ABSTRACT
Hematite holds promise for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting due to its stability, low-cost, abundance and appropriate bandgap. However, it suffers from a mismatch between the hole diffusion length and light penetration length. We have theoretically designed and characterized an ultrathin planar hematite/silver nanohole array/silver substrate photoanode. Due to the supported destructive interference and surface plasmon resonance, photons are efficiently absorbed in an ultrathin hematite film. Compared with ultrathin hematite photoanodes with nanophotonic structures, this photoanode has comparable photon absorption but with intrinsically lower recombination losses due to its planar structure and promises to exceed the state-of-the-art photocurrent of hematite photoanodes.
ABSTRACT
500 million tons of coal fly ash are produced worldwide every year with only 16% of the total amount utilized. Therefore, potential applications using fly ash have both environmental and industrial interests. Unburned carbon concentration measurements are fundamental to effective fly ash applications. Current on-line measurement accuracies are strongly affected by the mineral content and coal rank. This paper describes a char/ash particle cluster spectral emittance method for unburned carbon concentration measurements. The char/ash particle cluster spectral emittance is predicted theoretically here for various unburned carbon concentrations to show that the measurements are sensitive to unburned carbon concentration but insensitive to the mineral content and coal rank at short wavelengths. The results show that the char/ash particle cluster spectral emittance method is a novel and promising route for unburned carbon concentration on-line measurements without being influenced by mineral content or coal rank effects.
