Sharif Digital Repository

Spent fuel assemblies are kept in spent fuel maintenance pools, designed at the vicinity of the reactor, after consuming. As capacity of these pools are limited, fuel assemblies should be transported to outside of the reactor building for maintenance. Transportation cask is used for this reason which is Russian type, named TUK-13, at Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. The aim of this project is to ensure proper removal of heat from the transportation cask(TUK-13). For this purpose, numerical computational fluid dynamics method is used. The software used in this study is the Comsol. The temperature range suitable for any part of the chamber is different; but the most sensitive and the most... 

In present study, bioelectrochemical degradation of oxalate as a substance which its concentration in kidney leads to urolithiasis in a microfluidic microbial fuel cell (MFC) was investigated. In addition, to define a novel application for the microfluidic MFC, measurement and monitoring of oxalate concentration were studied. This application can introduce the system as an implantable medical device for medical usage of urolithiasis and hyperoxaluria diseases. In this work, by designing and fabrication of two MFCs including a large-scale and microfluidic one, and measuring the outlet concentration of oxalate in the large-scale system, the outlet concentration of oxalate at microfluidic MFC... 

Gas turbine engine control is a demanding task that requires the regulation of the thrust as well as the satisfaction of the limitations such as engine aerodynamic instability, over temperature and over speed. Fuzzy logic is an attractive technique for the control of poor understood unmodeled, or complex systems especially where the experience of human operators is available to provide qualitative rules. In such cases, it has been found that control decisions can be made on the basis of linguistic measures or fuzzy algorithms. The controller that is designed on the basis of this theory is called fuzzy logic controller. The main objective of this thesis is hardware implementation of fuzzy... 

In this thesis, dynamics of a turbojet’s fuel control unit is studied for the nature and the range of its inputs and outputs. Then, inputs and outputs involved in the system identification process are determined. Tools needed for the application of the input and the signal data sampling are recognized, and henceforth, with the appropriate input applied and the frequency-domain system identification process carried out, desired linear transformation functions representing dynamics of the fuel control unit are found. Using these transformation functions, the fuel control unit is simulated to be converted to an electronic control unit  

This study invewstigates the performance of a coupled microfluidic microbial fuel cell-microbial electrolysis cell producing biohydrogen in presence of shewanella oneidensis MR-1 from excreted oxalate of human metabolic processes. The effect of different parameters such as cell geometry including spiral and straight microchannels, precipitation of nano-particles on anode surface, substrate flowrate and the number of microfluidic microbial fuel cell supporting required power for microbial electrolysis cell were assessed. By anode modification, the maximum current density of 428 W m-3 was obtained which is less than 6-fold of the maximum power density in the cell fabricated by zinc foil. The... 

In this work, a model was presented for an MCFC fuel cell with internal reforming and combustion chamber. The model consists of mass and heat transfer equations beside the chemical and electrochemical reaction rate equations. Velocity distribution due to reactions and temperature distribution along the cell is considered. The model has been simulated in steady state form using finite difference method in MATLAB package environment accompanied by the analysis of the dynamic behavior of cell using method of lines in Simulink environment. Simulation results have been validated with experimental data extracted from literature. The last part of the work concerns with sensitivity analysis of some... 

Sustainable development is the basic aim of energy researchers. But common conversion technologies with respect to efficiency, fuel type and pollution of them, need basic operating improvement to reach sustainable development. Aim of this project is investigation of high temperature fuel cells as basic energy convertor. To improve performance of fuel cell system, four integration systemsare modeled and proposed. Using integrated systems in combined cooling, heat and power is another way of improving performance of systems, that is done in this project.
To improve system performance, the optimum operating values of these parameters is determined. In order to use four proposed system in... 

Vortex flow is one of the most sophisticated fluid movements in nature which has great industrial and scientific importance. In this dissertation, in order to study the combustion process due to a vortex flow, a new experimental model of a cold wall vortex engine, was designed, fabricated and tested with oxidizer issuing tangentially toward the end of the chamber. The cold wall effect in these chambers is a result of the cool layer of oxidizer which significantly reduces the amount of heat transfer to the chamber’s wall. This experimental model was designed to withstand the massive temperature rise resulting from the usage of Polyethylene as fuel and Nitrous oxide as oxidizer. In a series of... 

A two-dimensional, two-phase, nonisothermal model was developed in this work to investigate the water transport characteristic and water distribution in a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). Emphasis is placed on exploring the water distribution in different layers of DMF. The water and methanol crossover through the membrane were considered with the effect of diffusion, electro-osmotic drag, and convection. Governing equations including the prton and electron transport, continuity, momentum, species transport for methanol, water, and gases species, and the auxiliary equations are coupled to determine the output parameters. These parameters are the concentration distribution of the species,... 

Microbial fuel cell is one of the new technologies in the field of power generation from the organic energy resource. The fuel cell system in a process similar to chemical fuel cell generate electrical energy through oxidation of organic composition by uses of electrogenic microorganisms as biocatalyst. In this study the main object is providing a comprehensive mathematical model for the fuel cell system in micro-liter size. To achieve this purpose, we start to investigate properties of fuel cell system in this size. And according to the geometry of system we choose chemotactic equation for estimating hydrodynamic behavior of microorganism and using combination of conductive base and... 

In this thesis, the multidisciplinary design of liquid propellant satellite launch vehicle has been done by taking into consideration the effects of fuel sloshing. At first, the theory of multidisciplinary design and one-level architecture with the label of multidisciplinary feasibility have been used. In the following, Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) and Particle swarm optimization (PSO) have been developed. Then, the multidisciplinary design cycle began with the design of the liquid propellant system. In the propulsion section, the selection of the optimal fuel, the design of the nozzle, motor and the selection of the optimal engine cycle considering the geometric and mass... 

The commercial breakthrough of micro-tubular solid oxide fuel cells (MT-SOFCs) is still facing so many challenges because of the complexity of their manufacturing process and the high cost associated with them. By deploying electrophoretic deposition as a simple and cost-effective method, the different components of the fuel cells (the anode, electrolyte, and cathode) can deposit on the graphite rod as a sacrificial substrate. The next step is eliminating the sacrificial substrate which will make hollow rods of cell components. The results of this study show that the use of a particular type of pencil lead will have a minimal negative impact on the overall fuel cell performance, leading to a... 

Many studies on hybrid vehicles have been done in the past few years. The Full hybrid vehicles need a large number of batteries creating up to 300V to meet the required voltage of electric motor. The size and weight of the batteries cause some problems. This research investigates the mild hybrid vehicle. This vehicle includes a small electric motor and a high power internal combustion engine. In most cases the car’s driving force is created by internal combustion part. A small electric motor, which can operate as engine starter, generator and traction motor, is located between the engine and automatically shifted multi-gear transmission (gearbox). The clutch is used to disconnect the gearbox... 

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell performance is directly related to the flow channel design on bipolar plates. Power gains can be found by varying the type, size, or arrangement of channels. It has been understood that the flow field design has a deterministic role on mass transport and water management, and thus great efforts have been made for the optimal design of flow field such that high and stable cell performance can be achieved. This study concentrates on the improvement in the performance of PEM fuel cells through optimization of the channel dimensions and patterns in the velocity and pressure fields in bipolar plates. For design and optimization purposes, a 2D numerical... 

The objective of the present research, for the first time, was to configure a novel dynamic model to be applied in a general manner to simulate bioelectrochemical systems including microbial fuel cell and microbial electrolysis cell. Biochemical reactions engaged in organic substances degradation in both anolyte and biofilm were described by two anaerobic digestion models; Bernard’s anaerobic digestion model and ADM1. In addition, the bioelectrogenesis and electron transfer were modeled based on the direct electron transfer mechanism across the conductive biofilm. The biofilm simulation was established upon the one-dimensional distributions of substrates and microorganisms. In this study,... 

In this project railway industry is introduced as an optimal alternative for transportation in this country. To select the best choice, four railway technologies that have commercial capacity are presented and the most appropriate one is selected with respect to several criteria, including fuel consumption. The purpose of this thesis is to present the best technology in order to improve Iranian railway transportation by considering the shortage of fossil resources as well as pollution.In this project,the copmparison of alternatives and assessment criteria for best technology selection is done by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the questionaries are filled out by industry and... 

World environmental concerns sharp increase in necessity of using energy in comparison with permanent progress in the field of renewal energy technologies causes modern forms of energy sources which can be used by public. This project studies the increasing influence of the wind power in power systems and also designing and exploiting techniques of local saving energy systems. For this purpose, models and possibilities in order to anticipate the operation of wind farm which is connected to grid by saving energy is described. In this project, the operation of compound system components which is totally a combination of three systems is being studied. The considered compound systems consist of... 

Hydrogen is one of the favorite substitute for fossil fuels due to various properties including the flammability, ubiquity, and easy extraction from plain water. These properties have made it an appropriate alternative source of energy that can be used in internal combustion engines. Compared with fossil fuel energy, in addition to much lower emissions, hydrogen has proved to be much more efficient when applied as a clean source of energy. The main purpose of the present project is to study the effect of applying hydrogen on performance of compression - ignition as internal combustion engines as an alternative fuel. These studies encompass the results derived from the experiment of using... 

Nowadays, the attempts to reduce fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric pollutants, and economic savings, besides alignment with new rules, have been become the top priorities in the marines industry. In order to satisfy these goals, many efforts have been undertaken, including the vessel's trim and draft optimization which has done both experimentally and numerically and also thrust system simulation, to set a logical link between the effects of trim and draft of the ship and the calculated value of the required thrust from simulation to be able to optimize the fuel consumption. In this method, the ship is considered at the specific draft and the trim in bow and stern... 

In developing countries, especially those which are importer of advanced technology in policymakers as well as decision makers face multiple options in the selection, acquisition, application, and development of technology fields. Any appropriate and on-time response to these issues with regard to the dynamics of the market is the one of essential challenges in the technology policymaking which is arrayed in this thesis. The term “Technology Intelligence" is a generic solution for dealing with such a challenge. This research is a part of the development process of the technology intelligence system in the national context which emphasizes the field of “Fuel Cell Technology” as the...