-infrared (NIR) can regulate solar light and solar heat transmittance to reduce the building energy consumption. The development of these windows is however limited by the number of available dual-band electrochromic materials. Here, plasmonic oxygen-deficient TiO_2-x nanocrystals (NCs) are discovered to be an effective single-component dual-band electrochromic material, and that oxygen-vacancy creation is more effective than aliovalent substitutional doping to introduce dual-band properties to TiO₂ NCs. Oxygen vacancies not only confer good near-infrared (NIR)-selective modulation, but also improve the Li⁺ diffusion in the TiO_2-x host, circumventing the disadvantage of aliovalent substitutional doping with ion diffusion. Consequently optimized TiO_2-x NC films are able to modulate the NIR and visible light transmittance independently and effectively in three distinct modes with high optical modulation (95.5% at 633 nm and 90.5% at 1200 nm), fast switching speed, high bistability, and long cycle life. An impressive dual-band electrochromic performance is also demonstrated in prototype devices. The use of TiO_2-x NCs enables the assembled windows to recycle a large fraction of energy consumed in the coloration process (“energy recycling”) to reduce the energy consumption in a round-trip electrochromic operation.     

烟气CO2捕集热能梯级利用节能工艺耦合优化

醇胺法捕集CO₂技术是一种较成熟的CO₂捕集技术，具有吸收速度快、脱除效果好等显著优点，但其操作费用高、解吸能耗大。本文以降低醇胺法捕集烟气中CO₂系统再生能耗为出发点，对常规醇胺法捕集CO₂工艺统进行了节能优化研究。在常规工艺流程基础上引入压缩式热泵节能技术，并利用Aspen Plus软件建立了基于压缩式热泵技术的CO₂捕集工艺流程模型。研究了压缩式热泵与机械蒸汽压缩回收（MVR）热泵、分流解吸、分布式换热、级间冷却4种节能工艺耦合，通过模拟计算与优化，结果说明了最佳节能工艺组合为“解吸塔压缩式热泵+贫液MVR热泵+分流解吸+级间冷却”耦合的CO₂捕集工艺流程，当解吸塔顶气体分流比为0.25∶0.75、冷富液分流比为0.05∶0.95、级间冷却器位于吸收塔17块塔板位置、吸收塔输入冷量为-3.0GJ/h时，系统再生能耗最低，为2.533 GJ/tCO₂，相比常规有机胺工艺（再生能耗4.204GJ/tCO₂）节能率39.748%。     

基于DoG检测图像特征点的快速二进制描述子

针对SIFT描述子实时性差和传统二进制描述子对尺度、旋转和视角变化鲁棒性差的问题,本文通过优化采样模式和添加灰度差分不变量比较测试进行改进,提出了一种鲁棒性更高的二进制描述子。首先,设计了一种尺度关联、编号标记的采样模式;然后,旋转采样模式中各采样点到特定位置,确保描述子尺度、旋转不变性;接着,分析了采样点点对模式对描述子的影响,选择使用机器学习训练后的128对采样点对;最后,选择灰度值比较测试及梯度绝对值和比较测试构建二进制描述子。实验中采用DoG检测图像关键点,结果表明:本文提出的描述子在描述子构建和描述子匹配上比SIFT描述子分别快84%和67%;在有视角变化的图像匹配上,准确率比传统的二进制描述子高3%~5%,召回率平均要高30%以上。本文提出的特征点描述方法适用于时间要求高的图像匹配领域。     

铝合金三角形波纹夹芯板对平头弹抗冲击特性数值模拟研究

为研究铝合金三角形波纹夹芯板对平头弹体的抗冲击性能及损伤特性，利用有限元软件ABAQUS/Explicit建立弹体冲击靶板的数值模拟模型，并结合实验验证了模型及其参数的有效性。基于数值计算结果，分析了三角形波纹夹芯板几何结构对其防护性能、失效模式和能量吸收的影响规律及机理，并与等面密度单层板进行对比分析，研究结果表明，靶体几何结构对其抗冲击性能存在影响，三角形波纹夹芯板抗冲击性能低于单层板抗冲击性能。此外，增加芯体拓扑结构夹角能显著提高三角形波纹夹芯板的抗冲击性能，并且靶板几何形状会对其失效模式及耗能特性存在影响。     

Domestic demand-side response with heat pumps: controls and tariffs

ABSTRACT

Electric heat pumps feature prominently in projected energy transitions in the UK and elsewhere. Owing to their high electricity consumption, heat pumps are viewed as important targets for demand-side response (DSR). Findings are presented from a field trial of a new control system that aims to optimize heat pump performance, including under time-varying tariff conditions. The trial involved monitoring 76 properties with heat pumps, but without dedicated heat storage; 31 of these received the control system. Interviews were conducted with a subsample of 12 participants. The controller successfully evened out electricity demand over the day (reducing the evening peak), but this was associated with increased late night and daytime temperatures. Interview participants reported some disturbance owing to overnight heating and noise, as well as usability issues with the controller interface and hardware. These issues present risks to the future acceptability of such systems. While the system delivered short-term demand reductions successfully, longer-term demand shifting risked causing unacceptable disturbance to occupants. Future control systems could overcome some of the issues identified in this pioneering trial through more effective zoning, using temperature caps or installing dedicated heat storage, but these may either limit the available flexibility or be challenging to achieve.     

Structure variation and energy storage properties of acceptor-modified PBLZST antiferroelectric ceramics

Energy storage capacitors with high recoverable energy density and efficiency are greatly desired in pulse power system. In this study, the energy density and efficiency were enhanced in Mn-modified (Pb_0.93Ba_0.04La_0.02)(Zr_0.65Sn_0.3Ti_0.05)O₃ antiferroelectric ceramics via a conventional solid-state reaction process. The improvement was attributed to the change in the antiferroelectric-to-ferroelectric phase transition electric field (E_F) and the ferroelectric-to-antiferroelectric phase transition electric field (E_A) with a small Mn addition. Mn ions as acceptors, which gave rise to the structure variation, significantly influenced the microstructures, dielectric properties and energy storage performance of the antiferroelectric ceramics. A maximum recoverable energy density of 2.64 J/cm³ with an efficiency of 73% was achieved when x = 0.005, which was 40% higher than that (1.84 J/cm³, 68%) of the pure ceramic counterparts. The results demonstrate that the acceptor modification is an effective way to improve the energy storage density and efficiency of antiferroelectric ceramics by inducing a structure variation and the (Pb_0.93Ba_0.04La_0.02)(Zr_0.65Sn_0.3Ti_0.05)O₃-xMn₂O₃ antiferroelectric ceramics are a promising energy storage material with high-power density.     

A thermal-aware VM consolidation mechanism with outage avoidance

Efficient energy and temperature management techniques are essential elements for operators of cloud data centers. Dynamic virtual machine (VM) consolidation using live migration techniques presents a great opportunity for cloud service providers to adaptively reduce energy consumption and optimize their resource utilization. In recent studies, power consumption readings of individual physical hosts were chosen as the main monitoring parameters in their allocation policies, whereas very few have considered host temperature, which has shown to have a negative impact on server reliability, as a migration criterion. In this work, a thermal-aware VM consolidation mechanism is proposed for resource allocation optimization and server reliability assurance. We consider the variability in host temperature as a migration criterion to avoid outage incidents via having better VM consolidations. Extensive simulation results obtained from CloudSim show the promising performance of the proposed mechanism in energy saving while reducing the number of server outage incidents due to fluctuations in host temperature.