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Abstract: Microreactors have important advantages due to the increased heat and mass transfer resulting from the small dimensions of the system. This results in enhanced performance and efficiency. Microreformers with wall-coated or suspended catalytic layer configurations have been studied due to their lower transport resistances compared to packed-bed microreformers. In the present work, a theoretical study of the reacting flow in a wall-coated microreformer is carried out. The theoretical results for the conversions and carbon monoxide concentration of wall-coated reformers are compared with the reported experimental data. The effects of important parameters for wall-coated reformers such as the catalyst layer thickness, wall temperature, and the flow velocity of the reactants are studied. Recommendations for the design of micro wall-coated reformers are provided. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this study a numerical simulation was carried out to analyze the transport phenomena in a vertical type metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) reactor for Gallium Nitride (GaN) growth. The simulated results were compared and validated by experiment. The effects of showerhead design and chamber height are investigated and discussed. It was found that, by properly adjusting the height of the chamber, both the growth rate and film uniformity could be significantly improved. This is attributed to the suppression of the thermal and mass transfer boundary layers by the injection flow of reacting gas mixtures, as well as the confined vertical vortices caused by the geometry of the reduced space. However, inappropriate design of the distance between the showerhead and the susceptor can result in uneven distribution of the organic source in the vicinity of the substrate surface resulting in an uneven growth rate of the GaN film. Consequently, there exists an optimal chamber height that will give the best growth rate and uniformity to the GaN film as discussed in this study. This study provides comprehensive insight into the transport phenomena of GaN growth that includes coupled heat and mass transfer as well as chemical reactions. The results provide important information in a succinct format and enable decisions to be made about the showerhead and the geometrical design and size of a vertical MOCVD reactor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study experiments were conducted to study the porous thin plate drying process. An analysis was also carried out to determine the moisture transfer coefficients that vary with the moisture content of the plate during drying. The study is useful for analyzing the transient drying process of porous thin plates. Furthermore, energy and exergetic analyses based on the measured results were carried out to determine the dryer performance. It is found that, although the drying rate increases, the energy utilization ratio of the drying process decreases with either an increase in the rate of air flow or an increase in the size of the drying air inlet. The results indicate that a significant amount of the energy provided to the system was lost and not utilized for drying, especially for high drying rate dryers. An exergetic analysis showed that by adjusting the configuration of the air inlet and flow rate, the exergetic efficiency of the dryer can be significantly increased (from 0.5% to 10%). An overall transport phenomena analysis and performance evaluation including the transient moisture transfer coefficients, drying rate, energy utilization ratio, and exergetic efficiency in the current study provide comprehensive and important insights to the thermal physics of porous thin plate drying processes and the design of efficient dryer systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selective laser melting (SLM) process is an additive manufacturing technique that can fabricate three-dimensional workpiece by laser scanning and sintering of designated material in powder form on a preset scanning route along a bed of powders. This process involves a moving laser heating source which causes local transient mass and heat transfer with phase change, i.e., melting and solidifying, in a pool of melted powders. To fully investigate such a complicated transport process with reasonable computation cost, a novel quasi-transient numerical model (hopping model) was proposed and validated experimentally in this study. This approach includes a volumetric heat source defined as an elliptical Gaussian laser spot which hops along the scan path. Inconel 718 (IN718) superalloy powder is selected as the material for demonstration. Thermal analysis was carried out using a number of laser power and scan speeds in the range from 80 W to 120 W and from 80 mm/s to 140 mm/s, respectively. The comparison of molding appearance of the work pieces from the developed hopping model, full transient model, effective-transient model, and experiments illustrates the accuracy and the efficiency of the proposed hopping model. Molding appearance obtained from the quasi-transient model was consistent with experimental results with a relative error of less than 1.71% on the width of the IN718 stripes fabricated by SLM. For the cases analyzed in the current study, the quasi-transient model showed a 99% and a 60% reduction in both the computation time and the amount of computer memory needed compared to the full transient model and the effective-transient model, respectively. This novel quasi-transient simulation technique can be used to rapidly and effectively optimize process parameters for intelligent additive manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]