Spray combustion is widely used in power, transportation, chemical and metallurgical, iron and steel making, aeronautical and astronautical engineering. In recent years, large-eddy simulation (LES) becomes more and more attractive, because it can give the instantaneous flow and flame structures, and may give more accurate statistical results than the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) modeling. In this paper, the present status of the studies on LES of spray combustion is reviewed, and the future research needs are discussed.

Centered on the techniques and industrial applications of the reinforced cyclonic separation process, its principles and mechanism for separation of ions, molecules and their aggregates using polydisperse droplets are discussed generally; the characteristics and influential factors of fish-hook phenomenon of the grade efficiency curve in cyclonic separation for both gas and liquid are analyzed; and the influence of shear force on particle behavior (or that of particle swarm) is also summarized. A novel idea for cyclonic separation is presented here: enhancing the cyclonic separation process of ions, molecules and their aggregates with monodisperse microspheres and their surface grafting, rearranging the distribution of particles by size using centrifugal field, reinforcing the cyclonic separation performance with orderly arranged particle swarm. Also the investigation of the shortcut flow, recirculation flow, the asymmetric structure and non-linear characteristics of the cyclonic flow field with a com-bined method of Volumetric 3-component Velocimetry (V3V) and Phase-Doppler Particle Anemometer (PDPA) are elaborated. It is recommended to develop new systems for the separation of heterogeneous phases with cyclonic technology, in accordance with the capture and reuse of CO2, methanol to olefins (MTO) process, coal transfer, and the exploitation of oil shale.

Experimental and numerical investigations have been conducted to study turbulent flow of water and heat transfer characteristics in a rectangular channel with discontinuous crossed ribs and grooves. The tests investigated the overall heat transfer performance and friction factor in ribbed and ribbed-grooved channels with rib angle of 30°. The experimental results show that the overall thermo-hydraulic performance for ribbed-grooved channel is increased by 10%-13.6% when compared to ribbed channel. The investigation on the effects of different rib angles and rib pitches on heat transfer characteristics and friction factor in ribbed-grooved channel was carried out using Fluent with SST (shear-stress transport) k-ω turbulence model. The numerical results indicate that the case for rib angle of 45° shows the best overall thermo-hydraulic performance, about 18%-36% higher than the case for rib an-gle of 0°. In addition, the flow patterns and local heat transfer characteristics for ribbed and ribbed-grooved chan-nels based on the numerical simulation were also analyzed to reveal the mechanism of heat transfer enhancement.

A miniature process for separating the oil phase from dilute oil/water emulsion is developed. This process applies a confined space apparatus, which is a thin flow channel made of two parallel plastic plates. The space between the two plates is rather narrow to improve the collisions between oil droplets and the plate surface. Oil droplets have an affinity for the plate surface and thus are captured, and then coalesce onto the surface. The droplet size distribution of the residual emulsion resulted from the separation process is remarkably changed. The oil layer on the plate weakens the further separation of oil droplets from the emulsion. Three types of plate materials, polypropylene (PP), polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and nylon 66, were used. It is found that PP is the best in terms of the oil separation efficiency and nylon 66 is the poorest. The interaction between droplets in the emulsion and plate surface is indicated by the spreading coefficient of oil droplet on the plate in aqueous environment, and the influences of formed oil layer and plate material on the separation efficiency are discussed.

A series of carboxylated long chain polyethylene glycols (abbreviated as PEGCOOH) has been synthesized and used to support chloroplatinic acid. These supported catalysts were then tested for their efficiency in the hydrosilylation of alkenes. The factors affecting their catalytic properties, e.g. relative molecular mass of polyeth-ylene glycol, reaction temperature, platinum content, and type of alkenes, have been studied. It was found that the activity of the platinum catalyst decreased with increasing length of the polyethylene glycol chain, and increased with reaction temperature. Moreover, these catalysts could be reused several times without a noticeable decrease in activity or selectivity. The reaction pathway leading to excellent selectivity for the β-adduct of hydrosilylation of alkenes with triethoxysilane catalyzed by this catalysis system was discussed.

Tungsten carbide and zeolite nanocomposite was prepared by combining a mechanochemical approach with a reduction and carbonization approach, using natural zeolite and ammonia metatungstate as precursors. The sample was characterized by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscope. The results showed that the crystal phase of the sample is composed of zeolite, monotungsten carbide and bitungsten carbide. The mass percentage and the crystallite diameter of tungsten carbide change along with the reacted time. Its electrocatalytic activity was measured with a microelectrode system with three electrodes. The results show that its electrocatalytic property is related to its crystal phase and the mass percentage of tungsten carbide, and its electrocatalytic activity is connected with the property of electrolyte, in which it is measured. Synergistic effect between tungsten carbide and zeolite is found during electrocatalysis.

The two novel green oxidation processes of p/o-cresols to p/o-hydroxybenzaldehydes catalyzed by met-alloporphyrins in the presence of molecular oxygen were developed in this work. Among the metalloporphyrins with different central ions and substituents studied, T(p-NO2)PPCoCl and T(p-OCH3)PPFeCl presented the highest activities for p-cresol and o-cresol oxidation reactions respectively. The molar ratio of sodium hydroxide to cresols and different reaction parameters including reaction temperature, reaction time and reaction pressure have been inves-tigated, and 69.8%/50.4% conversions of p/o-cresol and 86.6%/26.6% selectivities for p/o-hydroxybenzaldehydes were reached under optimized conditions.

A chemical model, based on Pitzer activity coefficient model, is developed with a speciation approach to describe the solubility and chemistry of nesquehonite in concentrated chloride solutions. The chemical equilibrium constants for nesquehonite and aqueous species, i.e. , , and MgOH+, are precisely calculated as a function of temperature according to the Van’t Hoff equation by use of standard Gibbs free energy, standard formation enthalpy and heat capacity. The most recent solubility data are regressed to obtain new Pitzer parameters with good agreement. The predictive ability of the new model is improved significantly in comparison with previous models. The behavior of speciation chemistry for nesquehonite in various chloride media is explained through this modeling work on the basis of the bearing species distribution, activity coefficient and pH changes.

AB-8 resin was used as an adsorbent for the removal of trans-1,2-cyclohexandiol (CHD) from aqueous solutions. Batch experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of contact time and temperature on sorption efficiency. The adsorptive thermodynamic properties and kinetics of CHD from water onto AB-8 resin were studied. The Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models were employed to discuss the adsorption behavior. Thermodynamic parameters such as ΔG?, ΔH? and ΔS? were calculated. The results indicate that the equilibrium data are perfectly represented by Langmuir isotherm model. Thermodynamic study reveals that it is an exothermic process in nature and mainly physical adsorption enhanced by chemisorption with a decrease of entropy process. The kinetics of CHD adsorption is well described by the pseudo second-order model. The adsorbed CHD can be eluted from AB-8 resin by 5% ethanol aqueous solution with 100% elution percentage.

Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) grafted onto silica, which may be used for reverse phase chromatography (RPC), was simulated and synthesized for protein separation with temperature-triggered adsorption and desorption. Molecular dynamics simulation at an all-atom level was performed to illustrate the adsorption/desorption behavior of cytochrome c, the model protein, on PNIPAAm-grafted-silica, a temperature responsive adsorbent. At a temperature above the lower critical solution temperature (LCST), the PNIPAAm chains aggregate on the silica surface, forming a hydrophobic surface that is favorable for the hydrophobic adsorption of cytochrome c, which has a high exposure of hydrophobic patches. At temperatures below the LCST, the PNIPAAm chains stretch, forming hydrophilic surface due to hydrogen bonding between PNIPAAm and surrounding water. Desorption of cytochrome c on the PNIPAAm-grafted-silica surface occurs as a result of competition with water, which forms hydrogen bonds with the protein. The conformational transitions of both cytochrome c and PNIPAAm are monitored, providing molecular insight into this temperature-responsive RPC technique. PNIPAAm-grafted-silica beads were synthesized and used for the adsorption and desorption of cytochrome c at approximately 313 K and 290 K, respectively. The experimental results validate the molecular dynamics simulation. In comparison to conventional RPC, using temperature as a driving force for RPC reduces the risk of protein denaturation caused by exposure to chaotropic solvents. Moreover, it simplifies the separation process by avoiding the buffer exchange operations between the steps.

Cordyceps ophioglossoides is a valuable traditional medicinal material. We have found that intracellular polysaccharide (IPS) is the major biologically active ingredient in Cordyceps ophioglossoides. This study is the first time to optimize the yield of IPS from Cordyceps ophioglossoides. The optimal medium for IPS production consists of glucose 54.50 g•L?1, yeast powder 25.50 g•L?1, NaH2PO4 0.4 g•L?1 and K2HPO4 0.4 g•L?1. The suggested culture conditions are 24 °C, initial pH 4.5 with a rotary speed of 120 r•min?1 for 168 h. The yield of IPS is 737.93 mg•L?1, which is 50% higher than the yield under the conditions prior to optimization. The anti-oxidative activities of IPS in Cordyceps ophioglossoides L2 are also characterized using various in vitro assay. The anti-oxidative activity may explain the reason why IPS from Cordyceps ophioglossoides can be used to fight against neurodegenerative dis-eases and menopausal symptoms.

This study presents the first demonstration project in China for treatment of coal-bed methane (CBM) co-produced water and recycling. The work aims to provide a research and innovation base for solving the pollution problem of CBM extraction water. The reverse osmosis (RO) unit is applied to the treatment of CBM co-produced water. The results indicate that system operation is stable, the removal efficiency of the total dissolved solids (TDS) is as high as 97.98%, and Fe, Mn, and F? are almost completely removed. There is no suspended solids (SS) detected in the treated water. Furthermore, a model for the RO membrane separation process is developed to describe the quantitative relationship between key physical quantities—membrane length, flow velocity, salt concentration, driving pressure and water recovery rate, and the water recovery restriction equation based on mass balance is de-veloped. This model provides a theoretical support for the RO system design and optimization. The TDS in the CBM co-produced water are removed to meet the “drinking water standards” and “groundwater quality standards” of China and can be used as drinking water, irrigation water, and livestock watering. In addition, the cost for treat-ment of CBM co-produced water is assessed, and the RO technology is an efficient and cost-effective treatment method to remove pollutants.

Attempts had been made to synthesize Al2O3-2SiO2 nanopowders by sol-gel method with tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and aluminum nitrate (ANN) as the starting materials. DTS, TEM, SEM and BET were employed to study the effects of process parameters on the size, specific surface area and structure (morphology) of powders. The alkali-activation reactivity of the powders was tested for manufacturing geopolymers and their hydrothermal reactions were performed for fabricating zeolites. The results show that the optimum process parameters and drying method for preparing Al2O3-2SiO2 nanopowders are as follows: the molar ratio of water and ethanol to TEOS are 0︰1 and 12︰1 respectively at synthetic temperature of 50 °C and the drying method is azeotropic distillation with microwave drying. The average particle diameters of the powders were about 70 nm and the largest BET specific surface area was up to 669 m2•g?1. The compressive strength of the geopolymer and the calcium exchange capacity (by CaCO3) of NaA zeolite prepared with the powders reached to 29 MPa and 366 mg•g?1 respectively.

An invasive electrical resistance tomographic sensor was proposed for production logging in vertical oil well. The sensor consists of 24 electrodes that are fixed to the logging tool, which can move in the pipeline to acquire data on the conductivity distribution of oil/water mixture flow at different depths. A sensitivity-based algorithm was introduced to reconstruct the cross-sectional images. Analysis on the sensitivity of the sensor to the distribution of oil/water mixture flow was carried out to optimize the position of the imaging cross-section. The imaging results obtained using various boundary conditions at the pipe wall and the logging tool were compared. Eight typical models with various conductivity distributions were created and the measurement data were obtained by solving the forward problem of the sensor system. Image reconstruction was then implemented by using the simulation data for each model. Comparisons between the models and the reconstructed images show that the number and spatial distribution of the oil bubbles can be clearly identified.

This study was conducted to investigate the characteristics of meso-scale combustion. The technique of electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) was used to locate flame position and monitor the effect corresponding to varied air/fuel ratio in a meso-scale combustor. Combustion phenomena including igniting, quenching and unsteady combustion have been visualized using ECT. The method of metallization protecting ECT sensor from high tem-perature damage and the novel calibration method adapted to ECT monitoring of unknown permittivity flame have been shown to be successful. At the same time, electrical nature of combustion and dielectric characteristics of hy-drocarbon flame were studied. The relationship between flame permittivity and state parameters of combustion gas was demonstrated preliminarily.

The paper covers the electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) data analysis on shear zones formed during silo discharging process. This is due to the ECT aptitude for detection of slight changes of material concentration. On the basis of ECT visualisations, wall-adjacent shear zone profiles are analysed for different wall roughness parameters. The analysis on changes of material concentration, based on ECT images, enables the calculation for the characteristic parameters of shear zones—size and material concentration inside the shear zone in a dynamic process of silo discharging. In order to verify the methodology a series of experiments on gravitational flow of bulk solids under various conditions were conducted with different initial granular material packing densities and silo wall roughness. The investigation shows that the increase in container wall roughness is an effective method for re-ducing the dynamic effects during the material discharging, since these effects are resulted from the resonance be-tween hopper construction and trembling material. Such effects will damage industrial equipment in practical ap-plications and need further investigation.

In order to overcome the disturbance of noise, this paper presented a method to measure two-phase flow velocity using particle swarm optimization algorithm, nonlinear blind source separation and cross correlation method. Because of the nonlinear relationship between the output signals of capacitance sensors and fluid in pipeline, nonlinear blind source separation is applied. In nonlinear blind source separation, the odd polynomials of higher order are used to fit the nonlinear transformation function, and the mutual information of separation signals is used as the evaluation function. Then the parameters of polynomial and linear separation matrix can be estimated by mutual information of separation signals and particle swarm optimization algorithm, thus the source signals can be separated from the mixed signals. The two-phase flow signals with noise which are obtained from upstream and downstream sensors are respectively processed by nonlinear blind source separation method so that the noise can be effectively removed. Therefore, based on these noise-suppressed signals, the distinct curves of cross correlation function and the transit times are obtained, and then the velocities of two-phase flow can be accurately calculated. Finally, the simulation experimental results are given. The results have proved that this method can meet the meas-urement requirements of two-phase flow velocity.

Three-dimensional tracking of submicron particles in flows in a micro-channel was carried out using in-line holographic microscopy. A fixed single 0.5 μm fluorescent particle was identified and isolated from dust particles or overlapped particle pair using the laser induced fluorescent (LIF) method. Then in-line microscopic holograms of the fixed single particle were obtained at different positions on the optical axis, i.e. the defocus distances. The holograms of the single particle were used as the model templates with the known defocus distances. The particles in the in-line microscopic holograms of flow in the microchannel were then identified and located to obtain their two-dimensional positions. The defocus distances of those particles were determined by matching each hologram pattern to one of the model templates obtained in the single particle test. Finally the three-dimensional position and velocity of each particle were obtained.

Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) is a non-invasive imaging technique that aims at visualizing the cross-sectional permittivity distribution and phase distribution of solid/gas two-phase flow based on the measured capacitance. To solve the nonlinear and ill-posed inverse problem: image reconstruction of ECT system, this paper proposed a new image reconstruction method based on improved radial basis function (RBF) neural network combined with adaptive wavelet image enhancement. Firstly, an improved RBF network was applied to establish the mapping model between the reconstruction image pixels and the capacitance values measured. Then, for better image quality, adaptive wavelet image enhancement technique was emphatically analyzed and studied, which be-longs to a space-frequency analysis method and is suitable for image feature-enhanced. Through multi-level wavelet decomposition, edge points of the image produced from RBF network can be determined based on the neighbor-hood property of each sub-band; noise distribution in the space-frequency domain can be estimated based on statis-tical characteristics; after that a self-adaptive edge enhancement gain can be constructed. Finally, the image is re-constructed with adjusting wavelet coefficients. In this paper, a 12-electrode ECT system and a pneumatic convey-ing platform were built up to verify this image reconstruction algorithm. Experimental results demonstrated that adaptive wavelet image enhancement technique effectively implemented edge detection and image enhancement, and the improved RBF network and adaptive wavelet image enhancement hybrid algorithm greatly improved the quality of reconstructed image of solid/gas two-phase flow [pulverized coal (PC)/air].

ERT (electrical resistance tomography) is effective method for visualization of multiphase flows, offering some advantages of rapid response and low cost, so as to explore the transient hydrodynamics. Aiming at this target, a fully programmable and reconfigurable FPGA (field programmable gate array)-based Compact PCI (peripheral component interconnect) bus linked sixteen-channel ERT system has been presented. The data acquisition system is carefully designed with function modules of signal generator module; Compact PCI transmission module and data processing module (including data sampling, filtering and demodulating). The processing module incorporates a powerful FPGA with Compact PCI bus for communication, and the measurement process management is conducted in FPGA. Image reconstruction algorithms with different speed and accuracy are also coded for this system. The system has been demonstrated in real time (1400 frames per second for 50 kHz excitation) with signal-noise-ratio above 62 dB and repeatability error below 0.7%. Static experiments have been conducted and the images manifested good resolution relative to the actual object distribution. The parallel ERT system has provided alternative experimental platform for the multiphase flow measurements by the dynamic experiments in terms of concentration and velocity.

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To reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel fired power plants, a range of new combustion technologies are being developed or refined, including oxy-fuel combustion, co-firing biomass with coal and fluidized bed combustion. Flame characteristics under such combustion conditions are expected to be different from those in normal air fired combustion processes. Quantified flame characteristics such as temperature distribution, oscillation frequency, and ignition volume play an important part in the optimized design and operation of the environmentally friendly power generation systems. However, it is challenging to obtain such flame characteristics particularly through a three-dimensional and non-intrusive means. Various tomography methods have been proposed to visualize and characterize flames, including passive optical tomography, laser based tomography, and electrical to-mography. This paper identifies the challenges in flame tomography and reviews existing techniques for the quanti-tative characterization of flames. Future trends in flame tomography for industrial applications are discussed.

Based on an electrical resistance tomography (ERT) sensor and the data mining technology, a new voidage measurement method is proposed for air-water two-phase flow. The data mining technology used in this work is a least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) algorithm together with the feature extraction method, and three feature extraction methods are tested: principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares (PLS) and in-dependent component analysis (ICA). In the practical voidage measurement process, the flow pattern is firstly iden-tified directly from the conductance values obtained by the ERT sensor. Then, the appropriate voidage measurement model is selected according to the flow pattern identification result. Finally, the voidage is calculated. Experimental results show that the proposed method can measure the voidage effectively, and the measurement accuracy and speed are satisfactory. Compared with the conventional voidage measurement methods based on ERT, the proposed method doesn’t need any image reconstruction process, so it has the advantage of good real-time performance. Due to the introduction of flow pattern identification, the influence of flow pattern on the voidage measurement is over-come. Besides, it is demonstrated that the LS-SVM method with PLS feature extraction presents the best measure-ment performance among the tested methods.

Magnetic induction tomography (MIT) is one of the newest industrial process imaging techniques. Main industrial applications of the MIT imaging are in high conductive flow imaging. However, recently it has been shown that the MIT may be useful for low conductive process imaging. This paper presents a cost effective hardware design for MIT in industrial applications, called Bath-MKI industrial MIT system. The system comprises 8 inductor coils and has the possibility of expansion to 16 coils. The excitation signals and the measured voltages are generated and measured using a LabView based system. Two 16 by 1 multiplexers are used to select between the coils. Measurements, excitation and multiplexing are all controlled by a National Instrument (NI) USB based DAQ: USB-6259 and a signal generator. Using the same electronics, the prototype is tested with two different coil arrays; one is a small scale ferrite core coil and one larger scale air cored coil. Experimental image reconstruction results are shown using both small scale and large scale coil arrays.