NiCoFe/C cathode electrocatalysts for direct ethanol fuel cells

A direct ethanol fuel cell (DEFC), which is less prone to ethanol crossover, is reported. The cell consists of PtRu/C catalyst as the anode, Nafion^® 117 membrane, and Ni–Co–Fe (NCF) composite catalyst as the cathode. The NCF catalyst was synthesized by mixing Ni, Co, and Fe complexes into a polymer matrix (melamine-formaldehyde resins), followed by heating the mixture at 800 °C under inert atmosphere. TEM and EDX experiments suggest that the NCF catalyst has alloy structures of Ni, Co and Fe. The catalytic activity of the NCF catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) was compared with that of commercially available Pt/C (CAP) catalyst at different ethanol concentrations. The decrease in open circuit voltage (V_oc) of the DEFC equipped with the NCF catalysts was less than that of CAP catalyst at higher ethanol concentrations. The NCF catalyst was less prone to ethanol oxidation at cathode even when ethanol crossover occurred through the Nafion^®117 film, which prevents voltage drop at the cathode. However, the CAP catalyst did oxidize ethanol at the cathode and caused a decrease in voltage at higher ethanol concentrations.     

A far-infrared spectroscopic study of low temperature soft phonon mode in Tris-Sarcosine Calcium Chloride(TSCC)

Temperature dependences of the soft phonon frequency and the damping constant in Tris-Sarcosine Calcium Chloride (TSCC) single crystal have been investigated between 5K and 100K by using a Fourier-transform far-infrared spectrometer. It has been observed that the soft phonon frequency decreases gradually and the damping constant increases as the transition temperature is approached from below The damping constant varies from 7cm^-1 a 90K to less than 0.5cm^-1 at 5K. It has been found that the damping constant is approximately proportional to temperature below about 60K.     

Improvement in Thermoelectric Characteristics of n-type Iron Disilicide by Local Composition Modification

High thermoelectric figure of merit semiconducting ceramics of n -type iron disilicide with modified local compositions have been developed. Sintering and annealing of the composite powder composed of iron disilicide and precipitated cobalt (II) hydroxide resulted in the dissolution of excess Co and oxygen into the iron disilicide phase. Excess Co segregated to the grain boundary region, while interstitially incorporated oxygen was distributed homogeneously in the microstructure. The maximum figure of merit achieved was 5.2 × 10⁻⁴/K at 673 K.     

Polymerization of propylene over metal oxides-supported TiCl3 catalysts

Summary Several metal oxides-supported TiCl₃ catalysts were prepared and propylene polymerization was conducted over them without cocatalysts. It was found that isotactic polymerization of propylene took place effectively over them.     

Polymerization of propylene over titanium exchanged Y-zeolite

Summary It was found that isotactic polymerization of propylene took place over titanium ion-exchanged Y-zeolite without organometallic compounds. The results obtained have led to the conclusions that Ti⁴⁺ species as well as Ti³⁺ species are active for the polymerization and that neither Ti-alkyl bonds nor Cl ligands are necessarily essential for polymerization of propylene.     

A low wall-loading DEMO reactor design with high priority for early and reliable realization of a tokamak fusion reactor over the cost performance

Based on scientific databases adopted for designing ITER plasmas and on the advancement of fusion nuclear technology from the recent R&D program, a low wall-loading DEMO fusion reactor has been designed, where high priority has been given to the early and reliable realization of a tokamak fusion plasma over the cost performance. Since the major radius of this DEMO reactor is chosen to be 10 m, plasma ignition is achievable with a low fusion power of 0.8 GW and an operation period of 4–5 hours is available only with inductive current drive. The low ignition power makes it possible to adopt a first wall with an austenitic stainless steel, for which significant databases and operating experience exists, due to its use in the presence of neutron irradiation in fission reactors. In step with development of advanced materials, a step-wise increase of the fusion power seems to be feasible and realistic, because this DEMO reactor has the potential to produce a fusion power of 5 GW.     

On the possible patterns of inputs for block sorting in the Burrows-Wheeler transformation

Block sorting in the Burrows-Wheeler transformation is to sort all of the n circular shifts of a string of length n lexicographically. We introduce a notion called the width of a sequence of n strings of length n and show that the values of widths are very different between the two types of sequences of strings; (1) a sequence of n randomly generated strings of length n, and (2) the sequence of n circular shifts of a randomly generated string of length n.     

Output intersampling approach to direct closed-loop identification

A new direct closed-loop identification method, which uses the output intersampling technique, is proposed in this note. By using the intersampled plant input-output data, the proposed method removes the traditional restrictive identifiability condition, and does not require an external persistently exciting (PE) test signal     

Basic constructs of the SIM operating system

The basic constructs of SIMPOS (Sequential Inference Machine Programming and Operating System) are explained. SIMPOS is an operating system for a super-personal computer (SIM), based on logic programming language (a modified Prolog, called KL0). Our design principle is simplicity both in concept and structure. The entire system will be constructed using these basic constructs.