International Webinar on
Material Science and Engineering
Scientific Program
Keynote Session:
Title: SCALE ECONOMIES IN EXTENDED SNF STORAGE
Biography:
Geoffrey Rothwell is the Chief Consulting Economist for Turner Harris, specializing in all aspects of the economics of nuclearpower. G.S.Rothwel​has written extensively on energy economics and electricity markets. His book, Economics of Nuclear Power, was published by Routledge in 2016.
Abstract:
Fuel is periodically replaced in nuclear power plants (NPPs). Irradiated or Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF, where SNF could be used nuclear fuel if reprocessing facilities are available) cools in suitable facilities, where the type and the length of time depend on plans for the ultimate disposition of the SNF, for example, reprocessing or permanent long-term storage (“extended” implies storage longer than 50 years). The paper attempts to calculate the relationships between the costs and the sizes of on-site wet and on-site/off-site dry storage facilities. This is done by estimating reduced-form equations based on publicly available data, which can be modified with more recent, detailed, or proprietary data to update or extend the analysis: the values reported here should not be considered as the only possible outcomes; they are used here to understand relative NPP SNF owner economic incentives. The paper finds that once the NPP has been decommissioned, and only the on-site dry storage remains, there might not be a cost reason (from the point of view of the NPP owner/operator) to move the SNF to consolidated facilities. However, there is a consensus that consolidated facilities (a) would be more safe and secure than dispersed on-site storage locations, (b) would facilitate final disposal, and (c) can reduce the risks perceived by local communities near SNF storage facilities.
Title: Multi-Scale Design for Structural Energy Devices
Biography:
Xinhua Liu has completed her PhD from Tongji University and Postdoctoral Studies from Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, UK. She has great interests in material science and electrochemical engineering, working to develop scalable technologies to produce energy materials for various energy applications. With a great interest in design high performance batteries and battery packs from micro-scale to grid level, Xinhua has published more than 30 papers in recent five years including Advanced Materials, Advanced Science.
Abstract:
Energy devices, such as supercapacitors, Lithium-ion batteries, have now become the most critical component for electric vehicles (EV) and consumer electronics with improvements in energy and power density. The key aspects of a battery pack which define its performance are mainly the electrode and electrolyte chemistry selection, single cell performance and battery management. This talk will discuss the issues and challenges of the batteries and how to develop high performance batteries via multi-scale design, including the electrode/electrolyte material selection and structure design, the scaffold design for structural devices, and the battery pack design[1,2]. Advanced X-ray tomography technology is employed here for structure characterization and further understand the degradation mechanism [3]. Guidance in materials, manufacturing technology and pack design will be given. More focus will be given to the highly engineered electrospinning technology which can produce nanostructured functional materials, specifically carbon nanofibres/nanotubes, for fabrication of various electrochemical applications. The model based battery pack design will also be discussed to understand overall performance of lithium-ion battery pack due to cell-to-cell variations, thermal gradients and/or cell interconnects.
Title: Some Preliminary Thermal-Hydraulic Safety Analysis on the NHR-200II Reactor
Biography:
Wang Yan is working as a professor in Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, China.
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Abstract:
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The NHR-200II as a new 200 MWth nuclear heating reactor, which adopts natural circulation reactor with high passive safety could serve as a safe and economic energy source for combined heat and power of city. The thermal-hydraulic transient response of reactor system during the postulated loss of coolant accident have a significant impact on the containment design and the evaluation on passive safety of reactor. In this research, based on the preliminary design of the NHR-200 II at the current stage, the sub-channel calculation of reactor core and the analysis on some typical loss of coolant accidents were carried on by using COBRA and PCNHR code which was a validated transient analysis programs developed by Tsinghua University. The calculation results show that the NHR-200II has enough safety margin during the normal operation. Under the postulated loss of coolant accident, the reactor core of the NHR-200 II is able to keep being coved by the residual coolant in the reactor pressure vessel during the transient and the relative safety parameters are effectively controlled under the design limitation values without special safety injection like general PWR, which indicates the good safety feature of the NHR-200 II design.
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Oral Session 1:
- Computational materials science | Nano technology in material science |Hybrid polymer-based materials
Title: Right of recourse under nuclear civil liability law of India
Biography:
Ramandeep Singh Sidhu has Joined Law College as Assistant Professor in January 2017 Working as Officiating Principal in the college since August2018.
Abstract:
The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 follows global practice in the field of nuclear civil liability and has a specific provision that enables a nuclear operator to exercise right of recourse against a supplier. The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Rules, 2011 provides explanation regarding the provisions enshrined in the Act. The Rules explains about the Supplier which has been formulated based on the industry practices of nuclear sector. The paper analyses the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act and Rules on the issue of compatibility of right of recourse with the international nuclear civil liability principles and conventions, particularly with the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, 1997. This paper also discusses the issue of right of recourse by nuclear operator against the supplier in the light of explanation about a supplier as provided under the Act and Rules.
Title: Nuclear plants as an option to help decarbonising the European and French heat sectors
Biography:
Martin Louis Georges Leurent is working on 7 square Dunois.
Abstract:
A techno-economic prospective analysisThe PhD Thesis studies the role that nuclear plants could play in decarbonizing the European and French heating sectors. These thermal plants could remain used in the long term due to their low carbon profile and ability to provide flexibility to the power grid. The most widely spread operation of nuclear plants however implies the rejection into the environment of the heat that cannot be converted to electricity. Transferring part of this heat to nearby industrial sinks or district heating systems would reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. If replacing imported fossil-fuels, it would also improve energy self-sufficiency, favouring long-term price stability. Five Parts are composing the PhD Report. It starts with the Introduction (Part I) and ends with the Conclusions (Part V). Parts II, III and IV constitute the hearth of the Report. Part II evaluates the costs and benefits of diverse heat decarbonisation alternatives. Potentially cost-effective nuclear plant based heating systems are identified. At least seven out of the fifteen theoretical systems envisioned in Europe could prove to be overall good to the society. They represent a good compromise between the diverse socioeconomic criterions affecting decision-making processes, such as costs, greenhouse gases and air pollutant emissions, land use planning, energy self-sufficiency or price stability. The uncertainty is however important, especially regarding transportation and distribution costs. While the expected increase of carbon and fossil fuels prices would favour the development of low carbon heating systems, the economic and environmental balance remains to be evaluated on a case by case basis using advanced engineering softwares. Part II is decomposed into three Chapters: 1. Cost-Benefit Analysis of district heating (DH) using heat from nuclear plants in Europe; 2. Nuclear plant based DH systems are compared to other heat decarbonization options in Dunkirk; 3. Spatial analysis of feasible industrial symbiosis based on nuclear plant sourced steam in France. Part III analyses multi-stakeholder interactions in real world projects. Challenges to concrete implementation are high, arising from social, political, institutional, financial and psychological dimensions. If nuclear plants are planned on a site that holds potential for cost-effective heat supply (e.g. Gravelines, Le Bugey, Loviisa, Oldbury), they should be built as ‘cogeneration ready’. Cogeneration readiness can be delivered for a small incremental cost, and would ensure that the plants are ready for a complete cogeneration upgrade when the market, institutional and socio-political conditions are fulfilled. Alongside, the development of district heating networks and the co-location of diverse industrial factories within contiguous areas should be strongly supported through all channels, especially local ones. Part III is broken down into two Chapters: 4. Single case study of the Loviisa 3 project in Finland, offered by Fortum in 2009; 5. Multicriteria approach to help integrating viewpoints of various actors in a French urban area. Part IV investigates the French case in details through prospective and multi-level perspective approaches. Nuclear plant based heating systems could be progressively implemented between 2020 and 2050 without jeopardizing the development of renewable heat and power sources or other excess heat sources. Towards 2050, cost-effective supply of heat from French nuclear plants to DH systems and industrial sinks could total 20-180 TWth/a (10-60 TWth/a and 10-120 TWth/a, respectively) representing a reduction of 2-18% of the total French GHG emissions compare to 2014 levels (0.5-4% and 3.5-14%, respectively). Such systems are however barely mentioned in international and national energy scenario. While awareness, legitimacy and desirability can be stimulated by active and crossboundary intermediation, external and unpredictable events also hold a significant role. A prerequisite to an efficient intermediation is to acknowledge the fact that legitimacy is based not on the knowledge itself but on the working conditions surrounding knowledge creation. Part IV is split into two Chapters: 6.Prospective analysis in France towards 2050; 7. Open and active intermediation to enhance project experimentation in France.
Title: Inherent safety and ATWS analysis of High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor
Biography:
Abstract:
The modular high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), recognized as a candidate for the Generation IV nuclear energy system technology, has well-known inherent safety features. A commercial-scale 200 MWe Pebble-bed Modular High Temperature gas-cooled Reactor (HTR-PM) has been designed and constructed in Shandong Province, China. Most of the construction and installation work have been finished and the connection to the electric grid will be expected in 2019 or the first half of 2020.In this paper, the design and the inherent safety feature of the HTR-PM has been introduced. Several Anticipated Transient Without Scram (ATWS) accidents, a type of Beyond Design Basis Accident (BDBA) receiving high attention especially in Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) analysis, have been studied, including the reactivity introduction ATWS, loss of off-site power ATWS, depressurized loss of coolant ATWS.Calculation results prove that, even in such kind of BDBAs with very low probability, the inherent safety design of HTR-PM can guarantee the reactor shut-down itself by negative temperature feedback. During the accidents, the decay heat of the reactor can be transferred to the environment safely by heat conduction, natural convection and radiation, and the fuel temperature and the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) temperature would never exceed the limitation. The large release of the fission products would not happen.
Keynote Session:
Title: Novel HLC-HA-CCS and PVA-CMC-PEG hydrogels for wound dressing
Biography:
Zhu, Chenhui is a professor of school of chemical engineering, Northwest University, China, Director of Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Degradable Biomedical Materials. She received her Ph.D. degree in Northwest University in 2008, studied in the department of biomedical engineering of Duke University as a visiting scholar from 2012-2013. She won the 11th Shaanxi Youth Science and Technology Award, Shaanxi Youth Science and Technology Innovation Leader Award and Xi'an Academic and Technological Leader Award. Her research area focuses on biomaterials and protein engineering. Up to now, Prof. Zhu has published over 60 papers and 2 books, holds 15 patents.
Abstract:
Hydrogel is a kind of hydrophilic soft material with a three-dimensional network structure and has a broad application prospect in the field of medicine. The wound dressings to meet the clinic needs are the seeking goals of scientists. Natural biological materials have excellent biocompatibility 1, 2. In our study, Human-like collagen-hyaluronic acid-carboxylated chitosan (HLC-HA-CCS) complex hydrogels crosslinked with glutamine aminotransferase (TG) are prepared for wound dressing. HA elevates the compressive stress, CCS increases the anti-deformation, HA and CCS together contribute to improve the porosities, swelling and water retention properties. Full thickness skin defect experiments show that HLC-HA-CCS hydrogels can promote wound healing in comparison with traditional ones.
However, the mechanical properties of hydrogels made from natural materials are poor 2 , and the antimicrobial, moisturizing performance as well as bacteria resistance fail to meet the requirements of wound healing. Therefore, a double-layer polyvinyl alcohol-polyethylene glycol-sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (PVA-CMC-PEG) hydrogel are prepared to solve the above problems.
The double-layer hydrogels present a tight upper layer with smaller pore size and a loose lower layer with larger pore size, which can meet the absorption of seepage and bacteria resistance at the same time. The pore size at the longitudinal section presents a trend of gradual reduction and the two layers are bonded tightly. Furthermore, the double-layer hydrogels have a suitable water vapor transmission rate, excellent moisturizing effect, bacteria resistance ability and are non-sticky to the wound. Besides, the hydrogel have no toxic effects on cells. Full-thickness skin defect experiment shows that the double-layer PVA-CMC-PEG hydrogels canenhance wound healing greatly and would be ideal wound dressings
Figure 1.
a1 Porosity of the four HLC hydrogels; a2 pore distribution of the four HLC hydrogels; the swelling ratio of the four HLC hydrogels: b1 four hydrogels in deionized water and b2 four HLC hydrogels in physiological saline, **p < 0.01.
Figure 2.
SEM micrographs of the bi-layer hydrogels. a) Upper layer of the hydrogel with a small pore size. b) Lower layer of the hydrogel with a large pore size. c) Cross-sectional structure of the bi-layer. The scale bar is 100 μm.
Figure 3. Contrasting properties of a bi-layer hydrogel, an upper layer hydrogel, a lower layer hydrogel and a vaseline gauze. a) Water retention ability. b) WVTR. c) Protein absorption content. d) Bacterial invasion performance. The values are the mean ± SD (***p < 0.001, n = 3).
Shirin Alexander
Energy Safety Research Institute (ESRI), College of Engineering, Swansea University, UKTitle: Functionalized Al2O3 Nanoparticles from Superhydrophobic Derived Surfaces to Enhanced Oil Recovery Applications
Biography:
She is the senior lecturer at Swansea University.
Abstract:
The use of various low cost and non-hazardous hydrocarbon materials in order to tune the surface properties of aluminium oxide nanoparticles (NPs) from superhydrophilic to superhydrophobic is reported. The desired wettability is achieved by combining the surface roughness of nanoparticle-derived films and low/high surface energy properties of the highly branched and linear alkyl chains coating the NPs. It is known that branched HC chain architectures promote efficient packing at the surface of aqueous solutions, allowing densely packed disordered films to promote low surface tensions (energies). These nontoxic and cheap hydrocarbon-based NPs have much potential for new coating applications on a variety of substrates, and as a replacement for costly, hazardous fluorocarbons. The role of NPs hydrophobicity on their dynamic interfacial behaviour at the oil-water interface and their ability to form stable emulsions is also explored. The superhydrophobic NPs are able to reduce the interfacial tension of various oils-water by behaving as surfactants and may be used in various potential applications from domestic products to oil industry.
Title: Controlling sintering to obtain nano/submicronic microstructures: from the modeling to advanced approaches like flash sintering/synthesis
Biography:
Abstract:
The sintering is a key process which governs the quality of the obtained microstructures and the final material properties. This control can be done through the optimization of the sintering trajectory. In this aim we develop an analytic model able to predict the densification grain growth kinetic to model the sintering response of different conventional sintering cycles. Advanced sintering approaches like flash sintering applied to Spark Plasma Sintering or Microwave sintering has also an interesting potential to control the microstructures1 and tune the physical properties. The high Multiphysics nature of these processes requires a comprehensive simulation tool playing an important role in these processes control.
Oral Session 1:
- Energy materials| Material physics and material chemistry| Ceramics and composite materials
Title: Non-wovens carbon nanofibers doped and covered with carbon nanotubes as binderless hybrid hierarchical electrode for lithium storage
Biography:
Elaine Yoshiko Matsubara holds a BA (2002) in Chemistry, PhD (2010) in Carbon Nanomaterials for Energy Storage Devices from the University of São Paulo (USP), a part of her PhD studies from the Instituto de Ciencias de Los Materiales de Madrid (Spain), ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), University of Rome La Sapienza (Italy), and a post-doc in Photovoltaic Energy Devices from the State University of São Paulo (UNESP). She is presently Researcher at University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. Her work focuses on synthesis of doped carbon nanotubes, 3D hybrid hierarchical carbon composite materials and chemical and electrochemical graphene production to application and development of lithium and sodium ion batteries.
Abstract:
This study is an investigation of a hybrid hierarchical electrode produced by electrospinning and chemical vapor deposition methods. The binderless hybrid hierarchical electrode is composed by carbon nanofibers with carbon nanotubes inside and outside the fibers. Single- walled or multi-walled carbon nanotubes are present inside the nanofiber as a dopant and they are incorporated during the carbon nanofiber electrospun production. After that, multi-walled carbon nanotubes are grown onto the surface of the carbon nanofiber using chemical vapor deposition method.The suitability of carbon nanofibers for lithium storage applications was investigated by electrochemical methods using charge and discharge curves, cyclic voltammetry and impedance spectroscopy. The morphology of the flexible binderless hybrid hierarchical electrodes was investigated by scanning electron microscopy. The additional incorporation of oxide nanoparticles (manganese, zinc or both) by electrodeposition method are responsible to improve the specific capacitance of the electrode, showing new perspectives to use this electrode configuration to produce lightweight, flexible and conductive electrode for lithium ion batteries without binder addition.
Title: From High Temperature Superconductivity to Li-ion Battery
Biography:
Prof. Maw-Kuen Wu is a distinguished research fellow at the Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He is a member of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan, a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences as a Foreign Associate, and a member of the Academy of the Developing Countries. Prof. Wu has received awards including the Comstock prize, the Bernd T. Matthias Prize, the Humboldt Research Award, the Nikkei Asia Prize, the Ettore Majorana-Erice-Science Prize of Italy, and the Presidential Science Prize of Taiwan.
Abstract:
High temperature superconductivity observed in the cuprates and FeSe-based materials are strongly correlated with the novel Mott metal-insulator transition, which exists in many transition-metal chalcogenides. In this presentation I shall review the discoveries, which I personally involved, of the high Tc cuprate and FeSe superconductors (1,2). I shall discuss more in depth the current understanding regarding the origin of high Tc superconductivity based on our recent results on FeSe and related materials. The results suggest that the presence of ordered Fe-vacancy results in the metal-insulator transition. A proper treatment, either thermally or chemically, can disrupt the vacancy order to induce charge transfers between transition metal d-orbital and the chalcogen p-orbital, and subsequently lead to superconductivity. The concept of charge transfer from transition-metal oxides is the key to the development of high energy capacity cathode material for Li-ion battery (3,4). Herein I’ll present a designed Li-rich cathode material Li1.083Ni0.333Co0.083Mn0.5O2, which dominated by cationic redox reaction, exhibits high specific capacity and much less voltage fade. By reducing the excess lithium content to decrease the probability of Mn4+, Li+ and On- short range ordering, the designed material significantly suppresses the voltage fade at around 3.0/3.3 V that provides a different prospect in evolution of structural chemistry for Li-rich materials. A 60 mAh pouch cell displays 200 mAh/g initial capacity and 85% retention after 400 cycles in 0.2C charge/discharge rate. I’ll present the details of the mechanism responsible for the long cycle-life test .
