Effects of Diesel Concentration on the Thermal Conductivity,Specific Heat Capacity and Thermal Diffusivity of Diesel-Contaminated Soil

High energy consumption is a serious issue associated with in situ thermal desorption(TD)remediation of sites contaminated by petroleum hydrocarbons(PHs).The knowledge on the thermophysical properties of contaminated soil can help predict accurately the transient temperature distribution in a remediation site,for the purpose of energy conservation.However,such data are rarely reported for PH-contaminated soil.In this study,by taking diesel as a representative example for PHs,soil samples with constant dry bulk density but different diesel mass concentrations ranging from 0% to 20% were prepared,and the variations of their thermal conductivity,specific heat capacity and thermal diffusivity were measured and analyzed over a wide temperature range between 0℃ and 120℃.It was found that the effect of diesel concentration on the thermal conductivity of soil is negligible when it is below 1%.When diesel concentration is below 10%,the thermal conductivity of soil increases with raising the temperature.However,when diesel concentration becomes above 10%,the change of the thermal conductivity of soil with temperature exhibits the opposite trend.This is mainly due to the competition between soil minerals and diesel,because the thermal conductivity of minerals increases with temperature,whereas the thermal conductivity of diesel decreases with temperature.The analysis results showed that,compared with temperature,the diesel concentration has more significant effects on soil thermal conductivity.Regardless of the diesel concentration,with the increase of temperature,the specific heat capacity of soil increases,while the thermal diffusivity of soil decreases.In addition,the results of a control experiment exhibited that the relative differences of the thermal conductivity of the soil samples containing the same concentration of both diesel and a pure alkane are all below 10%,indicating that the results obtained with diesel in this study can be extended to the family of PHs.A theoretical prediction model was proposed based on cubic fractal and thermal resistance analysis,which confirmed that diesel concentration does have a significant effect on soil thermal conductivity.For the sake of practical applications,a regression model with the diesel concentration as a primary parameter was also proposed.

Generative pre-trained transformers(GPT)-based automated data mining for building energy management:Advantages,limitations and the future

Advanced data mining methods have shown a promising capacity in building energy management.However,in the past decade,such methods are rarely applied in practice,since they highly rely on users to customize solutions according to the characteristics of target building energy systems.Hence,the major barrier is that the practical applications of such methods remain laborious.It is necessary to enable computers to have the human-like ability to solve data mining tasks.Generative pre-trained transformers(GPT)might be capable of addressing this issue,as some GPT models such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 have shown powerful abilities on interaction with humans,code generation,and inference with common sense and domain knowledge.This study explores the potential of the most advanced GPT model(GPT-4)in three data mining scenarios of building energy management,i.e.,energy load prediction,fault diagnosis,and anomaly detection.A performance evaluation framework is proposed to verify the capabilities of GPT-4 on generating energy load prediction codes,diagnosing device faults,and detecting abnormal system operation patterns.It is demonstrated that GPT-4 can automatically solve most of the data mining tasks in this domain,which overcomes the barrier of practical applications of data mining methods in this domain.In the exploration of GPT-4,its advantages and limitations are also discussed comprehensively for revealing future research directions in this domain.

Experimental Investigation on Flow Pattern and Bubble Behavior during Subcooled Flow Boiling of R1233zd(E)in Parallel Channels

In this study,the flow pattern and bubble behavior of R1233zd(E)during subcooled flow boiling in parallel channels are experimentally investigated with visualization and thermal measurement.The test section is composed of 21 rectangular mini channels with the hydraulic diameter of 1.5 mm and the length of 140 mm.Bubbly flow,slug flow,churn flow and wavy-annular flow occur in sequence with the increase of vapor quality,while transient flow pattern transition process involving multiple flow patterns are also captured.The distribution of flow pattern is non-synchronized and axial-asymmetric,with earlier flow pattern transitions observed in peripheral channels away from the center axis.The initial nucleate site in each channel also show a random and axial-asymmetric distribution,while faster bubble growth can be noted in some channel under the comprehensive effects of liquid evaporation and bubble coalescence.The variation of heat transfer coefficient is correspondence to the flow pattern transition,showing different trends along the flow direction.The increase of mass flux can lead to delayed flow pattern transition and variation of heat transfer coefficient.In addition,higher heat transfer coefficient can be noted in channels away from the center axis.

Zeolite-mediated hybrid Cu^(+)/Cu~0 interface for electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia

The electrocatalytic conversion of reactive nitrogen species to ammonia is a promising strategy for efficient NH_(3) synthesis.In this study,we reveal that the hybrid Cu^(+)/Cu~0 interface is catalytically active for electrochemical ammonia synthesis from nitrate reduction.To maintain the hybrid Cu^(+)/Cu~0 state at negative reaction potentials,hydrophilic zeolite is used to modify Cu/Cu_(2)O electrocatalyst,which demonstrates an impressive NH_(3) production rate of 41.65 mg h^(-1) cm^(-2)with ~100% Faradaic efficiency of ammonia synthesis at-0.6 V vs.RHE.In-situ Raman spectroscopy unveil the high activity originates from the zeolite reconstruction at the electrode–electrolyte interface,which protects the valence state of Cu~0/Cu^(+) site under negative potential and promotes electrochemical activity towards NH_(3) synthesis.

Atomization characteristics of pyrolysis oil derived from waste tires

The atomization characteristics play a key role in the highly efficient combustion of pyrolysis oil derived from waste tires.In this study,the fuel properties of tire pyrolysis oil(TPO)were initially studied,and then a high-speed camera and a phase Doppler particle analyzer were employed to characterize the atomization feature of TPO.The influence of pressure and nozzle orifice diameter on atomization characteristics such as spray angle,droplet velocity,and droplet size distribution was investigated.The results showed that TPO had a high calorific value of about 43.6 MJ/kg and a low viscosity of 3.84×10^(–6)m^(2)/s at 40℃,which made it have the potential to be used as an alternative fuel.Higher pressure expanded the spray angle and extended the spray in both the axial and radial directions.With increasing pressure,spray angle and droplet velocity raised,and the increase in crushing effect of air reduced the Sauter mean diameter(SMD)of the droplets.To obtain proper atomization quality for combustion,the pressure is expected to be higher than 1.25 MPa.With increasing nozzle orifice diameter,droplet velocity increased,and the SMD of the droplets increased as well due to weakened crushing effect of the orifice.Therefore,the pressure must be increased to maintain the atomization quality when using a nozzle with a larger orifice.Due to the lower viscosity,the velocity and particle size distribution of TPO droplets after atomization were smaller than those of diesel droplets.The extremely small carbon black contained in TPO also contributed to the breaking of droplets and played a certain role in the size reduction of the oil droplets,but it may cause the risk of nozzle blockage.In summary,TPO showed great atomization characteristics for alternative fuel applications.