A REVIEW ON BIOMASS GASIFICATION FOR FUEL CELLS
INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTION JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT & APPLIED SCIENCES & TECHNOLOGIES
Authors: Mohanty, Sucharita; Subramanya, Gowreesh S.; Prathibha, B. S.
Abstract
Biomass has been used as a supply of heat energy since man initially discovered fire. Biomass energy is obtained in many ways and numerous fuels are extracted from it. Traditional biomass conversion technologies like direct combustion, digestion, fermentation, and pyrolysis give low electrical efficiency compared to biomass gasification with fuel cells. The proper gasifier technologies selection supported the compatibility of the fuel cell. Fuel cell technology can be used as a standalone system or integrated with various technologies like Biomass gasification, ORC, GT, or MGT for electricity generation. The current paper included a review of different biomasses, gas cleaning methods, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), and finally the integration of biomass gasifiers with SOFC. Gas cleaning methods remove particulates, organic and inorganic impurities which reduces the performance of biomass-derived gases and fuel cells especially if we select gasification technology. Therefore, more researches are needed to produce a better gas cleaning system for SOFC to reduce the impurities, improve the efficiency and economical designing of the system. Therefore, the start towards the technical realization of the system is ready and presented in this paper. Disciplinary: Renewable Energy & Clean Technology. (C)2020 INT TRANS J ENG MANAG SCI TECH.
Whole-Mount In Situ Hybridization in Zebrafish Embryos and Tube Formation Assay in iPSC-ECs to Study the Role of Endoglin in Vascular Development
JOVE-JOURNAL OF VISUALIZED EXPERIMENTS
Authors: Wang, Yong; Zhang, Ding; Zhou, Fang; Zhou, Meijun; Li, Qiujie; Chen, Jingyu; Yang, Jun
Abstract
Vascular development is determined by the sequential expression of specific genes, which can be studied by performing in situ hybridization assays in zebrafish during different developmental stages. To investigate the role of endoglin(eng) in vessel formation during the development of hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), morpholino-mediated targeted knockdown of eng in zebrafish are used to study its temporal expression and associated functions. Here, whole-mount in situ RNA hybridization (WISH) is employed for the analysis of eng and its downstream genes in zebrafish embryos. Also, tube formation assays are performed in HHT patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cell-differentiated endothelial cells (iPSC-ECs; with eng mutations). A specific signal amplifying system using the whole amount In Situ Hybridization - WISH provides higher resolution and lower background results compared to traditional methods. To obtain a better signal, the post-fixation time is adjusted to 30 min after probe hybridization. Because fluorescence staining is not sensitive in zebrafish embryos, it is replaced with diaminobezidine (DAB) staining here. In this protocol, HHT patient-derived iPSC lines containing an eng mutation are differentiated into endothelial cells. After coating a plate with basement membrane matrix for 30 min at 37 degrees C, iPSC-ECs are seeded as a monolayer into wells and kept at 37 degrees C for 3 h. Then, the tube length and number of branches are calculated using microscopic images. Thus, with this improved WISH protocol, it is shown that reduced eng expression affects endothelial progenitor formation in zebrafish embryos. This is further confirmed by tube formation assays using iPSC-ECs derived from a patient with HHT. These assays confirm the role for eng in early vascular development.