Development of a hydrogen purifier with Pd-based composite membrane

A hydrogen purifier equipped with Pd-Cu-Ni/PNS membranes has been developed to purify low-grade hydrogen and supply it to processes requiring high-purity hydrogen. The purifier does not include any purge system to flush out hydrogen from the membrane module to prevent membrane embrittlement because there is no α-β phase transition below the critical point of the Pd-H system, making the purifier simple. The hydrogen purifier was tested with three different grades of hydrogen, 90, 99 and 99.9%, to determine the effects of the grade of feed hydrogen on the hydrogen permeation behavior. A lower grade required a lower recovery ratio of the purifier to obtain a given relative hydrogen permeation flux. It was confirmed that the purifier can provide high-purity hydrogen to a gas chromatograph (GC) for carrier and make-up gases. A 75-day durability test provided evidence that the hydrogen purifier could be useful for extended periods as needed for commercial processes.     

Pd–Cu alloy membrane deposited on CeO2 modified porous nickel support for hydrogen separation

In this study, the hydrogen permeation behavior of a Pd₉₃–Cu₇ alloy membrane deposited on ceria-modified porous nickel support (PNS) was evaluated. PNS, which has an average pore size of 600 nm, was modified by alumina sol. Alumina sol was prepared using precursors that had a mean particle size of 300 nm. Alumina-modified PNS was further treated with ceria sol modification to produce a smoother surface morphology and narrow surface pores. A 7 μm thick Pd₉₃–Cu₇ alloy membrane was made on an alumina-modified PNS and a ceria-finished membrane was fabricated by magnetron sputtering followed by Cu-reflow at 700 °C for 2 h. SEM analysis showed that the membrane deposited on a ceria-finished PNS contained more clear grain boundaries than the membrane deposited on the alumina-modified PNS. The membrane was mounted in a stainless steel permeation cell with a gold-plated stainless steel O-ring. Permeation tests were then conducted using pure hydrogen and helium at temperatures ranging from 673 to 773 K and feed side pressures ranging from 100 to 400 kPa. These tests showed that the membrane had a hydrogen permeation flux of 2.8 × 10⁻¹ mol m⁻² s⁻¹ with H₂/He selectivity of >50,000 at a temperature of 773 K and pressure difference of 400 kPa.     

Robust low frequency current ripple elimination algorithm for grid-connected fuel cell systems with power balancing technique

The low frequency current ripple in grid-connected fuel cell systems is generated from dc–ac inverter operation, which generates 60 Hz fundamental component, and gives harmful effects on fuel cell stack itself, such as making cathode surface responses slower, causing an increase of more than 10% in the fuel consumption, creating oxygen starvation, causing a reduction in the operating lifetime, and incurring a nuisance tripping such as overload situation. With these reasons, low frequency current ripple makes fuel cell system unstable and lifetime of fuel cell stack itself short. This paper presents a fast and robust control algorithm to eliminate low frequency current ripple in grid-connected fuel cell systems. Compared with the conventional methods, in the proposed control algorithm, dc link voltage controller is shifted from dc–dc converter to dc–ac inverter, resulting that dc–ac inverter handles dc link voltage control and output current control simultaneously with help of power balancing technique. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm can not only completely eliminate current ripple but also significantly reduce the overshoot or undershoot during transient states without any extra hardware. The validity of the proposed algorithm is verified by computer simulations and also by experiments with a 1 kW laboratory prototype.     

Advanced nickel metal catalyst for water-gas shift reaction

A comparative study has been performed to investigate the effectiveness of a Ni metal catalyst before and after impregnation with potassium for the water-gas shift (WGS) reaction. The potassium-modified Ni metal is both more active and more selective for the WGS reaction than the unmodified Ni catalyst. Furthermore, there is no carbon deposition on the modified Ni catalyst. The amount of H₂ produced and the CO conversion via WGS over the potassium-modified Ni catalyst are higher than those for the commercial high-temperature shift (HTS) catalyst under severe experimental conditions (gas-hourly space velocity = 80 000 h⁻¹, CO 60% and H₂ 40%). The suppression of methanation over the modified Ni metal is attributed to the action of the incorporated potassium in increasing the density of the active hydroxyl group that takes part in the WGS reaction to form the intermediate.     

Dynamic FOAF management method for social networks in the social web environment

Nowadays various researches have been conducted on the utilization of Friend-Of-A-Friend (FOAF) as the foundation of social network services. However, automatic update and dynamic management of FOAF for the social network services are difficult. Hereupon, we propose a novel method to overcome the above problems by applying FOAF and RDF Site Summary (RSS) to OnLine Analytical Processing (OLAP) system. The proposed method generates the OLAP cube by using the collected FOAF and RSS from the web, and then processes the generated OLAP cubes. The implemented result shows that foaf:interest of users has reached an average of 19 % increase in 4 weeks. In proportion to the increased foaf:interest change, the number of foaf:knows of users has grown to an average of 9 %. By using the suggested method, we can provide better services in coping up with the rapid change of user interests with the automatic application of FOAF.     

Hydrogen-storage properties of a Mg-based mixture prepared by reactive mechanical grinding with ultrafine Fe2O3 particles and Ni

The sample Mg-10 wt.% (Fe₂O₃, Ni) was prepared by grinding Mg mechanically under H₂ (reactive mechanical grinding) with ultrafine Fe₂O₃ particles and Ni particles. The sample Mg-10 wt.% (Fe₂O₃, Ni) as milled absorbed 4.24 wt.% hydrogen at 593 K under 12 bar H₂ for 60 min. Its activation was accomplished only by one hydriding–dehydriding cycle. The activated sample absorbed 4.05 wt.% hydrogen at 593K, 12 bar H₂ for 60 min and desorbed 3.05 wt.% hydrogen at 593 K, 1.0 bar H₂ for 60 min. After hydriding–dehydriding cycling, Fe₂O₃ was reduced, Mg₂Ni was formed by the reaction of Mg with Ni, and a small fraction of Mg was oxidized.     

Novel Techniques to Minimize the Error Propagation of Decision Feedback Equalizer in 8VSB DTV System

In this paper, novel and yet simple techniques are presented to minimize the error propagation caused by the large precursors and postcursors of the decision feedback equalizer (DFE) in 8VSB DTV system. A technique that selects a reference tap (symbol timing of DFE) from an estimated channel impulse response (CIR) is presented to minimize the effect of the large precursors. Another technique that selects the reference tap position, i.e., decision delay in a feedforward filter (FFF), from the estimated CIR and the amplitude of the selected reference tap is proposed to minimize the effect of large postcursors. The combined structure of a feedback filter (FBF) and Viterbi decoder for use in 8VSB DTV system is also proposed to replace the past unreliable decision symbols in FBF as well as to reduce the decision error probability. Simulation results show that our proposed DFE can prevent effectively the error propagation, in particular, by changing the reference tap and its position in FFF according to the channel condition. It is also shown that an echo removing capability of the proposed DFE, where 400 and 620taps are used for the FFF and FBF, respectively, is greater than that of conventional DFEs by about -20 mus in the single pre-echo of -10 dB channel and by about 10 mus in the single post-echo of -1 dB channel     

Enhancement of Thermoelectric Figure of Merit for Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 by Metal Nanoparticle Decoration

Introducing nanoinclusions in thermoelectric (TE) materials is expected to lower the lattice thermal conductivity by intensifying the phonon scattering effect, thus enhancing their TE figure of merit ZT. We report a novel method of fabricating Bi_0.5Sb_1.5Te₃ nanocomposite with nanoscale metal particles by using metal acetate precursor, which is low cost and facile to scale up for mass production. Ag and Cu particles of ??40?nm were successfully near-monodispersed at grain boundaries of Bi_0.5Sb_1.5Te₃ matrix. The well-dispersed metal nanoparticles reduce the lattice thermal conductivity extensively, while enhancing the power factor. Consequently, ZT was enhanced by more than 25% near room temperature and by more than 300% at 520?K compared with a Bi_0.5Sb_1.5Te₃ reference sample. The peak ZT of 1.35 was achieved at 400?K for 0.1?wt.% Cu-decorated Bi_0.5Sb_1.5Te₃.     

引线键合的低成本解决方案

最近,金价不断上涨突破了35.4美元/g,同时半导体产品特别是存储器类产品的价格却不断下降。目前半导体行业最大的挑战是如何控制并降低成本。为了降低引线键合的原材料成本,近年来金-银合金引线已被开始用来替代金线键合。但是,由于金-银合金引线键合的器件在测试中出现的故障,不能用于在高湿度环境下进行可靠性测试(例如PCT测试)的器件,使其在应用上受到限制。研究了传统Au-Ag合金引线键合的电子器件在PCT测试时所产生的故障机理和钯元素的作用,通过在Au-Ag合金引线中掺入(Pd)钯元素来阻止在高湿度环境下进行可靠性测试时出现的故障。