1-Mar-2023: NTPC commissions India’s first Air cooled condenser
NTPC has commissioned India’s first Air cooled condenser installed Super Critical plant to demonstrate its Commitment towards water conservation through reduce, reuse and recycle.
NTPC, the country’s largest integrated energy utility, has started commercial operation of 1st Unit of 660 MW at North Karanpura (3*660 MW), in Jharkhand on 01st March-2023. This project has been envisaged with Air Cooled Condenser (ACC) which has almost 1/3rd water footprint as compared to a conventional Water Cooled Condenser (WCC). This would result in water saving of around 30.5 mcm annually thus fulfilling the needs of around 1.5 million people in the region annually.
What is Air Cooled Condenser (ACC)?
An Air Cooled Condenser (ACC) is a type of heat exchanger used in power plants and other industrial applications to cool and condense steam from a power cycle or other process. Unlike a water-cooled condenser, which uses water as the cooling medium, an ACC uses air to remove heat from the steam and condense it back into water.
An ACC consists of a series of finned tubes arranged in a grid pattern, with fans mounted above the tubes to force air through them. The steam from the power cycle enters the tubes and condenses on the surface of the tubes, releasing heat to the surrounding air. The resulting water then falls to the bottom of the tubes and is collected in a basin for reuse in the power cycle.
ACCs are often used in areas where water is scarce or where environmental regulations restrict the use of water as a cooling medium. They are also used in power plants with a dry cooling system, which uses air instead of water for cooling, to increase the efficiency of the plant. However, ACCs are generally less efficient than water-cooled condensers, and require a larger footprint to achieve the same cooling capacity.
7-Feb-2023: Muons Penetrate Ancient Xi'an Fortress Wall
Muography in Xi’an
CORMIS (Cosmic Ray Muon Imaging System) was used to examine the fortress wall of Xi’an, an ancient city in China. Muons can penetrate hundreds of metres of stone surfaces. Muography is a novel and innovative tool for archaeologists to investigate large-scale sites.
Muon Detection
- Muons are subatomic particles created by cosmic rays. Muons are highly unstable and exist for 2.2 microseconds.
- They can penetrate hundreds of metres of matter, unlike electrons.
Muography is a method of scanning large structures using muons. Muography has applications in archaeology, customs security, and internal imaging of volcanoes.
Archaeological Applications of Muography
- Muography can investigate large-scale archaeological sites.
- Luis Alvarez used Muography in the late 1960s to look for hidden rooms in the Pyramid of Khafre in Giza.
- Scientists have used Muography to analyze Mount Vesuvius in Italy.
- In 2015, Muography was used to look inside the Fukushima nuclear reactors after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
24-Nov-2022: New study on behaviour of charged particles in a magnetic field under ultra-cold temperatures can help control noise in quantum technology
A new study conducted by Bengaluru-based scientists has thrown fresh light on how a charged particle in contact with an environment in the presence of a magnetic field behaves when it is subjected to ultra-cold temperatures.
Scientists involved in the study have said that the latest findings could deepen existing knowledge and explore ways to control noise in the domain of quantum technology.
Quantum technology is too vulnerable to disturbances in the environment that corrupt the information stored in quantum computers, thus understanding the role of noise in quantum technology and finding ways to control it has long been a challenge for scientists.
Physicists from the Raman Research Institute (RRI), an autonomous institute funded by the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, and TIFR - International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), probed the role of noise in quantum technology and the evolving area called quantum Brownian motion. They found how noise in the quantum domain can affect a charged particle in a magnetic field and traced the role of quantum noise in the decay of correlations at ultra-cold temperatures in the context of a charged particle in a magnetic field in the research published recently in the journal Physica A.
Brownian motion, the random motion of particles when suspended in a fluid, forms one of the foundational pillars of physics, thanks to Albert Einstein's seminal work in this area. Quantum Brownian motion is a class of possible dynamics for an open quantum, continuous degree of freedom.
In the past, researchers have studied the behaviour of a neutral Brownian particle in a similar context. However, the researchers said a theoretical study involving the slow late time dynamics of a charged Brownian particle in a magnetic field applicable at ultra-cold temperatures is a first.
The study makes predictions about the nature of decay of factors called the position correlation function, the position-velocity correlation function, and the velocity autocorrelation function in the quantum domain accessible via ultra-cold atom experiments. The predictions can be tested by considering a charged particle in a magnetic field at ultra-cold temperatures (of the order of a few nano Kelvin) in an optical molasses which mimics a viscous environment.
“In the classical domain of high temperatures, correlations decay very fast at long times. In contrast, in the low-temperature domain, the decay of correlations slows down considerably. We study how the magnetic field and the harmonic oscillator trap confining the particle, affect the decay of correlations in the low temperature quantum domain,” said Professor Supurna Sinha, Faculty member in Theoretical Physics, and one of the co-authors of the paper titled ‘Long-time tails in Quantum Brownian Motion of a charged particle in a magnetic field’.
While the strength of the magnetic field affects the amplitude of the decay, this decay slows down when quantum fluctuations dominate over thermal fluctuations, noted Suraka Bhattacharjee, a postdoctoral fellow at RRI and the paper's lead author.
This work is an excellent example of the inter-theme research at RRI, in this case between theoreticians and experimentalists at the Quantum Mixtures laboratory, a part of the cluster of quantum laboratories at RRI.
In continuing theoretical work along similar lines, this group is currently trying to understand the behaviour of a quantum Brownian particle with a spin, a study of which is underway.