Chuanping Liu

Solar Electrical Energy Storage

Solar power is expected to play an important role in the future electricity supply chain. However, many challenges remain to be overcome. One such challenge is the intermittent nature of the energy source. A potential solution to the challenge is the use of energy storage technologies. This chapter provides an overview of the area, covering technical requirements of solar electrical energy storage, options for the storage technologies, utility-scale and distributed-scale storage technologies, and economic aspects of the storage technologies.

Study on Nitridation of Silicon Added With Amorphous Silicon Nitride

The direct nitridation process of silicon added with amorphous silicon nitride powder at atmospheric pressure was investigated and the product was analyzed by XRD and SEM. Based on the relationship between the conversion ratio of silicon and the reaction time at different temperatures, a physical and mathematical model was derived to describe the nitridation process of silicon particles. The results showed that the conversion ratio of silicon increased rapidly at the early stage of reaction. And the reaction would be accelerated by reducing the size of silicon particle and increasing the pressure of N2 . At the range of experimental temperature, the conversion ratio of silicon increases with improving temperature.© 2011 ASME

The Force on Intruder in Vibration Granular Bed

In this paper, a column is put in a vibrated bed as an intruder to study the force of bed by changing intruder’s mass and vibration strength. Our result indicates that the granular material is completely different with conventional fluid, which the force on intruder does not satisfy with Archimedes Law. The force is strongly influenced by its position in bed, as well as its size, shape and vibration strength. The deeper the intruder immerges, the bigger the force is. Because of the different forces, the interesting phenomena granular separation, that the intruder can not only rise to the top, but also sink to the bottom, and even keep in the middle of the bed, are present.Copyright

A Criteria for Size Separation Using Maximum Entropy Production

In order to study analytically the nature of the size separation in granular mixture, we present the maximum entropy production principle based on kinetic temperature of granular mixture. For simplicity we apply this principle to size separation of a sphere binary mixture in vibrated bed, and we find a new thermodynamic mechanism of size separation phenomenon. With the irreversible processes such as elastic collisions and frictions, the kinetic energy is dissipated rapidly in system, which induces the entropy production. By the fact that the entropy production rate always has the absolute maximum at the stable state of granular mixture, we find the crossover from “Brazil Nut Effect” to its reverse by changing particles size and density, and our result is about satisfied with Schnautz’s experiment.Copyright