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This study reports a newly designed induction heating system for efficient, fast, and safe flow-through heating. The system has a very simple architecture, which is composed of a transmitting coil, an isolating plastic pipe, and an embedded metal shell. Wireless energy transfer from the external coil to the internal metal shell through the pipe is essential for decreasing losses. Also, a large contact surface between a fluid and the immersed shell enables rapid heat transfer. The proposed heating system was systematically investigated for different shell geometries and the results were compared with a commercially available conductive flow-through heating device. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, a prototype of the designed induction heating system was manufactured and the heating measurements were conducted with water. Power transfer efficiency of the prototyped induction heating system was measured to be 97%. The comparative study indicates that such high-efficiency induction flow-through heating system offers a great potential for replacing the conventional conductive heating device used in household applications in which the rapid and compact heating is desired.

This paper aims to present a novel rapid hot embossing approach and to study filling capacity of optical glass in the hot embossing process. Firstly, a novel rapid hot embossing device is developed, which consists of a rapid heating module and a precision loading module. Particularly, the rapid heating module allows a maximum temperature of 800 °C and a heating rate of 300 °C/min, with decent temperature control accuracy and uniform temperature distribution. In hot embossing process, by incompletely filling the microhole of silicon carbide mold, a microlens would be formed on the surface of glass disc, and the filling capacity of glass is quantified by the maximum height of the microlens. The tailor-made hot embossing device was exploited to conduct a series of experiments for evaluating effects of process parameters on the filling capacity of N-BK7 glass. Experimental results indicate that the filling capacity of glass could be enhanced by increasing the embossing force, the embossing temperature, the soaking time but decreasing the annealing rate. Furthermore, compared to soaking time and annealing rate, embossing force and embossing temperature have more significant influence on the filling capacity of N-BK7 glass. Therefore, the novel rapid hot embossing is a practical and promising technology for fabricating microstructures on glass materials with high softening points.

The synthesis of alloyed nanoparticles has been studied extensively; however, the formation mechanisms involved remain unclear. Here, we reveal the detailed formation mechanism of alloyed nanoparticles in a Pd-Ru system, using a semibatch polyol method in which the simultaneous rapid reduction of both precursors was assumed to be the critical mechanism. We employed a microflow reactor to realize rapid heating and cooling. A significant difference in the reaction rate between the two precursors was observed. Pd was reduced within seconds, but the reduction of Ru was 2 orders of magnitude slower than that of Pd and was not as rapid as previously assumed. Further investigation of the semibatch method was performed to trace changes in the particle sizes and composition. Through quantitative and multilateral evidence, we concluded that the formation of low-crystallinity seeds, followed by solid-state diffusion, is the governing mechanism for the formation of alloyed Pd-Ru nanoparticles.

Current technical challenge for state-of-the-art coal power plants covers not only higher thermal efficiency, also lower CO 2 emission or easier CO 2 separation and capturing. One of expected technologies to achieve it, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) has been developed. In this study, characteristics of combustion and gasification reactions for the Datong coal samples have been investigated using thermo gravimetric-differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA) under different O 2 concentrations (≤ 5%) in a CO 2 -rich atmosphere by giving different heating and gas flow rates in the temperature range of 20 to 1400 °C. The samples of residual ash were subsequently analyzed by an Energy Dispersive Spectrum (EDS) analyzer to investigate Carbon molecular percentage, C%. The TG-DTA results, which were carried out under the coal temperature lower than 1000 °C, show that O 2 concentration (%) has a larger effect on C% in the residual ash. On the other hand, for the case of coal temperature over 1000 °C, C% has no strong dependency on O 2 % after gasification of the coal sample. Furthermore, a CO 2 gas laser beam was used to carry out experiments of rapid heating of coal samples over the targeted temperature in a second under different O 2 concentrations (≤10%) by circulating Air, N 2 , CO 2 or N 2 -CO 2 mixing gases using with the circulating flow system. In the low O 2 concentration range, the coal weight reduction decreases with increasing O 2 concentration with a linear line and the weight reduction of rapid heating using with the laser beam is comparatively lower than that of TG-DTA. The present results might have great significance for the future of coal gasification power generation and coal seam underground coal gasification projects, etc.

Lath martensite structures, tempered at various temperatures (723-923 K) were studied by changing heating rates (2 K/s to 1 000 K/s) to the tempering temperature in an alloy steel for machine structural use (SCM435; Fe-0.35C-0.24Si-0.77Mn-1.05Cr-0.17Mo). Hardness of the rapidly heated (at 100 K/s or 1 000 K/s) specimen is larger than that of the slowly heated (at 2 K/s) specimen when tempering temperature and time are the same. Cementite precipitates are formed on high-angle boundaries (prior austenite grain boundary, block and packet boundaries) as well as within laths and at low-angle boundaries (lath boundaries) by tempering. TEM observation has revealed that finer cementite is dispersed more uniformly in the rapidly heated specimen than in the slowly heated specimen. It is considered that the temperature where cementite precipitation starts is raised by increasing the heating rate to tempering temperature, resulting in a higher nucleation rate and a finer dispersion of cementite.