Tunnels and foundations as energy sources—Practical applications in Austria

Author(s):  
D Adam
2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C20-C20
Author(s):  
Evgeny Antipov ◽  
Nellie Khasanova

Ninety percent of the energy produced today come from fossil fuels, making dramatically negative impact on our future due to rapid consumption of these energy sources, ecological damage and climate change. This justifies development of the renewable energy sources and concurrently efficient large storage devices capable to replace fossil fuels. Li-ion batteries have originally been developed for portable electronic devices, but nowadays new application niches are envisaged in electric vehicles and stationary energy storages. However, to satisfy the needs of these rapidly growing applications, Li-ion batteries require further significant improvement of their properties: capacity and power, cyclability, safety and cost. Cathode is the key part of the Li-ion batteries largely determining their performance. Severe requirements are imposed on a cathode material, which should provide fast reversible intercalation of Li-ions at redox potential close to the upper boundary of electrolyte stability window, possess relatively low molecular weight and exhibit small volume variation upon changing Li-concentration. First generation of the cathode materials for the Li-ion batteries based on the spinel (LiM2O4, M – transition metal) or rock-salt derivatives (LiMO2) has already been widely commercialised. However, the potential to further improve the performance of these materials is almost exhausted. The compounds, containing lithium and transition metal cations together with different polyanions (XmOn)p- (X=B, P, S, Si), are now considered as the most promising cathode materials for the next generation of the Li-ion batteries. Covalently-bonded structural frameworks in these compounds offer long-term structural stability, which is essential for good cyclability and safety. Further advantages are expected from combining different anions (such as (XO4)p- and F- ) in the anion sublattice, with the hope to enhance the specific energy and power of these materials. Various fluoride-phosphates and fluoride-sulphates have been recently discovered, and some of them exhibit attractive electrochemical performance. An overview of the research on the cathode materials for the Li-ion batteries will be presented with special emphasis on crystallography as a guide towards improved properties important for practical applications.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. Pérez-Bueno ◽  
M. L. Mendoza López ◽  
K. M. Brieño Enriquez ◽  
J. Ledesma García ◽  
L. A. Godínez Mora-Tovar ◽  
...  

Nowadays, hydrogen has a preponderant position among the potentially sustainable energy sources. Due to its power density, its storage is of main concern when considering a broad use in practical applications. Carbon nanotubes constitute promising candidates for the design and construction of hydrogen storage devices. This work explores the use of some procedures involving electrochemistry, aimed to bond atomic Ti on the outer surface of MWNTs. Each titanium atom has the potential of hosting two hydrogen molecules and relinquishing them by heating. Nevertheless, nanotubes are difficult to handle due to electrostatic charge and agglomeration, and in this context, two routes were tested as procedures to spread and stick nanotubes on an electrode: (1) a functionalization capable of attaching gold was tested in two forms, as either using 4 nm particles or a flat gold electrode. The fixation of Au particles was confirmed by HRTEM. (2) A simpler route that consisted on drying a CH2Cl2/nanotubes solution previously spread on a glassy carbon flat electrode. CH2Cl2was selected as the medium and TiCl4as the precursor for attaching atomic Ti to the nanotubes. The results revealed that hydrogen adsorption, estimated from voltamperometry, was five times higher on Ti-MWNTs than on bare nanotubes.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (21) ◽  
pp. 7443
Author(s):  
Robert Basmadjian ◽  
Amirhossein Shaafieyoun ◽  
Sahib Julka

Forecasting renewable energy sources is of critical importance to several practical applications in the energy field. However, due to the inherent volatile nature of these energy sources, doing so remains challenging. Numerous time-series methods have been explored in literature, which consider only one specific type of renewables (e.g., solar or wind), and are suited to small-scale (micro-level) deployments. In this paper, the different types of renewable energy sources are reflected, which are distributed at a national level (macro-level). To generate accurate predictions, a methodology is proposed, which consists of two main phases. In the first phase, the most relevant variables having impact on the generation of the renewables are identified using correlation analysis. The second phase consists of (1) estimating model parameters, (2) optimising and reducing the number of generated models, and (3) selecting the best model for the method under study. To this end, the three most-relevant time-series auto-regression based methods of SARIMAX, SARIMA, and ARIMAX are considered. After deriving the best model for each method, then a comparison is carried out between them by taking into account different months of the year. The evaluation results illustrate that our forecasts have mean absolute error rates between 6.76 and 11.57%, while considering both inter- and intra-day scenarios. The best models are implemented in an open-source REN4Kast software platform.


Author(s):  
Simona Moschini ◽  
Konstantinos Gryllias ◽  
Wim Desmet ◽  
Bert Pluymers

During last decades the scientific community focused its attention on energy efficiency solutions. Materials have been developed or improved to avoid energy dispersions and new strategies have been developed in order to exploit at best renewable and non renewable energy sources. Other paths are currently followed to pursue the same goal, for instance, the introduction of innovative monitoring system and techniques. In this framework, the concept of virtual sensing reveals itself as one of the most powerful tools. Several physical quantities are relevant to define the health status of the system. Unfortunately, many of these quantities cannot be directly measured in many practical applications due to lack of specific sensor or to the environment in which the system is operating. As a consequence, state estimation techniques come out as an extremely helpful tool. These techniques allow combining the world of measurements with the one of numerical modeling leading to the estimation of the desired unmeasurable system quantities. In the current research a Kalman Filter based algorithm is applied to investigate and assess the health condition of a rotor system. The system under investigation is a classical example in rotordynamics. The attention is focused on the estimation of one of the most common malfunction in rotating machinery: the unbalance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunao Shimizu ◽  
Kazumoto Miwa ◽  
Takeshi Kobayashi ◽  
Yujiro Tazawa ◽  
Shimpei Ono

AbstractGiven the growing demand for environmentally friendly energy sources, thermoelectric energy conversion has attracted increased interest as a promising CO2-free technology. SnSe single crystals have attracted attention as a next generation thermoelectric material due to outstanding thermoelectric properties arising from ultralow thermal conductivity. For practical applications, on the other hand, polycrystalline SnSe should be also focused because the production cost and the flexibility for applications are important factors, which requires the systematic investigation of the stability of thermoelectric performance under a pseudo operating environment. Here, we report that the physical properties of SnSe crystals with nano to submicron scale are drastically modified by atmospheric annealing. We measured the Seebeck effect while changing the annealing time and found that the large positive thermopower, + 757 μV K−1, was completely suppressed by annealing for only a few minutes and was eventually inverted to be the large negative value, − 427 μV K−1. This result would further accelerate intensive studies on SnSe nanostructures, especially focusing on the realistic device structures and sealing technologies for energy harvesting applications.


Author(s):  
L. J. Chen ◽  
L. S. Hung ◽  
J. W. Mayer

When an energetic ion penetrates through an interface between a thin film (of species A) and a substrate (of species B), ion induced atomic mixing may result in an intermixed region (which contains A and B) near the interface. Most ion beam mixing experiments have been directed toward metal-silicon systems, silicide phases are generally obtained, and they are the same as those formed by thermal treatment.Recent emergence of silicide compound as contact material in silicon microelectronic devices is mainly due to the superiority of the silicide-silicon interface in terms of uniformity and thermal stability. It is of great interest to understand the kinetics of the interfacial reactions to provide insights into the nature of ion beam-solid interactions as well as to explore its practical applications in device technology.About 500 Å thick molybdenum was chemical vapor deposited in hydrogen ambient on (001) n-type silicon wafer with substrate temperature maintained at 650-700°C. Samples were supplied by D. M. Brown of General Electric Research & Development Laboratory, Schenectady, NY.


Author(s):  
T. Imura ◽  
S. Maruse ◽  
K. Mihama ◽  
M. Iseki ◽  
M. Hibino ◽  
...  

Ultra high voltage STEM has many inherent technical advantages over CTEM. These advantages include better signal detectability and signal processing capability. It is hoped that it will explore some new applications which were previously not possible. Conventional STEM (including CTEM with STEM attachment), however, has been unable to provide these inherent advantages due to insufficient performance and engineering problems. Recently we have developed a new 1250 kV STEM and completed installation at Nagoya University in Japan. It has been designed to break through conventional engineering limitations and bring about theoretical advantage in practical applications.In the design of this instrument, we exercised maximum care in providing a stable electron probe. A high voltage generator and an accelerator are housed in two separate pressure vessels and they are connected with a high voltage resistor cable.(Fig. 1) This design minimized induction generated from the high voltage generator, which is a high frequency Cockcroft-Walton type, being transmitted to the electron probe.


Author(s):  
Bradley L. Thiel ◽  
Chan Han R. P. ◽  
Kurosky L. C. Hutter ◽  
I. A. Aksay ◽  
Mehmet Sarikaya

The identification of extraneous phases is important in understanding of high Tc superconducting oxides. The spectroscopic techniques commonly used in determining the origin of superconductivity (such as RAMAN, XPS, AES, and EXAFS) are surface-sensitive. Hence a grain boundary phase several nanometers thick could produce irrelevant spectroscopic results and cause erroneous conclusions. The intergranular phases present a major technological consideration for practical applications. In this communication we report the identification of a Cu2O grain boundary phase which forms during the sintering of YBa2Cu3O7-x (1:2:3 compound).Samples are prepared using a mixture of Y2O3. CuO, and BaO2 powders dispersed in ethanol for complete mixing. The pellets pressed at 20,000 psi are heated to 950°C at a rate of 5°C per min, held for 1 hr, and cooled at 1°C per min to room temperature. The samples show a Tc of 91K with a transition width of 2K. In order to prevent damage, a low temperature stage is used in milling to prepare thin foils which are then observed, using a liquid nitrogen holder, in a Philips 430T at 300 kV.


Author(s):  
Michael T. Postek

The term ultimate resolution or resolving power is the very best performance that can be obtained from a scanning electron microscope (SEM) given the optimum instrumental conditions and sample. However, as it relates to SEM users, the conventional definitions of this figure are ambiguous. The numbers quoted for the resolution of an instrument are not only theoretically derived, but are also verified through the direct measurement of images on micrographs. However, the samples commonly used for this purpose are specifically optimized for the measurement of instrument resolution and are most often not typical of the sample used in practical applications.SEM RESOLUTION. Some instruments resolve better than others either due to engineering design or other reasons. There is no definitively accurate definition of how to quantify instrument resolution and its measurement in the SEM.


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