Formation free energy of sodium stannate measured using β-β″-Al_2O_3 ceramic electrolyte

β-β″-Al2O3precursor powder was successfully prepared by a solid-phase sintering method with Li2CO3, Na2CO3 （as the sources of Li20 and Na20, respectively） and β″-Al2O3 powder as the raw materials. The precursor was characterized by X-ray diffraction （XRD） and scan- ning electron microscope （SEM）. The results indicate that the amount of Na20 in the raw materials has a great effect on the formation of β″-Al2O3 in the β-β″-Al2O3 precursor. When Na20 content is 10 wt%, the content of β″-Al2O3 phase reaches the maximum value of 86.24 wt% in the precursor. The β-β″-Al2O3 ceramic was prepared from β-β″-Al2O3 precursor powder by isostatic pressing and burying sintering process. The conductive property of the β-β″-Al2O3 ceramic was examined by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy （EIS） method, and the density was measured by the Archimedes method. The results reveal that when 10 wt% Na20 was added, the sample exhibits the best performance with the lowest resistivity of 4.51.cm and the highest density of 3.25 g.cm 3. A solid electrolyte battery of PtlSnQ, Na2SnO3113 β-β″-Al2O3 Na CrO2, Cr2lO3 Pt was assembled by the β-β″-Al2O3 electrolyte tube to measure the open potential of the resulting battery, and the formation free energy of sodium stannate was calculated In the temperature range of 1273-773 K, the relationship between formation free energy of sodiumstannate and temperature was generated as follows：△GNa2SnO3 0=-1040.83＋0.2221T±7.54.

Numerical study of a guide-vane-augmented vertical darrieus tidal-currentturbine

It is reported that the augmented vertical axis turbine (VAT) has a better operating performance. A guide-vane type augmentation is proposed in this study, with a simpler outline and a better adaptability to various directions of the incident water flow, as compared to the duct-type diffuser. A 2?D numerical model based on the computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS-Fluent is established and validated by experimental data. It is found that the guide vanes could narrow the flow path together with the VAT rotor and increase the flow velocity around the blades. The fluctuation of the instantaneous torque output is significantly reduced by using the guide-vane stator. The numerical results indicate that a four blades setup is suitable for the stator and the chord length of the guide vane should be equal to that of the rotor blade. The gap between the stator and the rotor is suggested to be a quarter of the chord length of the rotor blades. The non-zero pitch angle of the guide vane is found to have negative effects on the torque and the power output. The averaged power and torque coefficients for three non-zero directional angles of the incident flow are approximately 30% lower than those for the zero-directional angle.