This paper intends to provide a comprehensive state-of-art review of recent progresses and to formulate perspectives on window-ejected fire plumes, originating from under-ventilated compartment fires (known as ‘Regime I’ fires). Various external boundary conditions are considered, as they contribute to the fire and plume dynamics, and as such affect decisions on fire prevention and firefighting. Hence this is an important fire combustion topic of both fundamental and practical significance. After discussing the general fundamentals, the paper focuses particularly on recent progresses on quantifying the ejected fire plume behavior: constrained by the presence of walls; at sub-atmospheric pressure (for fires at high altitudes) and under complex flow conditions caused by wind. Experiments, theoretical scaling analysis and basic models are reviewed. The key points cover systematically: the compartment fire evolution (and hence criteria for flame ejection through the window); flame interaction and merging behavior from two windows; air entrainment mechanisms and characteristic parameters (flame structure/dimensions, temperature profile and heat flux) of window-ejected fire plumes. Meanwhile, the limitations of present research and future challenges are also discussed.
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is an electricity generation technology that concentrates solar irradiance through heliostats onto a small area, the receiver, where a heat transfer medium, currently a fluid (HTF), is used as heat carrier towards the heat storage and power block. It has been under the spotlight for a decade as one of the potential or promising renewable and sustainable energy technologies.
Using gas/solid suspensions as heat transfer medium in CSP has been advocated for the first time in the 1980′s and this novel concept relies on its possible application throughout the full CSP plant, i.e., in heat harvesting, conveying, storage and re-use, where it offers major advantages in comparison with the common heat transfer fluids such as water/steam, thermal fluids or molten salt. Although the particle suspension has a lower heat capacity than molten salts, the particle-driven system can operate without temperature limitation (except for the maximum allowable wall temperature of the receiver tubes), and it can also operate with higher hot-cold temperature gradients. Suspension temperatures of over 800 °C can be tolerated and achieved, with additional high efficiency thermodynamic systems being applicable. The application of high temperature particulate heat carriers moreover expands the possible thermodynamic cycles from Rankine steam cycles to Brayton gas cycles and even to combined electricity generating cycles.
This review paper deals with the development of the particle-driven CSP and assesses both its background fundamentals and its energy efficiency. Among the cited systems, batch and continuous operations with particle conveying loops are discussed. A short summary of relevant particle-related properties, and their use as heat transfer medium is included. Recent pilot plant experiments have demonstrated that a novel bubbling fluidized bed concept, the upflow bubbling fluidized bed (UBFB), recently adapted to use bubble rupture promoters and called dense upflow fluidized bed (DUFB), offers a considerable potential for use in a solar power tower plant for its excellent heat transfer at moderate to high receiver capacities.
For all CSP applications with particle circulation, a major challenge remains the transfer of hot and colder particles among the different constituents of the CSP system (receiver to storage, power block and return loop to the top of the solar tower). Potential conveying modes are discussed and compared. Whereas in solar heat capture, bubbling fluidized beds, particle falling films, vortex and rotary furnaces, among others, seem appropriate, both moving beds and bubbling fluidized beds are recommended in the heat storage and re-use, and examined in the review.
Common to all CSP applications are the thermodynamic cycles in the power block, where different secondary working fluids can be used to feed the turbines. These thermodynamic cycles are discussed in detail and the current or f
The impact of ship emission reductions can be maximised by considering climate, health and environmental effects simultaneously and using solutions fitting into existing marine engines and infrastructure. Several options available enable selecting optimum solutions for different ships, routes and regions. Carbon-neutral fuels, including low-carbon and carbon-negative fuels, from biogenic or non-biogenic origin (biomass, waste, renewable hydrogen) could resemble current marine fuels (diesel-type, methane and methanol). The carbon-neutrality of fuels depends on their Well-to-Wake (WtW) emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide emissions (N2O). Additionally, non-gaseous black carbon (BC) emissions have high global warming potential (GWP). Exhaust emissions which are harmful to health or the environment need to be equally removed using emission control achieved by fuel, engine or exhaust aftertreatment technologies. Harmful emission species include nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur oxides (SOx), ammonia (NH3), formaldehyde, particle mass (PM) and number emissions (PN). Particles may carry polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals, which cause serious adverse health issues. Carbon-neutral fuels are typically sulphur-free enabling negligible SOx emissions and efficient exhaust aftertreatment technologies, such as particle filtration. The combinations of carbon-neutral drop-in fuels and efficient emission control technologies would enable (near-)zero-emission shipping and these could be adaptable in the short- to mid-term. Substantial savings in external costs on society caused by ship emissions give arguments for regulations, policies and investments needed to support this development.
The shift in the energy sector toward green resources makes fuel cells increasingly relevant as a supplier of green and sustainable energy. However, factors such as expensive catalysts, anodic poisoning, and fuel crossover reduce the lifetime and performance of the fuel cells, necessitating catalysis improvement. This review article presents the unique capabilities of metal chalcogenides (MC) as tailored catalysts, elucidating their synthesis, testing techniques, and performance evaluations. MC catalysts are matured via various physical and chemical methods to control their morphology, quantity, dimension, and size. Upon synthesis, the catalyst performance is quantified using three-electrode cells, followed by tests in fuel-cell prototypes. As anodic catalysts, MCs oxidize various fuels such as methanol, ethanol, urea, and impure H2 at high current densities and low onset potentials, while hindering the poisoning species. As cathodic catalysts, MCs exhibit current values similar to that exhibited by their noble metal counterparts while reducing oxygen selectively in the vicinity of the fuels via four electron transfers at a wide range of potentials.
This is a comprehensive, critical, and pedagogical review of volumetric emission tomography for combustion processes. Many flames that are of interest to scientists and engineers are turbulent and thus inherently three-dimensional, especially in practical combustors, which often contain multiple interacting flames. Fortunately, combustion leads to the emission of light, both spontaneously and in response to laser-based stimulation. Therefore, images of a flame convey path-integrated information about the source of light, and a tomography algorithm can be used to reconstruct the spatial distribution of the light source, called emission tomography. In a carefully designed experiment, reconstructions can be post-processed using chemical kinetic, spectroscopic, and/or transport models to extract quantitative information. This information can be invaluable for benchmarking numerical solutions, and volumetric emission tomography is increasingly relied upon to paint a more complete picture of combustion than point, linear, or planar tools. Steady reductions in the cost of optical equipment and computing power, improvements in imaging technology, and advances in reconstruction algorithms have enabled a suite of three-dimensional sensors that are regularly used to characterize combustion. Four emission modalities are considered in this review: chemiluminescence, laser-induced fluorescence, passive incandescence, and laser-induced incandescence. The review covers the reconstruction algorithms, imaging models, camera calibration techniques, signal physics, instrumentation, and post-processing methods needed to conduct volumetric emission tomography and interpret the results. Limitations of each method are discussed and a survey of key applications is presented. The future of volumetric combustion diagnostics is considered, with special attention paid to the advent and promise of machine learning as well as spectrally-resolved volumetric measurement techniques.

