ALBERT

Description: A new radioactive liquid waste cementation facility was under commissioning recently in the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology of Tsinghua University, which is designed to simultaneously process multiple intermediate-level radioactive waste drums. Therefore, the multiple volume sources and the scattering effect becomes a key issue in its radiation protection. For this purpose, the Monte Carlo program FLUKA code and experimental measurement were both adopted. In the FLUKA simulation, five different scenarios were considered, i.e., one drum, two drums, four drums, six drums, and eight drums. For the multiple volume sources, the source subroutine code of FLUKA was rewritten to realize the sampling. The complex shielding also leads to a deep penetration problem; hence, the optimization algorithm and variance reduction techniques were adopted. During the measurement, two scenarios, outdoor and indoor, were carried out separately representing the dose field when only one drum is considered and when the scattering effect is considered. A comparison between the experiments and calculations shows very good agreement. From both of the Monte Carlo simulation and the experimental measurement, it can be drawn that, in the horizontal direction, with the increase of the drum number, the dose rate increases very little, while in the vertical direction, the increase of the dose rate is very obvious with the increase of the drum number. The complicated source term sampling methods, the optimization algorithm and variance reduction techniques, and the experimental verification can provide valuable references for the similar scattering problem in radiation protection and shielding design.

Description: Uncertainty analyses of fission product yields are indispensable in evaluating reactor burnup and decay heat calculation credibility. Compared with neutron cross section, there are fewer uncertainty analyses conducted and it has been a controversial topic by lack of properly estimated covariance matrix as well as adequate sampling method. Specifically, the conventional normal-based sampling method in sampling large uncertainty independent fission yields could inevitably generate nonphysical negative samples. Cutting off these samples would introduce bias into uncertainty results. Here, we evaluate thermal neutron-induced U-235 independent fission yields covariance matrix by the Bayesian updating method, and then we use lognormal-based sampling method to overcome the negative fission yields samples issue. Fission yields uncertainty contribution to effective multiplication factor and several fission products’ atomic densities at equilibrium core of pebble-bed HTGR are quantified and investigated. The results show that the lognormal-based sampling method could prevent generating negative yields samples and maintain the skewness of fission yields distribution. Compared with the zero cut-off normal-based sampling method, the lognormal-based sampling method evaluates the uncertainty of effective multiplication factor and atomic densities are larger. This implies that zero cut-off effect in the normal-based sampling method would underestimate the fission yields uncertainty contribution. Therefore, adopting the lognormal-based sampling method is crucial for providing reliable uncertainty analysis results in fission product yields uncertainty analysis.

Description: The experiments are carried out in a three-dimensional channel with a screw conveyor, which plays the role of granular drives for the granular flow system and determines the injection of granular in the test target section. The jam-to-dense transition of granular flow is studied with the different inclination angle. The results show that, with a fixed diameter of hopper orifice and initial filling position, there is a change from jam to dense when the inclination angle larger than 22°. Variation of the flow rate with elevated frequency of the screw conveyor is further studied. The flow pattern is changed from dilute to dense with increasing rotation frequency of the screw rod. When the rotation frequency is larger than 5 Hz, the flow is dense. The dynamic balance of the interface between dilute to dense granular is observed in the main target section. We further research the dynamic interface by measuring the highest and lowest location with time and also simulate the gravity flow rate and screw conveyor flow rate with EDEM. From the results, we find that the interface between dilute flow and dense flow is influenced by the combined action of crew conveyor flow and dense gravity flow.

Description: Solar energy is a renewable type, clean, and inexhaustible which is sufficiently available on the Algerian territory. The energy received daily on a horizontal surface of 1 m2 is in the order of 5 kWh over almost the whole Algerian territory; the duration of sunshine surpasses 2000 hours annually and can reach 3900 hours on the highlands and the Sahara. The importance of this work is based on exploiting solar energy to produce electricity. This study is based on the experimental exploitation of solar energy using solar tree’s prototype suggestion. This new model is focused to replace the leaf of a tree by the solar cell, starting by examining the solar field and physical phenomenon related with it; the description of cell photovoltaic comes after; and finally, the dimension of the solar system and the experimental studies are virtually released in the University of M’sila. In this work, a prototype of new artificial solar tree is proposed experimentally by using material available in the local market: 25 solar panels, metal support, electrical queues, regulator, and battery. The results highlight a power improvement in the case of the proposed new model (solar tree) compared to the traditional one provided (solar panel), for the specified time range between 8 am and 2:30 pm. On the other hand, the traditional model values improve if the time dimension is extended from 2:30 pm to 6:00 pm. This is due to the temperature of the region and the presence of interstellar spaces between the cells of the solar tree.

Description: CAP1400 nuclear island structure is an advanced and novel nuclear power plant structure. In order to explore the seismic response characteristics of CAP1400 nuclear island structure on soft rock sites, a three-dimensional refined nonlinear seismic response analysis model was established for a soft rock foundation-nuclear island structure system using ABAQUS software. The influences of the input ground motion intensity and the frequency spectrum characteristics on the acceleration, relative displacement, and floor response spectrum, as well as the critical shear wave velocity of nonbedrock sites for CAP1400 nuclear island structure, were proposed. The results suggested that the increasing amplitude of the peak acceleration and relative displacement of nuclear island structure decreased as the soft rock site entered a nonlinear state, and the high-frequency components of the input ground motion became more abundant. Specifically, the earthquake response was the largest at the cooling water tank on the top of the shield building, which was the focus of the seismic research on nuclear island structure. Due to the influence of the ground motion frequency spectrum characteristics and the nonbedrock site effect, the peak acceleration, peak relative displacement, and acceleration response spectrum of the nuclear island structure showed different changing trends for the near-field and far-field ground motions. Based on the influence of the site shear wave velocity on the seismic response of nuclear island structure, it was recommended that the critical shear wave velocity of nonbedrock sites for CAP1400 nuclear island structure should be 1250 m/s, and the nuclear island structure-foundation dynamic interaction could be ignored at this time. The research conclusions could provide some technical support and theoretical basis for the construction and seismic performance research of CAP1400 and other nuclear power plants.

Description: Solar resource data derived from satellite imagery are widely available nowadays, either as an open-source or paid database. This article is intended to assess open-source databases, which cover the region of Indonesia. Here, four known solar resource databases, which spatially cover the Indonesian archipelago, have been used, namely, Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resource (POWER), Surface Solar Radiation–Heliosat-East (SARAH-E), CM SAF Cloud, Albedo, Radiation edition 2 (CLARA-A2), and SolarGIS. In addition, a minor portion of the Meteonorm database by Meteotest, around five sample points across Indonesia, has been assessed in terms of coherency to the four mentioned databases. Correlation coefficient and relative bias of the multiyear monthly mean annual cycle global horizontal irradiation (GHI) between pairs of databases are inspected. Three out of four databases are then validated through the available irradiation ground measurement data provided by the World Radiation Data Centre (WRDC). The correlation between each pair varies mostly between 0.7 and 1, which shows that the four databases to a certain extent agree on how the intermonthly variation would behave throughout the year. On the other hand, the validation result reveals that the three databases, i.e., POWER, CLARA-A2, and SARAH-E, are suffering from positive bias error ranging from 3% to 7%. Despite that fact, the correlation between measured and estimated values is still acceptable with SARAH-E showing the best performance among the three. Careful selections and adjustment enable the possibility of these databases to be utilized as a tool for depicting interannual and intermonthly variations of solar irradiation throughout the Indonesian archipelago.

Description: Cu2Zn1−yFeySnS4-based solar cells with different mole fractions of iron have been analyzed using numerical simulations in this study. The analysis deals with the effect of the iron content on the overall electrical performance of solar cells. Results revealed that the Voc is affected by the increase of the iron content even if it improves the other parameters. We found that the CZFTS solar cell with a mole fraction of iron equal to 1 (CFTS) showed the best results in terms of power conversion efficiency (PCE). Moreover, variations of several structural and physical parameters of the buffer CdS and the best absorber CFTS on the overall electrical characteristics of the cell were investigated. Simulations showed promising results with PCE of 20.35%, Jsc of 26.09 mA/cm2, Voc of 0.93 V, and FF of 83.93%. The results obtained can serve as a basis for the design and manufacture of high-efficiency CZFTS solar cells.

Description: Arsenic trisulfide (As2S3) has been found to be an excellent glass former at high temperature and pressure. However, there is still some scarcity for the elastic and phonon behavior of the orpiment phase. By using the Dreiding force field of the geometry optimization computations, we investigated the elastic constants, mechanical moduli, and the phonon dispersion of orpiment As2S3 under the pressure from 0 to 5 GPa. Some results of the elastic parameters of orpiment-As2S3 at 0 GPa are consistent with the experimental data. The phonon dispersions for orpiment As2S3 under pressure are also reasonable with previous calculations.

Description: This paper presents a new multi-photovoltaic panel measurement and analysis system (PPMAS) developed for measurement of atmospheric parameters and generated power of photovoltaic (PV) panels. Designed system presented with an experimental study evaluates performance of four new and four 5-year-old PV panel technologies which are based on polycrystalline (Poly), monocrystalline (Mono), copper indium selenide (CIS), and cadmium telluride (CdTe) in real time, under same atmospheric conditions. The PPMAS system with the PV panels is installed in Yildirim Beyazit University, Ankara Province, in Turkey. The designed PPMAS consists of three different subsystems which are (1) photovoltaic panel measurement subsystem (PPMS), (2) meteorology measurement subsystem (MMS), and (3) data acquisition subsystem (DAS). PPMS is used to measure the power generation for PV panels. MMS involves different types of sensors, and it is designed to determine atmospheric conditions including wind speed, wind direction, outdoor temperature, humidity, ambient light, and panel temperatures. The measured values by PPMS and MMS are stored in a database using DAS subsystem. In order to improve the measurement accuracy, PPMS and MMS are calibrated. This study also focuses on outdoor testing performances of four new and four 5-year-old PV panels. Average monthly panel efficiencies are estimated as 8.46%, 8.11%, 5.65%, and 3.88% for new Mono, new Poly, new CIS, and new CdTe PV panels, respectively. Moreover, average monthly panel efficiencies of old panels are calculated as 8.22%, 7.85%, 5.35%, and 3.63% in the same order. Test results obtained from the experimental system are also statistically examined and discussed to analyze the performance of PV panels in terms of monthly panel efficiencies.

Description: The inefficient indoor burning of fuelwood on traditional cookstoves generates pollutants, primarily carbon monoxide and many other human health-damaging emissions. It is from this risk that it is necessary to have an immediate shift to alternative cleaner fuel sources. Biogas, which is among the biofuels from biomass, is one of the resources that play a considerable part in a more diverse and sustainable global energy mix. For domestic purposes in rural areas of Tanzania, biogas provides a better option that can supplement the use of fossil fuels such as wood, charcoal, and kerosene, which is nonrenewable. However, the low efficiency experienced in the locally made biogas burners hinders the large-scale use of biogas among the population in the country. With the locally made burners, the users of biogas for the domestic application face problems including heat loss and high gas consumption which affects the whole cooking process. It is against this backdrop that the current study objectives incline on designing and improving the efficiency of the locally manufactured burners to achieve the uniform flow of fuel in the mixing chamber, which will result to the consistent heat distribution around the cooking pot. The optimization of the burner was done by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) through varying the number of flame portholes and air holes as well as the size of the jet before fabrication. The increased efficiency of the burner has also contributed by the addition of the fuel distributor. The results showed that the optimum hole diameter of the jet was 2.5 mm and that of the manifold was 100 mm. The currently developed biogas burner was tested and compared with the other two locally made burners. The water boiling test (WBT) on these three burners showed that the developed burner has a thermal efficiency of 67.01% against 54.61% and 58.82% of the Centre for Agricultural Mechanization and Rural Technology (CARMATEC) and Simgas, respectively. Additionally, the fuel consumption of the developed burner was 736 g/L as compared to 920 g/L for CARMARTEC and 833 g/L for that of Simgas. The developed burner and its corresponding cookstove are both environmentally friendly and economical for household utilization in Tanzania and other developing countries.