Effect of K2O content on breakdown strength and energy-storage density in K2O-BaO-Nb2O5-SiO2 glass-ceramics

Phase evolution, dielectric properties, breakdown strength, and energy-storage performance were studied by varying K₂O content in K₂O-BaO-Nb₂O₅-SiO₂ glass-ceramics. It was found that dielectric loss with the increase of K₂O content increases owing to the un-crystallized K₂O into the glass network, while dielectric breakdown strength firstly increases and then decreases due to the competition between two physical mechanisms, i.e., interfacial polarization and bridging-oxygen bond broken by the non-bridging oxygen ions. With the increase of K₂O content, energy-storage density firstly increased up to 12.06±0.69 J/cm³ with a high breakdown strength of 1973 kV/cm, and then decreased. Also, the discharged efficiency is obtained as a high value of 92% from P-E hysteresis loops.     

Simulation and experimental research on energy conversion efficiency of scroll expander for micro‐Compressed Air Energy Storage system

A scroll expander was applied to the Micro‐Compressed Air Energy Storage system, and its energy conversion efficiency was investigated. In order to study the variation mechanism of the volume, mass, pressure and temperature of the air in different chambers, the mathematical model of the expansion process was developed on the base of the geometric model, mass conservation equation, ideal gas equation and energy conservation equation. Then, the mathematical model was implemented in Matlab, and the simulated energy conversion efficiency defined as the ratio between the output shaft power of the scroll expander and the input compressed air power was obtained. Furthermore, a test system was built in order to validate the mathematical model and study the improvement of the energy conversion efficiency. The prototypes of the scroll expander with different cross‐sectional areas of the intake port or the discharge port were fabricated and tested in the experiments. Results show that the simulated torque and energy conversion efficiency agree well with the experimental results. Also, there is a small deviation between the expansion process and the ideal isentropic process due to the gas leakage, intake and discharge loss. In addition, the air supply pressure and the cross‐sectional area ratio of the discharge port to the intake port are two important parameters for the improvement of the energy conversion efficiency. The experiments show that the energy conversion efficiency varies from 23% to 36% at the air supply pressure of 0.35 to 0.65 MPa, indicating that it is proportional to the air supply pressure. It can also be concluded from the experiments that when the air pressure is higher than 0.45 MPa, the ideal ratio range can be determined as 0.6‐0.8. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Water sorption and cooking time of red kidney beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.): part I – Effect of freezing and drying conditions on water sorption and cooking time

Water sorption and cooking time of kidney beans were determined. The beans were manually harvested at 19.2 ± 0.1% moisture content and stored at ?20 and ?10 °C for about half a year. The beans were further dried at 30, 40 and 50 °C inside a thin‐layer drier for 7.5 h or under room conditions for 4 week. The freezing storage temperature before the beans were dried did not influence their cooking time and water sorption. The saturated kernel volumes decreased approximately 7% after drying. The beans decreased their sphericity during water sorption and had a larger swelling ratio in the thickness direction than in other directions. Lower initial moisture content, especially with a higher drying temperature, decreased water sorptivity and resulted in higher percentage of uncooked kernels if the beans were not soaked before cooking. However, there was no relationship between initial moisture content and uncooked percentage if the beans were soaked before cooking. High drying temperature resulted in hard‐to‐cook (HTC) phenomenon.     

The hurdle effect of osmotic pretreatment and high‐pressure cold pasteurisation on the shelf‐life extension of fresh‐cut tomatoes

Tomatoes are perishable products due to the activity of microorganisms and endogenous enzymes. The objective was to produce cut tomatoes with extended shelf life, using the combined hurdle effect of osmotic pretreatment (OD) and high pressure (HP), instead of a conventional one‐step thermal process. Samples were processed in a multicomponent osmotic solution at 35 °C, subsequently cold‐pasteurised in pack at 600 MPa and stored at 5–15 °C. Quality deterioration during isothermal and nonisothermal storage was kinetically modelled. Both OD process and OD‐HP combined process caused an increase in lycopene content that was well retained. Texture, colour and flavour of treated samples were evaluated as similar to fresh, with OD‐HP samples showing better retention during storage. Being microbiologically stable, shelf life of OD‐HP samples was limited by sensory deterioration, whereas OD samples were rejected due to eventual microbial growth. Shelf life of OD and OD‐HP samples was estimated at 77 and 181 days, respectively, at 5 °C.     

Cold Rich Bypass to Strippers for CO2 Capture by Concentrated Piperazine

Cold rich bypass to the stripper in CO₂ capture by alkanolamines will usually reduce the total heat duty. Bypass reduces the stripping steam in the overhead vapor and balances the temperature approach in the main cross exchanger. This process improvement reduces the energy requirement of any configuration, but it is most beneficial when the overhead vapor is not already countercurrently contacted with incoming rich solution. Therefore, the 2‐stage flash configuration was evaluated in this work, and it had an improvement of 11 % over the no bypass case. Its improvement was better than what was observed with a simple stripper and interheated column. An optimized cool rich bypass for a pilot scale 2‐stage reduces the equivalent work.     

Storage technologies for wind power in the Columbia River Gorge

The transition from traditional energy sources to renewable has gained popularity and acceptance in recent years. This has been driven mainly by the current level of pollution, global warming, decommission of old nuclear power plants and the increasing cost of conventional energy sources. Nevertheless, one of the many steps to overcome is the seasonality or intermittency of renewable energy sources such as wind power. In recent years, new technologies have come up to address this problem, so the energy can be stored for future purposes. This paper analyses these energy storage alternatives for a specific case in the Columbia River Gorge for wind power. A hierarchical decision model is developed with criteria including political, social, environmental, technical and economical. The main conclusions highlight that the economical and technical criteria are among the most important ones for decision-makers.     

Self-discharge characteristics and performance degradation of Ni-MH batteries for storage applications

The needs for onboard energy storage are practically dependent on the Ni-MH and Li-ion battery packs, because these two power-assisting systems have features of proper energy density, longer cycle lifetime, quick charge acceptance, and proper operating windows for both voltage and temperature. In particular, the Ni-MH power system has a proper tolerance mechanism for overcharge and overdischarge, a lower cost for battery pack maintenance, and a slightly longer cycle lifetime profile. We studied the self-discharge characteristics, state-of-health, state-of-charge, and energy efficiencies at various charge input levels. The end-of-voltages during charge and discharge were evaluated for the Ni-MH storage batteries. The impedance measurements and data analysis have also been conducted for equivalent circuit simulations. The performance deterioration and capacity decay are fundamentally analyzed and discussed in details, including electrode side-reactions, structure degradations, separator weakening, and level changes of electrolyte saturation in the battery. Further battery quality enhancement through cycle duration improvement for onboard energy storage potentially provides more suitable power and energy delivery in order to obtain higher efficiency, save more fuels, and reduce CO₂, SO₂, and NO_x emissions.     

A dynamic two phase flow model for a pilot scale sodium borohydride hydrogen generation reactor

A two-dimensional, non-isothermal and dynamic model was developed to describe a sodium borohydride/hydrogen reactor for stationary use. All relevant transport phenomena were treated in detail and the kinetic model developed previously by the authors was introduced into the algorithm. In this paper the reactive solution was modelled as a two phase flow; with this approach the impact of the hydrogen production on the solution stirring could be observed and quantified.     

Changes in in vitro protein digestion of retort‐pouched pork belly during 120‐day storage

To investigate the effect of long‐term storage on in vitro protein digestion of the retort‐pouched pork belly. The products were stored at 25 °C for 0, 30, 60 and 120 days and digested with pepsin and trypsin at each time point. SDS‐PAGE and LC‐MS‐MS were applied to separate and identify proteins and their digested products. In vitro protein digestibility decreased from 47.7% after 60‐day storage to 25.4% after 120‐day storage for the samples digested by pepsin, and from 63.9% to 45.7% for the samples digested by pepsin and trypsin at corresponding time points. LC‐MS‐MS demonstrated changes in peptide composition and abundance with storage time. Long‐term storage could deteriorate nutritive values of meat products by reducing digestible protein content.