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Sludge land application is now one of the most promising approaches for disposing urban sewage sludge at home and abroad Particularly in the northwest loess areas, sludge that abounds in organic matters and nutrients including N and P is applicable to improve the barren loess with loose structure Meanwhile, sludge with heavy metals is another research subject of concern. This study selected corn and wheat (two main crops in northwest of China) as test crops, and the loess added with different dry weights of composted sludge as experimental soil. The crops were planted in pots to compare the influences of different dry weights of composted sludge on the seedling growth of the crops (corn and wheat) and the absorption of heavy metals (Ni and Cd). The result indicated that composted sludge with dry weights ranging from 1% to 10% can promote the seedling growth of corn and wheat and 1% was optimal for the growth with increases about 14% and 3% for corn and wheat respectively. While more than 10% of dry weight can inhibit the growth and the inhibition effect kept pace with the dry weight of composted sludge At the end of the experiment, majority of the Ni and Cd were still accumulated in the matrix and the absorption coefficients of Ni and Cd in crops were about 0.02-0.17 and 0.02-0.12 respectively. Comparing with the control experiment, sludge land application can improve the performance of the loess and provide Ni and Cd for corn and wheat When 5% and 10% of composted sludge was added, the content of Ni and Cd contained in the experimental soil met the secondary standard (pH>7.5, Ni≤60 mg/kg and Cd ≤0.6 mg/kg) set by the Environmental Quality Standard for Soils (GB15618-1995). Therefore, to apply sludge in land use, the annual addition amount of sludge needs to satisfy both the Disposal of Sludge from Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant-Control Standards for Agricultural Use and the Environmental Quality Standard for Soils .

With various disadvantages of pollution control technologies for toxic metal-contaminated soil, we mixed contaminated soil with sludge for in situ composting to stabilize toxic metals, so plants are enriched to take up the toxic metals. When simulating the above, we added toxic metal solution into sewage sludge, and then composed it with steel slag to determine inhibition of the availability of toxic metals. When toxic metals were added into sludge, the potential ecological index and geoaccumulation index of Cd became high while Zn was low. Steel slag had an inhibited availability of Cd, and when the adjunction of steel slag was 7%, the availability of Cd was lowest. Steel slag promoted the availability of Zn, and when the adjunction of steel slag was 27%, the availability of Zn was highest. Results showed that during composting, with increasing steel slag, Cd stabilizing time was reached sooner but Zn stabilizing time was slower, and the availability of all metals became lower. In the end, composting inhibited the potential ecological index of Cd, but it promoted the potential ecological index of Zn. Steel slag promoted the stability of Cd and Zn as Fe/Mn oxide-bound and residual species. Therefore, composting sludge and steel slag could be used as an effective inhibitor of Zn and Cd pollution.

This paper summarizes an experimental study of the multi-gap switch for fast linear transformer driver. The self-breakdown voltage testing has been conducted and the relation between self-breakdown voltage and gas pressure was obtained when the switch was filled with dry-air. As the pressure changed from 0 to 0.15 MPa, the self-breakdown voltage increased from 80 kV to 200 kV. An experimental study has been carried out on the triggering feature and discharge distribution property，and the uniform discharge distribution has been acquired after 5 000 shots, which can prolong the life of the switch. The switch filled with 0.15 MPa dry-air had 34.4 ns delay with 1.6 ns jitter operating at 78.5% of self-breakdown voltage and trigger voltage of 70kV. The switch is very simple in structure and as

A trigger device and a triggered pseudospark switch (TPSS) were designed based on surface flashover technology, in order to meet the requirements from present pulse power technology and pulse current test technology such as a long lifetime, reliability in a wide voltage range, a short delay time, as well as small delay jitters. The trigger devices were made from different dielectric materials, with their permittivities from tens to thousands. The trigger characteristics of TPSS were investigated. The results indicate that the high-dielectric trigger device shows better performance and higher emitted charge of the electron emission within all adjusted parameters including the gas pressure and applied voltage. For the dielectric material with relative permittivity er of 3460, when the gas pressure is 7 Pa, the hold-off voltage of TPSS is 28 kV, the minimum trigger switch voltage drops to 128 V, the minimum discharging delay time and delay jitter are less than 35ns and 6ns, respectively, and the reliable operation can be reached within a very large range of charging voltage, between 0.46% and 99% of its self-breakdown voltage.

Based on the principle of thermal conduction, three metal alloys (stainless steel, copper-tungsten and graphite) were chosen as the material of the high impulse current discharging switch. Experimental results indicate that the mass loss and surface erosion morphology of the electrode are related with the electrode material (conductivity σ, melting point Tm, density ρ and thermal capacity c) and the impulse transferred charge (or energy) per impulse for the same total impulse transferred charge. The experimental results indicate that the mass loss of stainless steel, copper-tungsten and graphite are 380.10 μg/C, 118.10 μg/C and 81.90 μg/C respectively under the condition of a total impulse transferred charge of 525 C and a transferred charge per impulse of 10.5 C. Under the same impulse transferred charge, the mass loss of copper-tungsten (118.10 μg/C) with the transferred charge per impulse at 10.5 C is far larger than the mass loss (38.61 μg/C) at a 1.48 C transferred charge per impulse. The electrode erosion mechanism under high energy impulse arcs is analyzed briefly and it is suggested that by selecting high conductive metal or metal alloy as the electrode material of a high energy impulse spark gap switch and setting high erosion resistance material at the top of the electrode, the mass loss of the electrode can be reduced and the life of the switch prolonged.

Numerical computation based on a zero-dimensional thin-plasma-shell model has been carried out to study the scaling of the maximum kinetic energy per unit length, the current amplitude and the compression ratio for the imploding Z-pinch liner driven by peaked current pulses. A dimensionless scaling constant of 0.9 with an error less than 10{%} is extracted at the optimal choice of the current and liner parameters. Deviation of the chosen experimental parameter from the optimal exerts a minor influence on the kinetic energy for wider-shaped and slower-decaying pulses, but the influence becomes significant for narrower-shaped and faster-decaying pulses. The computation is in reasonable agreement with experimental data from the Z, Saturn, Blackjack 5 and Qiangguang-I liners.

The density, drift velocity and reproducibility of the plasma produced by a cable plasma gun array have been measured with a charge collector array. The plasma is used to prefill a coaxial plasma-opening switch with a conducting time approaching 0.4 μs. The reproducibility of the plasma source in subsequent shots is better than 5%. Near the gun nozzle and the opposite electrode, the plasma density amounts to 1015cm-3, which is 2 times to 3 times that in the gap between the two coaxial electrodes. A plasma drift velocity of about 2.4 cm/μs is observed from the time of flight of the charged particles. Both plasma density and drift velocity increase almost linearly with the rise in charge voltage.

Imploding plasma liners in the Z-pinch scheme have been demonstrated to be capable of producing high power radiation in the soft x-ray waveband owing to the conversion of the kinetic energy of imploding liner into thermal energy which in turn is converted into x-ray energy. To obtain largest x-ray power for a certain pulsed-power driving-source, the liner should gain a kinetic energy as great as possible, which imposes an optimal scaling upon the operating parameters of liner in terms of getting largest kinetic energy. This work exposes, by means of numerical calculations based on zero-dimensional quasi-plasma-shell model, the large variation of the scaling factor, which connects the parameters of the initial linear and the driving current, with different driving current waveforms. Also solved in the work is the optimal scaling factor in the sense of producing maximum kinetic energy. Calculations show that maximum kinetic energy is obtained at the current maximum or a little time later. These results are in reasonable agreement with several experiments and will be of help to the design and experimental adjustment of Z-pinch liners.

A series of experiments has been carried out on Qiang-guang I generator to study the dynamics of krypton gas-puff Z-pinches. The generator was operated at a peak current of 1.5 MA with a rise-time of 80 ns. The specific linear mass of gas liner was about 20 μg/cm in these experiments. In the diagnostic system, a four-frame x-ray framing camera and a pinhole camera were employed. A novel feature of this camera is that it can give time-resolved x-ray images with four frames and energy-resolved x-ray images with two different filters and an array of 8 pinholes integrated into one compact assemble. As a typical experimental result, an averaged radial imploding velocity of 157 km/s over 14 ns near the late phase of implosion was measured from the time-resolved x-ray images. From the time-integrated x-ray image an averaged radial convergence of 0.072 times of the original size was measured. An averaged radial expansion velocity was 130 km/s and the maximum radial convergence of 0.04 times of the original size were measured from the time-resolved x-ray images. The dominant axial wavelengths of instabilities in the plasma were between 1 and 2 mm. The change in average photons energy was observed from energy spectrum- and time-resolved x-ray images.

The linear multi-core pulse transformer is an important primary driving source used in pulsed power apparatus for the production of dense plasma owing to its compact, relatively low-cost and easy-to-handle characteristics. The evaluation of the magnetic saturation of the transformer cores is essential to the transformer design, because the energy transfer efficiency of the transformer will degrade significantly after magnetic saturation. This work proposes analytical formulas of the criterion of magnetic saturation for the cores when the transformer drives practical loads. Furthermore, an electric circuit model based on a dependent source treatment for simulating the electric behavior of the cores related to their nonlinear magnetization is developed using the initial magnetization curve of the cores. The numerical simulation with the model is used to evaluate the validity of the criterion. Both the criterion and the model are found to be in agreement with the experimental data.

Kr gas-puff Z-pinch experiment performed recently on Qiang-guang I pulsed power generator is reported. The generator has a 1.5 MA current with a pulse width of 100 ns. The total x-ray energy as well as its spectrum has been obtained, and the average power of x-ray radiation in 50-700 eV measured by XRDs is 2 TW. The generator configuration, gas-puff load assembly and diagnostic system for the experiments are described.

Sewage sludge and industrial steel slag (SS) pose threats of serious pollution to the environment. The experiments aimed to improve the stabilizing effects of heavy metal Ni and Cd morphology in composting sludge. The total Ni and Cd species distribution and chemical forms in the compost sewage sludge were investigated with the use of compost and co-compost with SS, including degradation. The carbon/nitrogen ratio of piles was regulated with the use of sawdust prior to batch aerobic composting experiments. Results indicated that the co-composting with SS and organic matter humification can contribute to the formation of Fe and Mn hydroxides and that the humus colloid significantly changed Ni and Cd species distribution. The decreased content of Ni and Cd in an unstable state inhibited their biological activity. Conclusions were drawn that an SS amount equal to 7% of the dry sludge mass was optimal value to guarantee the lowest amount of Cd in an unstable state, whereas the amount was 14% for Ni.

Experiments have been conducted on a plasma opening switch (POS) test-bed to investigate the influence of cathode materials made of aluminum, stainless steel, molybdenum and tungsten on opening performance for conduction time up to 3 microseconds, conduction current up to 100 kA. Remarkably different opening characteristics have been shown for these materials, with tungsten being of the best opening performance.