Yiping Wang

Mercury adsorption/oxidation plays a crucial role in mercury transformation during coal combustion. To gain an intuitive understanding of the adsorption/oxidation mechanisms between mercury and fly ash, changes in mercury speciation of fly ash before and after Hg adsorption were investigated using temperature-programmed decomposition–atomic fluorescence spectroscopy (TPD-AFS). The results directly reveal that the primary adsorption/oxidation mechanism between mercury and fly ash is the heterogeneous oxidation reaction of Hg⁰ to HgCl₂. The mercury adsorption capacity exhibits a strong positive correlation with both the unburned carbon (UBC) content and the specific surface area (SSA) of the fly ash, whereas the presence of metal oxides has a negligible effect on mercury adsorption. Higher inlet concentrations of Hg⁰ enhance mercury adsorption, while flue gas components such as N₂, O₂, and CO₂ have minimal influence on mercury adsorption.

In this paper, under the background of low-temperature steam waste heat recovery technology, the pressure oscillation characteristics of direct-contact condensation between continuously falling droplets and saturated steam at sub-atmosphere pressure were studied. An experimental device of pressure oscillation based on an acceleration oscillation sensor was established to investigate the influence of vapor pressure and fluid velocity on the oscillation characteristics of direct-contact condensation. The results showed that as the absolute pressure increases, the peak value of oscillation decreases gradually and the time-domain periodic waveform becomes fluctuating. When the liquid flow rate is low, the condensation oscillation shows a single-peak waveform and the dominant frequency moves towards a higher frequency. When the liquid velocity increases gradually, the RMS (root mean square) of pressure oscillation remains unchanged at first and then decreases obviously. The dominant frequency of oscillation decreases from 23.68 Hz to 7.16 Hz continuously, and the amplitude of oscillation decreases in a parabolic pattern. The auto power spectrum showed that the frequencies with higher energy become unconcentrated and show fluctuation characteristics. The amplitude of the dominant frequency is about 0.0004 (m/s²)², while that of the other peak frequencies is about 0.00010–0.00015 (m/s²)². In practical applications, excessive flow velocity and reduced vacuum degree should be avoided to prevent low-frequency vibration, which may lead to fatigue damage or even failure of the equipment due to resonance. In addition, the direct-contact condensation state can be inferred from the vibration signal to reduce environmental noise.

The recovery of low-temperature steam is of great significance to the effective utilization of energy. Direct contact condensation (DCC) technology is an effective heat recovery method with a low initial investment. An evaluation of the direct contact condensation heat transfer technology of water droplets and low-temperature saturated steam (at an absolute pressure of 7.3–19.9 kPa) was performed using both experimental and computational approaches. In the experiment, an experimental device based on the weighing method was set up, and the direct contact heat transfer process between droplets with a normalized diameter of less than 21.7 and saturated pure steam at 40–60 °C was experimentally investigated. The transient condensation efficiency and heat transfer coefficient were calculated by the real-time mass variation. The rapid condensation stage was classified to discuss the effects of initial droplet diameter, pressure, temperature, and mass flow rate on the heat transfer process. A two-dimensional model was developed using computational fluid dynamics techniques and verified by experimental results. The results indicated that when the normalized diameter of the droplet is less than two, 1.6 is the optimal value for DCC. For droplets with a normalized diameter greater than two, the optimal droplet temperature and mass flow rate are 15 °C and 10 g/s, respectively.

Due to the continuity and complexity of chemical systems, piping and operating conditions will have a significant effect on the on-line continuous weighing of materials inside process equipment. In this paper, a mathematical model of the weighing system considering piping and operating conditions was established based on the gas–liquid continuous heat transfer weighing process. A theoretical criterion which can be extended to any continuous weighing system of the materials inside equipment with connected piping is obtained through the mechanical derivation between the material mass, the cantilever beam deflection, the strain gage deformation, and the bridge output voltage. This criterion can effectively predict the influence of piping on weighing results with specific accuracy, and provide a basis for engineering optimization design. On this basis, a set of gas–liquid continuous contact weighing devices was built. The static/dynamic experimental results showed that the accuracy of the system meets the set requirements.

An important trend of Building Integrated Solar Thermal (BIST) system is to improve the aesthetic aspect of the solar collector to meet the requirement of architectural style and energy collection. Painting on the glass cover in an appropriate method is a simple and practical way. In this study, a halftone coating was used to print a red brick wall pattern on the glass cover. A series of comparative experiments were carried out to test the effect of the coating on the thermal behavior of the solar collector. In heat collection processes, compared with the solar collector with blank cover plate, the one with coated cover plate has lower absorber plate temperature and higher cover plate temperature. The lower the solar irradiance, the smaller the effect of color coating on the solar collector. Compared with the uncoated surface, the coated surface is more sensitive to solar irradiation. In the same heat collection process, compared with the solar collector coated on the outer surface of the cover plate, the one coated on the inner surface has 0.8 °C higher heat absorber plate temperature and 5% lower top heat loss.

The transient heat transfer behaviour of direct contact condensation of steam in spray cooling water in a packed column was investigated experimentally and theoretically in this work for the first time. A new analysis method of the state equation was applied to analyze the molar quantity variation of steam in the course of the experiment. The results showed that increasing the cooling water flow rate properly could significantly accelerate the steam condensation rate and this was more obvious at the beginning of the operation. The higher the flow rate of the cooling water was, the shorter a time it took for the steam to be completely condensed. When the cooling water flow rate was 840 L/h, the steam was mainly condensed within 13 s, which indicated that it would rapidly handle steam by regulating cooling water flow rate. However, the effect of changing cooling water temperature on steam condensation rate is slight with the cooling water temperature inceasing from 23 °C to 42 °C. The volumetric heat transfer coefficient in this experiment is in the range of 1.47 kW · m⁻³ · K⁻¹ to 10.93 kW · m⁻³ · K⁻¹ with the cooling water flow rate inceasing from 120 L/h to 840 L/h, and the maximum uncertainty in the results is 2.2 %.

In order to solve the heat dissipation problem of densely-packed solar cells in high concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) system, a new cooling method of using silicon oil directly immerse the solar cells was proposed. The heat transfer performance of silicon oil immersion cooling the densely-packed solar cells with and without fin structure was investigated through experiment and simulation methods. The results of heat transfer performance of solar cells without fin structure showed that the simulated data was consistent well with data of experiment and the temperature could be lowered down in the operation range of solar cell. Furthermore, the heat transfer performance of solar cells with fin structure was researched using the model under different silicon oil inlet temperatures, inlet flow rates and the flow pressure drop was measured. The results indicated that the solar cells temperature declined and distributed well with silicon oil inlet flow rate increasing but the solar cells temperature raised linearly with silicon oil inlet temperature increasing. The optimized parameters of cooling receiver with fin structure were that: height of fin was 14 mm, number of fin was 50 and the thickness of substrate was 1.5 mm, with which the large amount of heat of densely-packed solar cells under high concentration ratio could be well controlled and make sure the power generation of HCPV system was high efficient.