Study of the effect of finned tube adsorber on the performance of solar driven adsorption cooling machine using activated carbon–ammonia pair

Solar refrigeration represents an important application of solar energy due to the excellent matching between the high sunshine and the refrigeration needs. Solar adsorption refrigeration devices are among the significant techniques used to meet the needs for cooling requirements. Several solar refrigeration systems have been proposed and are under development such as sorption systems including liquid/vapor, solid/vapor absorption, adsorption, vapor compression and others. The purpose of this paper is to identify the influence of a cylindrical adsorber on the performances of a solar adsorption refrigerating machine. The adsorber heated by solar energy contains an activated carbon–ammonia pair; it is composed by many cylindrical tubes welded using external fins. A model based on the conservation equations of energy and mass in the adsorber has been developed and well described. Using real solar irradiance data as well as many initial conditions, the model computes for each point and in the considered time interval during the day, the temperature, the adsorbed mass, the pressure inside the adsorber and the solar performance coefficient (COP). The results show that the optimal diameter of the adsorber with fins is greater than the one without fins. Moreover the mass cycled in the case of an adsorber equipped with external fins is more significant than the one without fins, and the maximal temperature reached in the adsorber with fins attains 97 °C while in the adsorber without fins reaches 77 °C. Thus, the performances of the solar adsorption refrigerating machine with an adsorber equipped with fins are higher than the machine without fins.     

Monthly and seasonal assessment of wind energy characteristics at four monitored locations in Liguria region (Italy)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the monthly and seasonal variation of the wind characteristics in term of wind energy potential using the wind speed data collected between 2002 and 2008 for four meteorological stations in Liguria region, in Northwest of Italy, namely Capo Vado, Casoni, Fontana Fresca and Monte Settepani. The results show that Capo Vado is the best site with a monthly mean wind speed between 2.80 and 9.98 m/s at a height of 10 m and a monthly wind power density between 90.71 and 1177.97 W/m², while the highest energy produced may be reached in December with a value of 3800 MWh. This study may provide information for developing wind energy sites and planning economical wind turbines capacity for the electricity production in Liguria region, as well as an example of how, deepening the analysis at monthly and seasonal scale, the characteristics of the sites might fall in quite different classes of power density.     

How believable are published laboratory data? A deeper look into system-compliance and elastic modulus

Elastic modulus(E) interpretation is debatable with limited literature detailing the impact of systemcompliance.To address this impact,a comprehensive testing schedule using an aluminium 6061(Al)sample is carried out on several systems under various test setups.Al is chosen as it is extruded and adheres to well defined shape tolerances and elastic properties.A robust method,using the SavitzkyGolay filter,is introduced to identify significant slope changes in the stress-strain curve.Since the load in the test system is well defined,the recorded deformation is corrected to the expected value of Al resulting in a system-compliance factor.The results across the testing systems and test setups showed significant variance,with the recorded E always lower than the anticipated E_(Al).The number of components within the system over which the deformation is measured had the most significant impact,lowering the expected E by up to 50%.Additionally,the system-compliance factor is inconsistent across different systems and setups.Thus,it is evidently proved that each setup must be separately evaluated for its system-compliance and that no single value exists across systems and setups.The findings are then projected onto a series of uniaxial compressive strength(UCS) tests carried out on Stanstead granite(SS GR) samples.The corrected E_(t50) and E_(avg) values for system-compliance of the samples are within ±1%for each system as opposed to being ±50% pre-correction.The findings conclude that it is deemed necessary and of utmost importance that the deformation be corrected to accommodate the systemcompliance to obtain reliable results.     

Proposed Multiply Charged Ion Source

A proposal is presented in this work for a new type of ion source that employs a hyperbolic potential field for the dual purpose of trapping the plasma ions, and permitting the electrons to impact the trapped ions successively, which by turn render the ions highly stripped. The pvwposed souroe consists of an axially symmetric hyperbolic Penning assembly energized with fixed and cosinusoidal voltage and is immersed in a homogeneous axial magnetic field. The anode and both of the two cathodes follow hyperboloid surfaces of one and two sheets respectively. Extraction of the stripped ions can be accomplished either radially or axially through an extracting system, which is optimized to satisfy Pierce conditions of rectilinear flow. Filtering the extracted ions is done by a quadrupole mass analyzer. Under the influence of the imposed hyperbolic potential field, electrons are allowed to ascillate with bound or unbound trajectories depending on the operating conditions. From the solutions of the equations of motion governing such oscillating electrons, it is possible to optimize the overall performance of the proposed ion source.     

Deep learning based approach for digitized herbarium specimen segmentation

Multimedia Tools and Applications - As herbarium specimens are largely digitized and freely available in online portals, botanists aim to examine their taxonomic aspects to identify the plant...     

Road traffic density estimation using microscopic and macroscopic parameters

In this paper we present a comparative study of two approaches for road traffic density estimation. The first approach uses the microscopic parameters which are extracted using both motion detection and tracking methods from a video sequence, and the second approach uses the macroscopic parameters which are directly estimated by analyzing the global motion in the video scene. The extracted parameters are applied to three classifiers, the K Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier, the LVQ classifier and the SVM classifier, in order to classify the road traffic in three categories: light, medium and heavy. The methods are compared based on their robustness to the classification of different road traffic states. The goal of this study is to propose an algorithm for road traffic density estimation with a high precision.     

Stabilisation of discrete 2D time switching systems by state feedback control

This article deals with sufficient conditions of asymptotic stability for discrete two-dimensional (2D) time switching systems represented by a model of Roesser type with state feedback control. This class of systems can correspond to 2D state space or 2D time space switching systems. This work is based on common and multiple Lyapunov functions. The results are presented in LMI form. Two examples are given to illustrate the results.