Sharif Digital Repository

Charge-discharge rate capability is one of the most important properties of cathode materials for lithium batteries, in particular when envisaging high power density applications such as automotive applications. Efforts to modify rate have been carried out by carbon coating and decreasing particle size in order to modify electronic and ionic conductivity. However, this approach cannot justify all experimental data reported in the literature. Here, we investigated the rate capability of cathode materials by considering their density of states (DOS) calculated by several density functional theory (DFT) methods, in both the lithiated and the delithiated case. We suggested that these structures... 

Transition metal lithium orthosilicates are of interest as cathode materials for lithium batteries. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed to evaluate the structural and electrochemical properties of the different polymorphs of Li2MnSiO4. Our computational studies predict superior properties for the Pmn21 polymorph even after extraction of two Li per formula unit. We state that the shortcomings observed for Li2MnSiO4 as a cathode are caused by two mechanisms. Switching of the magnetic state occurs during the first cycles. The subsequent transition, under delithiated conditions, from the Pmn21 or Pmnb polymorphs to the electrochemically weakest P21/n polymorph is the... 

Today, energy and fresh water play a vital role in human life and the development of economics and also in industry. The energy density in water desalination process is remarkable, so using the renewable energy sources for this purpose can be interesting especially in the high potential renewable energy sources (solar energy) like Middle East. The simulation and feasibility study of solar water desalination system coupled with lithium battery energy storage is considered in the case study of Iran. For these purposes, a complete simulation of the considered system is done. Then, using simulation results, the economic study is carried out using tem economic method. Also, the parametric study... 

Steganography is the art of hiding information in a cover media without attracting attention. One of the cover media which can be used for steganography is speech. In this paper, we propose a new speech steganography in wavelet domain. In this method, lifting scheme is used to create perfect reconstruction Int2Int wavelets. The data is hidden in some of the Least Significant Bits (LSB) of detail wavelet coefficients. The LSB bits for hiding are selected with a new adaptive algorithm. This algorithm does not hide information in silent parts, so there is no need for silent detection algorithms. This method has zero error in hiding/unhiding process, while normal wavelet domain LSB has about 0.2... 

In this study, the effect of utilization of a nanostructured nickel based material as a negative electrode on the performance of microfluidic microbial fuel cell (MFC) with Escherichia coli as biocatalyst has been investigated. Designing the microfluidic MFC with nickel nanostructure resulted in a higher volumetric power density of 343 W m−3 compared to the previously published results. The assessment of effective parameters on the electrochemical performance of cell was investigated. The investigation of the hydraulic diameter impact on the power generation proves that reducing the microchannel hydraulic diameter from 1000 to 350 μm minimized the internal mass-transfer resistance, and... 

A new high capacity method for transform domain image steganography is introduced in this paper. The proposed steganography algorithm works on the wavelet transform coefficients of the original image to embed the secret data. As compared to current transform domain data hiding methods, this scheme can provide a larger capacity for data hiding without sacrificing the cover image quality. This is achieved through retaining integrity of the wavelet coefficients at high capacity embedding. This improvement to capacity-quality trading-off interrelation is analyzed in detailed and experimentally illustrated in the paper  

The purpose of this study was to produce intelligent pectin-based superabsorbent polymers (SAP) to be used as pH- and thermosensitive carriers for the controlled delivery of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). The superabsorbent formation was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic (FT-IR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The effects of pH, ionic strength, temperature, porosity, particle size and levels of loaded drug on drug release profile in various surrounding media were investigated. Each sample was well characterized through swelling studies. The molecular weight between crosslinks (M̄C), crosslinking density (ve) polymer-solvent interaction parameter... 

Recent developments of superconductive industry require cryocoolers with cooling power higher than one Watt in the 70-80 K temperature range. High capacity pulse tube cryocoolers assure the cooling power required for operation of superconducting devices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of the pressure wave generator on high capacity pulse tube cryocooler performance. In this respect the hydrodynamic and thermal behavior of the cryocooler is explained by applying the mass and energy balance equations to different components of the cryocooler cycle. A linear temperature profile is assumed in the regenerator and nodal analysis technique is employed to simulate the tube... 

Nanostructured MgH2-Ni/Nb2O5 nanocomposite was synthesized by high-energy mechanical alloying. The effect of MgH2 structure, i.e. crystallite size and lattice strain, and the presence of 0.5 mol% Ni and Nb2O5 on the hydrogen-desorption kinetics was investigated. It is shown that the dehydrogenation temperature of MgH2 decreases from 426 °C to 327 °C after 4 h mechanical alloying. Here, the average crystallite size and accumulated lattice strain are 20 nm and 0.9%, respectively. Further improvement in the hydrogen desorption is attained in the presence of Ni and Nb2O5, i.e. the dehydrogenation temperature of MgH2/Ni and MgH2/Nb2O5 is measured to be 230 °C and 220 °C, respectively. Meanwhile,... 

Recent developments of superconductive industries require cryocoolers with cooling power higher than 1 W in the 70-80 K temperature range. High capacity pulse tube cryocoolers assure the cooling power required for operation of superconducting devices. This paper presents numerical simulation of a high capacity pulse tube cryocooler, intended to provide more than 200 W cooling power at 80 K. In this respect the behavior of the cryocooler is explained by applying the mass and energy balance equations to different components of the cryocooler. Nodal analysis technique is employed to simulate the tube section behavior numerically. To perform the system optimization the influence of key operating... 

We report improved performance of Li-ion polymer batteries through advanced gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs). Compared to solid and liquid electrolytes, GPEs are advantageous as they can be fabricated in different shapes and geometries; also ionic properties are significantly superior to that of solid and liquid electrolytes. We have synthetized GPE in form of membranes by trapping ethylene carbonate and propylene carbonate in a composite of polyvinylidene fluoride and N-methylpyrrolidinore. By applying phase-transfer method, we synthetized membranes with micro-pores, which led to higher ionic conductivity. The proposed membrane is to be modified further to have higher capacity, stronger... 

The optimum design of a high capacity double inlet pulse tube refrigerator based on second law of thermodynamics has been presented in this paper. Second law is applied to calculate the work loss in the regenerator and to optimize the cryocooler performance. To investigate the behavior of the pulse tube refrigerator, mass and energy balance equations are applied to several control volumes of the cryocooler cycle. A complete system of conservation equations is employed to solve the regenerator analytically. The proposed model reports the cooling capacity of 110 W at 80 K cold end temperature at frequency of 50 Hz, orifice conductance of 0.4 and double inlet coefficient of 0.6, with 2.4 kW net...