Comparison of YAG: Eu phosphors synthesized by supercritical water in batch and continuous reactors

Luminescent yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG, Y₃Al₅O₁₂) nanoparticles doped with Eu (10 at%) were synthesized in batch-type and continuous-type supercritical water (SCW) reactors. In the case of the continuous-type SCW method, the particles of YAG: Eu phosphors were much smaller and demonstrated a uniform spherical-like shape. Inversely, in the case of the batch-type SCW method, a needle-like or elliptical-like shape was formed because a finite amount of time was required to reach SCW conditions from ambient conditions. However, the emission intensity of YAG: Eu phosphors synthesized by using the batch-type SCW method was stronger. Therefore, it is concluded that the continuous-type SCW method is superior to the batch-type SCW method from the viewpoint of the particle size and shape, but the luminescence property of phosphors in the continuous-type SCW method needs to be improved. In addition, a calcination process slightly improved the luminescence intensities of YAG: Eu phosphors generated by using either the batch-type or continuous-type SCW methods.     

Effect of NaOH on the decomposition of halogenated hydrocarbon by supercritical water oxidation

To protect alloys from corrosion phenomena in the supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) process, the effects of neutralizer on the conversion and corrosion were investigated. The surface morphologies of all the alloy coupons exposed to 2,4-Dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP) in the SCWO were significantly changed in microscopic images. The theoretical amount of NaOH as a neutralizer was calculated under the assumption of complete oxidation of 2,4-DCP. The pre-dosed NaOH in the range of 100% to 300% stoichiometric amount could not affect significantly the pH value in the SCWO. Moreover, the pH = 7 was not achieved until 700% stoichiometric amount of NaOH was pre-dosed to the reactor. It is noted that the conversion rate recorded over 99% without oxidant when 800% of NaOH was pre-dosed into the reactor. In addition, under the addition of H₂O₂ as an oxidant, the increased amount of NaOH led to the improvement of conversion rate. The pre-dosed NaOH may contribute to the conversion rate of 2,4-DCP in the SCWO. However, due to low solubility of salt in the SCWO, the fouling problem should be solved in the SCWO process.     

Quantitative Evaluation of Void Distributions within a Plasma-Sprayed Ceramic

The size–shape distribution of voids, which includes cracks and pores, was determined using quantitative stereological analysis. The analysis was performed on a water-stabilized plasma-spray-formed Al₂O₃–13 wt% TiO₂. The individual voids were assumed to have an oblate spheroidal shape, which could simulate shapes ranging from spherical pores to cracks. The cracks were generally intralamellar or translamellar, and the pores were interlamellar. The information obtained from two-dimensional plane sections was unfolded to three-dimensional information using stereological analysis. The quantitative information of voids was acquired in terms of shape and size.     

Acoustic Emission Studies of Alumina-13% Titania Free-Standing Forms during Four-Point Bend Tests

Free-standing alumina-13% titania samples were manufactured with a water-stabilized plasma spray gun to a thickness of ∼5 mm. A thin layer of aluminum was arc sprayed prior to depositing the thick coating and etched away using hydrochloric acid. The so-obtained free-standing plate was cut into four-point-bend-test specimens with dimensions of ∼5 mm × 5 mm × 50 mm. The as-sprayed material consisted of a supersaturated solid solution, where titania was frozen inside the alumina matrix. Heat treatment was performed at 1450°C for 24 h and then at 1100°C for another 24 h. After heat treatment, titania precipitates were observed. The major phases of the as-sprayed and heat-treated samples were γ- and α-alumina, respectively. The porosity was ∼10% for as-sprayed samples; this value was reduced to ∼3% after heat treatment. Four-point bend tests were performed on the as-sprayed and heat-treated specimens in cross-section and in-plane directions. An acoustic emission technique was used to examine the cracking during the tests in situ. Microcracking prior to failure was observed for as-sprayed samples that were tested in the cross-section direction. However, when tested in the in-plane direction, catastrophic failure with less evidence of microcracking occurred. For heat-treated specimens, microcracks were usually observed when tests were performed in either of the orientations. Energy and amplitude distributions for each testing condition were examined. These distributions changed after heat treatment; however, no significant differences were distinguished when tests were performed in the cross-section or in-plane directions.     

Novel service protocol for supporting remote and mobile users in wireless sensor networks with multiple static sinks

A wireless sensor network typically consists of users, a sink, and a number of sensor nodes. The users may be remotely connected to a wireless sensor network and via legacy networks such as Internet or Satellite the remote users obtain data collected by the sink that is statically located at a border of the wireless sensor network. However, in practical sensor network applications, there might be two types of users: the traditional remote users and mobile users such as firefighters and soldiers. The mobile users may move around sensor fields and they communicate with the static sink only via the wireless sensor networks in order to obtain data like location information of victims in disaster areas. For supporting the mobile users, existing studies consider temporary structures. However, the temporary structures are constructed per each mobile user or each source nodes so that it causes large energy consumption of sensor nodes. Moreover, since some of them establish the source-based structure, sinks in them cannot gather collective information like mean temperature and object detection. In this paper, to effectively support both the remote users and the mobile users, we propose a novel service protocol relying on the typical wireless sensor network. In the protocol, multiple static sinks connect with legacy networks and divide a sensor field into the number of the multiple sinks. Through sharing queries and data via the legacy networks, the multiple static sinks provide high throughput through distributed data gathering and low latency through short-hops data delivery. Multiple static sinks deliver the aggregated data to the remote users via the legacy networks. In case of the mobile users, when a mobile user moves around, it receives the aggregated data from the nearest static sink. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol is more efficient in terms of energy consumption, data delivery ratio, and delay than the existing protocols.     

Design and analysis of novel quorum-based sink location service scheme in wireless sensor networks

Geographic routing in wireless sensor networks requires sources nodes to be aware of the location information of sinks to send their data. To provide the sink location service, quorum-based schemes have been proposed, which exploit crossing points between a quorum of a sink location announcement (SLA) message from a sink and a quorum of a sink location query (SLQ) message from a source node. For guaranteeing at least one crossing point in irregular sensor networks with void areas or irregular boundaries, the previous schemes however collect and flood the network boundary information or forward a SLA and SLQ message along the whole network boundary. In this paper, we design a novel quorum-based sink location service scheme that exploits circle and line quorums, which does not require the network boundary information and send a SLA and SLQ message along the whole network boundary. In the proposed scheme, a source node sends a SLQ message to the network center and sends another SLQ message to an edge node in the network boundary, thus generating a SLQ line quorum. On the other hand, a sink node sends a SLA message along a circle path whose center is the network center, thus forming a SLQ circle quorum. By this way, it is guaranteed that the SLQ and SLA quorums have at least one crossing point in irregular sensor networks. Both numerical analysis and extensive simulation results verify that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes in terms of the delivery distance, the delivery hop count, and the energy consumption for providing sink location service.     

Scalable IPv6 multi-homing scheme based on end-to-end argument

The motivation of the multi-homing is to improve reliability and load sharing. However, the existing multi-homing schemes for IPv6 seem to simply focus on preserving connectivity via other links when one of the links fails. In this paper, we present a multi-homing scheme in IPv6 considering the load sharing and delay latency, and reliability. The simulation results show the distinct performance of our approach.     

Decomposition of 2-chlorophenol by supercritical water oxidation with zirconium corrosion

The 2-chlorophenol (2-CP) was oxidized in a continuous anti-corrosive supercritical water system. The variation of decomposition efficiency by the corrosion of zirconium 702 was also studied at the variation of feed concentration and reaction time. According to AES depth profile, the oxygen penetration depth to zirconium was not proportional to the exposure time. It might stem from the formation of zirconium oxide layer on the surface delaying the corrosion. However, the increase in feed concentration accelerated the corrosion of zirconium. The corrosion of zirconium at low feed concentration led to the improvement of decomposition efficiency due to the catalytic effect of formed zirconium oxides, while that at high feed concentration deteriorated the decomposition efficiency owing to large consumption of oxidant in corrosion.     

Rendezvous-based data dissemination for supporting mobile sinks in multi-hop clustered wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, a clustering-based technique is considered as an efficient approach for supporting mobile sinks without using position information. It exploits a Backbone-based Virtual Infrastructure (BVI) which uses only cluster heads (CHs) to construct routing structures. Since sensor nodes have constrained energy and are failure-prone, the effective design of both a clustering structure to construct a BVI and a routing protocol in the BVI is an important issue to achieve energy-efficient and reliable data delivery. However, since previous studies use one-hop clustering for a BVI, they are not robust against node and link failures and thus leading low data delivery ratio. They also use flooding-based routing protocols in a BVI and thus leading high energy consumption. Thus, in this paper, we propose a rendezvous-based data dissemination protocol based on multi-hop clustering (RDDM). Since RDDM uses a multi-hop clustering to provide enough backup sensor nodes to substitute a CH and enough backup paths between neighbor CHs, it can provide high robustness against node and link failures. By using a rendezvous CH, RDDM constructs routing paths from source nodes to mobile sinks without flooding in our BVI and thus can save energy of sensor nodes. By considering movement types of sinks, RDDM finds out a shorter path between a source node and a mobile sink through signaling only between neighbor CHs and thus can reduce the energy consumption. Analysis and simulation results show that RDDM provides better performance than previous protocols in terms of energy consumption and data delivery ratio.