Radiant panel and air heating performance in large industrial buildings

This study determined the vertical temperature gradient in two large industrial buildings with room height close to 10 m. One of the buildings was an assembly hall with air heating system and the other was a warehouse equipped with radiant heating (primary) and air heating (secondary) system. The objective of the study was to determine the differences of vertical temperature gradient in halls during the winter. The findings from this study were used in dynamic whole-year simulations for estimating the heating and ventilation energy differences. The results showed about 0.2 K/m vertical temperature gradients in both halls, which was smaller by a factor of 5 for air heating than guidebook. This difference was likely because of the building being ventilated and well insulated. Temperature gradients kept reasonably constant at all measured outdoor temperatures. Energy simulations with measured gradient values of 0.2 K/m and with outdoor airflow rate during occupied hours 1.0 L/(s·m²), which was enough for ventilation and for air heating with simulated good insulation level, resulted in 15% to 41% higher primary energy for air heating. If it is possible to lower outdoor airflow rates to 0.5 L/(s·m²) during occupied hours, which was enough to remove pollutants from occupancy, the analyzed cases showed 23% lower primary energy for radiant heating.     

Towards gadget-free internet services: A roadmap of the Naked world

This paper presents a roadmap for the transition from current gadget-centric digital services towards a gadget-free services environment called the Naked world. The main idea of the Naked world is that all the services which are currently provided by gadgets will be provided by the infrastructure, thus no gadgets will be needed to use any kind of digital services. When a user in the Naked world intends to use a service, the infrastructure senses the user, the nearby intelligent surrounding launches an interactive user interface, performs identification through biometric identities, provides the service, and then closes the session when the user finishes the job. Therefore, the Naked world comprises highly intelligent and context-aware interactive environments. The vision of the Naked world is an evolution towards a user-friendly and ubiquitously available digital services, which is naturally bounded by the technological advancement. Henceforth, this paper presents the essential technologies and functional requirements along with the current and forthcoming novel technological concepts and challenges for the realization of the Naked world.     

Synthesis of Pd–alumina and Pd–lanthana Suspension for Catalytic Applications by One-step Liquid Flame Spray

Catalytic materials of alumina and lanthana supported nanosized palladium particles (7 wt%) in a water suspension were prepared by Liquid Flame Spray (LFS) method. The particle production rate was 90 g/h, using liquid precursors containing Al(NO₃)₃ · 9H₂O, La(NO₃)₃ · 6H₂O and Pd(NH₃)₄NO₃ in water solution. In the LFS method, a turbulent, high-temperature (T_max ∼ 2,700 °C) H₂–O₂ flame is used. The liquid precursor is atomized into micron sized droplets by high velocity H₂ flow and introduced into the flame where the droplets will evaporate. The evaporated compounds decompose and the reaction product re-condenses into particulate material. Here, the nanosized particles are formed by gas-to-particle conversion and the micron sized particles via liquid-to-solid route. In this study, the produced particulate material was collected by thermophoresis along with condensing water into a suspension (nanoparticles in water) in a one-step process. Thus, the whole suspension was produced from the end products of the flame. According to TEM-EDS analysis, the particulate material contained micron sized porous aluminum oxide or lanthanum oxide carrier particles, coated by nanosized palladium particles (∼2–10 nm). The surfactant (Rhodasurf-La 42) was injected into the suspension just after collection to reduce agglomeration. Catalytic performance of the produced Pd–lanthana containing suspension was tested in laboratory with synthetic gases, in order to use it as a possible raw material for three-way catalyst (TWC). The suspension was used as Pd raw material in TWC washcoat and dispersed onto a metallic honeycomb.     

All‐in‐one implementation framework for binary heaps

Even a rough literature review reveals that there are many alternative ways of implementing a binary heap, the fundamental priority‐queue structure loved by us all. Which one of these alternatives is the best in practice? The opinions of crowd‐pullers and textbook authors are aligned: use an array. Of course, the correct answer is ‘it depends’. To get from opinions to facts, a framework—a set of class templates—was written that provides a variety of customization options so it could be used to realize a large part of the proposed variants. Also, some of the derived implementations were performance benchmarked. From this work, three conclusions can be drawn: (i) It is difficult to achieve space efficiency and speed at the same time. If n denotes the current number of values in the data structure, ? is a small positive real, ?  < 1, and denotes the size of the values of type in bytes, space efficiency means bytes of space, and speed means O (lgn ) worst‐case time per push and pop . (ii) If an array‐based solution is sufficient, Williams' original program from 1964 is still to this day hard to beat. (iii) Sometimes a linked structure and clever programming is a viable option. If the binary‐heap variant you need is not available at the software library you are using, reading this essay might save you some headaches. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.