Search results for "Sorptivity"

Soil moisture influences sorptivity and water repellency of topsoil aggregates in native grasslands

2017

Abstract Water repellency is associated to coating of soil particles by hydrophobic substances, usually of organic origin, affecting water dynamics in soil matrix. We analyzed the effect of water repellency on water sorptivity of topsoil aggregates of six soil types under three initial moisture conditions (10 kPa, 100 kPa, and air-dried). Undisturbed soil samples were collected to evaluate sorptivity in the 0–5 cm soil layer at different locations in Pampa Biome in southern Brazil. Disturbed soil samples were also collected for soil particle size distribution, particle density and organic matter content. Sorptivity test was conducted in a tension micro-infiltrometer, using distilled water a…

Electronic and optical properties of CeO 2 from first principles calculations

2016

International audience; First-principles calculations of the electronic structure of CeO2 nanoparticles (NPs) were performed to investigate published experimental data obtained by different spectroscopies. The main features of the valence and conduction bands have been analyzed from the total and partial density of states. Several functionals were applied to interpret and quantify the optical properties, including the dielectric function, extinction coefficient and refractive index. It is found that the on-site hybrid functional B3PW91 modelled most suitably the band gap region of CeO2 NPs and consequently gave a more accurate band gap value. It also agreed very well with the experimental v…

Influence of soil surface sealing and hydrophobicity on water infiltration

Nella tesi viene affrontato lo studio dell’impatto dei fenomeni di sealing superficiale e di idrofobicità sui processi di infiltrazione dell’acqua nel suolo. A tal fine vengono utilizzati diversi tipi di esperimenti infiltrometrici che consentono di determinare le modificazioni delle proprietà idrauliche del suolo indotte da questi due fenomeni permettendo di valutare così le loro ripercussioni negative sui processi idrologici. The thesis aims at investigating the effects of soil sealing and hydrophobicity on the water infiltration process. Different field infiltrometric techniques are applied at this end due to their ability to characterize modifications of soil hydraulic properties that d…

Unsaturated Soil Hydraulic Properties

2016

In the first part of this chapter, the tension infiltrometer (TI) technique is illustrated. After having described apparatus and instruments as well as the operative procedures in the field, the solutions based on the Wooding’s equation for steady-state flow are presented. Specific focus is given to the multi-potential approaches that allow determination of unsaturated soil hydraulic conductivity, K 0, corresponding to a sequence of pressure head values, h 0, imposed on the soil surface. The analytical model proposed by Haverkamp et al. (1994) to describe three-dimensional transient infiltration from a circular source is introduced and a single-test approach is presented that allows estimat…

Application of minidisk infiltrometer to estimate soil water repellency

2016

Soil water repellency (SWR) reduces affinity of soils to water resulting in detrimental implication for plants growth as well as for hydrological processes. During the last decades, it has become clear that SWR is much more widespread than formerly thought, having been reported for a wide variety of soils, land uses and climatic conditions. The repellency index (RI), based on soil-water to soil-ethanol sorptivity ratio, was proposed to characterize subcritical SWR that is the situation where a low degree of repellency impedes infiltration but does not prevent it. The minidisk infiltrometer allows adequate field assessment of RI inherently scaled to account for soil physical properties other…

Dithienopyrrolobenzotriazole-based organic dyes with high molar extinction coefficient for efficient dye-sensitized solar cells

2016

Abstract Four novel organic dyes DT1-DT4 containing a dithienopyrrolobenzotriazole unit were synthesized and applied in dye sensitized solar cells, where dithienopyrrolobenzotriazole moiety was introduced as a π-spacer for the first time. The four dyes exhibited good light harvesting efficiency with high molar extinction coefficients and broad spectral response. The influence of the different electron donor on the photovoltaic performance was evaluated. The effects of the linear and branched alkyl chains in the π-bridge on the photophysical, electrochemical and photovoltaic performance were systemically investigated. The results show that branched alkyl chains are better than linear alkyl c…

Novel dithieno[3,2-b:2′,3′-d]pyrrole-based organic dyes with high molar extinction coefficient for dye-sensitized solar cells

2013

Abstract Three new metal-free organic dyes FD1 – 3 with a planar dithieno[3,2- b :2′,3′- d ]pyrrole unit as linker were synthesized and used for dye-sensitized solar cells with high molar extinction coefficients. In this work, dithieno[3,2- b :2′,3′- d ]pyrrole was employed as π-conjugated bridge to construct A–π– d –π–A organic dyes, where 9,9-dihexyl-9 H -fluorene was used as a donor, and cyanoacrylic acid as an electron acceptor. For a typical device, a solar energy conversion efficiency ( η ) of 6.36% based on FD2 was achieved under simulated AM 1.5 solar irradiation (100 mW cm −2 ) with a short-circuit photocurrent density ( J sc ) of 13.76 mA cm −2 , an open-circuit voltage ( V oc ) o…

Innovative Recycling of Lime Slaker Grits from Paper-Pulp Industry Reused as Aggregate in Ambient Cured Biomass Fly Ash-Based Geopolymers for Sustain…

2019

Lime slaker grits and biomass fly ash are solid wastes produced by the Kraft paper-pulp industry that are commonly disposed of in landfill. However, recent studies and European regulations discourage such disposal practices. This work investigates an alternative and innovative way to recycle and reuse these wastes in the production of green geopolymeric mortars intended for application in the construction industry. Here, biomass fly ash was used as the main source of alumino-silicate in the binder precursor (70 wt.% substitution to metakaolin), and grits (ranging from 1&ndash

Impact of climate, soil properties and grassland cover on soil water repellency

2021

Abstract Numerous soil water repellency (SWR) studies have investigated the possible causes of this temporal phenomenon, yet there remains a lack of knowledge on the order of importance of the main driving forces of SWR in the context of changing environmental conditions under grassland ecosystems. To study the separate and combined effects of soil texture, climate, and grassland cover type on inducing or altering SWR, four sites from different climatic and soil regions were selected: Ciavolo (CI, IT), Csolyospalos (CSP, HU), Pwllpeiran (PW, UK), Sekule (SE, SK). The investigated parameters were the extent (determined by repellency indices RI, RIc and RIm) and persistence (determined by wat…

Donor-π-acceptors containing the 10-(1,3-dithiol-2-ylidene)anthracene unit for dye-sensitized solar cells

2012

Two donor-acceptor molecular tweezers incorporating the 10-(1,3-dithiol-2-ylidene)anthracene unit as donor group and two cyanoacrylic units as accepting/anchoring groups are reported as metal-free sensitizers for dye-sensitized solar cells. By changing the phenyl spacer with 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) units, the absorption spectrum of the sensitizer is red-shifted with a corresponding increase in the molar absorptivity. Density functional calculations confirmed the intramolecular charge-transfer nature of the lowest-energy absorption bands. The new dyes are highly distorted from planarity and are bound to the TiO(2) surface through the two anchoring groups in a unidentate binding for…