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Abstract The development of electric vehicles (EVs) exhibits rapid and remarkable progress nowadays, serving as a crucial route to accomplish the target of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. As an integral part of the thermal management system oriented toward electric vehicles, the heat pump air conditioning system for electric vehicles is the result of a comprehensive choice that trades off the cooling and heating performance, environmental performance and economic cost. Particularly, different regions around the world suffer varying cooling and heating challenges due to the complicated climatic characteristics. Thus the most suitable refrigerant and system cycle structure may differ. This paper focuses on evaluating both the refrigerants and cycle structures to screen the most suitable choice. According to the climate conditions of different cities, the annual energy consumption, life cycle climate performance, and economic cost of the basic system (Base), two-stage compression system (TSC,IC), and vapor injection (VI) system with CO2, R134a, and R1234yf refrigerants respectively, are quantitatively analyzed and evaluated. Subsequently, through comparative analysis, a comprehensive selection map for heat pump systems in electric vehicles worldwide is developed and the most suitable heat pump air conditioning system for each cites is determined. The results can provide a selection reference and decision-making for the air conditioning system of electric vehicles from regional considerations. It was found that the CO2 HPACVI was recommended for cold regions to meet both environmental and economic requirements. In warm region, the R1234yf HPACBase system was recommended to be used. For regions transitioning from cold to warm climates, the R1234yf HPACVI system was suggested. In hot region, the R1234yf AC system was recommended.

Background: Since cardiovascular disease (CVD) stands as the primary cause of death in those with diabetes, and given the substantial influence of obesity as a common risk factor for both diabetes and atherosclerotic conditions, this investigation sought to find the relationship between anthropometric indicators and CVD risk within these populations. Methods: Our study examined 36,329 adults, including those with diagnosed diabetes, pre-diabetes, and without diabetes from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data spanning 1999 to 2018. Various anthropometric indicators such as body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, weight-adjusted waist index (WWI), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), weight, and height were assessed. Baseline characteristics were compared among the three groups after weighting. Participants were then grouped based on anthropometric indicators, and logistic regression models were used to analyze the association between these indicators and CVD risk in the total diabetes group (including diabetic and pre-diabetic individuals). Threshold effect analysis was conducted to explore nonlinear relationships, and mediation analyses assessed whether serum parameters influenced these relationships. Results: This cross-sectional study involved 36,329 participants, weighted to a count of approximately 160.9 million, including over 45.9 million pre-diabetic individuals and around 16.6 million diabetic individuals. Baseline analysis showed significant associations between all six anthropometric indicators and CVD risk across patients with different diabetes statuses. Weighted restricted cubic spline (RCS) curve analysis highlighted increased CVD risk among the total diabetes group for each anthropometric indicator compared to the non-diabetic group. Anthropometric indicators were then divided into quartiles, and after adjusting for confounders, Model 3 revealed that the highest BMI group had a heightened risk of CVD compared to the lowest BMI group. Similar trends were observed in the WWI and WHtR subgroups. Threshold effect analysis of anthropometric indicators unveiled nonlinear associations between waist circumference, height, WWI and CVD risk. Mediation analysis suggested that lipid parameters, especially HDL, significantly mediated these relationships. Conclusion: In individuals with diabetes and pre-diabetes, BMI, weight, and WHtR displayed a consistent, linear increase correlation with CVD risk. Conversely, the link between waist circumference, height, and WWI and CVD risk showcased a more complex, nonlinear pattern. Moreover, HDL level emerged as notable mediator in the association between anthropometric indicators and the risk of CVD.

Abstract Thermal-integrated pumped thermal electricity storage (TI-PTES) could realize efficient energy storage for fluctuating and intermittent renewable energy. However, the boundary conditions of TI-PTES may frequently change with the variation of times and seasons, which causes a tremendous deterioration to the operating performance. To realize efficient and flexible energy storage in operating conditions, a novel composition-adjustable TI-PTES is proposed, and the operating performance is investigated and compared with composition-fixed TI-PTES. Simulation results show that, compared to composition-fixed TI-PTES, the energy storage efficiency of TI-PTES could be enhanced by the absolute value of 4.4–18.3% by introducing composition adjustment method under various boundary conditions. Besides, tuning sub-system composition could simultaneously adjust the capacities of power input, heat storage and power output, realizing a more flexible operating range for TI-PTES. A case study for an isolated energy community shows that composition-adjustable TI-PTES could realize 100% conversion of off-peak electric energy and reduce daily investment by 35.6% compared with composition-fixed TI-PTES.

Abstract The supercritical CO2 (sCO2) power cycle could improve efficiencies for a wide range of thermal power plants. The sCO2 turbine generator plays an important role in the sCO2 power cycle by directly converting thermal energy into mechanical work and electric power. The operation of the generator encounters challenges, including high temperature, high pressure, high rotational speed, and other engineering problems, such as leakage. Experimental studies of sCO2 turbines are insufficient because of the significant difficulties in turbine manufacturing and system construction. Unlike most experimental investigations that primarily focus on 100 kW‐ or MW‐scale power generation systems, we consider, for the first time, a small‐scale power generator using sCO2. A partial admission axial turbine was designed and manufactured with a rated rotational speed of 40,000 rpm, and a CO2 transcritical power cycle test loop was constructed to validate the performance of our manufactured generator. A resistant gas was proposed in the constructed turbine expander to solve the leakage issue. Both dynamic and steady performances were investigated. The results indicated that a peak electric power of 11.55 kW was achieved at 29,369 rpm. The maximum total efficiency of the turbo‐generator was 58.98%, which was affected by both the turbine rotational speed and pressure ratio, according to the proposed performance map.

Abstract Background This study aimed to understand the incidence and clinical significance of acalculous cholecystitis in patients with acute hepatitis E (HE). Patients and methods A single center enrolled 114 patients with acute HE. All patients underwent imaging of the gallbladder, and patients with gallstones and cholecystectomy were excluded. Results Acalculous cholecystitis was found in 66 patients (57.89%) with acute HE. The incidence in males was 63.95%, which was significantly higher than in females (39.29%) (P = 0.022). The mean length of hospital stay and the incidence of spontaneous peritonitis in patients with cholecystitis (20.12 ± 9.43 days and 9.09%, respectively) were significantly higher than those in patients without cholecystitis (12.98 ± 7.26 days and 0%, respectively) (P

This paper considers trajectory a modeling problem for a multi-agent system by using the Gaussian processes. The Gaussian process, as the typical data-driven method, is well suited to characterize the model uncertainties and perturbations in a complex environment. To address model uncertainties and noises disturbances, a distributed Gaussian process is proposed to characterize the system model by using local information exchange among neighboring agents, in which a number of agents cooperate without central coordination to estimate a common Gaussian process function based on local measurements and datum received from neighbors. In addition, both the continuous-time system model and the discrete-time system model are considered, in which we design a control Lyapunov function to learn the continuous-time model, and a distributed model predictive control-based approach is used to learn the discrete-time model. Furthermore, we apply a Kullback–Leibler average consensus fusion algorithm to fuse the local prediction results (mean and variance) of the desired Gaussian process. The performance of the proposed distributed Gaussian process is analyzed and is verified by two trajectory tracking examples.

Engines waste a major part of their fuel energy in the jacket water and exhaust gas. Transcritical Rankine cycles are a promising technology to recover the waste heat efficiently. The working fluid selection seems to be a key factor that determines the system performances. However, most of the studies are mainly devoted to compare their thermodynamic performances of various fluids and to decide what kind of properties the best-working fluid shows. In this work, an active working fluid selection instruction is proposed to deal with the temperature match between the bottoming system and cold source. The characters of ideal working fluids are summarized firstly when the temperature match method of a pinch analysis is combined. Various selected fluids are compared in thermodynamic and economic performances to verify the fluid selection instruction. It is found that when the ratio of the average specific heat in the heat transfer zone of exhaust gas to the average specific heat in the heat transfer zone of jacket water becomes higher, the irreversibility loss between the working fluid and cold source is improved. The ethanol shows the highest net power output of 25.52 kW and lowest electricity production cost of $1.97/(kWh) among candidate working fluids.

This research conducted a study specially to systematically analyze combined recovery of exhaust gas and engine coolant and related influence mechanism, including a detailed theoretical study and an assistant experimental study. In this research, CO2-based transcritical Rankine cycle (CTRC) was used for fully combining the wastes heats. The main objective of theoretical research was to search an ‘ideal point’ of the recovery system and related influence mechanism, which was defined as operating condition of complete recovery of two waste heats. The theoretical methodology of this study could also provide a design reference for effective combined recovery of two or multiple waste heats in other fields. Based on a kW-class preheated CTRC prototype that was designed by the ‘ideal point’ method, an experimental study was conducted to verify combined utilization degree of two engine waste heats by the CTRC system. The operating results showed that the prototype can gain 44.4–49.8 kW and 22.7–26.7 kW heat absorption from exhaust gas and engine coolant, respectively. To direct practical operation, an experimental optimization work on the operating process was conducted for complete recovery of engine coolant exactly, which avoided deficient or excessive recovery.

This research conducted a study specially to systematically analyze combined recovery of exhaust gas and engine coolant and related influence mechanism, including a detailed theoretical study and an assistant experimental study. In this research, CO2-based transcritical Rankine cycle (CTRC) was used for fully combining the wastes heats. The main objective of theoretical research was to search an 'ideal point' of the recovery system and related influence mechanism, which was defined as operating condition of complete recovery of two waste heats. The theoretical methodology of this study could also provide a design reference for effective combined recovery of two or multiple waste heats in other fields. Based on a kW-class preheated CTRC prototype that was designed by the 'ideal point' method, an experimental study was conducted to verify combined utilization degree of two engine waste heats by the CTRC system. The operating results showed that the prototype can gain 44.4-49.8 kW and 22.7-26.7 kW heat absorption from exhaust gas and engine coolant, respectively. To direct practical operation, an experimental optimization work on the operating process was conducted for complete recovery of engine coolant exactly, which avoided deficient or excessive recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]