Modeling of Diffusion in Capillary Porous Materials During the Drying Process

This paper presents a model of heterogenous diffusion in capillary porous materials during the process of drying. The governing heat and mass transfer equations have been established using the liquid as well as vapor flow. Two models have been presented. Model 1 does not consider the heat conduction while the model 2 has been established by considering the conduction. The developed models and the numerical solutions of the resulting differential equations can take into account the moisture and temperature dependent thermophysical properties of the product. All equations have been established in spherical coordinates but the programme written for the purpose of calculations can be used for other geometries also. Numerical calculations have been performed for gas concrete and tiles using model 1, while model 2 has been used for gas concrete only because of the lack of data for thermophysical properties of the tile. For gas concrete it was seen that conduction has only marginal effect on the drying process and the numerical predictions of the drying process were reasonably accurate.     

A new monitoring system for piping systems in fossil fired power plants

A CEC-funded project has been performed to tackle the problem of producing an advanced Life Monitoring System (LMS) which would calculate the creep and fatigue damage experienced by high temperature pipework components. Four areas were identified where existing Life Monitoring System technology could be improved:

1. 1. the inclusion of creep relaxation

2. 2. the inclusion of external loads on components

3. 3. a more accurate method of calculating thermal stresses due to temperature transients

4. 4. the inclusion of high cycle fatigue terms.

The creep relaxation problem was solved using stress reduction factors in an analytical in-elastic stress calculation. The stress reduction factors were produced for a number of common geometries and materials by means of non-linear finite element analysis. External loads were catered for by producing influence coefficients from in-elastic analysis of the particular piping system and using them to calculate bending moments at critical positions on the pipework from load and displacement measurements made at the convenient points at the pipework. The thermal stress problem was solved by producing a completely new solution based on Green's Function and Fast Fourier transforms. This allowed the thermal stress in a complex component to be calculated from simple non-intrusive thermocouple measurements made on the outside of the component. The high-cycle fatigue problem was dealt with precalculating the fatigue damage associated with standard transients and adding this damage to cumulative total when a transient occurred.

The site testing provided good practical experience and showed up problems which would not otherwise have been detected.     

Continuous precipitation of calcium sulfate dihydrate from waste sulfuric acid and lime

Precipitation of calcium sulfate dihydrate, gypsum, from (i) a pure sulfuric acid/lime suspension and (ii) a waste sulfuric acid/lime suspension in a continuous pilot plant in the temperature range from 40 °C to 80 °C was studied. It was observed that in the case of waste sulfuric acid with a high content of Mg²⁺ and Fe²⁺ ions, several hours after the beginning of the precipitation, partial dissolution of the product and modification of the crystals from needle‐ and plate‐like to agglomerated structures occurred. It is suggested that the secondary changes occur due to the increased concentration of Mg²⁺ and Fe²⁺ ions in the reactor. Below 60 °C, and above 70 °C plate‐like and needle‐like single crystals respectively were formed. The mean size (d₅₀) of the crystals was found to increase with increasing temperature and decrease with the initial concentration of lime. Gypsum produced between 70 °C and 80 °C is suitable for further processing for construction plaster. In a precipitation process with pure sulfuric acid only single perfect needle‐like crystals occurred. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry     

3D velocity from 3D Doppler radial velocity

We present local least squares and regularization frameworks for computing 3D velocity (3D optical flow) from 3D radial velocity measured by a Doppler radar. We demonstrate the performance of our algorithms quantitatively on synthetic radial velocity data and qualitatively on real radial velocity data, obtained from the Doppler radar at Kurnell Radar station, Botany Bay, New South Wales, Australia. Radial velocity can be used to predict the future positions of storms in sequences of Doppler radar datasets.© 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 15, 189–198, 2005     

Experimental Study of Ice Jam Thickening under Dynamic Flow Conditions

River ice jams are a common occurrence on northern rivers, and their formation can present a severe flood risk to nearby communities. As more and more river regulation projects are developed to provide an alternative to fossil fuels for electrical power-generating capacity, our need to understand the mechanisms associated with ice jam formation under variable flow conditions becomes more vital. This is because, at present, hydropeaking operations are often severely curtailed during the ice-affected seasons due to concerns that sudden flow fluctuations might instigate ice jams and associated flooding. Here, an experimental investigation explores the effects of rapid increases in discharge on ice jam formation and evolution. It is found that the thickness of ice jams formed under highly dynamic flow conditions tend to be slightly thinner than those formed during steady carrier flows for comparable discharges. Also, despite the highly dynamic nature of these consolidation events, the resulting ice thicknesses appear reasonably well approximated by steady flow theory.     

Emission of trace toxic metals during pulverized fuel combustion of Czech coals

A study of the trace elements emission (As, Se, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Zn, Hg, Tl, Pb, Ni, Sn, Sb, V, Mn and Fe) from pulverized coal combustion has been made at six heating and power stations situated in the Czech Republic. The amount of chlorine in coal has considerable influence on volatilization of some elements such as Zn, Cu, Pb, Hg and Tl, which is explained by the formation of thermodynamically stable compounds of these elements with chlorine. Generally, the affinities for Cl follows the order Tl > Cu > Zn > Pb > Co > Mn > Sn > Hg. The experimental data indicates enrichment of some of the trace toxic elements in the emissions (Cu, Zn, As, Se, Cd, Sn, Sb, Hg and Pb) and good agreement was obtained by thermodynamic equilibrium calculations with a few exceptions. In the case of Fe, Mn, Co, Cr and Sn calculated values are overestimated in the bottom ash and there are zero predicted amounts of these elements in the fly ash. In comparison, the results from experiments show up to 80% of these elements retained in fly ash. This implies that there exist additional steps leading to the enrichment by Fe, Mn, Co, Cr and Sn of small particles. Such mechanisms could include the ejection during devolatilization of small inorganic particles from the coal of bottom ash particles, or disintegration of the char containing these metals to small particles of fly ash. On the other hand, there are slightly overestimated or similar values of relative enrichment factors for As, V, Cu, Cd, Sb, Tl and Pb in the fly ashes and zero predicted values for bottom ashes. Our experimental results show about 5% or less of these elements are retained in bottom ashes, so they probably remain in the bottom ash inside unburned parts of coal. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of leaf-spring with aircushion trailer suspensions in the transport environment

Packaging engineers need to be able to accurately determine the forces present in the shipping environment in order to protect packaged goods. The purpose of this study was to determine the vertical vibration levels measured in three separate truck-trailer suspension systems; conventional leaf-spring, conventional air-ride and damaged air-ride. The main conclusion reached in this study is that the air-ride suspension when maintained gives lower power density (PD) levels on all road surfaces studied. A damaged air-ride suspension and leaf-spring suspension are very similar in response frequencies, although the damaged air-ride produces higher vibration levels at lower frequencies.     

A feasibility study of a direct-mapping parallel processing method to solve linear equations in load-flow calculation

With the growing size and complexity of power systems, system analysis—such as transients calculation—takes much time. Hence, fast calculation methods are required. Although parallel processing is a hopeful method, there have been difficulties in the parallel solution of linear equations which appear in power-flow calculations by the Newton-Raphson method. This paper aims at the fast calculation of the power-flow problem by means of parallel processing. In order to improve the suitability to the parallel solution of the differential equation in transients calculation, we assume the use of a direct-mapping parallel processing machine to map directly the network of a power system onto a network of processors. Under this assumption, we propose a new parallel-processing-oriented method in which the linear equation is solved by linear iterations between nodes with Aitken acceleration. We simulate the method on three model power systems and compare this Parallel Iterative Method (PIN) with a Parallel Direct Method (PDM) which uses the banded matrix according to the number of operations required. As a result, we can expect that PIM may solve linear equations faster than PDM with m processors, although the PIM might be inferior to the PDM with m × m processors, where m denotes the half-band width of the banded matrix.     

Measurement and prediction of pressure drop in two-phase flow

Experimental data for air–water two-phase co-current flow in two different pipe diameters were used to test the prediction of pressure drop by a number of existing theories and correlations. Several models are shown to be useful for prediction, particularly with the stratified regimes which have proved difficult to handle in the past. The model suggested by Olujic proved to be of particular value.     

Thermal design method of bayonet-tube evaporators and condensers

The paper describes an effectiveness-NTU design method of bayonet-tube evaporators and condensers. Including the effect of the wall superheat on the shell-side film coefficient, and using an energy balance on the tube, differential equations for the steady-state fluid temperatures are formulated. Because of the nonlinear nature of the governing equations, the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method is employed to the solution of the finite difference equations. The results are iterated with the combination of integration techniques. An upper bound to the numerical error being ±5% the fluid temperature distribution as well as the exchanger effectiveness are determined, and presented as a function of the Hurd number, the number of heat transfer units and the flow arrangement. For flow entering through the inner tube, the temperature distribution displays the occurrence of a minimum at a point other than the tube-tip of the exchanger. In an extension of the analysis, an effort is made to illustrate the deviation of the results obtained by uniform film coefficient from the present study, and the differences are outlined.