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Fundamental insight into the physics of buoyant gas dispersion from realistic flow geometries is necessary to accurately predict flow structures associated with hydrogen outflow from accidental leaks and the associated flammability envelope. Using helium as an experimental proxy, turbulent buoyant jets issuing from high-aspect-ratio slots on the side wall of a circular tube were studied experimentally applying simultaneous particle image velocimetry (PIV) and planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) techniques. Two slots with an aspect ratio of 10 were considered in this study. The effects of buoyancy, asymmetry, jet densities and Reynolds numbers on the resulting flow structure were studied in both vertical and horizontal orientations. Significant discrepancies were found between the evolution of current realistic jets issuing from curved surfaces and those conventional high-aspect-ratio jets originating from flat surfaces. These realistic pipeline leak-representative jets were found to deflect along the jet streamwise axis. It was found that increases in aspect ratio caused a reduction in the angle of deflection, jet centreline decay rates and the width growth on both velocity and scalar fields compared to their non-planar round jet counterparts, most notably in the far field., Comment: 36 pages, 13 figures, submitted for publication in International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (IJHE). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1811.05580

Buoyancy effects and nozzle geometry can have a significant impact on turbulent jet dispersion. This work was motivated by applications involving hydrogen. Using helium as an experimental proxy, buoyant horizontal jets issuing from a round orifice on the side wall of a circular tube were analysed experimentally using particle image velocimetry (PIV) and planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) techniques simultaneously to provide instantaneous and time-averaged flow fields of velocity and concentration. Effects of buoyancy and asymmetry on the resulting flow structure were studied over a range of Reynolds numbers and gas densities. Significant differences were found between the centreline trajectory, spreading rate, and velocity decay of conventional horizontal round axisymmetric jets issuing through flat plates and the pipeline leak-representative jets considered in the present study. The realistic pipeline jets were always asymmetric and found to deflect about the jet axis in the near field. In the far field, it was found that the realistic pipeline leak geometry causes buoyancy effects to dominate much sooner than expected compared to horizontal round jets issuing through flat plates., Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, submitted for publication in Journal of Fluid Mechanics

This paper proposes a system-wide optimal resource dispatch strategy that enables a shift from a primarily energy cost-based approach, to a strategy using simultaneous price signals for energy, power and ramping behavior. A formal method to compute the optimal sub-hourly power trajectory is derived for a system when the price of energy and ramping are both significant. Optimal control functions are obtained in both time and frequency domains, and a discrete-time solution suitable for periodic feedback control systems is presented. The method is applied to North America Western Interconnection for the planning year 2024, and it is shown that an optimal dispatch strategy that simultaneously considers both the cost of energy and the cost of ramping leads to significant cost savings in systems with high levels of renewable generation: the savings exceed 25% of the total system operating cost for a 50% renewables scenario., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures

Simulation of smart grid technologies requires a fundamentally new approach to integrated modeling of power systems, energy markets, building technologies and the plethora of other resources and assets that are becoming part of modern electricity production, delivery and consumption systems. As a result, the US Department of Energy's Office of Electricity commissioned the development of a new type of power system simulation tool called GridLAB-D(TM) that uses an agent-based approach to simulating smart grids. This paper presents the numerical methods and approach to time-series simulation used by GridLAB-D and reviews applications in power system studies, market design, building control system design, and integration of wind power in a smart grid.

This paper introduces the design of a demand response network control strategy aimed at thermostatically controlled electric heating and cooling systems in buildings. The method relies on the use of programmable communicating thermostats, which are able to provide important component-level state variables to a system-level central controller. This information can be used to build power density distribution functions for the aggregate heat pump load. These functions lay out the fundamental basis for the methodology by allowing for consideration of customer-level constraints within the system-level decision making process. The proposed strategy is then implemented in a computational model to simulate a distribution of buildings, where the aggregate heat pump load is managed to provide the regulation services needed to successfully integrate wind power generators. Increased exploitation of wind resources will place similarly themed ancillary services in high-demand, traditionally provided by dispatchable energy resources that are ill-suited for the frequent power gradients that accompany wind power generation., Comment: 2011 International Conference on Smart Grid and Clean Energy Technologies

Characterization of transport properties of porous media is increasingly relying on computational methods that require reconstruction of the media structure. We present a simple method of constructing the 3D surface of fibrous porous media - the gas diffusion layer (GDL) used as the porous electrode in PEM fuel cells. The method is based on extending the depth-of-field on the whole attainable thickness of the GDL. A series of images of the GDL sample is recorded by the sequential movement of the sample with respect to the microscope focus. Different layers of the surface of the sample appear in focus in the different images in the series. The indexed series of the in-focus portions of the sample surface is combined into one sharp 2D image and interpolated into the 3D surface representing the surface of an original GDL sample. The method uses a conventional upright stage microscope that is operated manually, the inexpensive Helicon Focus software, and the open source MeshLab software. The accuracy of the reconstruction of the image features was found to be ~ 1% for probing depth of ~ 100 um with the corresponding image acquisition time being ~ 10 min. Applying this method we found that: i) this technique is able to reproduce 3D-projection of the GDL structure for a depth of ~ 50-100 um, ii) the depth of the deepest channel in the GDL can be as much as ~ 100-160 um, for GDL samples with a thickness ~ 200 um.

Experimental two-phase invasion percolation flow patterns were observed in hydrophobic micro-porous networks designed to model fuel cell specific porous media. In order to mimic the operational conditions encountered in the porous electrodes of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), micro-porous networks were fabricated with corresponding microchannel size distributions. The inlet channels were invaded homogeneously with flow rates corresponding to fuel cell current densities of 1.0 to 0.1 A/cm2 (Ca 10e-7-10e-8). A variety of fractal breakthrough patterns were observed and analyzed to quantify flooding density and geometrical diversity in terms of the total saturation, St, local saturations, s, and fractal dimension, D. It was found that St increases monotonically during the invasion process until the breakthrough point is reached, and s profiles indicate the dynamic distribution of the liquid phase during the process. Fractal analysis confirmed that the experiments fall within the flow regime of invasion percolation with trapping. In this work, we propose to correlate the fractal dimension, D, to the total saturation and use this map as a parameter for modeling liquid water transport in the GDL., Comment: Submitted to the Journal of the Electrochemical Society