Excellent destabilization effect and ideal desorption temperature in the hydride Mg2FeH6 substituted with yttrium; a first principles study

We investigated some properties of the hydride Mg₂FeH₆ substituted with yttrium by a first principles calculation. Some experimental results showed that 4d transition metal, yttrium serves as a good catalyst for magnesium based hydrogen storage alloys, but there are a few theoretical studies about magnesium based hydrides substituted with it. Mg₂FeH₆ is regarded as a cheaper material than pure MgH₂, while it is crystalized into Fm3m structure (space group 225). Although it has high hydrogen storage capacity, many investigations have not been devoted to it due to its extremely high thermodynamic stability. The yttrium substituted Mg₂FeH₆ exhibits very low energy of formation, and its desorption temperature, 75 °C is very suitable for practical hydrogen storage applications. Our results showed that Mg₂FeH₆ is destabilized effectively by yttrium substitution and introducing vacancy defects has additive effect to the improvement of dehydrogenation performance.     

Application of piece‐wise linear weight functions for 2D 8‐node quadrilateral element in contact problems

The present study is a continuation of our previous work with the aim to reduce problems caused by standard higher order elements in contact problems. The difficulties can be attributed to the inherent property of the Galerkin method which gives uneven distributions of nodal forces resulting in oscillating contact pressures. The proposed remedy is use of piece‐wise linear weight functions. The methods to establish stiffness and/or mass matrix for 8‐node quadrilateral element in 2D are presented, i.e. the condensing and direct procedures. The energy and nodal displacement error norms are also checked to establish the convergence ratio. Interpretation of calculated contact pressures is discussed. Two new 2D 8‐node quadrilateral elements, QUAD8C and QUAD8D, are derived and tested in many examples, which show their good performance in contact problems. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulation of Temperature Distribution in Stored Wheat without Aeration

A neural-deterministic simulation model applied for calculating distributions of temperatures and moisture content in a bed of wheat stored in a steel silo without aeration is presented in the article. The model consists of differential equations of heat and moisture transfer, initial and boundary conditions, and three artificial neural networks used during simulated ambient air conditions. Experiments and computer simulations were carried out in order to determine temperature fields in wheat grain stored in a steel silo for two months. The computer simulations were carried using MATLAB and FEMLAB software. The difference between measured and simulated temperature in grain near the silo wall at a height of 2.5 m from the bottom was less than 3.0°C. On the basis of the analysis performed it was concluded that the temperature distributions obtained with the model were consistent with the measured results obtained for grain stored in a steel silo without aeration.     

Microprocessor debugging techniques and their application in debugger design

Every microprocessor-based system needs powerful debugging tools. Debugging power strongly depends on a mechanism of control exchange between the debugger and an application program. Several implementation methods of such a mechanism are briefly described and compared in this paper. It is shown that conditional breakpoints facilitate a semantics-oriented approach to program debugging. Some debugging techniques derived from elementary control-exchange mechanisms are proposed. Most of the techniques discussed are implemented in the MD-86 debugger designed for the Intel 8086 microprocessor. The debugger itself is also briefly described.     

The influence of biomass co-combustion on boiler fouling and efficiency

The paper presents an attempt to evaluate the influence of biomass co-combustion on the fouling of boiler convection surfaces. In order to show the influence of co-firing biomass with bituminous coal on boiler efficiency, the calculations of pulverized fuel (PF) OP 140 steam generator have been carried out. Typical Upper Silesian coal with medium fouling inclination has been chosen as a basic fuel. Three kinds of biomass have been taken into consideration: straw, wood and dried sewage sludge. The results confirm that the properties of additional fuels cause deterioration of the boiler efficiency as well as the changes in boilers operational parameters (amount of water injected in attemperators, ash stream, hot air temperature). The biomass during cofiring in fact replaces the coal, but always the additional fuel consumption is higher than that of the substituted coal. Therefore, the actual decrease of coal consumption is smaller than the thermal fraction of the biomass.     

Genotoxic effect of triarylmethane dye--acid green 16 after chronic ethanol consumption in mice

Genotoxic effect and hepatic microsomal monooxygenase activities were assessed in mice treated with Acid Green 16 (single i.p. injection at dose 75 mg/kg) superimposed on prolonged ethanol consumption (10% solution in drinking water for 2-4 months). Treatment of mice with Acid Green 16 led to an increased frequency of micronucleated erythrocytes in bone marrow. In animals pretreated with ethanol the frequency of micronucleated erythrocytes, produced by Acid Green 16, was significantly higher. The changes in frequency of micronucleated erythrocytes were accompanied by the enhanced activity of microsomal monooxygenases manifested by higher activity of 7-ethoxycoumarin o-deethylase (the level of cytochrome P-450 was not altered). The obtained results showed that ethanol tended to increase the genotoxic effect of Acid Green 16. However, the slight inductive effect of ethanol on microsomal monooxygenases did not provide clear evidence that the genotoxic effect of Acid Green 16 was associated with ethanol stimulation of the metabolic activation of the dye in the liver.