Material-efficient design

Kjelstrup, S., Coppens, M.-0., Pharoah, J.G., and Pfeifer, P. (2010). Nature-Inspired Energy- and Material-Efficient Design of a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell. Energy Fuels, Vol. 24, pp. 5097. 

The upper limit of efficiency of the biophotolysis of water has been projected to be 3% for weU-controUed systems. This limits the capital cost of useful systems to low cost materials and designs. But the concept of water biophotolysis to afford a continuous, renewable source of hydrogen is quite attractive and may one day lead to practical hydrogen-generating systems. 

The density of a material is a function of temperature and pressure but its value at some standard condition (for example, 293.15 K or 298.15 K at either atmospheric pressure or at the vapor pressure of the compound) often is used to characterize a compound and to ascertain its purity. Accurate density measurements as a function of temperature are important for custody transfer of materials when the volume of the material transferred at a specific temperature is known but contracts specify the mass of material transferred. Engineering applications utilize the density of a substance widely, frequently for the efficient design and safe operation of chemical plants and equipment. The density and the vapor pressure are the most often-quoted properties of a substance, and the properties most often required for prediction of other properties of the substance. In this volume, we do not report the density of gases, but rather the densities of solids as a function of temperature at atmospheric pressure and the densities of liquids either at atmospheric pressure or along the saturation line up to the critical temperature. 

The size, shape and materials of construction depend on the function of the facility, the net explosive weight (NEW) for the worst-case accidental explosion in the facility, and other factors. Both reinforced concrete and steel have been used as materials, and shapes range from box (room) shaped, through horizontal and vertical cylinders to spheres. Generally, the room-shaped structures are most economically designed and constructed of reinforced concrete, while cylindrical and spherical shapes are most efficiently designed when made of steel. 

Design the arrangement of the voltaic cells in a microplate in such a way as to use materials efficiently. 

Computational chemists have developed several remarkably powerful and reliable computer codes, capable of describing the relative stability of various conformations of macromolecules, and details of the electronic structure of molecules of more modest size ( 1). The properties of molecules which can be obtained by use of these programs correlate with important features of chemical reactivity and the properties of materials. Molecular design, in pharmaceuticals, photochemistry, and general materials science can be made much more efficient by the routine use of these computational systems. However, their use is at present not widespread it is limited to a few large chemical companies. 

A balanced process is designed such that only VCM leaves the plant, with raw materials efficiency close to stoichiometry. 

Abstract. Activated carbons were chosen as an efficient hydrogen sorption materials to design gas storage systems. Based on experimental data empirical dependences for choosing commercially available carbon hydrogen sorbents systems were proposed. To increase gas sorption capacity technology of carbon additional activation was applied. 

As Fig. 13 shows, future generation materials with "designer" band gaps can produce higher efficiency devices to generate more electricity with the same solar spectrum. By stacking the available materials, additional components of the solar spectrum contribute to the overall production of conduction electrons, or electric current. 

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