Destination: Perfection

The objectives of the perfect power project include: 1) the achievement of system-wide perfect power and demonstration of its technological viability; 2) 50% peak demand reduction capability via on-site generation when called upon by ComEd/PJM; 3) deferral of ComEd planned substation upgrades due to the demand reduction achieved; 4) demonstration of the economic value of perfect power, specifically the avoidance of outage costs and the introduction of significant savings and revenue from providing ancillary services; and 5) a design that can be replicated to any municipality-sized system where customers can participate in electric power market opportunities. In addition, the IIT team seeks to fulfill the mission of the university as set forth by President John L. Anderson, "IIT will be internationally recognized in distinctive areas of education and research, using as its platform the global city of Chicago, driven by a focus on professional and technology oriented education, and based on a culture of innovation that embraces bold and transformational ideas." Transforming the IIT power delivery infrastructure to achieve perfect power is a bold idea that will require a never-ending series of innovations. We have embraced the vision of the GEI and we look forward to sharing our progress with the power and energy community in the years to come.     

Macroporous nanocomposite polymer electrolyte for lithium-ion batteries

A novel macroporous nanocomposite polymer membrane (NCPM) based on poly(vinylidene difluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) [P(VDF-HFP)] copolymer was prepared by in situ hydrolysis of Ti(OC₄H₉)₄ using a non-solvent-induced phase separation technique. SEM micrograph shows that the yielding TiO₂ nanoparticles are dispersed uniformly in the polymer matrix and there are a lot of spherical macropores connecting with each other by some smaller pores. DSC results exhibit that the crystallinity of polymer matrix decreases with the incorporation of TiO₂ nanoparticles. The tensile stress of the NCPM is 9.69 MPa and its fracture strain 74.4%. After immersion in 1.0 mol l⁻¹ LiPF₆/ethyl carbonate (EC)–dimethyl carbonate (DMC), the ionic conductivity of the obtained nanocomposite polymer electrolyte (NCPE) is 0.98 × 10⁻³ S cm⁻¹ at 20 °C. Lithium-ion batteries, which use this kind of NCPE as the separator and electrolyte, display good discharging performance at different current densities, presenting promise for its practical application.     

Design and performance of a solar-powered air-conditioning system in a green building

A solar-powered adsorption air-conditioning system was designed and installed in the green building of Shanghai Research Institute of Building Science. The system contained 150 m² solar collectors and two adsorption chillers with nominal refrigeration capacity of 8.5 kW. Based on performance characteristics of the adsorption chiller, the operation mode of the solar-powered air-conditioning system was optimized by maintaining a phase shift of 540 s between the two adsorption chillers. Thereafter, the whole system realized stable operation by the balance of heat consumption and refrigeration output. From June to August of 2005, the solar-powered air-conditioning system continuously ran between 9:00 and 17:00. The operation performance of the system under representative working condition showed that the average refrigeration output of the solar-powered air-conditioning system was 15.3 kW during an 8 h operation and the maximum value exceeded 20 kW. Solar fraction for the system in summer was 71.7%, which corresponded to the designed cooling load (15 kW). Compared with the ambient temperature, it was deduced that solar radiant intensity had a more distinct influence on the performance of solar-powered air-conditioning system.     

Multiphase reactor scale-up for Cu–Cl thermochemical hydrogen production

This paper examines selected design issues associated with reactor scale-up in the thermochemical copper–chlorine (Cu–Cl) cycle of hydrogen production. The thermochemical cycle decomposes water into oxygen and hydrogen, through intermediate copper and chlorine compounds. In this paper, emphasis is focused on the hydrogen, oxygen and hydrolysis reactors. A sedimentation cell for copper separation and HCl gas absorption tower are discussed for the thermochemical hydrogen reactor. A molten salt reactor is investigated for decomposition of an intermediate compound, copper oxychloride (CuO·Cl₂), into oxygen gas and molten cuprous chloride. Scale-up design issues are examined for handling three phases within the molten salt reactor, i.e., solid copper oxychloride particles, liquid (melting salt) and exiting gas (oxygen). Also, different variations of hydrolysis reactions are compared, including 5, 3 and 2-step Cu–Cl cycles that utilize reactive spray drying, instead of separate drying and hydrolysis processes. The spray drying involves evaporation of aqueous feed by mixing the spray and drying streams. Results are presented for the required capacities of feed materials for the multiphase reactors, steam and heat requirements, and other key design parameters for reactor scale-up to a pilot-scale capacity.     

Adaptive nonuniform polar quantization application to high quality speech compression

The logarithmic companding technique has shown to be extremely useful in speech quantization with rate of 8 bits/sample. However, for lower bit rates it is not the ideal solution for high quality speech coding. Because of that, in this paper we establish source coding scheme which enables better spectrum efficiency for input that has a large dynamic range. Since our wish is also to improve signal quality in comparison with quality defined with standards G.711 and G.712, we opt for adaptive technique application to the speech coding. Our research shows that proper design of forward gain-adaptive polar quantization can enable compression of about 1 bit/sample as well as significantly better quality than in case of using coder designed according to standard G.711. Furthermore, performances can be sustained over the whole speech dynamic range. Also, if the requisite speech quality is not supposed to be lower than G.712 standard quality, the achieved compression can be almost 1.5 bits/sample. Besides, we propose knew simple encoding rule which can additionally reduce bit rate for 0.1 bit/sample.     

Effect of the magnetic phase transition on the charge transport in layered semiconductor ferromagnets TlCrS<Subscript>2</Subscript> and TlCrSe<Subscript>2</Subscript>

TlCrS₂ and TlCrSe₂ crystals were synthesized by solid-state reaction. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that TlCrS₂ and TlCrSe₂ compounds crystallize in the hexagonal crystal system with lattice parameters a = 3.538 Å, c = 21.962 Å, c/a ≈ 6.207, z = 3; a = 3.6999 Å, c = 22.6901 Å, c/a ≈ 6.133, z = 3; and X-ray densities ρ _x = 6.705 and 6.209 g/cm³, respectively. Magnetic and electric studies in a temperature range of 77–400 K showed that TlCrS₂ and TlCrSe₂ are semiconductor ferromagnets. Rather large deviations of the experimental effective magnetic moment of TlCrS₂ (3.26 μ_B) and TlCrSe₂ (3.05 μ_B) from the theoretical one (3.85 μ_B) are attributed to two-dimensional magnetic ordering in the paramagnetic region of strongly layered ferromagnets TlCrS₂ and TlCrSe₂. The effect of the magnetic phase’s transition on the charge transport in TlCrS₂ and TlCrSe₂ is detected.     

A Laguerre polynomial-based bound on the symbol error probability for adaptive antennas with optimum combining

We derive a simple closed-form upper bound on the symbol error probability for coherent detection of M-ary phase-shift keying using antenna arrays with optimum combining, in the presence of multiple uncorrelated equal-power cochannel interferers and thermal noise in a Rayleigh fading environment. The new bound, based on Laguerre polynomials, is valid for an arbitrary number of antenna elements as well as arbitrary number of interferers, and it is proven to be asymptotically tight. Comparisons with Monte Carlo simulation are also provided, showing that our bound is useful in many cases of interest.     

Sigmoid-basis nonlinear power-control algorithm for mobile radio systems

Convergence speed and distributiveness are important properties of a power-control algorithm in order to evaluate its potential for use in cellular radio systems. Most of the power-control algorithms in literature are derived from numerical linear algebra or linear control theory and, consequently, are in linear form. This paper, on the other hand, proposes a (sigmoid-basis) nonlinear power-control algorithm that is fully distributed and first order. The algorithm is obtained by discretization of the differential equation forms of the algorithm shown to be stable in the case of a feasible system. It is shown to be quadratically convergent in the neighborhood of its fixed point. We carried out computational experiments on a code-division multiple-access system. The results indicate that our algorithm significantly enhances the convergence speed of power control in an estimation error-free scenario and is more robust against estimation errors as compared with the linear distributed power-control algorithm of Foschini and Miljanic as a reference algorithm. The proposed algorithm was also verified with an advanced dynamic system simulator.     

Distributed cooperative MAC for multihop wireless networks

This article investigates distributed cooperative medium access control protocol design for multihop wireless networks. Cooperative communication has been proposed recently as an effective way to mitigate channel impairments. With cooperation, single-antenna mobile terminals in a multi-user environment share antennas from other mobiles to generate a virtual multipleantenna system that achieves more reliable communication with a higher diversity gain. However, more mobiles conscribed for one communication inevitably induces complex medium access interactions, especially in multihop wireless ad hoc networks. To improve the network throughput and diversity gain simultaneously, we investigate the issues and challenges in designing an efficient MAC scheme for such networks. Furthermore, based on the IEEE 802.11 DCF, a cross-layer designed cooperative MAC protocol is proposed. The MAC scheme adapts to the channel condition and payload length.     

Replacement of Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio

Two major challenges exist in the development and deployment of cognitive radio networks: spectrum sensing and hidden terminal problem. In this research, we consider a network structure where the spectrum sensing task is separated from the unlicensed users (secondary users). The service provider for the secondary users needs to place sensing devices within the networks of licensed users (primary users). These sensing devices sense the primary users? activity. The sensing devices also decide whether to admit a secondary user?s transmission. A new cognitive cycle is proposed accordingly. The proposed protocol is analyzed using the theory of Lamé curve. The problem of optimally locating sensing devices and the properties of the proposed system are studied for single-user case and multi-user case. For the case without a separate control channel, a lowtemperature handshake technique is proposed for handshakes between the secondary users and the sensing devices. The other advantage of the proposed scheme is from the business model point of view: the expensive sensing devices will be implemented by the cognitive radio service provider, instead of being built in the secondary user devices which are usually consumer products demanding low cost.