Application of Meshless Pore-Level Model to Pyrolysis and Synthesis of Nuclear Fuels

Uranium-ceramic nuclear fuels can be fabricated through pyrolysis-based materials processing technique. This technique requires lower energy compared to sintering route. During the fabrication process, the source material changes composition continuously and chemical reactions and transport phenomena vary accordingly. Therefore, to obtain such nuclear fuel materials with high uniformity of microstructure/species without crack, transport phenomena in the material processing needs to be better understood. A system-scale model has been developed to account for the pyrolysis-based uranium-ceramic nuclear material processing in our prior work. In this study, a pore-scale numerical model based on Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) will be described for modeling the synthesis of SiC matrix and U3O8. The system-level model provides thermal boundary conditions to the pore-level model. The microstructure and compositions of the produced composites will be studied. Since the control of process temperature plays an important role in the material quality, the effects of heating rate and U3O8 particle size and volume on species uniformity and microstructure are investigated.

Prediction and Performance of Compact Latent Heat Recovery Heat Exchanger With Small Diameter Tubes

The most part of energy losses in power system such as fuel cells is due to the heat released by the exhaust gas to atmosphere. The exhaust gas consists of non-condensable gas and steam with sensible and latent heat. As a lot of latent heat is included in the exhaust gas, its recovery is very important to improve the power system efficiency. Based on the previous basic studies, a thermal hydraulic prediction method for latent heat recovery exchangers was proposed. For the condensation of steam on heat transfer tubes, the modified Sherwood number taking account of the mass absorption effect on the wall was used. Two kinds of compact heat exchanger with staggered banks of bare tubes of 10.5 or 4mm in outer diameter was designed with the prediction method. The more compactness was obtained with the smaller tubes at a designed heat recovery. The thermal hydraulic behavior in the compact heat exchangers was experimentally studied with air-steam mixture gas. In the parametric experiments varying the steam mass concentration, the temperature distributions of cooling water and mixture gas were measured. The experimental results agreed well with the prediction proposed in this study and the more compactness with the smaller tubes was proved.

Single-Phase Heat Transfer in Micro-Tubes: A Critical Review

This review paper specifically concentrates on heat transfer in micro-tubes and eleven experiments (on liquid flow) and two experiments (on gaseous flow) from 1991 to 2007 are reviewed critically with respect to measurement techniques, instrumentation; and factors like surface roughness and diameter that may play an important role at these small scales. Moreover, a comprehensive list of numerical and analytical results (for both liquid and gaseous flows) is presented in this paper. Interestingly, the effect of surface roughness on heat transfer does not seem to have been investigated thoroughly, as it has been observed to play a key role in influencing heat transfer at small diameters. The state-of-art review thus provides the contemporary experimenters in the field of mini-micro channel heat transfer, this tabulated data that can be used to understand how the different parameters affect the heat transfer in these small scales and a data-bank to validate future numerical and experimental work. The present study identifies the various factors that have contributed in the disparity of results found in the literature and finds that there is a need to investigate certain issues like the effects of roughness, diameter, and secondary flow due to buoyancy on heat transfer and transition. Moreover, it was observed that the start and end of the transition region at these small diameters are not validated by the any of the existing macro-scale correlations.

Selective Synthesis of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes by Blending Catalysts

Single-walled carbon nanotubes are considered the most attractive material and a lot of synthesis processes are developed. Among these synthesis processes chemical vapor deposition processes are considered to be most suitable for macroscopic production. In many CVD processes the alcohol catalytic CVD process can be the best process because it can produce very pure nanotubes without any purification. However, cobalt is essential as a catalyst that makes the flexibility of catalysts restricted. In this paper, our investigation mainly focused on as follows: The efficiency of combined catalysts with/without cobalt. The diameter distributions against catalysts density. The electrical states of catalysts near Fermi level. Consequently, almost all of cobalt containing catalysts worked well, and the diameter distributions were proportional to the particle size. Efficient catalysts had enough states around Fermi level and the cobalt-less efficient catalyst cluster model showed the similar density of state to the cobalt cluster. Thus, noticing to the DOS, other efficient catalysts can be discovered and the diameter distribution will be controllable by adjusting temperature, a catalyst size, and a catalyst combination without any complicated techniques and facilities.

Diameter and Length Effect on Diffusive-Ballistic Phonon Transport in a Carbon Nanotube

We report a non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (MD) study on heat conduction of finite-length single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). The length and diameter dependences of the thermal conductivity are quantified for a range of nanotube-lengths up to a micrometer at room temperature using two different temperature control techniques. A thorough investigation was carried out on the influence of intrinsic thermal boundary resistance between the temperature-controlled layers and the rest of the SWNT. The trend of length effect indicates a gradual transition from nearly pure ballistic phonon transport to diffusive-ballistic phonon transport. The nearly pure ballistic phonon transport was also confirmed by the minor diameter-dependence of thermal conductivity for short SWNTs. For longer SWNTs with stronger diffusive effect, the thermal conductivity is larger for SWNTs with smaller diameters.

Measurement of Thermal Accommodation Coefficients Using Laser-Induced Incandescence

Laser-induced incandescence (LII) is used to measure the thermal accommodation coefficient between soot sampled from a well-characterized flame and various monatomic and polyatomic gases. These measurements show that the thermal accommodation coefficient between soot and monatomic gases increases with molecular mass due to the decreasing speed of incident gas molecules and corresponding decrease in surface deformation rate, and that energy is transferred preferentially from the surface to the translational mode of the polyatomic gas molecules over internal energy modes.

Modeling a Passive Cooling System for Photovoltaic Cells Under Concentration

Cooling of photovoltaic cells under high intensity solar irradiance is a major concern when designing concentrating photovoltaic systems. The cell temperature will increase if the waste heat is not removed and the cell voltage/power will decrease with increasing cell temperature. This paper presents an analysis of the passive cooling system on the Amonix high concentration photovoltaic system (HCPV). The concentrator geometry is described. A model of the HCPV passive cooling system was made using Gambit. Assumptions are discussed that were made to create the numerical model based on the actual system, the methods for drawing the model is discussed, and images of the model are shown. Fluent was used to compute the numerical results. In addition to the theoretical results that were computed, measurements were made on a system in the field. These data are compared to the theoretical data and differences are calculated. Theoretical conditions that were studied included uniform cell temperatures and worst case weather scenarios, i.e., no wind, high ambient conditions, and high solar irradiance. The performance of the Amonix high concentrating system could be improved if more waste heat were removed from the cell. Now that a theoretical model has been developed and verified, it will be used to investigate different designs and material for increasing the cooling of the system.

Viscous Dissipation in Laminar Water Flows in Micro-Tubes

Numerical calculations are performed to investigate the effect of viscous dissipation on the temperature rise and friction numbers for laminar water flows in micro-tubes. The calculated values are compared with those determined from reported experimental data for glass and diffused silica micro-tubes (D = 16 – 101 μm and L/D = 625 – 1479). The results confirm a definite slip at the wall with slip lengths of ∼ 0.7 μm and 1.0 μm, which decrease the friction number and the temperature rise in the micro-tubes, but their effect gradually diminishes as either D or L/D increases. The friction number decreases exponentially as D decreases and, to a lesser extent, as L/D increases. The effect of L/D on the friction number is insignificant for micro-tube diameters ≤ 20 μm. For D > 400 μm, the friction number approaches that of Hagen-Posieuille of 64 for macro-tubes when L/D > 1500, but approaches higher values at smaller L/D. The dimensionless analytical expression developed for calculating the friction number and the temperature rise for water flows in micro-tubes is in good agreement with both the numerical and experimental results.

Thermionic Emission From Potassium-Intercalated Carbon Nanotube Arrays

Vacuum and solid-state thermionic emission have long been proposed as a means of converting heat or solar energy directly into electrical power. However, low work function materials must be developed before a reasonably efficient power generation device can be realized. In this work, thermionic emission energy distributions were measured for four samples including a single-crystal tungsten (100) sample, a pristine CNT mat, and two potassium-intercalated CNT mats. One of the potassium-intercalated CNT mats was composed largely of randomly oriented CNTs while the other CNT sample was grown in templated anodized alumina to align the growth pattern. Thermionic emission data obtained from the tungsten sample validated the experimental apparatus and method. The pristine CNT mat exhibited an emission distribution with a work function of 4.7 eV, while the potassium-intercalated samples exhibited work functions of approximately 3.1 and 3.4 eV for the randomly oriented and the templated meshes, respectively. The differences in the measured work function values for intercalated samples may be due to emitter tip differences. Both intercalated CNT samples showed some degradation after cooling from 510°C and reheating to the same temperature.

Numerical Investigation of EHD Conduction Pumping of Liquid Film With Phase-Change

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) conduction pumping is associated with the heterocharge layers of finite thickness in the vicinity of the electrodes, generated by the process of dissociation of the neutral electrolytic species and recombination of the generated ions. This paper numerically investigates the EHD conduction pumping of a thin liquid film in the presence of phase change. The flow system comprises a liquid film flowing over a two-dimensional flat plate while the vapor phase extended far beyond the interface to result in almost motionless vapor. The channel is separated into four different sections: the entrance, electrode, evaporation, and downstream sections. The entrance, electrode and downstream regions are adiabatic while a constant heat flux is applied in the evaporation side. The concept of EHD conduction pumping of liquid film in the presence of phase change is demonstrated in this paper. The enhanced heat transfer due to conduction pumping is evaluated.