An eco-friendly and bio-based ternary hybrid gel consisting of alginate, sepiolite, and ammonium polyphosphate (APP) was fabricated via a facile one-pot method. Rheological tests showed that this ternary hybrid hydrogel exhibited shear-thinning behavior. Firefighting experiments showed that a burning cotton bale extinguished by using water re-ignited, whereas the ternary hybrid gel effectively prevented smoldering and re-ignition of the cotton bale because of the firm adhesion of the hybrid gel to the surface of the cotton bale. Firefighting experiments also showed that the hybrid gel only covered the upper layer of a rice pile after firefighting efforts, whereas water ruined the grains completely, making them inedible and suitable for use only as a feed or for discard with the burnt grains. The firefighting mechanism of this hybrid gel involved multiple modes of action: volatilization of the large amount of water in the gel absorbed much heat (cooling the combustion zone), APP decomposed into non-flammable ammonia when heated (dilution of flammable volatiles and oxygen), and APP and sepiolite were conducive to forming a continuous and dense char layer (insulation of the exchange of combustible gas, heat, and oxygen). This work provides an environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and bio-based hybrid gel for firefighting in grain and cotton reserves.

The spray cold plate has a compact structure and high-efficiency heat exchange, which can meet the requirements of high heat flux dissipation of multiple heat sources, and is a reliable means to solve the heat dissipation of the next generation of chips. This paper proposes to use surfactants to enhance the heat transfer of the spray cold plate, and conduct a systematic experimental study on the heat transfer performance of the spray cold plate under different types and concentrations of additives. It was found that among the three surfactants, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) can improve the heat transfer performance of the spray cold plate, and at the optimal concentration of 200ppm, the heat transfer coefficient of the spray cold plate was increased significantly by 19.8%. Both the n-octanol-distilled water and Tween 20-distilled water can reduce the heat transfer performance of the cold plate using multi nozzles. In addition, based on the experimental data, the dimensionless heat transfers correlations for the spray cold plate using additives were conducted, and the maximum errors of dimensionless correlations for using additives were 2.1%, 2.8%, and 5.4% respectively. This discovery provides a theoretical analysis and basis for the improvement of spray cold plates.

The energy consumption problem of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems over general directed graphs is investigated. The considered problem is firstly reformulated as a Nash equilibrium seeking problem, and a distributed consensus-based algorithm is then proposed to solve it. To address the challenge arising from general directed graphs, a distributed estimation algorithm is embedded such that the explicit dependence on the left eigenvector associated with the eigenvalue zero of the Laplacian matrix can be avoided. Then, the exponential convergence of the proposed distributed Nash equilibrium seeking algorithm is established under a standing assumption. A numerical example is finally provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Clarifying the mechanism of fungi growth is of great significance for maintaining the quality during grain storage. Among the factors that affect the growth of fungi spores, the most important factors are temperature, moisture content and storage time. Therefore, through this study, a multivariate linear regression model among several important factors, such as the spore number and ambient temperature, rice moisture content and storage days, were developed based on the experimental data. In order to build a more accurate model, we introduce a random forest algorithm into the fungal spore prediction during grain storage. The established regression models can be used to predict the spore number under different ambient temperature, rice moisture content and storage days during the storage process. For the random forest model, it could control the predicted value to be of the same order of magnitude as the actual value for 99% of the original data, which have a high accuracy to predict the spore number during the storage process. Furthermore, we plot the prediction surface graph to help practitioners to control the storage environment within the conditions in the low risk region.

Liquid Li metal is a promising nuclear reactor coolant; however, relevant research regarding its heat transfer characteristics remains insufficient. In this study, a steady-state two-dimensional mathematical model is established to describe the heat transfer process of liquid Li in a straight pipe. A numerical analysis is conducted to investigate the effects of inlet velocity, inlet temperature, and wall heat flux on heat transfer in liquid Li. The results indicate the advantage of using liquid Li for improving heat transfer at high inlet temperatures (> 1000 K) compared with using liquid sodium and lead–bismuth eutectic. Considering the mechanism of the outlet radial heat flow model, the ratio of turbulent to molecular diffusion coefficients presents a parabolic distribution along the radius of the pipe. Increasing the inlet velocity, decreasing the inlet temperature, and decreasing the wall heat flux can effectively weaken the dominant role of molecular heat transfer owing to the low Prandtl number of liquid Li. The heat transfer of liquid Li is investigated comprehensively in this study, and the results provide a basis for the practical application of liquid Li as a promising coolant.

Sound speed is an important acoustic parameter for tissue characterization. Herein we developed an ultrasound computed tomography (USCT) system for ex vivo sound speed imaging and evaluation of small animal organs. The proposed USCT system employs a 256-element ring array transducer and allows simultaneous signal transmission and reception for all channels. The method does not require complicated sample preparation procedures and can yield accurate measurement results. Experimental results show that sound speeds of excised rat brain, heart, liver, spleen, and kidney measured by the method are close to published data. This work demonstrates a new method for sound speed imaging and holds potential for in vivo applications.