Search results for "ELECTRICITY"
showing 10 items of 1225 documents
Potential and limits of water-cooled Pb–17Li blankets and divertors for a fusion power plant
2000
Abstract Blankets and divertors are key components of a fusion power plant. They have a large impact on the overall plant design, its performance and availability, and on the cost of electricity. The water-cooled Pb–17Li (WCLL) blanket uses reduced activation ferritic–martensitic steel as structural material. It was previously validated under numerous aspects such as TBR, mechanical and thermo-mechanical stability, thermal–hydraulics, MHD, safety and others. This was done assuming the specifications for a European DEMOnstration reactor which were fixed back in 1989. A WCLL blanket would best be combined with a water-cooled divertor so that a single coolant could be used for the entire react…
Programmable assembly of peptide amphiphile via noncovalent-to-covalent bond conversion
2017
Controlling the number of monomers in a supramolecular polymer has been a great challenge in programmable self-assembly of organic molecules. One approach has been to make use of frustrated growth of the supramolecular assembly by tuning the balance of attractive and repulsive intermolecular forces. We report here on the use of covalent bond formation among monomers, compensating for intermolecular electrostatic repulsion, as a mechanism to control the length of a supramolecular nanofiber formed by self-assembly of peptide amphiphiles. Circular dichroism spectroscopy in combination with dynamic light scattering, size-exclusion chromatography, and transmittance electron microscope analyses r…
Characterization of a small Mediterranean island end-users’ electricity consumption: The case of Lampedusa
2017
Abstract The paper presents the results of a study carried out on Lampedusa Island (Italy) and based on the survey of electricity consumption data. The main outcomes of the study are: • the characterization of the energy demand of private houses and hotels in Italian small islands with significant touristic flows during the summer period; • the identification of inefficient use of the electric loads; • the construction of aggregated load profiles for clusters of homogeneous domestic end-user to be used for implementing Demand Response strategies. The study shows how electricity consumption in Mediterranean small islands are very high with respect to the national average and lays the basis f…
Stochastic model for electrical loads in Mediterranean residential building: validation and applications
2014
A major issue in modelling the electrical load of residential building is reproducing the variability between dwellings due to the stochastic use of different electrical equipment. In that sense and with the objective to reproduce this variability, a stochastic model to obtain load profiles of household electricity is developed. The model is based on a probabilistic approach and is developed using data from the Mediterranean region of Spain. A detailed validation of the model has been done, analysing and comparing the results with Spanish and European data. The results of the validation show that the model is able to reproduce the most important features of the residential electrical consum…
Cell Systems Bioelectricity: How Different Intercellular Gap Junctions Could Regionalize a Multicellular Aggregate
2021
Simple Summary Electric potential patterns across tissues are instructive for development, regeneration, and tumorigenesis because they can influence transcription, migration, and differentiation through biochemical and biomechanical downstream processes. Determining the origins of the spatial domains of distinct potential, which in turn decide anatomical features such as limbs, eyes, brain, and heart, is critical to a mature understanding of how bioelectric signaling drives morphogenesis. We studied theoretically how connexin proteins with different voltage-gated gap junction conductances can maintain multicellular regions at distinct membrane potentials. We analyzed a minimal model that i…
ICT applications for improving the generation and distribution efficiency of a small mediterranean island
2016
The paper presents a study on the opportunities offered by ICT for improving the efficiency of the generation and distribution system of a small island. The island taken into consideration is the Italian Lampedusa island. In the paper, the power distribution system of the island is described and the summer and winter daily load profiles are examined in order to define the more suitable control actions for improving the generation and distribution efficiency of the power system. Finally the architecture of an idoneous control system for the smart grid is proposed and an evaluation of the purchase and installation costs of components and devices for the transition of a traditional house towar…
Special applications of reverse electrodialysis
2016
Reverse electrodialysis (RED) is a process for direct electricity production from salinity gradients, based on the use of suitable exchange membranes. To develop the RED process on an applicative scale and to add value to the overall process, a key role is entrusted to the selection of electrodic system, redox species, and electrode materials. In particular, it was shown that a proper selection of redox processes allows the use of a RED cell for the wastewater treatment of organic and inorganic pollutants resistant to conventional biological methods and for the synthesis of chemicals without energy supply. The utilization of microbial reverse electrodialysis cells was also proposed to incre…
Congestion management rules and trading strategies in the Spanish electricity market
2009
Abstract This paper analyses the economic incentives embodied in the rules governing the resolution of transmission constraints in the Spanish wholesale electricity market and the way these incentives may have influenced on the trading behaviour of both the generators and the demand side. The evidence obtained is consistent with them responding to these incentives. In particular, buyers would respond to the way congestion costs are billed to them by abandoning the daily market in favour of the intraday market as far as possible. Additionally, some strategic generators may have been prompted the system operator to require them to inject electricity into the system to solve network congestion…
An ACE Wholesale Electricity Market Framework with Bilateral Trading
2011
In this paper, an agent-based simulation model for a hybrid power market structure is presented. A bilateral transaction mechanism is combined with a uniform-pricing auction settlement in order to isolate the impact of medium-term bilateral contracts on market power and spot prices in a competitive wholesale market setting. First we describe the negotiation method for bilateral trading of energy and then introduce a new approach for bidding in the DA market based on the load duration curve. We find that, despite the conventional concerns, the foreclosure effect produced by the bilateral agreement between a generation and a retail business will not necessarily lead to higher prices, and will…
Compositional and Optical Gradient in Films of PbZrxTi1-xO3 (PZT) Family
2011
Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O3 (PZT) (x = 0-1) films have attracted the attention of researchers for the past 30 years due to their excellent ferroelectric (FE) and electromechanical properties, which have led to the commercialization of thin PZT films for ferroelectric random access memory (FeRAM), forming a market of several millions USD annually. Ferroelectricity of perovskite oxide thin films, especially PZT thin films, can be exploited in semiconductor devices to achieve non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) with high-speed access and long endurance, which can overcome the barriers, encountered in current semiconductor memory technologies. The ferroelectricity can be also exploited to voltage depe…