Nanostructured Pseudocapacitors Based on Atomic Layer Deposition of V 2 O 5 onto Conductive Nanocrystal-based Mesoporous ITO Scaffolds
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There exist substantial differences in top-of-atmosphere direct radiative forcing of aerosols due to a region's economic production (RFp) and consumption (RFc), in the context of economic globalization, trade and globalizing air pollution. Yet an explicit systematic analysis of all socioeconomic and atmospheric factors determining the RF difference is lacking. Here, we evaluate five socioeconomic (population, per capita output, emission intensity) and atmospheric (chemical efficiency and radiative efficiency) factors that determine a region's RFp, RFc and their difference. We consider the RF of secondary inorganic aerosols, primary organic aerosols and black carbon by 10 regions worldwide in 2007. The population size varies by a factor of nine across the regions, and per capita output by 40 times from both production- and consumption-based perspectives. The cross-regional spread reaches a factor of 181 (species dependent) for production-based emission intensity and a factor of 96 for consumption-based intensity. From one region to another, production-based chemical efficiency changes within a factor of 5 and consumption-based efficiency within a factor of 3.5. Radiative efficiency varies slightly across the regions (within 2) from both production- and consumption-based perspectives. Although socioeconomic factors are often a greater driver for the difference between a source region's RFp and RFc, the atmospheric factors are also important for many source regions and species. Our results contribute to regional attribution of climate change and establishment of effective international collaborative mitigation strategies.
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We develop one-way coupling methods between a Boussinesq-type wave model based on the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method and a free-surface flow model based on a mesh-free particle method to strike a balance between accuracy and computational cost. In our proposed model, computation of the wave model in the global domain is conducted first, and the nonconstant velocity profiles in the vertical direction are reproduced by using its results. Computation of the free-surface flow is performed in a local domain included within the global domain with interface boundaries that move along the reproduced velocity field in a Lagrangian fashion. To represent the moving interfaces, we used a polygon wall boundary model for mesh-free particle methods. Verification and validation tests of our proposed model are performed, and results obtained by the model are compared with theoretical values and experimental results to show its accuracy and applicability.
New integrated biorefinery (IBR) concepts are being investigated to co-produce hydrocarbon fuels and high-value bio-based chemicals to improve the economic viability of IBRs, to enhance biomass resource utilization efficiencies, and to maximize potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions. Unlike fuel-only biorefineries, IBRs may co-produce a significant amount of bio-based chemicals, whose emission implications for specific biorefinery products and the biorefinery as a whole need to be evaluated. We discuss this in principle and apply three sets of co-product handling methods to conduct life-cycle analysis (LCA) of modeled IBRs with co-production of two bioproduct examples - succinic acid and adipic acid - alongside a renewable diesel blendstock fuel product. The LCA results for the specific co-product handling methods that were examined shed light on potential artifacts of product-specific LCA with selected co-product methods. We discuss the advantages and limitations of each method and conclude that (i) a system-level or 'black-box' LCA allocation method is too simplistic to reflect appropriately the GHG burdens of distinctly different processing trains for fuels and chemicals in the IBR context, and (ii) the displacement method is the only co-product handling method that accounts fully for the emission effects of both the fuel product and the non-fuel bio-based co-products in the IBRs within the context of the existing fuel-focused GHG regulatory framework. Alternatively, biorefinery system-level LCA combines benefits of individual products to offer a complete picture. This system-level LCA approach offers a holistic LCA without somewhat arbitrary decisions either on an allocation basis or by the selection of an evaluation metric based on specific products.
Chemoresistive sensors based on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) functionalized with SnO{sub 2} nanocrystals (NCs) have great potential for detecting trace gases at low concentrations (single ppm levels) at room temperature, because the SnO{sub 2} nanocrystals act as active sites for the chemisorption of gas molecules, and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) act as an excellent current carrying platform, allowing the adsorption of gas on SnO{sub 2} to modulate the resistance of the CNTs. However, uniform conjugation of SnO{sub 2} NCs with MWCNTs is challenging. An effective atomic layer deposition based approach to functionalize the surface of MWCNTs with SnO{sub 2} NCs, resulting in a novel CH{sub 4} sensor with 10 ppm sensitivity, is presented in this paper. Scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy were implemented to study the morphology, elemental composition, and the crystal quality of SnO{sub 2} functionalized MWCNTs. High resolution TEM images showed that the crystal quality of the functionalizing SnO{sub 2} NCs was of high quality with clear lattice fringes and the dimension almost three times smaller than shown thus far in literature. A lift-off based photolithography technique comprising bilayer photoresists was optimized to fabricate SnO{sub 2} functionalized MWCNTs-based chemoresistor sensor, which at room temperature can reliably sense below 10 ppm of CH{sub 4} in air. Such low level gas sensitivity, with significant reversible relative resistance change, is believed to be the direct result of the successful functionalization of the MWCNT surface by SnO{sub 2} NCs.
A system-wide assessment of the Puerto Rico power system grid strength is studied when considering high levels of inverter-based resource penetration. This study is carried out in PSSE and assesses the impact of inverter-based resource (IBR) contributions in response to three-phase ground faults. A hypothetical 100% inverter-based generation scenario is created to assess the extreme impact on short circuit levels and a realistic scenario is considered to assess the impact to short circuit ratios. The overall conclusion is that short circuit capacity and current will drastically decrease in a high IBR scenario, an effect that is quantified in this paper. The short circuit ratio metric is typically used to assess the impact of IBR but generally overestimates grid strength due to not accounting for the impact from multiple IBRs. Other methods such as equivalent circuit based short circuit ratio and weighted short circuit ratio offer a more comprehensive consideration for multiple IBRs and can better account for their mutual interactions. The work presented in this paper is part of the PR100 study.
Cellulosic biofuels face significant problems of feedstock aggregation and logistics leading to poor economies of scale. The current model is based on relatively small biorefineries using locally-gathered feedstocks. Here, we examine the potential capacity of a hypothetically distributed, depot-based, biorefinery system to produce cellulosic ethanol from corn stover in the United States Midwest. The local depots serve to aggregate, pretreat and densify biomass (via pellets), which are collected, transported, and fed to a few very large, cellulosic ethanol biorefineries. We found that a corn stover-based depot system would help establish one or two very large-scale biorefineries capable of processing about 8-12% of total corn stover available in the United States Midwest. About 55-153 depots could supply the pretreated pellets to each distributed biorefinery leading to an annual production of 1.02 - 2.91 billion liters of cellulosic ethanol. Most of the participating depots would be located in Illinois and Iowa. The ethanol selling price in this depot-based biorefinery system would varys between U$S 0.67 and U$S 0.72 liter-1. The estimated range of GHG savings from cellulosic ethanol in the depot system compared to gasoline was 3.35-4.84 Tg CO2 year-1. In addition of being economically competitive, a distributed, depot-based, biorefinery system could meet the 60% GHG reduction requirement of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA).
We describe a pin-less design for the high voltage (HV) resistive divider of the all-glass LAPPD (TM) 8 in,square thin photodetector module. The divider, which distributes high voltage applied to the photocathode to the two micro-channel plates (MCPs) that constitute the amplification stage, is comprised of the two MCPs and three glass mechanical spacers, each of which is coated with a resistive layer using atomic layer deposition (ALD). The three glass grid spacers and the two MCPs form a continuous resistive path between cathode and anode, with the voltages across the MCPs and the spacers determined by the resistance of each. High voltage is applied on an external tab on the top glass window that connects to the photocathode through the metal seal. The DC ground is supplied by microstrips on the bottom glass plate that form the high-bandwidth anode. The microstrips exit the package through the glass-frit seal of the anode base-plate and the package sidewall. The divider is thus completely internal, with no HV pins penetrating the low-profile flat glass package. Measurements of the performance of the divider are presented for the 8 in.-square MCP and spacer package in a custom test fixture and for an assembled externally pumped LAPPD (TM) prototype with an aluminum photocathode. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
X-ray detectors that combine two-dimensional spatial resolution with a high time resolution are needed in numerous applications of synchrotron radiation. Most detectors with this combination of capabilities are based on semiconductor technology and are therefore limited in size. Furthermore, the time resolution is often realised through rapid time-gating of the acquisition, followed by a slower readout. Here, a detector technology is realised based on relatively inexpensive microchannel plates that uses GHz waveform sampling for a millimeter-scale spatial resolution and better than 100 ps time resolution. The technology is capable of continuous streaming of time- and location-tagged events at rates greater than 10(7) events per cm(2). Time-gating can be used for improved dynamic range.
Rechargeable batteries based on an abundant metal such as aluminum with a three-electron transfer per atom are promising for large-scale electrochemical energy storage. Aluminum can be handled in air, thus offering superior safety, easy fabrication, and low cost. But, the development of Al-ion batteries has been challenging due to the difficulties in identifying suitable cathode materials. This study presents the use of a highly open framework Mo 2.5 + y VO 9 + z as a cathode for Al-ion batteries. The open-tunnel oxide allows a facile diffusion of the guest species and provides sufficient redox centers to help redistribute the charge within the local host lattice during the multivalent-ion insertion, thus leading to good rate capability with a specific capacity among the highest reported in the literature for Al-based batteries. Our study also presents the use of Mo 2.5 + y VO 9 + z as a model host to develop a novel ultrafast technique for chemical insertion of Al ions into host structures. The microwave-assisted method employing diethylene glycol and aluminum diacetate (Al(OH)(C 2 H 3 O 2 ) 2 ) can be performed in air in as little as 30 min, which is far superior to the traditional chemical insertion techniques involving moisture-sensitive organometallic reagents. The Al-inserted Al x Mo 2.5 + y VO 9 + z obtained by the microwave-assisted chemical insertion can be used in Al-based rechargeable batteries.
In this paper, we propose a frozen Gaussian approximation (FGA)-based multi-level particle swarm optimization (MLPSO) method for seismic inversion of high-frequency wave data. The method addresses two challenges in it: First, the optimization problem is highly non-convex, which makes hard for gradient-based methods to reach global minima. This is tackled by MLPSO which can escape from undesired local minima. Second, the character of high-frequency of seismic waves requires a large number of grid points in direct computational methods, and thus renders an extremely high computational demand on the simulation of each sample in MLPSO. We overcome this difficulty by three steps: First, we use FGA to compute high-frequency wave propagation based on asymptotic analysis on phase plane; Then we design a constrained full waveform inversion problem to prevent the optimization search getting into regions of velocity where FGA is not accurate; Last, we solve the constrained optimization problem by MLPSO that employs FGA solvers with different fidelity. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by a two-dimensional full-waveform inversion example of the smoothed Marmousi model.