Archive for Penn State
You are browsing the archives of Penn State.
Video of the week: Paolo Colombo on engineering porosity in ceramics
Porosity is sometimes thought of as a flaw in ceramic materials, but, as Paolo Colombo explains, porosity can also be used to add new functionality to a material. Colombo, who is a professor of materials science and technology at the University of Padova, Padova, Italy, and an adjunct professor at Pennsylvania State University, explains how all of the properties of ceramic materials can be manipulated to create applications such as gas separation membranes, metal filters and diesel particulate filters to clean the exhaust of diesel engines.
Share
DOE’s University Turbine Systems Research Program announces project selection
The DOE announced the selection of three projects under the Office of Fossil Energy’s University Turbine Systems Research Program. University researchers will investigate the chemistry and physics of advanced turbines, with the goal of promoting clean and efficient operation when fueled with coal-derived synthesis gas (syngas) and hydrogen fuels.
Development of high-efficiency, ultra-clean turbine systems requires significant advances in high temperature materials science, understanding of combustion phenomena and innovative cooling techniques to maintain integrity of turbine components. Such necessary technology advancements are basic to the needs of the entire gas turbine industry.
The UTSR program aim is to accelerate basic turbine technology development to provide nonproprietary research to support industry, and to provide training in gas turbine technologies for students. The program is managed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory.
Selected projects will direct efforts toward combustion, aerodynamics, heat transfer and materials research for syngas- and hydrogen-fueled turbines. There is one project of particular interest to ceramists:
• University of Texas-El Paso — Thermal barrier coatings protect engine components and allow further increase in engine temperatures for higher efficiency, making them critical technologies for advanced coal-based power generation systems. The researchers propose to develop nanostructured hafnium oxide-based coatings for TBCs of advanced hydrogen turbines. They intend to create a fundamental understanding and knowledge database of next generation TBC materials with high-temperature tolerance, durability and reliability. The proposed nanostructured TBCs will have superior heat resistance, thermal insulation, oxygen barrier qualities, hot-corrosion and erosion resistance and resistance to adverse coating/substrate interactions. (DOE share: $381,233; UTEP share: $95,979; duration: 36 months)
The other projects include:
• Penn State — For this study, the researchers will combine experiments with chemical kinetic modeling to investigate the effects of diluents (water and CO2) and minor contaminant species (methane, ethane and oxides of nitrogen) on the ignition and combustion of high hydrogen content (HHC) fuels. The proposed work will broaden the experimental database for ignition delay, burning rate and oxidation kinetics at high pressures. The goal is to further advance the development of practical guidelines for realistic composition limits and operating characteristics for HHC fuels. (DOE share, $719,999; PSU share, $180,253; duration: 36 months)
• Texas A&M — The objective of the proposed research is to provide the gas turbine engine designer with quantitative information pertaining to the physics of secondary flow (an undesirable condition in turbines), its influence on the efficiency and performance of gas turbines and the impact of film cooling ejection arrangements on reducing or suppressing the detrimental effect of secondary flows. The researchers will pay particular attention to the design of endwall contour geometries with the objective of quantifying the effect of a contoured rotating endwall on secondary flow formation with and without fillets compared with the noncontoured rotating endwall. (DOE share: $399,891; Texas A&M share: $100,078; duration: 36 months)
Share
Top “Pipeline Power” schools
If you do a Google search of “top ten,” you get more than 90 million hits – from David Letterman, to New Year’s resolutions, to urinals (which is another ceramics story).
The list I want to share with you here deals with the patent strength and research prowess of U.S. universities. I suppose there are many ways to select the top ten research schools. What I found was a ranking of “Pipeline Power” created by IEEE Spectrum. The score is calculated using growth in patent activity, frequency of citations, number and variety of technologies drawing on the patents, and originality based on the variety of existing technologies the patents build on.
The nominees are MIT, Cal Tech, University of California, Harvard, Rice, Texas, Central Florida, Georgia Tech, Stanford and Wisconsin. The envelope please. And the winner is . . . MIT!
Also in the rankings business is Small Times. This website focused on microtechnology and nanotechnology in its “2009 University Report and Rankings.” Questionnaires and peer reviews were used in this study. Winners were identified for several categories:
- SUNY-Albany (Commercialization)
- Penn State (Research)
- MIT (Peer Nano Research)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley (Peer Micro Research)
- MIT (Peer Nano Commercialization)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley (Peer Micro Commercialization)
Penn State received high research marks because of its facilities, staff, funding, students, degrees conferred and papers presented. SUNY-Albany scored high in spinoffs, patents awarded and IP licenses based on its micro/nano patents, startups and number of companies using faculty.
Share
New ceramic material speeds microwaving, uses less energy
Dishes and cookware made from a newly developed ceramic material may soon enable faster and more energy-efficient microwaving, according to Sridhar Komarneni, a professor of clay mineralogy at Penn State University. Komarneni reports on the new material’s development in the July 11, 2008, online edition of Chemistry of Materials. “Currently, food heated in a microwave loses heat to the cold dish because the dishes are transparent to microwaves,” he says. “The plates are still cool when the cooking is completed.” He explains that microwave ovens have an alternating electric component that causes molecules with a positive charge at one end and a negative charge at the other – such as water molecules – to move back and forth, aligning themselves with the electrical field. The moving molecules bump into nearby molecules, causing them to move, too. This motion creates heat and, so, cooks food. Unlike food, however, microwave cookware does not become hot because its molecules are ”transparent” – or do not interact – with microwaves. This means food loses some of its heat to the cookware in which it is cooked, the researcher says.
Now, however, Komarneni has discovered a way to prevent this heat loss. Working in conjunction with Hiroaki Katsuki and Nobuaki Kamochi of Saga Ceramic Research Laboratory in Saga, Japan, he has developed a new ceramic material that can be directly heated by microwaves. Komarneni says the team took powdered petalite – a mineral containing lithium, aluminum and silicon – and mixed it with a small quantity of magnetic iron oxide. They then dried the powder and fired it in a kiln for five hours, before sintering it at 1250°C to create an iron oxide-petalite foam, suitable for use as a microwave ceramic. He explains that the iron oxide component interacts with the microwaves’ electric field and rapidly heats, while the insulating petalite component helps to retain the heat after the oven is turned off. He says the team tested the new ceramic material against standard porcelain ovenware in a 600-watt microwave oven. After 70 seconds of power, the porcelain had reached 50-60°C, but the new material’s temperature had increased to more than 200°C. The new material’s temperature continued to increase for 30 seconds after the oven was turned off, peaking at 294°C, he says. He also reports that, when he coated a plate made of the petalite-magnetite material with cooking oil and heated it for two minutes, 98 percent of the oil disappeared through decomposition. This makes Komarneni believe that the new material might also be used “in a closed system to decompose organic contaminants in soil or dirt.” The researcher says this would likely create less waste and utilize less energy than than that produced through existing remediation methods.
Share
