Analysis of thermochemical energy storage in an elemental configuration

Design and bio-inspired optimization of direct contact membrane distillation for desalination based on constructal law

At the present study, a one-dimensional model for the flat sheet direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) for desalination purposes is proposed. Flows and membrane properties have been estimated by appropriate temperature-dependent correlations. Results show that the numerical model is in a very good agreement with experimental data at various feed temperatures, flow rates and concentrations. A constructal design is investigated for DCMD to assess how constructal law can improve the DCMD performance. With the same thermal efficiency of 93.5%, constructal design improves the water mass flux by 37.5% in comparison with the conventional DCMD design. Also, an evolutionary-based optimization algorithm is employed to increase the efficiency of the constructal and conventional design. The Pareto frontier of the constructal and conventional design is compared with each other and the correlations between design variables are investigated. Overall, the present study demonstrates how constructal law can increase the performance of energy systems with a simple modification.

The liver, a functionalized vascular structure

The liver is not only the largest organ in the body but also the one playing one of the most important role in the human metabolism as it is in charge of transforming toxic substances in the body. Understanding the way its blood vasculature works is key. In this work we show that the challenge of predicting the hepatic multi-scale vascular network can be met thanks to the constructal law of design evolution. The work unveils the structure of the liver blood flow architecture as a combination of superimposed tree-shaped networks and porous system. We demonstrate that the dendritic nature of the hepatic artery, portal vein and hepatic vein can be predicted, together with their geometrical features (diameter ratio, duct length ratio) as the entire blood flow architectures follow the principle of equipartition of imperfections. At the smallest scale, the shape of the liver elemental systems-the lobules-is discovered, while their permeability is also predicted. The theory is compared with good agreement to anatomical data from the literature.