Development of a new solar thermal engine system for circulating water for aeration

This paper presents a numerical study about the performance of a Beta Stirling solar thermal engine system. This system is composed of a solar collector box connected to a regenerator hydraulic system and a transmitting power system. The objective of the system is to offer a new alternative to help solving stagnant water pollution in hot countries like Thailand by circulating water in canals, lakes, ponds etc. for aeration using solar energy.The purpose of this study is to determine the power output and actual heat transfer on the performance of the solar thermal engine. The solar thermal engine is analyzed using a mathematical model based on the first law of thermodynamics for processes with finite speed, with particular attention to the energy balance at the receiver. The result of calculations showed that the regenerator volume and phase angle must be chosen carefully to fulfill the requirement that total fluid mass in the system is constant and to obtain maximum power output throughout the day.     

Enhancing optical absorption in visible light of ZnO co-doped with europium and promethium by first-principles study through modified Becke and Johnson potential scheme

By using first-principles calculations we studied the electronic, optical and magnetic properties of ZnO co-doped with Eu and Pm. In this calculation, we used Wien2k code based on full potential linearized augmented plane waves (FP-LAPW) method with the modified Becke-Johnson (mBJ) approximation. This correction gives good band gap compared to experimental band gap. The introduction of Eu and Pm codoping leads to an increase in the band gap. Electrons can transit easily from the valence band to the conduction band, which results in an enhancement of visible light absorption in a wider absorption range. Absorption spectra reach a high value in visible and infrared light regions. With the significance of the obtained results, the studied compounds may potentially find spintronic and optoelectronic applications.     

A population-based iterated greedy algorithm for the minimum weight vertex cover problem

Given an undirected, vertex-weighted graph, the goal of the minimum weight vertex cover problem is to find a subset of the vertices of the graph such that the subset is a vertex cover and the sum of the weights of its vertices is minimal. This problem is known to be NP-hard and no efficient algorithm is known to solve it to optimality. Therefore, most existing techniques are based on heuristics for providing approximate solutions in a reasonable computation time.Population-based search approaches have shown to be effective for solving a multitude of combinatorial optimization problems. Their advantage can be identified as their ability to find areas of the space containing high quality solutions. This paper proposes a simple and efficient population-based iterated greedy algorithm for tackling the minimum weight vertex cover problem. At each iteration, a population of solutions is established and refined using a fast randomized iterated greedy heuristic based on successive phases of destruction and reconstruction. An extensive experimental evaluation on a commonly used set of benchmark instances shows that our algorithm outperforms current state-of-the-art approaches.     

Bond graph modeling,design and experimental validation of a photovoltaic/fuel cell/ electrolyzer/battery hybrid power system

This work presents a complete bond graph modeling of a hybrid photovoltaic-fuel cell-electrolyzer-battery system. These are multi-physics models that will take into account the influence of temperature on the electrochemical parameters. A bond graph modeling of the electrical dynamics of each source will be introduced. The bond graph models were developed to highlight the multi-physics aspect describing the interaction between hydraulic, thermal, electrochemical, thermodynamic, and electrical fields. This will involve using the most generic modeling approach possible for managing the energy flows of the system while taking into account the viability of the system. Another point treated in this work is to propose. In this work, a new strategy for the power flow management of the studied system has been proposed. This strategy aims to improve the overall efficiency of the studied system by optimizing the decisions made when starting and stopping the fuel cell and the electrolyzer. It was verified that the simulation results of the proposed system, when compared to simulation results presented in the literature, that the hydrogen demand is increased by an average of 8%. The developed management algorithm allows reducing the fuel cell degradation by 87% and the electrolyzer degradation by 65%. As for the operating time of the electrolyzer, an increment of 65% was achieved, thus improving the quality of the produced hydrogen. The Fuel Cell's running time has been decreased by 59%. With the ambition to validate the models proposed and the associated commands, the development of this study gave rise to the creation of an experimental platform. Using this high-performance experimental platform, experimental tests were carried out and the results obtained are compared with those obtained by simulation under the same metrological conditions.     

Composite short-side-chain PFSA electrolyte membranes containing selectively modified halloysite nanotubes (HNTs)

Aquivion membrane displays improved properties as compared to Nafion membrane, partly due to shorter side chains. However, some improvements are still necessary for proton exchange membrane fuel cell to operate at low relative humidity. To overcome this drawback, the addition of clay nanoparticle into the Aquivion matrix can be considered. In this study, different composite membranes have been prepared mixing short-side-chain PFSA (perfluorosulfonic acid) Aquivion and selectively modified halloysite nanotubes for PEMFC low relative humidity operation. Halloysites were grafted with fluorinated groups, sulfonated groups, or perfluoro-sulfonated groups on inner or outer surface of the tubes. The obtained composite membranes showed improved properties, especially higher water uptake associated with reduced swelling and better mechanical strength compared to pristine Aquivion membrane and commercially available Nafion HP used as reference. The best performance in this study was obtained with Aquivion loaded with 5 wt% of pretreated perfluoro-sulfonated halloysite. The composite membrane, referred to as Aq/pHNT-SF5, displayed the largest water uptake and proton conductivity among the panel of membranes tested. The chemical stability was not affected by the presence of halloysite in the Aquivion matrix.

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Reducing the complexity of distance measurement methods for circular turbo codes that use structured interleavers

The knowledge of turbo code's minimum Hamming distance (d_min) and its corresponding codeword multiplicity (A_min) is of a great importance because the error correction capability of a code is strongly tied to the values of d_min and A_min. Unfortunately, the computational complexity associated with the search for d_min and A_min can be very high, especially for a turbo code that has high d_min value. This paper introduces some useful properties of turbo codes that use structured interleavers together with circular encoding. These properties allow for a significant reduction of search space and thus reduce significantly the computational complexity associated with the determination of d_min and A_min values. © 2014 The Authors. International Journal of Communication Systems published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-assembly and characterization of layered double hydroxide/DNA hybrids

The purpose of this study was to control the fabrication of new labile supramolecular assemblies by formulating associations of DNA molecules with inorganic layered double hydroxides (LDHs). The results show that LDH/DNA hybrids synthesized by a coprecipitation route involving the in situ formation of LDHs around DNA molecules acting as templates were characterized by a lamellar organization, with DNA molecules sandwiched between hydroxide layers, exhibiting a regular spacing of 1.96 nm. Our results indicate that labile complexes resulting from the association of nucleic acids and inorganic materials can be obtained not only by anion exchange but also by a direct self-assembly route.