• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.603-616
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• 2007

Roy Huddle, having invented the coated particle in Harwell 1957, stated in the early 1970s that we know now everything about particles and coatings and should be going over to deal with other problems. This was on the occasion of the Dragon fuel performance information meeting London 1973: How wrong a genius be! It took until 1978 that really good particles were made in Germany, then during the Japanese HTTR production in the 1990s and finally the Chinese 2000-2001 campaign for HTR-10. Here, we present a review of history and present status. Today, good fuel is measured by different standards from the seventies: where $9*10^{-4}$ initial free heavy metal fraction was typical for early AVR carbide fuel and $3*10^{-4}$ initial free heavy metal fraction was acceptable for oxide fuel in THTR, we insist on values more than an order of magnitude below this value today. Half a percent of particle failure at the end-of-irradiation, another ancient standard, is not even acceptable today, even for the most severe accidents. While legislation and licensing has not changed, one of the reasons we insist on these improvements is the preference for passive systems rather than active controls of earlier times. After renewed HTGR interest, we are reporting about the start of new or reactivated coated particle work in several parts of the world, considering the aspects of designs/ traditional and new materials, manufacturing technologies/ quality control quality assurance, irradiation and accident performance, modeling and performance predictions, and fuel cycle aspects and spent fuel treatment. In very general terms, the coated particle should be strong, reliable, retentive, and affordable. These properties have to be quantified and will be eventually optimized for a specific application system. Results obtained so far indicate that the same particle can be used for steam cycle applications with $700-750^{\circ}C$ helium coolant gas exit, for gas turbine applications at $850-900^{\circ}C$ and for process heat/hydrogen generation applications with $950^{\circ}C$ outlet temperatures. There is a clear set of standards for modem high quality fuel in terms of low levels of heavy metal contamination, manufacture-induced particle defects during fuel body and fuel element making, irradiation/accident induced particle failures and limits on fission product release from intact particles. While gas-cooled reactor design is still open-ended with blocks for the prismatic and spherical fuel elements for the pebble-bed design, there is near worldwide agreement on high quality fuel: a $500{\mu}m$ diameter $UO_2$ kernel of 10% enrichment is surrounded by a $100{\mu}m$ thick sacrificial buffer layer to be followed by a dense inner pyrocarbon layer, a high quality silicon carbide layer of $35{\mu}m$ thickness and theoretical density and another outer pyrocarbon layer. Good performance has been demonstrated both under operational and under accident conditions, i.e. to 10% FIMA and maximum $1600^{\circ}C$ afterwards. And it is the wide-ranging demonstration experience that makes this particle superior. Recommendations are made for further work: 1. Generation of data for presently manufactured materials, e.g. SiC strength and strength distribution, PyC creep and shrinkage and many more material data sets. 2. Renewed start of irradiation and accident testing of modem coated particle fuel. 3. Analysis of existing and newly created data with a view to demonstrate satisfactory performance at burnups beyond 10% FIMA and complete fission product retention even in accidents that go beyond $1600^{\circ}C$ for a short period of time. This work should proceed at both national and international level.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 2022

Recently, Hanmi Gemological Institute & Laboratory (HGI) had an opportunity to examine 5 transparent synthetic moissanite. The round brilliants ranged from 0.93 to 0.96 ct and had a colorless, pink, yellow, blue, and red color. Advanced testing results, including Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy, identified all the specimens as synthetic moissanite. Under the microscope, all samples except the colorless were confirmed to be a synthetic moissanite coated with a colored film. EDXRF chemical analysis detected very weak X-ray fluorescence peak characteristics of Ca, Ti, and Co in the colored samples. These features were not detected in the colorless sample. Raman spectroscopy investigation was unable to detect the 1332 cm^-1 (produced by sp³ bonding of carbon atoms) or the ~1550 cm^-1 (produced by graphite-related sp² bonding) peak in the colorless sample. The SEM image of the colorless sample showed no indication of a coating. The TEM image of the colorless sample revealed the presence of a 3~8 nm thick layer on the moissanite. Moreover, from the corresponding STEM Z-contrast image combined with the energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) line profiles and EDX elemental maps, this layer was estimated to be carbon, silicon and oxygen.

• Textile Coloration and Finishing
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.48-56
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• 2016

Improvement of heat sink technology related to the continuous implementation performance and extension of device-life in circumstance of easy heating and more compact space has been becoming more important issue as multi-functional integration and miniaturization trend of electronic gadgets and products has been generalized. In this study, it purposed to minimize of decline of the heat diffusivity by gluing polymer through compounding of inorganic particles which have thermal conductive properties. We used NH-9300 as base resin and used inorganic fillers such as silicon carbide(SiC), aluminum nitride(AlN), and boron nitride(BN) to improve heat diffusivity. After making film which was made from 100 part of acrylic resin mixed hardener(1.0 part more or less) with inorganic particles. The film was matured at $80^{\circ}C$ for 24h. Diffusivity were tested according to sorts of particles and density of particles as well as size and structure of particle to improve the effect of heat sink in view of morphology assessing diffusivity by LFA(Netzsch/LFA 447 Nano Flash) and adhesion strength by UTM(Universal Testing Machine). The correlation between diffusivity of pure inorganic particles and composite as well as the relation between density and morphology of inorganic particles has been studied. The study related morphology showed that globular type had superior diffusivity at low density of 25% but on the contarary globular type was inferior to non-globular type at high density of 80%.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.535-543
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• 2022

A CPFD (Computational particle fluid dynamics) model of solar fluidized bed receiver of silicon carbide (SiC: average d_p=123 ㎛) particles was established, and the model was verified by comparing the simulation and experimental results to analyze the effect of particle behavior on the performance of the receiver. The relationship between the heat-absorbing performance and the particles behavior in the receiver was analyzed by simulating their behavior near bed surface, which is difficult to access experimentally. The CPFD simulation results showed good agreement with the experimental values on the solids holdup and its standard deviation under experimental condition in bed and freeboard regions. The local solid holdups near the bed surface, where particles primarily absorb solar heat energy and transfer it to the inside of the bed, showed a non-uniform distribution with a relatively low value at the center related with the bubble behavior in the bed. The local solid holdup increased the axial and radial non-uniformity in the freeboard region with the gas velocity, which explains well that the increase in the RSD (Relative standard deviation) of pressure drop across the freeboard region is responsible for the loss of solar energy reflected by the entrained particles in the particle receiver. The simulation results of local gas and particle velocities with gas velocity confirmed that the local particle behavior in the fluidized bed are closely related to the bubble behavior characterized by the properties of the Geldart B particles. The temperature difference of the fluidizing gas passing through the receiver per irradiance (∆T/I_DNI) was highly correlated with the RSD of the pressure drop across the bed surface and the freeboard regions. The CPFD simulation results can be used to improve the performance of the particle receiver through local particle behavior analysis.