The use of a computer simulator, previously developed and validated, applied to a four-stroke marine dual-fuel engine, has allowed the authors to present in this paper a solution to improve the overall efficiency of the engine by adopting a hybrid turbocharger. This component replaces the original one allowing, in addition to maintaining the previous usual functions, the production of electricity to satisfy part of the ship’s electric load. In this study the application of the hybrid turbocharger concerns an engine powered by natural gas in particular. The turbocharger substitution involves a significant variation of the engine load governor operating mode. The improved engine characteristics that the hybrid turbocharger facilitates, compared to the original, are highlighted by the results reported in tabular and graphical form, for different engine loads and speeds.

Dissolved gas analysis (DGA) is widely used to detect the incipient fault of power transformers. However, the accuracy is greatly limited by selection of DGA features and performance of fault diagnostic model. This paper proposed a fault diagnostic method integrating feature selection and diagnostic model optimization. Firstly, this paper set up three feature sets with eight basic DGA gases, 28 DGA gas ratios and 36 hybrid DGA features, respectively. Then, to eliminate the interference of weak-relevant and irrelevant features, the genetic-algorithm-SVM-feature-screen (GA-SVM-FS) model was built to screen out the optimal hybrid DGA features subset (OHFS) from three feature sets. Next, using the OHFS as the input, the support vector machine (SVM) multi-classifier optimized by ISGOSVM (SVM classifier optimized by improved social group optimization) was built to diagnose fault types of transformers. Finally, the performance of OHFS and ISGOSVM diagnostic model was tested and compared with... [more]

The failure mechanism of heterogeneous rocks (geological materials), especially under hydraulic conditions, is important in geological engineering. The coupled mechanism of flow-stress-damage should be determined for the stability of rock mass engineering under triaxial stress states. Based on poroelasticity and damage theory, a three-dimensional coupled model of the flow-stress-damage failure process is studied, focusing mainly on the coupled characteristics of permeability evolution and damage in nonhomogeneous rocks. The influences of numerous mesoscale mechanical and hydraulic properties, including homogeneity, residual strength coefficient, loading rates, and strength criteria, on the macro mechanical response are analyzed. Results reveal that the stress sensitive factor and damage coefficient are key variables for controlling the progress of permeability evolution, and these can reflect the hydraulic properties under pre-peak and post-peak separately. Moreover, several experiment... [more]

Many steel refineries generate significant quantities of coke oven gas (COG), which is in some cases used only to generate low pressure steam and small amounts of electric power. In order to improve energy efficiency and reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, a combined cycle power plant (CCPP) where COG is used as fuel is proposed. However, desulphurization is necessary before the COG can be used as a fuel input for CCPP. Using a local steel refinery as a case study, a proposed desulphurization process is designed to limit the H2S content in COG to less than 1 ppmv, and simulated using ProMax. In addition, the proposed CCPP plant is simulated in Aspen Plus and is optimized using GAMS to global optimality with net present value as the objective function. Furthermore, carbon tax is considered in this study. The optimized CCPP plant was observed to generate more than twice the electrical efficiency when compared to the status quo for the existing steel refinery. Thus, by generating more e... [more]

很多炼钢厂排放大量焦炉煤气。大部分焦炉煤气被用于燃烧来生产低压蒸汽以及通过汽轮机生产少量的电。为了提高发电效率并减少温室效应，本文提出运用联合循环发电来替代蒸汽发电。不同于现有的蒸汽发电的是，在联合循环发电过程中，焦炉煤气必须经过脱硫处理。基于当地炼钢厂的情况，本文提出并设计了焦炉煤气脱硫方案，使得焦炉煤气中H2S含量低于1 ppmv。该脱硫过程采用ProMax模拟。联合循环发电采用Aspen Plus模拟。并且整个联合循环发电过程又用GAMS软件模拟，以最大化纯现价为目标来优化整个联合循环发电过程。本文还考虑了二氧化碳排放税对纯现价的影响。优化后的联合循环发电效率是现有的低压蒸汽发电的两倍多。因此，通过提高发电效率，钢铁厂所需购买电量降低，也因而从生命周期的角度来说大大减少了二氧化碳的排放量。