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Item Ladle Slide Gate Health Monitoring for Steel Industry: Overcoming the Industrialization Challenges of Data-Driven Diagnostics in Steel Plants(2024) Disidoro, Fabio; Schmidt, Verena; Mehmedovic, Adi; Schöpe, Till; Netsch, ChristophThe steel industry is undergoing a transformative phase with the advent of digitalization and automation technologies. A system was developed and implemented to track the condition of ladle slide gate refractories during operation. It aims at providing operators with timely insights on ladle slide gate conditions and guidance to support decision making at the ladle preparation area. Digital twins of refractory components consolidate data of different sources and process steps along their lifecycle. We will give insights on how data driven, classical as well as machine learning based models, support slide gate refractory plate condition assessments. Then, we will provide an outlook on how such models can be used to estimate the remaining lifetime. The framework and methodology presented in this paper aims to offer insights into overcoming the obstacles in the industrialization of data-driven solutions within the steel sector. The architecture selected streamlines the implementation of data-driven tools in the steel industry, considering the stringent data sharing requirements and the heterogenous infrastructure. Results will be presented demonstrating the application of the system to detect critical situations with the operation of ladle slide gate systems and support operators in decision making related to refractory components at the ladle preparation area.Item Colouring solutions for building integrated photovoltaic modules: A review(2024-07-01) Borja Block, Alejandro; Escarre Palou, Jordi; Courtant, Marie; Virtuani, Alessandro; Cattaneo, Gianluca; Roten, Maxime; Li, Heng-Yu; Despeisse, Matthieu; Hessler-Wyser, Aïcha; Desai, Umang; Faes, Antonin; Ballif, ChristopheAs global decarbonisation requires the widespread adoption of solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity, addressing challenges related to land use has become relevant. The conflict between PV installations and other land uses, such as forestry or agriculture, highlights the urgency for alternative solutions. Integrating PV technology into the built environment is a compelling strategy to mitigate these challenges, enabling electricity generation precisely where it is needed. In the context of buildings integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), PV modules serve a dual purpose, functioning both as electricity generators and integral components of the architectural design. Therefore, the architecture requirements — specifically in terms of shape, size, and colour— become relevant for BIPV modules. This paper offers a general overview of the diverse colouring technologies employed for BIPV modules, describing their functioning, challenges, and advantages. An examination of the current landscape of coloured PV products involving considerations of pricing and power output is presented. Additionally, this work addresses the critical topics of reliability and stability in colour solutions, outlining methodologies for quantitative colour characterization. It provides foresight into the potential challenges facing installations in the future and explores the multifaceted social, economic, and environmental implications of this evolving technology. © 2024 The Author(s)Item An Integrated Photonic Biosensing Platform for Pathogen Detection in Aquaculture(2024-08-13) Knoben, Wout; Graf, Siegfried; Borutta, Florian; Tegegne, Zerihun; Ningler, Michael; Blom, Arthur; Dam, Henk; Evers, Kevin; Schonenberg, Rens; Schütz-Trilling, Anke; Veerbeek, Janneke; Arnet, Roman; Fretz, Mark; Revol, Vincent; Valentin, Thomas; Bridges, Christopher; Schulz, Stephan; van Kerkhof, Joost; Leenstra, Anne; Orujov, Farid; van Middendorp, HenkAquaculture is expected to play a vital role in solving the challenge of sustainably providing the growing world population with healthy and nutritious food. Pathogen outbreaks are a major risk for the sector, so early detection and a timely response are crucial. This can be enabled by monitoring the pathogen levels in aquaculture facilities. This paper describes a photonic biosensing platform based on silicon nitride waveguide technology with integrated active components, which could be used for such applications. Compared to the state of the art, the current system presents improvements in terms of miniaturization of the Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) and the development of waferlevel processes for hybrid integration of active components and for material-selective chemical and biological surface modification. Furthermore, scalable processes for integrating the PIC in a microfluidic cartridge were developed, as well as a prototype desktop readout instrument. Three bacterial aquaculture pathogens (Aeromonas salmonicida, Vagococcus salmoninarum, and Yersinia ruckeri) were selected for assay development. DNA biomarkers were identified, corresponding primer-probe sets designed, and qPCR assays developed. The biomarker for Aeromonas was also detected using the hybrid PIC platform. This is the first successful demonstration of biosensing on the hybrid PIC platform.Item EIS-Based Hysteresis Modelling of LFP Cells(2023-06-29) Thenaisie, Guillaume; Brivio, ClaudioBased on recent advances in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, a new approach to the modelling of the hysteresis of LiFePO4 is proposed. A method for characterising the hysteresis based on electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is presented, which allows to reduce the characterization time from multiples weeks to few days. The results show that hysteresis in LiFePO4 is a very slow relaxation process strongly correlated with prior works results in crystalline phase transitions. An Electrical Circuit Model (ECM) of the cell is then extracted by using the distribution of relaxation times (DRT) on the EIS profile of the cell. The extracted DRT parameters show good agreement at low frequencies with previous thermodynamic studies. The performances of the ECM is compared with state of art physics-based ECM (without hysteresis compensation) and show an RMSE reduction of four fold under dynamic cycling. © 2023 IEEE.Item Intrinsic performance loss rate: Decoupling reversible and irreversible losses for an improved assessment of photovoltaic system performance(2024-01-01) Quest, Hugo; Virtuani, Alessandro; Ballif, ChristopheABSTRACT: Solar electricity is set to play a pivotal role in future energy systems. In view of a market that may soon reach the terawatt (TW) scale, a careful assessment of the performance of photovoltaic (PV) systems becomes critical. Research on PV fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) focuses on the automated identification of faults within PV systems through production data, and long-term performance evaluations aim to determine the performance loss rate (PLR). However, these two approaches are often handled separately, resulting in a notable gap in the field of reliability. Within PV system faults, one can distinguish between permanent, irreversible effects (e.g. bypass diode breakage, delamination and cell cracks) and transient, reversible losses (e.g. shading, snow and soiling). Reversible faults can significantly impact (and bias) PLR estimates, leading to wrong judgements about system or component performance and misallocation of responsibilities in legal claims. In this work, the PLR is evaluated by applying a fault detection procedure that allows the filtering of shading, snow and downtime. Compared with standard filtering methods, the addition of an integrated FDD analysis within PLR pipelines offers a solution to avoid the influence of reversible effects, enabling the determination of what we call the intrinsic PLR (i-PLR). Applying this method to a fleet of PV systems in the built environment reveals four main PLR bias scenarios resulting from shading losses. For instance, a system with increasing shading over time exhibits a PLR of −1.7%/year, which is reduced to −0.3%/year when reversible losses are filtered out. © 2024 The Author(s). Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.