Impact of the reaction conditions on the photocatalytic reduction of water on mesoporous polymeric carbon nitride under sunlight irradiation

Sacrificial hydrogen evolution was studied with sol–gel prepared carbon nitride photocatalysts loaded in-situ with platinum in a photocatalytic setup with defined geometry and a solar simulator as light source. Reaction conditions (e.g. photocatalyst concentration, triethanolamine concentration, amount of Pt precursor, water quality, etc.), and catalyst properties (e.g. BET surface area) were varied to optimize the catalysts for hydrogen evolution. We found that most of the parameters strongly influence the in-situ co-catalyst loading. The optimum platinum loading is between 0.03 and 0.09 wt%, which is less than 5% of the initial amount of platinum. A long term stability test was conducted showing a stable hydrogen evolution rate for more than 10 days indicating a stable catalyst under applied reaction conditions. We found that a change in the BET surface area affects the photocatalytic activity rather than the experimental conditions.     

The Brazilian experience of rural electrification in the Amazon with decentralized generation - The need to change the paradigm from electrification to development

There are at least 607 thousand households in the Brazilian Amazon that need to be attended with some form of regular electricity service. These households are not attended by the electricity sector through its electricity distribution companies and most of them have some form of precarious decentralized electricity generation that is not registered or regulated in the institutional framework. Diverse initiatives were taken by Brazilian government to attend these household through alternatives that relied on locally available renewable energy. This paper accesses this initiatives of rural electrification in the Brazilian Amazon. First an overview of the problems of rural electricity are discussed and its specificities in the Brazilian Amazon. Then the Brazilian institutional framework that organizes the decentralized electricity generation is described with its various limitations. The diverse initiatives undertaken to attend the rural communities in the Amazon since the 1990s are described, as well as how these initiatives are linked to the policies for rural electrification. The results shows that it can be inferred that sole market mechanisms are not sufficient to guarantee economic sustainability of these projects. This can be one of the reasons why traditional electricity distribution companies showed the lack of interest in promoting rural electrification with other means than grid extension. The most successful projects had financed efforts to integrate the generation of electricity into local development initiatives in order to guarantee sustainability and used substantial part of funding for local mobilization and organization. It needs a paradigm chance by treating these initiatives as local development initiatives and promoting alternative ways for its implementation through partnership between local new actors in the electricity sector and government and implementing policy on a local municipal level.     

Optimized battery-management system to improve storage lifetime in renewable energy systems

Lead-acid batteries are the main technology used in renewable energy systems (RESs) and autonomous power-supply systems due to their maturity and low cost, factors that will remain valid for the next few years. It is often stated, however, that batteries in RES applications exhibit shorter lifetimes than those expected by manufacturers’ data or those experienced in real traditional applications. Overall, in relation to all other components in RESs, the battery lifetime is quite short and has an intensive impact on the costs of the total system.     

Numerical study on the formation of Taylor bubbles in capillary tubes

Numerical simulations have been carried out for the transient formation of Taylor bubbles in a nozzle/tube co-flow arrangement by solving the unsteady, incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. A level set method was used to track the two-phase interface. The calculated bubble size, shape, liquid film thickness, bubble length, drift velocity, pressure drop and flow fields of Taylor flow agree well with the literature data. For a given nozzle/tube configuration, the formation of Taylor bubbles is found to be mainly dependent on the relative magnitude of gas and liquid superficial velocity. However, even under the same liquid and gas superficial velocities, the change of nozzle geometry alone can drastically change the size of Taylor bubbles and the pressure drop behavior inside a given capillary. This indicates that the widely used flow pattern map presented in terms of liquid and gas superficial velocities is not unique.     

Interdependent Regulation of Polycystin Expression Influences Starvation-Induced Autophagy and Cell Death

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is mainly caused by deficiency of polycystin-1 (PC1) or polycystin-2 (PC2). Altered autophagy has recently been implicated in ADPKD progression, but its exact regulation by PC1 and PC2 remains unclear. We therefore investigated cell death and survival during nutritional stress in mouse inner medullary collecting duct cells (mIMCDs), either wild-type (WT) or lacking PC1 (PC1KO) or PC2 (PC2KO), and human urine-derived proximal tubular epithelial cells (PTEC) from early-stage ADPKD patients with PC1 mutations versus healthy individuals. Basal autophagy was enhanced in PC1-deficient cells. Similarly, following starvation, autophagy was enhanced and cell death reduced when PC1 was reduced. Autophagy inhibition reduced cell death resistance in PC1KO mIMCDs to the WT level, implying that PC1 promotes autophagic cell survival. Although PC2 expression was increased in PC1KO mIMCDs, PC2 knockdown did not result in reduced autophagy. PC2KO mIMCDs displayed lower basal autophagy, but more autophagy and less cell death following chronic starvation. This could be reversed by overexpression of PC1 in PC2KO. Together, these findings indicate that PC1 levels are partially coupled to PC2 expression, and determine the transition from renal cell survival to death, leading to enhanced survival of ADPKD cells during nutritional stress.     

A state space analysis of propose-and-revise

A central research topic in the area of knowledge engineering is the reuse of problem-solving methods for developing knowledge based systems. For being able to reuse a problem-solving method it is important to know under which restrictions a problem-solving method is appropriate to solve a given problem. This paper describes the problem-solving method propose-and-revise as well as the way this problem-solving method searches in its problem space for a solution. A quantitative analysis of the efficiency of this search process is given. Additionally, task and domain specific properties and restrictions and their influence on the efficiency of the search process are considered. For these purposes an instance of the problem-solving method is transformed to a corresponding instance of a Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver (STRIPS) planning system. Then the problem-solving method is considered as an additional control strategy for such a planning system. By this way the various insights and analysis results which are available in the area of planning systems may be exploited for the analysis of problem-solving methods. ©1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Prognose der Sorptionskinetik organischer Schadstoffe in heterogenem Aquifermaterial

A model for the simulation of kinetic sorption processes in heterogeneous aquifer material is presented. Sorption kinetics is responsible for the long persistence of many organic contaminants in the subsurface. Therefore, reliable model predictions of these processes are of major importance concerning, for instance, the design of efficient remediation strategies. The modeling approach presented here recognizes sorption kinetics as retarded diffusion within the intra-particle pore space and, in particular, takes into account the sedimentological and petrographical composition of the aquifer material. This is in accordance with results from laboratory experiments quantifying sorption/desorption processes. For solving the model equations a finite-difference scheme is applied which incorporates several features proven to be relevant in practical model applications (mass balance, flexible choice of boundary conditions, easy handling). The simulation results shown here focus on the impact of aquifer heterogeneity (lithological composition, grain size distribution) on sorption and desorption kinetics of organic contaminants. Furthermore, this approach can be straightforwardly coupled to existing software for simulating multi-dimensional solute transport.     

Basic investigations on debris cooling

An experimental investigation of boiling phenomena in inductively heated particle beds has been performed. The major aim of these experiments is to provide data for validating numerical codes used in reactor safety. The experiments can be divided in three parts: boiling experiments, dryout experiments and quenching experiments. In boiling experiments, the pressure gradients have been measured along the bed height for different flow modes, different heat inputs and different system pressures. In dryout experiments, the minimum heat input has been determined for which the particle bed starts to superheat significantly above the saturation temperature. The final test series deals with the cool down behaviour of strongly superheated particles by flooding them with cold water. The initial temperatures ranged from 200 up to 900 °C in top-quenching experiments and from 230 up to 450 °C in bottom-quenching experiments. All experiments were performed with pre-oxidised stainless steel balls of 6 and 3 mm diameter in a cylindrical crucible. The bed height was 640 mm and the bed diameter was 125 mm for boiling and dryout experiments, respectively 150 mm for quenching experiments. The experimental results are compared with various available dryout models.