The electrokinetic conversion of flow work to electricity using a glass microchannel array coated with nano-layers of gold that serve as electrodes on both its ends was studied and a maximum power output of 1 mW at an efficiency of 1.3% is reported. The establishment of such a high power generation capability in combination with a low pressure drop (26 kPa) makes this electrokinetic work conversion device more practical than those previously reported in literature.

The cavity walls are a widely used construction system. They became popular in traditional masonry construction for their capacity to reduce the passage of moisture and improve the walls’ thermal performance. However, the latter only applied to narrow cavities with restricted internal air movement. Cavities are also present in emerging technologies, such as 3D concrete printed walls. However, the large cavities of the 3D printed concrete walls have high convective heat transfers that affect the envelope’s thermal performance. Therefore, the authors developed a conjugate heat transfer finite element model to study the large cavities in 3D printed concrete walls and determine the effect on the convective heat transfer of subdividing large cavities. The results show it is possible to reduce the heat flux four times, from 40.4 W/m2 to 9.1 W/m2, subdividing a large cavity into sixteen small ones. This reduction might be higher, increasing the number of cavity subdivisions. However, it is infeasible to restrict the air movements in unfilled air cavities over 25 mm wide for the Rayleigh numbers ≥ 10⁵. Therefore, the practicality of minimizing heat transfer by subdividing large air cavities in 3D printed walls is limited.

The design of sacrificial cathodic protection (CP) systems conventionally involves steady-state assumptions, which means design parameters are considered constant during the in-service life of CP systems. In contrast, it is evident by experimental observations (including field measurements) that cathodic protection is a transient process due to variations in electrolyte properties such as seasonal changes in electrical conductivity of soil, depletion of anodes, and formation of corrosion deposits on anode material surface, to name a few. The lack of practical time-dependent models on this critical issue is apparent in the literature; accordingly, in this study, a pseudo transient electrochemical model is adopted to highlight the transient behavior of cathodic protection systems and investigate key differences with steady-state behavior. For the sake of demonstration, the developed model is used to simulate the time-dependent performance of a sacrificial anode bed for cathodic protection of screw-pile foundations. The methodology proposed in this study can be used by corrosion engineers to improve and optimize the design of CP systems and numerically estimate the performance of sacrificial anodes and the level of protection over time.

Magnetic fields induced by currents created in pressure driven flows inside a solid-state charged nanopore were modeled by numerically solving a system of steady state continuum partial differential equations, i.e., Poisson, Nernst-Planck, Ampere and Navier-Stokes equations (PNPANS). This analysis was based on non-dimensional transport governing equations that were scaled using Debye length as the characteristic length scale, and applied to a finite length cylindrical nano-channel. The comparison of numerical and analytical studies shows an excellent agreement and verified the magnetic fields density both inside and outside the nanopore. The radially non-uniform currents resulted in highly non-uniform magnetic fields within the nanopore that decay as 1/r outside the nanopore. It is worth noting that for either streaming currents or streaming potential cases, the maximum magnetic field occurred inside the pore in the vicinity of nanopore wall, as opposed to a cylindrical conductor that carries a steady electric current where the maximum magnetic fields occur at the perimeter of conductor. Based on these results, it is suggested and envisaged that non-invasive external magnetic fields readouts generated by streaming/ionic currents may be viewed as secondary electronic signatures of biomolecules to complement and enhance current DNA nanopore sequencing techniques.