IR-sintering of ink-jet printed metal-nanoparticles on paper

Sintering of printed metal nanoparticles can be made not only by conventional heating, but also by, e.g., electrical, microwave, plasma, laser and flash lamp annealing. We demonstrate sintering by using low-cost incandescent lamps as an effective way of obtaining highly conductive contacts of two types of ink-jet printed metal-nanoparticle inks on paper; both alkanethiol protected gold nanoparticles and a commercially available silver nanoparticle ink. This low-cost roll-to-roll compatible sintering process is especially suitable on paper substrates because of the high diffuse reflectance, relatively high thermal stability and low thermal conductivity of paper. A volume resistivity of around 10 μΩ cm was achieved of the inkjetted silver nanoparticles within 15 s of exposure to an IR lamp, which corresponds to a conductivity of 10-20% of that of bulk silver. Too long exposure time and too high intensity, however, lead to darkening of the paper fibers. Both the crack formation and the coffee ring effect of the inkjet printed gold nanoparticles were, furthermore, found to be reduced on paper as compared to glass or plastic substrates.     

Titanium dioxide coated cementitious materials for air purifying purposes: Preparation,characterization and toluene removal potential

This work presents promising results for air purification by heterogeneous photocatalysis on new titanium dioxide loaded cementitious materials. A set of eight concretes and plasters is enriched with TiO₂ photocatalyst by dip-coating and/or sol–gel methods.     

Heat extraction thermal response test in groundwater-filled borehole heat exchanger – Investigation of the borehole thermal resistance

In groundwater-filled borehole heat exchangers (BHEs) convective flow influences the heat transfer in the borehole. During heat extraction thermal response tests (TRTs) the effect of the changing convective flow is more dominant than during heat injection tests. Water is heaviest around 4 °C and when exceeding this temperature during the test, the convective flow is stopped and restarted in the opposite direction resulting in a higher borehole thermal resistance during that time. Just before 0 °C the convective flow is the largest resulting in a much lower borehole thermal resistance. Finally, during the freezing period phase change energy is released and material parameters change as water is transformed into ice, resulting in a slightly higher borehole resistance than at a borehole water temperature of 0 °C. The changes in borehole thermal resistance are too large for ordinary analysis methods of thermal response tests to work. Instead another method is introduced where the borehole thermal resistance is allowed to change between different time intervals. A simple 1D model of the borehole is used, which is matched to give a similar mean fluid temperature curve as the measured one while keeping the bedrock thermal conductivity constant during the whole test. This method is more time-consuming than ordinary TRT analyses but gives a good result in showing how the borehole thermal resistance changes. Also, a CFD-model with a section of a simplified borehole was used to further study the effect of convection and phase change while the temperature was decreased below freezing point. The test and the model show similar results with large variations in the borehole thermal resistance. If the knowledge of changing borehole thermal resistance was used together with a design program including the heat pump and its efficiency, a better BHE system design would be possible.     

Surplus biomass through energy efficient kilns

The use of biomass in the European Union has increased since the middle of the 1990s, mostly because of high subsidies and CO₂ emission regulation through the Kyoto protocol. The sawmills are huge biomass suppliers to the market; out of the Swedish annual lumber production of 16.4 Mm³, 95% is produced by medium to large-volume sawmills with a lumber quotient of 47%. The remaining part is produced as biomass. An essential part (12%) of the entering timber is used for supply of heat in their production processes, mostly in the substantial drying process. The drying process is the most time and heat consuming process in the sawmill. This study was undertaken to determine the sawmills’ national use of energy and potential magnitude of improvements. If the drying process can be made more effective, sawmills’ own use of biomass can be decreased and allow a considerably larger supply to the biomass market through processed or unprocessed biomass, heat or electricity production. The national electricity and heat usage when drying the lumber have been analysed by theoretical evaluation and experimental validation at a batch kiln. The main conclusion is that the heat consumption for drying lumber among the Swedish sawmills is 4.9 TW h/year, and with available state-of-the-art techniques it is possible to decrease the national heat consumption by approximately 2.9 TW h. This additional amount of energy corresponds to the market’s desire for larger energy supply.     

Priorities for Fresh Water Use Purposes in Selected Countries with Policy Implications

Priorities in water use purposes were studied by a two-phase questionnaire in 11 countries/regions on five continents with different water resources and use, socio-economic and cultural conditions. The first phase involved three regions: East Africa (1988), the Baltic region (1994) and Finland (1993, 2001). In the second phase (2001–02), water use purposes were to be viewed ‘as they are’ and ‘as they should be’. On average, community water supply was ranked first, nature conservation second and hydropower third. Priorities varied less than originally anticipated. Priorities should also be remembered in integrated water resources management.     

Mechanistic model for kinetics of propene hydroformylation with Rh catalyst

Hydroformylation of propene to isobutyraldehyde and n‐butyraldehyde was studied in the kinetic regime in a semibatch stainless steel reactor at 85–115°C and 1–15 bar pressure in 2,2,4‐trimethyl‐1,3‐pentanediol monoisobutyrate solvent with rhodium catalyst cyclohexyl diphenylphosphine as a ligand, which showed lower normal/isometric aldehyde ratio (n/i) than previously studied triphenylphosphine. The rate was pressure and Rh concentration dependent. The regioselectivity was conversion independent; however, dependent on the ligand concentration, as higher ligand concentration promoted isobutyraldehyde formation. The influence of ligand concentration on regioselectivity was investigated. A kinetic model was proposed based on the mechanism of alkene hydroformylation and compared with experimental observations. Numerical data fitting was performed showing good agreement of reaction rates and regioselectivity with experimental data. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2012     

New Improved Tests for Cointegration with Structural Breaks

Abstract. This article proposes Lagrange multiplier‐based tests for the null hypothesis of no cointegration. The tests are general enough to allow for heteroskedastic and serially correlated errors, deterministic trends, and a structural break of unknown timing in both the intercept and slope. The limiting distributions of the test statistics are derived, and are found to be invariant not only with respect to the trend and structural break, but also with respect to the regressors. A small Monte Carlo study is also conducted to investigate the small‐sample properties of the tests. The results reveal that the tests have small size distortions and good power relative to other tests.     

Comparing the effects of two school workstations on spine positions and mobility, and opinions on the workstations – A 2-year controlled intervention

A wide variety of conventional design workstations are used in schools and workstations have often been described as inappropriate for children's body dimensions. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of saddle chairs and desks with comfort curve for the body on schoolchildren's spine positions and mobility and opinions of workstations compared to conventional workstations. During the first 12-month study period, the number of participants was 98, 48 in the intervention and 50 in the control group. Since the older control group (9th graders, n = 29) decided against participation after the first 12 months, the number of participants in the entire follow-up of 24 months, was 47 (27 intervention and 20 control participants). During the follow-up, the intervention group used new chairs and desks while the controls used conventional workstations. Spine positions and mobility were measured and both groups completed a questionnaire, concerning opinions of workstations. The results indicated that no difference between groups was found when comparing workstation effects on spine positions and mobility during the whole follow-up. Schoolchildren preferred the ergonomic workstations to the conventional workstations during the first year (p < 0.001), but no difference was seen during the second year.

Relevance to industry

: The present results indicated that new design workstations had no effects on spine positions compared to conventional workstations. However, some intra-group positive effects were observed among intervention group. Therefore, the authors believe further development of both school workstations and school environment should be encouraged to ensure better long-term back health in children.     

Flexible view recognition for indoor navigation based on Gabor filters and support vector machines

Real-world scenes are hard to segment into (relevant) objects and (irrelevant) background. In this paper, we argue for view-based vision, which does not use segmentation, and demonstrate a practical approach for recognizing textured objects and scenes in office environments.

A small set of Gabor filters is used to preprocess texture combinations from input images. The impulse responses of the filters are transformed into feature vectors that are fed to support vector machines. Pairwise feature comparisons decide the classification of views.

We validate the approach on a robot platform using three different types of target objects and indoor scenes: people, doorways, and written signs. The general-purpose system can run in real time, and that recognition accuracies of practical utility are obtained.