There has always been a desire to develop industrial processes that minimize the resources they use, and the wastes they generate. The problem is when new guidelines are forced upon long established processes, such as solvent based coating operations. This means instead of integrating an emission reduction technology into the original design of the process, it is added on after the fact. This significantly increases the costs associated with treating emissions. In this work the ultimate goal is the design of an “add-on” abatement system to treat emissions from solvent based coating processes with high destruction efficiency, and lower costs than systems in current use. Since emissions from processes that utilize solvent based coatings are primarily comprised of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), the treatment of these compounds will be the focus. VOCs themselves contain a significant amount of energy. If these compounds could be destroyed by simultaneously extracting the energy they release, operational costs could be substantially reduced. This thesis examines the use of model-based design to develop and optimize a VOC abatement technology that uses a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) for energy recovery. The model was built using existing HYSYS unit operation models, and was able to provide a detailed thermodynamic and parametric analysis of this technology. The model was validated by comparison to published literature results and through the use of several Design of Experiment factorial analyses. The model itself illustrated that this type of system could achieve 95% destruction efficiency with performance that was superior to that of Thermal Oxidation, Biological Oxidation, or Adsorption VOC abatement technologies. This was based upon design criteria that included ten year lifecycle costs and operational flexibility, as well as the constraint of meeting (or exceeding) current regulatory thresholds.

In der Arbeit wurde erstmals die Eignung von Silizium-Bauelementen mit monolithisch integrierten Thermosäulen als Wärmeleistungstransducer für thermochemische Sensoren zur Detektion flüchtiger organischer Verbindungen (VOC) untersucht. Dabei wurden bereits in massensensitiven und kapazitiven Sensoren bewährte Polymerschichten als chemisch sensitive Rezeptoren verwendet. Als Kriterien für die Bewertung des Sensors dienten Empfindlichkeit, Signal-Rausch-Verhältnis, Reproduzierbarkeit und Signaldynamik. Weiterhin konnte die für die Anwendung der Silizium-Thermosäulen entwickelte Methodik zur Charakterisierung neuer organischer Clathratbildner als potentielle Rezeptormaterialien genutzt werden. Für die untersuchten Clathratbildner wurden die Empfindlichkeiten und die Signaldynamik gegenüber einer Auswahl typischer organischer Lösungsmittel gemessen. Es konnte festgestellt werden, dass die Empfindlichkeitsrelationen deutlich von den Eigenschaften der Rezeptorschichten bestimmt werden und damit eine Mustererkennung in entsprechend konfigurierten Sensorarrays möglich sein sollte. Entgegen den Erwartungen spielt jedoch für die Selektivität der Rezeptorschichten der stereoselektive Effekt der Clathratbildung keine Rolle, da entsprechende Phasenumwandlungen erst oberhalb sensorrelevanter Partialdrücke auftreten und der Messeffekt lediglich durch Adsorption erzeugt wird.

<p>In this thesis the sink-effect in indoor materials wasstudied using mathematical modelling and experimental studies.The sink-effect is a concept which is commonly used tocharacterise the ability of different indoor materials to sorbcontaminants present in the indoor air. The sorption process ismore or less reversible, i.e. molecules sorbed in materials athigh contaminant concentrations may again be desorbed at lowerconcentrations. Knowledge of the sorption capacity of materialsand the rate at which sorption and desorption takes place is offundamental importance for mathematical simulation of indoorair quality. The aim of this work is to contribute withknowledge about how the sink-effect can be described inmathematical terms and how the interaction parametersdescribing the sorption capacity and sorption/desorptionkinetics can be determined. The work has been of amethodological nature. The procedure has been to set upphysically sound mathematical models of varying complexity andto develop small-scale chamber experiments. Two differentdynamic chamber methods have been used. One is based on amodified standard FLEC-chamber while the other uses a chamberwith two compartments, one on each side of the material. The"twin-compartment" method was designed due to the observationthat the contaminant readily permeated straight through theselected materials, which resulted in uncontrolled radiallosses in the FLEC-chamber. In order to be useful forcomparison between experiments and calculations and parameterfitting, the boundary conditions in the chambers must beprecisely known and controlled. This matter has shown to be themost crucial and difficult problem in the research. A varietyof mathematical models for the sink-effect have been proposed.In some models advanced fluid simulations were used in order totest the influence ofill-defined flow boundary conditions. Theaim of the modelling is to find a formulation with a minimum ofinteraction parameters, which is generally useful, i.e. both insmall-scale laboratory environments and in full-scale like anoffice room. Estimated model parameters are shown to be able toyield a reasonably good fit to experimental data for thesorption process but a less satisfactory fit for the desorptionprocess.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>sink-effect, sorption, adsorption, diffusion,indoor air quality, volatile organic compounds, VOC,contaminants, building materials</p>

Thin-film solar cells on glass substrates are likely to have a bright future due to the potentially low costs and the short energy payback times. Polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si, grain size &gt 1 pm) has the advantage of being non-toxic, abundant, and long-term stable. Glass as a substrate, however, limits the processing temperatures to ~600??C for longer process steps. Films with large grain size can be achieved by solid phase crystallisation (SPC), and especially by solid phase epitaxy (SPE) on seed layers, using amorphous silicon deposited at low temperatures as a precursor film. With SPC and SPE, the amorphous silicon film is typically crystallised at ~600??C over hours. During this anneal at atmospheric pressure -depending on the properties of the amorphous silicon film- ambient gas can percolate the film and can negatively affect the crystallisation. In this work, a high-vacuum anneal chamber was designed and built to allow the in-situ crystallisation of amorphous silicon films deposited on glass in a PECVD cluster tool. An important aspect of the design was the comfortable and safe operation of the vacuum anneal chamber to enable unattended operation. This was realised by means of a state-of-the-art, programmable temperature controller and a control circuit design that incorporates various safety interlocks. The chamber interior was optimised such that a temperature uniformity of 2-3K across the sample area was achieved. The chamber was calibrated and tested, and SPC and SPE samples were successfully crystallised. In initial SPC crystallisation experiments with solar cell structures, after post-deposition treatments, a 1 -sun open-circuit voltage of 465 mV was obtained, similar to furnace-annealed samples. In initial experiments with SPE solar cell structures, difficulties regarding the characterisation of the unmetallised solar cells with the quasi-steady-state open-circuit voltage method (QSSVOC) were encountered after post-deposition hydrogen treatment. A possible explanation for these difficulties is the contact formation with the metal probes. Furthermore, limiting factors of the QSSVOC method for the characterisation of unmetallised cells with high contact resistance values were investigated and, additionally, the accuracyof the QSSVOC setup was improved in the low light intensity range.

Mainz, Univ., Diss., 2004

Zugl.: Göttingen, Universiẗat, Diss., 2007.

Zugl.: München, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2008

Universiẗat, Diss., 1999--Dortmund. / Dateiformat: PDF.

Universiẗat, Diss., 2002--Dortmund.

Universiẗat, Diss., 2002--Tübingen.