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Why nitrogen oxide inhibits CO oxidation over highly dispersed platinum ceria catalysts
Full text linkThe influence of nitrogen oxide on the lean CO oxidation activity of highly dispersed Pt/ceria and reference Pt/alumina catalysts has been studied by kinetic measurements and infrared spectroscopic characterization. Co-feeding of nitrogen oxide leads to the formation of nitrates on the supports that induce a highly oxidized character of the Pt sites and in the case of Pt/ceria, inhibit ceria lattice oxygens to react with CO adsorbed on Pt rim sites via a Mars-van Krevelen mechanism below the ignition temperature. The build-up of nitrates below the light-off temperatures is faster when CO is present in the feed. Above the light-off temperatures, carbonates replace the nitrates while the catalytic activity remains high
Performance and robustness analysis reveals phenotypic trade-offs in yeast
Full text linkTo design strains that can function efficiently in complex industrial settings, it is crucial to consider their robustness, that is, the stability of their performance when faced with perturbations. In the present study, we cultivated 24 Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains under conditions that simulated perturbations encountered during lignocellulosic bioethanol production, and assessed the performance and robustness of multiple phenotypes simultaneously. The observed negative correlations confirmed a trade-off between performance and robustness of ethanol yield, biomass yield, and cell dry weight. Conversely, the specific growth rate performance positively correlated with the robustness, presumably because of evolutionary selection for robust, fast-growing cells. The Ethanol Red strain exhibited both high performance and robustness, making it a good candidate for bioproduction in the tested perturbation space. Our results experimentally map the robustness-performance trade-offs, previously demonstrated mainly by single-phenotype and computational studies
Effect of heating of pea fibres on their swelling, rheological properties and in vitro colon fermentation
Full text linkDietary fibre intake is essential for all human beings and has been correlated to beneficial health effects. Pea hull fibres (PF) are generally seen as a side stream during extraction of protein and starch from yellow pea but could be used in various food products to boost fibre content. In this study, the thermal treatment of pea hull fibres was investigated in terms of physicochemical properties and in vitro colonic fermentation. The PF that was subjected to heating showed an increase of fibres solubilised in the liquid and particle size. Results also showed that viscosity and storage modulus increased with thermal treatment, possibly due to the swelling of the PF. The pea fibre was readily fermentable based on total gas production and pH. However, the susceptibility to fermentation of PF did not increase with thermal treatment. Total gas production and short chain fatty acid produced were similar independent of thermal treatment. Conclusively, heating of the PF resulted in increased ability to structure water suspension, owing to increased fibre particle size, but is not sufficient to increase short chain fatty acid production during colonic fermentation. To explain this, we propose that the changes in cell wall structure were not major enough to induce higher fermentability
The heat transfer potential of compressor vanes on a hydrogen fueled turbofan engine
Full text linkHydrogen is a promising fuel for future aviation due to its CO2-free combustion. In addition, its excellent cooling properties as it is heated from cryogenic conditions to the appropriate combustion temperatures provides a multitude of opportunities. This paper investigates the heat transfer potential of stator surfaces in a modern high-speed low-pressure compressor by incorporating cooling channels within the stator vane surfaces, where hydrogen is allowed to flow and cool the engine core air. Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations were carried out to assess the aerothermal performance of this cooled compressor and were compared to heat transfer correlations. A core air temperature drop of 9.5\ua0K was observed for this cooling channel design while being relatively insensitive to the thermal conductivity of the vane and cooling channel wall thickness. The thermal resistance was dominated by the air-side convective heat transfer, and more surface area on the air-side would therefore be required in order to increase overall heat flow. While good agreement with established heat transfer correlations was found for both turbulent and transitional flow, the correlation for the transitional case yielded decent accuracy only as long as the flow remains attached, and while transition was dominated by the bypass mode. A system level analysis, indicated a limited but favorable impact at engine performance level, amounting to a specific fuel consumption improvement of up to 0.8\ua0% in cruise and an estimated reduction of 3.6\ua0% in cruise NOx. The results clearly show that, although it is possible to achieve high heat transfer rate per unit area in compressor vanes, the impact on cycle performance is constrained by the limited available wetted area in the low-pressure compressor
Hydrogen permeability of thin-ply composites after mechanical loading
Full text linkHydrogen is a sustainable alternative to conventional fuels, and it may be obtained with near zero carbon footprint. However, hydrogen storage remains a key challenge, and the use of composite tanks has gained significant interest over the last few years. In addition, thin-ply composites promote fibre damage by delaying matrix microcracking and free edge delamination. In this work, the H2 permeation/diffusion performance of virgin and mechanically loaded thin cross-ply laminates is studied. In addition, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) is used to identify defects and micro-damage in the laminates and explain the experimental values. The study shows that the hydrogen (H2) barrier performances of thin-ply composites are lower than conventional metallic systems. Obtained permeability values, however, resulted well below the allowable limits for most combinations of temperature and pressure and remain unaffected despite the application of high tensile strains showing that permeation is not accelerated
Weighted Bergman kernels for nearly holomorphic functions on bounded symmetric domains
Full text linkWe identify the standard weighted Bergman kernels of spaces of nearly holomorphic functions, in the sense of Shimura, on bounded symmetric domains. This also yields a description of the analogous kernels for spaces of “invariantly-polyanalytic” functions — a generalization of the ordinary polyanalytic functions on the ball which seems to be the most appropriate one from the point of view of holomorphic invariance. In both cases, the kernels turn out to be given by certain spherical functions, or equivalently Heckman-Opdam hypergeometric functions, and a conjecture relating some of these to a Faraut-Koranyi hypergeometric function is formulated based on the study of low rank situations. Finally, analogous results are established also for compact Hermitian symmetric spaces, where explicit formulas in terms of multivariable Jacobi polynomials are given
Numerical homogenization of spatial network models
Full text linkWe present and analyze a methodology for numerical homogenization of spatial networks models, e.g. heat conduction and linear deformation in large networks of slender objects, such as paper fibers. The aim is to construct a coarse model of the problem that maintains high accuracy also on the micro-scale. By solving decoupled problems on local subgraphs we construct a low dimensional subspace of the solution space with good approximation properties. The coarse model of the network is expressed by a Galerkin formulation and can be used to perform simulations with different source and boundary data, at a low computational cost. We prove optimal convergence to the micro-scale solution of the proposed method under mild assumptions on the homogeneity, connectivity, and locality of the network on the coarse scale. The theoretical findings are numerically confirmed for both scalar-valued (heat conduction) and vector-valued (linear deformation) models
climateBUG [Formula presented]: A data-driven framework for analyzing bank reporting through a climate lens
No full textThis paper applies computational linguistics learning methods to the banking industry and climate change fields. We introduce our data-driven framework, climateBUG, with the aim of detecting latent information about how banks discuss their activities related to climate change using natural language processing (NLP). This framework consists of an ingestion pipeline, a configurable database, and a set of API’s. In addition, climateBUG offers two standalone components, namely a unique annotated corpus of approximately 1.1M statements from EU banks’ annual and sustainability reporting and a deep learning model adapted to the semantics of the corpus. When benchmarking on classification performance, our model outperforms other models with similar scopes due to its stronger domain relevance. We also provide examples of how the framework can be applied from a user perspective
A pressure-coupled Representative Interactive Linear Eddy Model (RILEM) for engine simulations
Full text linkThe Representative Linear Eddy Model (RILEM) was introduced by Lackmann et al. (2018) as an alternative modeling approach to simulate turbulent non-premixed combustion in engines. The model utilizes a RANS approach for turbulence and the Linear Eddy Model (LEM) with a presumed probability density function (PDF) approach for combustion closure. A distinct feature of RILEM is its potential to handle arbitrary combustion regimes and the consideration of complex physical phenomena such as differential diffusion effects. The original version of RILEM implemented a volume-based coupling between LEM and the flow solver. This work presents a new variant of RILEM, i.e., Multiple Representative Interactive Linear Eddy Model (MRILEM) based on a pressure-based coupling, to overcome some deficiencies of the original RILEM, namely statistical fidelity. Due to the introduced pressure coupling, the effects of heat losses (wall heat fluxes, latent heat of evaporation) on combustion are intrinsically included via the pressure trace. Furthermore, we introduce a new step function PDF for the progress variable defined by its mean value only. Issues with an incomplete solution space for mixture fraction and progress variable due to the stochastic nature of LEM are remedied with a PDF scaling technique, aided by a novel parameterization of the progress-variable PDF The new variant of RILEM is evaluated using part- and full-load cases of a heavy-duty metal engine. The impact of utilizing multiple LEM lines on the completeness of the solution space and its influence on the distribution of scalar values in the CFD domain was demonstrated. Results for pressure trace, flame structure, and CO emissions are analyzed and compared with simulations using the Multi-Zone Well-Mixed Model (MZWM) model and experiments. While pressure traces agree well among the different models and experiments, noteworthy differences are observed between the models regarding CO emissions and temperature. Effects of turbulence chemistry interaction were noticed when comparing MRILEM to the results of the MZWM simulation, namely flame brush and species mass fraction distribution
Role of intrinsic and extrinsic xylan in softwood kraft pulp fiber networks
Full text linkXylan is primarily found in the secondary cell wall of plants providing strength and integrity. To take advantage of the reinforcing effect of xylan in papermaking, it is crucial to understand its role in pulp fibers, as it undergoes substantial changes during pulping. However, the contributions of xylan that is added afterwards (extrinsic) and xylan present after pulping (intrinsic) remain largely unexplored. Here, we partially degraded xylan from refined bleached softwood kraft pulp (BSKP) and adsorbed xylan onto BSKP. Enzymatic degradation of 1 % xylan resulted in an open hand sheet structure, while adsorption of 3 % xylan created a denser fiber network. The mechanical properties improved with adsorbed xylan, but decreased more significantly after enzymatic treatment. We propose that the enhancement in mechanical properties by adsorbed extrinsic xylan is due to increased fiber-fiber bonds and sheet density, while the deterioration in mechanical properties of the enzyme treated pulp is caused by the opposite effect. These findings suggest that xylan is decisive for fiber network strength. However, intrinsic xylan is more critical, and the same properties cannot be achieved by readsorbing xylan onto the fibers. Therefore, pulping parameters should be selected to preserve intrinsic xylan within the fibers to maintain paper strength