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1. Noninvasive Fuel Flow Monitoring System for Vented Fuel Oil Heaters

   https://doi.org/10.3390/s23125664  

   Bond, Baxter; Vilagi, Alana; Pride, Dominique J. (June 2023, Sensors)

   In this work, we present hardware and firmware design and preliminary testing results for a noninvasive device for measuring fuel oil consumption in fuel oil vented heaters. Fuel oil vented heaters are a popular space heating method in northern climates. Monitoring fuel consumption is useful to understanding residential daily and seasonal heating patterns and understanding the thermal characteristics of buildings. The device is a pump monitoring apparatus (PuMA) that employs a magnetoresistive sensor to monitor the activity of solenoid driven positive displacement pumps, which are commonly used in fuel oil vented heaters. PuMA accuracy for calculating fuel oil consumption was evaluated in a lab setting and found to vary up to 7% from the measured consumption value during testing. This variance will be explored more in field testing. 

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2. Effects of Needle Lift and Fuel Type on Cavitation Formation and Heat Transfer Inside Diesel Fuel Injector Nozzle

   Zeidi, Javad SM; Dulikravich, George S; Reddy, Sohail R; Darvish, Shadi (May 2017, International Symposium on Advances in Computational Heat Transfer, paper CHT-17-102, Naples, Italy, May 28-June 1, 2017)

   In the present study, the flow inside a real size Diesel fuel injector nozzle was modeled and analyzed under different boundary conditions using ANSYS-Fluent software. A validation was performed by comparing our numerical results with previous experimental data for a rectangular shape nozzle. Schnerr-Sauer cavitation model, which was selected for this study, was also validated. Two-equation k-ε turbulence model was selected since it had good agreement with experimental data. To reduce the computing time, due to symmetry of this nozzle, only one-sixth of this nozzle was modeled. Our present six-hole Diesel injector nozzle was modeled with different needle lifts including 30 μm, 100 μm and 250 μm. Effects of different needle lifts on mass flow rate, discharge coefficient and length of cavitation were evaluated comprehensively. Three different fuels including one Diesel fuel and two bio-Diesel fuels were also included in these numerical simulations. Behavior of these fuels was investigated for different needle lifts and pressure differences. For comparing the results, discharge coefficient, mass flow rate and length of cavitation region were compared under different boundary conditions and for several fuel types. The extreme temperature spike at the center of an imploding cavitation bubble was also analyzed as a function of time and initial bubble size. 

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3. Migration and fuel use in rural Zambia

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-021-00385-7  

   Wu, Yu; Entwisle, Barbara; Sinai, Cyrus; Handa, Sudhanshu (December 2021, Population and Environment)

   Abstract What is the effect of migration on fuel use in rural Zambia? Opportunities to increase income can be scarce in this setting; in response, households may pursue a migration strategy to increase resources as well as to mitigate risk. Migrant remittances may make it possible for households to shift from primary reliance on firewood to charcoal, and the loss of productive labor through migration may reinforce this shift. This paper uses four waves of panel data collected as part of the Child Grant Programme in rural Zambia to examine the connection between migration and the choice of firewood or charcoal as cooking fuel and finds evidence for both mechanisms. Importantly, this paper considers migration as a process, including out as well as return migration, embedding it in the context of household dynamics generally. Empirical results suggest that while out-migration helps move households away from firewood as a fuel source, return migration moves them back, but because the former is more common, the overall effect of migration is to shift households away from primary reliance on firewood. 

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4. Rapid and Onsite Detection of Fuel Adulteration

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c00578  

   Movafaghi, Sanli; Vallabhuneni, Sravanthi; Wang, Wei; Jathar, Shantanu; Kota, Arun K (June 2023, Langmuir)
5. Uranium: The Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Beyond

   https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms23094655  

   Costa Peluzo, Bárbara Maria; Kraka, Elfi (May 2022, International Journal of Molecular Sciences)

   This review summarizes the recent developments regarding the use of uranium as nuclear fuel, including recycling and health aspects, elucidated from a chemical point of view, i.e., emphasizing the rich uranium coordination chemistry, which has also raised interest in using uranium compounds in synthesis and catalysis. A number of novel uranium coordination features are addressed, such the emerging number of U(II) complexes and uranium nitride complexes as a promising class of materials for more efficient and safer nuclear fuels. The current discussion about uranium triple bonds is addressed by quantum chemical investigations using local vibrational mode force constants as quantitative bond strength descriptors based on vibrational spectroscopy. The local mode analysis of selected uranium nitrides, N≡U≡N, U≡N, N≡U=NH and N≡U=O, could confirm and quantify, for the first time, that these molecules exhibit a UN triple bond as hypothesized in the literature. We hope that this review will inspire the community interested in uranium chemistry and will serve as an incubator for fruitful collaborations between theory and experimentation in exploring the wealth of uranium chemistry. 

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