Characterizing groundwater heat-transport in a complex lowland aquifer using paleo-temperature reconstruction, satellite data, temperature-depth profiles, and numerical models

Heat is a naturally occurring widespread groundwater tracer that can be used to identify flow patterns in groundwater systems. Temperature measurements, being relatively inexpensive and effortless to gather, represent a valuable source of information which can be exploited to reduce uncertainties on groundwater flow, and e.g. support performance assessment studies on waste disposal sites. In a lowland setting, however, hydraulic gradients are typically small, and whether temperature measurements can be used to inform us about catchment-scale groundwater flow remains an open question. For the Neogene aquifer in Flanders, groundwater flow and solute transport models have been developed in the framework of safety and feasibility studies for the underlying Boom Clay Formation as potential host rock for geological disposal of radioactive waste. However, the simulated fluxes by these models are still subject to large uncertainties, as they are typically constrained by hydraulic heads only. In the current study we use a state-of-the-art 3D steady-state groundwater flow model, calibrated against hydraulic head measurements, to build a 3D transient heat-transport model, for assessing the use of heat as an additional state variable, in a lowland setting, at the catchment scale. We therefore use temperature-depth (TD) profiles as additional state variable observations for inverse conditioning. Furthermore, a Holocene paleo-temperature time curve was constructed based on paleo-temperature reconstructions in Europe from several sources in combination with land-surface temperature (LST) imagery remote sensing monthly data from 2001 to 2019 (retrieved from NASA’s MODIS). The aim of the research is to understand the mechanisms of heat transport and to characterize the temperature distribution and dynamics in the Neogene aquifer. The simulation results clearly underline advection/convection and conduction as the major heat transport mechanisms, with a reduced role of advection/convection in zones where flux magnitudes are low, which suggests temperature is a useful indicator also in a lowland setting. Furthermore, performed scenarios highlight the important roles of i) surface hydrological features and withdrawals driving local groundwater flow systems, and ii) the inclusion of subsurface features like faults in the conceptualization and development of hydrogeological investigations. These findings serve as a proxy of the influence of advective transport and barrier/conduit role of faults, particularly the Rauw Fault in this case, and suggest that solutes released from the Boom Clay might be affected in similar ways.

Home Monitoring for Fever: An Inexpensive Screening Method to Prevent Household Spread of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic surge has exceeded testing capacities in many parts of the world. We investigated the effectiveness of home temperature monitoring for early identification of COVID-19 patients. Study Design: We compared home temperature measurements from a convenience sample of 1180 individuals who reported being test positive for SARS-CoV-2 to an age, sex, and location matched control group of 1249 individuals who had not tested positive. Methods: All individuals monitored their temperature at home using an electronic smartphone thermometer that relayed temperature measurements and symptoms to a centralized cloud based, de-identified data bank. Results: Individuals varied in the number of times they monitored their temperature. When temperature was monitored for over 72 hours fever (> 37.6 C or 99.7 F or a change in temperature of > 1 C or 1.8 F) was detected in 73% of test positive individuals, a sensitivity comparable to rapid SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests. When compared our control group the specificity of fever for COVID-19 was 0.70. However, when fever was combined with complaints of loss of taste and smell, difficulty breathing, fatigue, chills, diarrhea, or stuffy nose the odds ratio of having COVID-19 was sufficiently high as to obviate the need to employ RTPCR or antigen testing to screen for and isolate coronavirus infected cases. Conclusions - Our findings suggest that home temperature monitoring could serve as an inexpensive convenient screen for the onset of COVID-19, encourage earlier isolation of potentially infected individuals, and more effectively reduce the spread of infection in closed spaces.

Features of Adjusting the Frozen Soil Properties Using Borehole Temperature Measurements

The paper examines the theoretical issues of using borehole temperature survey data to control a frozen wall formed around the sinking mine shafts of the Nezhinsk mining and processing plant potash mine. We consider adjusting the parameters of the mathematical model of the frozen soil based on temperature measurements in boreholes. Adjustment of the parameters of the mathematical model (thermophysical properties of the soil) is usually carried out by minimizing the discrepancy functional between the experimentally measured and model temperatures in the temperature control boreholes. An important question about the form of this functional and the existence of minima remained after the previous studies. The study aimed at this question included analysis of heat transfer in two horizontal layers (sand and chalk) for two shafts under construction using artificial ground freezing. It was shown that the discrepancy functional minimum under certain conditions moves over time or is nonunique. This phenomenon results in ambiguity in adjusting the mathematical model parameters in the frozen soil to fit the borehole temperature survey data. At the stage of the frozen wall growth, the effective thermal conductivity in the frozen zone can be determined ambiguously from the temperature measurements in the boreholes—its value can change over time. At the stage of maintaining the frozen wall, the solution turns out to be dependent on the ratio of effective thermal conductivities in the frozen and unfrozen zones.

A novel heat generation acquisition method of cylindrical battery based on core and surface temperature measurements

Heat generation measurements of the lithium-ion battery are crucial for the design of the battery thermal management system. Most previous work uses the accelerating rate calorimeter (ARC) to test heat generation of batteries. However, utilizing ARC can only obtain heat generation of the battery operating under the adiabatic condition, deviating from common operation scenarios with heat dissipation. Besides, using ARC is difficult to measure heat generation of the high-rate operating battery because the battery temperature easily exceeds the maximum safety limit. To address these problems, we propose a novel method to obtain heat generation of cylindrical battery based on core and surface temperature measurements and select the 21700 cylindrical battery as the research object. Based on the method, total heat generation at 1C discharge rate under the natural convection air cooling condition in the environmental chamber is about 3.2 kJ, and the average heat generation rate is about 0.9 W. While these two results measured by ARC are about 2.2 kJ and 0.6 W. This gap also reflects that different battery temperature histories have significant impacts on heat generation. In addition, using our approach, total heat generation at 2C discharge rate measured in the environmental chamber is about 5.0 kJ, with the average heat generation rate being about 2.8 W. Heat generation results obtained by our method are approximate to the actual battery operation and have advantages in future applications.