Highlights of the article: - Novel plasma-assisted route to Fe2O3-TiO2-Au nanosystems on FTO substrates. - Pure nanocomposites containing α-Fe2O3, amorphous TiO2 and Au nanoparticles. - Functional tests in photoelectrochemical water splitting and self-cleaning applications.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4528891
Quality of indoor environment as well as energy consumption in buildings are a growing concern in the context of overheating of buildings, as the EU legislation is primarily focused on heating season. The statistical data of EU have shown that there is already a large amount of buildings not comfortably cool during summer and the trend is increasing. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to evaluate the influence of high intensity passive cooling as one of the passive solutions for overheating of buildings on the overall thermal response of building envelope systems. Specifically, a variety of multi-layer external walls during realistic summer time conditions of Central European climate were considered. For this purpose, a finite element method was used to simulate the non-stationary thermal response of several heavy weight and light weight external wall constructions. The results have shown that indoor air change intensity as well as internal heat gains have a significant impact on heat flow through the building envelope. Clear difference in thermal behaviour was detected between light weight and heavy weight envelope systems, as a consequence of different thermal mass and thermal insulation position. While the results of the conducted study represent guidelines to architects, designers, investors and other stakeholders in building industry, the growing popularity of light weight constructions, especially in residential buildings, dictates further research of building envelope configurations and passive cooling system impact on the thermal response of constructions.
COBISS.SI-ID: 7505505
Highly transparent thin films of TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 composites on glass were prepared by sol-gel process, wherein different amounts of zirconia precursor were mixed with titania precursor solution (0–20 mol% Zr with regard to Ti). For better adhesion of the films on glass supports, a silica binder was added to the mixture of alkoxides (27 mol% Si vs. Ti). The prepared samples were characterized by various techniques to obtain information on their structural, optical and surface properties. The presence of anatase titania polymorph as the only crystalline phase was detected. Unexpectedly, the higher loading of Zr promoted the growth of anatase particles with progressive spherical shape and concomitant decrease of specific surface area, which adversely influenced the photocatalytic activity. Decrease of the photodegradation activity with increasing amount of Zr was evidenced by contact angle measurements of a fatty deposit, spectrofluorometrically using terephthalic acid probe and by EPR spectroscopy monitoring indirectly the non-persistent radicals generation. On the other hand, the higher content of Zr improved the mechanical stability of resulting thin films. An optimal Zr content around 10 mol% appears to be a good compromise between photocatalytic activity and mechanical robustness of the films.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4714491