Heat exchanger network design of an organic Rankine cycle integrated waste heat recovery system of a marine vessel using pinch point analysis

The coexistence of different kinds of waste heat sources on marine vessels with various temperature ranges increases the need for an optimal heat exchanger network (HEN) design for the heat collection process to reduce the unutilizable heat that needs to be discharged to overboard. The optimal HEN design has not been taken into consideration by using pinch point analysis in previous studies of marine organic Rankine cycle (ORC) systems that utilize from different kinds of waste heat sources. The objective of the study is to determine the optimal HEN design for an ORC integrated waste heat recovery system of a marine vessel by utilizing the pinch point analysis to improve the overall energy efficiency. Lubricating oil, high-temperature cooling water and scavenge air of the main engine, and the exhaust gas emitted from the boiler plant were identified as the major waste heat sources of a reference container ship. A heat collection stream, in which thermal oil is used as the heat transfer fluid that transfers the collected heat to an ORC system, was proposed. The pinch point analysis showed that the optimum waste heat recovery could be gained by separating the scavenge air cooler into three stages and the lubricating oil cooler into two stages. The results of the parametric study for the varying evaporator inlet pressure between 1000 and 3000 kPa showed that R1234ze(Z) yields the best performance among nine different organic working fluids with the thermal efficiency and exergy efficiency of 15.24% and 86.47% for the ORC system, respectively. For the proposed configuration, the unavailable waste heat that cannot be transferred to thermal oil was found as 23.71%, 16.56%, 13.17%, and 7.81% of the total waste heat produced by the heat sources, and also 8.24%, 9.80%, 11.55%, and 12.93% of the net power output produced by the main engine can be recovered for 25%, 50%, 76%, and 100% maximum continuous rating (MCR), respectively.     

Contribution of polyaniline coating to the stability and performance of nickel hydroxide based electroactive materials

This study has been conducted for investigating the contribution of polyaniline (PANI) to the electroactivity of nickel hydroxide (NH) by using a combination of electrochemical, structural and morphological characterization techniques. NH, PANI and nickel hydroxide/PANI composite (NHP) electrodes were produced on nickel foam substrates. Electrodeposition and chemical bath deposition methods were used for the preparation of NH and PANI, respectively. All the electrochemical experiments were conducted in alkaline solutions. NH and PANI were used as reference materials and exhibited properties in accordance with the literature. Namely, for NH electrode capacity decayed by cycling because of the phase transformation from α to β-Ni(OH)₂, and particles growth from 350 to 850 nm. Also, flower-like structure of the as prepared Ni(OH)₂ faded after 2000 cycles. On the other hand, PANI electrode although exhibited a decrease in the conductivity because of its degradation retained its capacity over cycling because of swelling and shrinking that led to an increased surface area. Composite electrode consisting of PANI and NH resulted in an improvement of capacity retention. At the beginning of cycling capacitance of the composite electrode was 0.64 F/cm², capacity decreased to 0.47 F/cm² after 500 cycles then, continuously increased and finally reached to 0.54 F/cm² after 2000 cycles. Presence of PANI in combination with NH, limited the particle growth and contributed to the preservation of flower like structure of NH. Contrary to both NH and PANI electrodes, charge transfer resistance of NHP exhibited a decrease with cycling indicating a synergy between NH and PANI in addition to morphological changes.     

Enhanced thermoelectric properties induced by chemical pressure in Ca3Co4O9

We report the investigation of boron substitution on structural, electrical, thermal, and thermoelectric properties of Ca_3−xB_xCo₄O₉ (x=0, 0.5, 0.75, and 1) in the temperature range between 300 K and 5 K. X-ray diffraction studies show that the Ca₃Co₄O₉ phase is successfully preserved as the majority phase in the x=0.5 sample despite the small size of boron ions. Electrical transport measurements confirm that B³⁺ substitution for Ca²⁺ causes an increase in resistivity due to the decrease in carrier concentration. x=0.5 sample is found to have a Seebeck coefficient of 181 μV/K at room temperature which is ~1.5 times higher than that of the pure Ca₃Co₄O₉. Our results indicate that the chemical pressure due to the large ionic radii difference between B³⁺ (0.27 Å) and Ca²⁺ (1 Å) enhances the thermoelectric properties as long as the unique crystal structure of Ca₃Co₄O₉ is preserved.     

A fluid dynamics-based deformable model for segmentation of cervical cell images

A novel deformable model for unsupervised segmentation of cervical cells within Pap smear images is presented in this paper. The proposed method is inspired by fluid mechanics and based on the simulation of incompressible fluid flood via grid-based solution of Navier–Stokes equations. In this approach, simulation starts inside the cytoplasmic region and the simulated fluid is attracted toward the cell contours. Unlike most of the other fluid-based methods, gradient magnitude data are not used for extracting topological relief of the image. However, gradient magnitude of the image is still considered as the source for extracting particles. Direction of propagation of the flow is determined by an interaction mechanism based on the permeability rate of these particles. Interaction between fluid and particles guides the advancing fronts of the fluid toward object boundaries. Redefinition of complex topologies with particle groups provides potential of improved segmentation capability and flexibility to the model. We demonstrate the segmentation capability of our model with fully automated and unsupervised experimental setting on Pap smear sample images. Results showed that proposed method may be more adaptive than watershed algorithm and have an improved performance on recovering shape and boundary data of cervical cells.     

Progress toward a liquid crystal contact lens display

A contact lens embeddable display using electro‐optic modulation was designed and fabricated. Using a guest–host liquid crystal configuration, a spherically deformed liquid crystal cell was fabricated comprising poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT : PSS) as a conductive layer and obliquely evaporated SiO₂ as an alignment layer. An additional SiO₂ buffer layer was evaporated on top of the PEDOT : PSS to overcome compatibility problems with the patterning of the photolithographically defined spacers. Although the contrast is modest, a patterned modulation could clearly be observed, indicating that our approach and fabrication process could eventually lead to a fully pixelated contact lens display.     

A 2-D recursive inverse adaptive algorithm

In this paper, a 2-D form of the recently proposed recursive inverse (RI) adaptive algorithm is introduced. The filter coefficients can be updated along both the horizontal and vertical directions on a 2-D plane. The proposed approach uses a variable step size and avoids the use of the inverse autocorrelation matrix in the coefficient update equation, which leads to an improved and more stable performance. Performance of the 2-D RI algorithm is compared to that of the 2-D RLS algorithm in an image deconvolution and an adaptive line enhancer problem settings. The simulation results show that the proposed 2-D RI algorithm leads to an improved performance compared to that of the 2-D RLS algorithm.